Race, Ethnicity, Power, and Social Structures

Core Concepts in Race and Ethnicity

• Like gender, race and ethnicity are key anchors for people’s social- and self-identities.
• Why do some categories (like gender, race, ethnicity) get attached to inequality and even violence while others (e.g., height, hair color) do not?
• Ethnicity = cultural values and norms that distinguish the members of a given group from others.
• Common modes of distinction: language, dress, shared history, religion, ancestry.

Concepts in Race and Ethnicity

• Race (differences in human physical characteristics used to categorize large numbers of individuals) is a subset of ethnicity.
• In other words: variations in how groups look is one way to divide, but its use this way works just like variations in dress, language, and so on.
• Race is special in that (in the contemporary world) it most commonly implicitly or explicitly fits into a strong hierarchy.
• At a minimum, one race is usually at the top of the social hierarchy by status and economic measures.
• When racial groups are relatively disadvantaged economically and socially (even though they may be numerically largest), we call them a minority group.

Concepts in Race and Ethnicity

• Prejudice = the holding of (positive or negative) preconceived ideas about an individual or group, which are resistant to change even in the face of new information. Difference from “heuristic” or “stereotype” because they’re “resistant to change.”
• Racism = the application of prejudice to race.
• Institutional racism = patterns of discrimination based on ethnicity that have become embedded in existing social institutions.
• Similar concept to “patriarchy” in radical feminism.
• Effect matters, not intent.
• Example: “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?” (Source)
• 50% more callbacks for “White Names.”

Race, Ethnicity, and Social Construction

• As with gender, sociologists are much more interested in how race and ethnicity are socially constructed and the effects of racial and ethnical categorization than they are in possible biological bases. Why?
• Within-group variation is bigger than between-group variation.
• Non-environmental, socially-consequential biological differences are controversial and small.
• Example of racial biological difference that is big: skin cancer (5X higher for whites).
• Historically (and today) many societies have been obsessed with racial and ethnic classifications.
• Racial and ethnic categories are surprisingly fluid!

The U.S. Census: An Example

• Enumeration of U.S. population (not a sample!) taken every ten years since 1790.
• Before 1960, people’s race was chosen by the census-taker, but after that people self-identify.
• In 2000, people were allowed to select more than one race.
• In 2020, for the first time since 1900, “Negro” will not appear as a census category.
• Categories that have appeared in various censuses since 1790 as categories for “race”: “Aleut,” “Hindu,” “Mulatto,” “Quadroon” (Source).

Race and Ethnicity in the U.S.

• Historical shifts: EVERYONE (beyond 0.9% of the population who are “American Indian and Alaska Natives”) are immigrants to the U.S. since the 17th century.
• Most whites: earlier settler colonialists from Europe (Britain, Netherlands, Spain) or later economic migrants (Southern, Eastern Europe, Ireland).
• African Americans: overwhelmingly descended from people brought from Africa in the slave trade (later economic migration within North America and within the United States).
• Latinos: earlier settler colonialists descended from Spanish colonialists and native americans, and later economic migrants from within North America.
• The “top” of the racial hierarchy in the U.S. are Protestant whites.
• Since the early 20th century, several groups have “become white,” particularly Catholics, Italians, and Irish.

African Americans

• Most forced to immigrate through slavery, a brutal system of unfree labor.
• Many slaves actively or passively resisted slavery.
• Slaves were emancipated in 1863, and the 13th amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery in 1865.
• Period of “reconstruction” defeated in the South by the 1870s, and “Jim Crow” segregation measures firmly in place by the end of the 20th century, along with a regime of racial terror including widespread lynching.
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) allows “separate but equal” institutions.

Civil Rights

• Plessy overturned with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS (1954).
• Large post-WWII migration of blacks from South to northern cities, largely “pulled” by manufacturing jobs.
• Widespread protest and civil disobedience (primarily in the American South) lead by men and women like Martin Luther King Jr. peaks in the U.S. Civil Rights act of 1964 and continues to today.
• Today, there is a prominent Black bourgeoisie and political leadership, but also persistent economic inequality and de facto segregation.

Latinos

• Many settlers were in the American southwest before it was even part of the U.S. (ceded after Mexican-American War of 1848).
• Subsequent economic migration alternatively allowed and brutally policed (“Operation Wetback” in the 1950s).
• Immigration (particularly from Mexico) is one of the most contentious subjects of US politics today.
• Like African Americans, there is also a split among contemporary latinos.
• Some (such as Cubans) enjoy good economic and social prospects.
• Others (particularly recent Mexican immigrants) are among the most disadvantaged groups in contemporary society.
• Hispanics now least likely to obtain a college degree of any major U.S. racial group.
• The category “latino” is also particularly contentious.
• Is it a racial category? An ethnic one? A basis of shared mobilization?
• Making Hispanics (Cristina Mora, 2014 U Chicago Press; link).

Asian Americans

• Long presence in the U.S., particularly Japanese and Chinese immigrants on the U.S. west coast.
• Worked in demanding occupations, such as railroad construction and mining and sometimes brought unwillingly under semi-legal indenture (“Coolie labor”).
• Japanese were put in “internment camps” during WWII.
• Today, the population is a combination of refugees (Vietnamese, Hmong) and economic migrants (Taiwanese, Chinese, Korean).
• Along many measures, some Asian-Americans perform extremely well (often as well as or better than whites!), but still suffer discrimination (often cultural).

The Resegregation of Jefferson County

• Gardendale, Alabama wanted to “secede” (i.e., break off from) the Jefferson County School district.
• Local residents want “local control,” but warn of becoming like nearby integrated school districts.
• Alabama resisted school integration for years after Brown.
• “Psychological harm.”
• Closes schools, districts, rather than integrate them.
• Pays for students to attend outside.
• In another Share post, an organizer [of the succession movement] noted that there Jefferson County school district was busing children into ‘our schools…from as far away a Center Point’ and that ‘a look around at our community sporting events, our churches are great snapshots of our community. A look into our schools, and you’ll see something totally different.”
• “We” (local community) are one group; “they” (“the other”) are different and undeserving.

Global Race and Ethnicity

• The key source of racial and ethnic hierarchies throughout the world is colonialism.
• Even decolonization was an engine for conflict.
• The ethnic legacy of colonialism (and the politics of independence) and migration make some states combustible mixes of ethnic and racial groups.
• Sometimes political elites pursue strategies of segregation, “ethnic cleansing,” or even genocide against minorities in a given state.
• The former Yugoslavia.
• Much of the contemporary middle east (Syria, Israel, Turkey, Iraq) India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh after “Partition.”
• Intentions are the source of enormous political conflict, civil war, and other kinds of violence.
• VERY often, political conflict “maps onto” racial or ethnic cleavages many parts of the world today, ethic and racial.
• These tensions are also a key source of migration.

Migration

• Traditional views “Push” (factors causing people to leave a given country) versus “pull” (factors causing people to come to a country).

Example: “push” of ethnic violence and economic deprivation in the Middle East and “pull” of political stability and (relative) economic opportunity in contemporary Europe.

• Now “Micro” (social networks, local knowledge of conditions) versus “macro” (political and economic) factors.

Example: a Taiwanese family emigrates to the U.S. because jobs are more plentiful and upward-mobility is easier (macro) but settles in a specific place because previous friends and family have moved there.

The Future of Race and Ethnicity?

• Assimilation = the acceptance of a minority into the majority, where the minority takes on the norms and values of the majority.
• The problem of the “rule of colonial difference.”
• It’s harder than it seems to actually assimilate!
• Coping with ethnic and racial difference
• The “melting pot” -> differences “mix together” as groups come in contact with one another.
• “Pluralism” -> groups stay separate but all may participate in economic life.
• “Multiculturalism” -> groups are separate but also equal.
• “Retrenchment” -> return to regimes of racial apartheid.
• Deciding among these options is perhaps the great political issue (both nationally and globally) of our time.

Government and Structures of Power

• Power = the ability of individuals or the members of a group to achieve aims or further the interests they hold.
• (even when others resist) = key addendum of most mainstream definitions of power.
• Example: winning a contested election.
• Compare to some other theories, where discipline and control (forms of power) BOTH constrain AND enable people.
• Example: categorizing people as mentally ill (person may resist, but not legitimately, and their pathway to recovery and becoming “a productive member of society” runs through allowing themselves to be disciplined by power).
• Difficult question: is freedom the absence of power (being exerted on you) or the possession of power (to do what you want)?
• Why “difficult”? Because different concepts imply different institutions!

Government and the Structures of Power

• When power is “legitimate” (justified by widely shared beliefs) it is usually called authority (power rightfully exercised).
• With the exercise of authority comes the emergence of “citizens,” individuals who have common rights and duties.

How does “Power” become “Government”?

• The exercise of power in groups is usually organized into some form of collective decision making.
• The earliest forms of government were participatory or direct democracy, where decisions are made commonly by everyone affected by them.
• This is extremely difficult to “scale up,” both because of logistics and also because of expertise. Example: are YOU qualified to say whether the bank interest rate should be raised or lowered? These were very replaced very early on by systems of representation, whether monarchies or emperors (unelected delegates). Also possible (as in the US) to elect representatives.
• These representatives then can EITHER follow their own best judgment or try to reflect the “will of the people.”

Where do “nation-states” come from?

• Historically, almost all political organizations were empires or monarchies until the last 250 years or so.
• In a world, historical shift, “the state” emerged and was (usually very violently) brought into congruence with “the nation” to make “nation-states.”
• The state = an organization claiming a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in a given territory.
• The nation = people with a common identity that ideally includes shared culture, language, and feelings of belonging.
• Generally (and ideally), nations-states today are sovereign, or the ultimate authority in a given territory.
• What is the main mover forming nation states? WAR.
• The power and efficiency of taxation and mobilization.

What happens in “nation-states”?

• They either achieve sovereignty and capacity (the ability to effectively govern their territory), or they become failed states.
• Example of failed states: modern day Afghanistan, Sudan.
• In return for taxation and mobilization (money and support to fight), citizens can demand civil, political, and social rights.
• Civil rights = legal rights held by all citizens in a given national community.
• Political rights = the rights to choose representation or be a representative.
• Social rights = a social “safety net” protecting the health and livelihood of citizens.
• Not all groups in a society have equal access to either of these, but they can be claimed as things owed to citizens.

The nationalism in “nation-states”

• Almost all existing states today are (at least nominally) nation- states, but they got there from very different paths.
• Forced expropriation and homogenization at different points in history.
• Example: France (in the 19th century) and the former Yugoslavia (in the 1990s).
• Big ethnic differences overlaid by rituals creating a common identity (plus violent expropriation).
• Examples: the United States and Britain.
• Anticolonial nationalism (where an educated elite is strongly motivated by nationalism, but the peasantry doesn’t necessarily follow).
• Example: India.
• Punchline: nationalism is an ideal seldom realized, and it is a historical invention, not a reflection of “timeless” community.

Varieties of World Political Organization

• Nation-states in the world range from liberal democracies (U.S., Most of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, India) to autocratic states with democratic veneers (Russia) to nondemocratic states (China) to violent dictatorships (North Korea).
• Many nation-states face tensions with (and even rebellions from) suppressed nationalist minorities.
• Examples: Quebecois in Canada, Tibetans in China, Basques in France and Spain.
• Many nation-states also face the territorial legacy of colonialism, where there is little connection between the formal map and actual national or ethnic differences.

Structures of Power: The US and the rest of the World

• The U.S. is the predominant superpower, with a military dwarfing all others (almost all others combined) in its size, expense, and sophistication.

Who rules the U.S.?

• How is democracy “limited” by inherent problems of scale and expertise?
• Democratic elitism.
• Leaders who possess appropriate judgment or technical expertise are elected as managers of the complex decisions necessary to run a state.
• This is usually accomplished effectively through Competition among political parties.
• Political party = an organization of individuals with broadly similar political aims, oriented toward achieving legitimate control of government through an electoral process.
• Pluralism = Interest groups (business organizations, ethnic groups, labor unions, etc.) compete with other another to bend the ear of policymakers.

The power elite

• Networks of wealthy, well-educated people who span military, education, business, and politics.
• Members of the power elite often know each other, and move from one domain to the other.
• Example: Dwight Eisenhower (military general, US president, president of Columbia University).
• The military in the U.S.
• Extremely large economic force (spread through all 50 states) in the “militaryindustrial complex.”
• Very high social legitimacy.
• Posse Comitatus Act (restricted from domestic use).
• Especially compared to the developing world, the military plays very little explicit role in U.S. politics, especially given its size.

The Composite Structure of U.S. Authority

• Federal level
• Executive (U.S. President and executive departments like State department or the Department of Justice) – Legislative (U.S. House of Representatives [currently 435 voting seats) determined by population and the U.S. Senate [100 voting seats] given two per state) – Judicial (U.S. Supreme Court composed of 9 life-appointed justices confirmed by the senate)
• State level (excluding protectorates and territories, e.g., Puerto Rico)
• Similar breakdown of authority to the Federal government, but most actions usually under the control of and subject to federal authority.
• This is via constitutional questions (via appeal to the Supreme Court) and funding/regulatory authority (via things like Federal Highway Grants and Welfare Grants).
• Example: National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 Controls much education policy, as well as day-to-day health and welfare provision.
• Local Level
• Group of Cities, Metropolitan Authorities, Counties, Villages, Incorporated Towns, etc.
• Controls provision of extra funding for schools, municipal services (garbage, public transit) and most policing.
• Funded mainly through extra taxes like property and consumption taxes.
• In some cases, quite large (example: NYC).

The Structure of U.S. Politics: Elections

• The U.S.’s electoral system is MUCH more complicated than any other contemporary industrial society!
• Most electoral terms (but not all!) are every two (U.S. House of Reps), four (Governors, President), or six years (U.S. Senators).
• So there are elections every two years.
• Legal voting age is 18 in the U.S., and the franchise is restricted to (usually) non-felon citizens.
• 2008: 5.3 million people are disenfranchised for felonies U.S. has oscillated between very restrictive and very liberal voting requirements, usually with the aim of restricting the franchise to obtain political advantage and suppress minorities.
• Examples: Jim Crow, contemporary state voter ID laws.

(More) Elections

• Idealized democracy: one person, one vote, with everyone having equal opportunity to actually execute their votes.
• BUT the U.S. is not a direct democracy.
• The president is actually elected by the 538 delegates of the electoral college.
• And, in the modern era, the candidates for president are chosen by the Democratic and Republican parties at their convention.
• Parties are protected associations, so they quite literally can write their own rules.
• Democrats have large numbers of unelected “superdelegates” (719 of 4,765 total; 2,383 needed to win).
• Republicans nearly had a “brokered convention” in which the first vote for a candidate fails and delegates become “unpledged.”

From Elections to Electorate

• Organizationally dominated by political parties, but more and more individual voters declare no affiliation.
• 1964: 51 % democrat, 25% republican, 23% independent.
• 2012: 30% democrat, 28% republican, 41% independent.
• Significant declines in voting rates rebounded in 2008 and 2012.
• 1960: 64%; 2000: 56%; 2008: 61%; Usual midterms: 40%.
• Large decline in trust in government.
• Percent who “trust the government almost always or most of the time.”
• 1950s: roughly 80%; 2010: about 20%.

The Ideology of the Electorate

• “Liberal” or “Progressive”
• In general support higher social spending and an “ethic of social protection” resulting in liberal or progressive attitudes towards social issues (immigration, women’s rights, minority protection, etc.).
• Sometimes called “equality of outcome.”
• “Conservative”
• In general support strict budgetary controls and an “ethic of personal responsibility” resulting in more conservative attitudes towards social issues.
• Sometimes called “equality of opportunity.”
• Many exceptions (economic progressives/social conservatives; technolibertarians, etc.).
• Americans also famously describe themselves as “independents” or “moderates.”

Is the U.S. Electorate Getting More Polarized?

• On the one hand… More and more people identify as “independents.”
• Most people (about a third) identify their ideology as “moderate.”
• But on the other hand… There are strong, and increasing, divisions among certain groups within the electorate.

Why Are Attitudes Polarized? (Answers, No. Theories? Yes.)

• What’s the Matter With Kansas? (Thomas Frank).
• White working class voters abandoned the Democratic party as mainline Protestant groups declined, manufacturing jobs evaporated, and identity politics increased.
• Bowling Alone (Robert Putnam).
• Fewer people participate in organizations that span political attitudes (like bowling leagues), so people have less exposure to alternatives.
• There is a hard core of dedicated organizers (Occupy movement, Tea Party) that seek to mobilize passionate people to very right- or left-wing causes, while much of the population is demobilized.

Why Are Attitudes Polarized?

• Echo Chamber.
• Media landscape is now highly fragmented, and people can practice “homophily”—talking to and consuming media from people who already agree with them (Source).
• Over time, this leads to “shutting out” alternative viewpoints.
• Think of unfriending your Uncle Roy.
• Diminished Democracy (Skocpol).
• Voluntary organizations have been pushed aside for nationalized, professionalized interest groups and lobbyists (on both the left and right).
• “Rather than volunteer, please donate!”
• Gives rise to single-issue organizations (and hard cores of single-issue voters; e.g., abortion, guns) and a demobilized electorate.

Why Are Attitudes Polarized?

• For about 40 years, both political parties have aggressively (tried to) gerrymander congressional districts.
• Gerrymandering: manipulating the boundaries of districts to affect the overall proportion of representation to one party or another – Recently, republicans have been much more successful.
• In 2022, 84 percent of congressional races were decided by 10 points or more in the general election (source).
• Politicians, therefore, mostly worry about primaries, which also tend to push them in much more radical directions.

On the “populist wave”

• Trump was elected for several reasons! Unusual electoral alignment He won just where he needed to.
• Trump’s vote was more “spread out” across the electoral college than Clinton’s 2008 and 2012 democratic coalitions stayed home just enough for Clinton to lose Changing structures of U.S. Political institutions Practices like gerrymandering increasingly reward extreme politics Congressmen don’t fear general elections! Decreased dialog across political spectrum.
• Fewer shared values? Declining life chances among less-educated whites in suburban and rural areas White nationalism and cultural resentment.
• None of these is sufficient, but together they pushed Trump over the line! The US realization of a populist wave.
• Populism: a strategy of political appeal that divides society into a “pure people” against a “corrupt elite,” and that privileges popular sovereignty above all else (Source) This movement is happening all over the world.
• “Brexit” (UK), Yellow Vest Protests (France), Bolsero’s election (Brazil).

Netanyahu’s reelection (Israel), Modi’s BJP government (India)

• Populism is based on in-group/out-group appeals (us/them).
• Trump: “We’re on track for a million illegal aliens to rush our borders. People hate the word ‘invasion’ but that’s what it is. It’s an invasion of drugs and criminals and people. You have no idea who they are.”
• Populism (ironically) often makes anti-corruption appeals (“drain the swamp”!) but is usually organized in a way that perpetuates corruption.
• Example: “drain the swamp” and self-dealing in Trump’s DC hotel.
• Populism can invite constitutional crises.
• Who exactly are “the people” whose views should be enacted, and what relationship do they have to political procedures?

Social Movements

• Large groups of people who seek to accomplish, or to block, a process of social change.
• At one extreme, these “collective actions” seeking social change can become revolutions, when an existing political order is overthrown by means of a mass movement that emerges when desired changes cannot be achieved within the system, often using violence.
• Examples: American Revolution (1776-1783), French Revolution (1789), Chinese Revolution (1949).
• Revolutions are outside of institutional politics, but much more often social movements (protests, election mobilizations, etc.) occur within political structures.

Why Are There Social Movements?

• Societies develop contradictions and tensions within them as large-scale social change occurs.
• Example (from Marx): the inherent tension of capitalism produces class struggle from the falling rate of profit.
• Marx (wrongly) thought this class conflict would eventually produce a revolution through the absolute poverty of the working class (proletariat).
• However, many social movements are still fed by relative deprivation, or the gap between the expectation of social mobility and its frustration (example: what happens if economic growth in China or India even starts slowing down?).
• Social movements are efforts to address these tensions via a “return to how it was” (conservative social movements) or “make a new and better world” (progressive social movements).
• Conservative example: evangelical Christian focus on “family values”; Progressive example: identity politics’ goal of a “world free from discrimination and bias.”

Where Do Social Movements Come From?

Social movements are organizations, and occur both with careful planning and spontaneously.

• If they are to persist, they need to mobilize resources—to secure the money, people, and organizational expertise to effect change.
• There needs to be a structural opportunity for change.
• This can come from the institutional order (e.g., the U.S. doesn’t regulate religion) or from state weakness (e.g., inability for states to be repressive enough).
• There need to be the people and resources to mobilize.
• Example: U.S. civil rights grounded in black churches, educated and trained leaders, means of communication.
• There need to be collective goals.
• These can either be present at the outset of organizations (e.g., National Organization for Women) or discovered as groups go along (e.g., French National Assembly).

What About Movements Today?

• New social movements (post 1960s, contemporary industrial societies).
• Single-issue campaigns oriented to nonmaterial ends and draw[ing] support from across class lines.
• Examples: environmentalism, feminism, anti-Nuclear movements, antiglobalization.
• Located in civil society—the sphere between the state and the marketplace occupied by family, community associations, and other noneconomic institutions.
• Usually new social movements don’t want to completely overthrow the political order, but do want to make major changes in all aspects of people’s lives.

The Internet?

• In contemporary industrial societies…
• …does the internet lead to “slacktivism”/political mobilization? …and/or feed the “echo chamber” of political attitudes?
• In the developing world…
• …do services like twitter/facebook/google help foster social movements?
• …and/or do they enable greater government surveillance and control?
• Example: China’s “social credit system.”

What is the Future of Democracy?

The rise of Trump in the US has created a Pandora’s box for society, with lower-class whites supporting him as a populist. Despite promises, elections cannot change people’s lives, and Trump’s rise raises concerns about the future of US politics. Analysts believe the US election system will eventually stop Trump from being president, but the impact has already left a dent and the US faces an institutional failure.

Work and Occupations

• Work = the carrying out of tasks that require the expenditure of mental and physical effort / the activity by which people produce from the natural world and so ensure their survival.
• Think Work = force * distance from physics.
• “produce for survival” vs. any thing that takes effort.
• Economy = the system of production and exchange that provides for the material needs of individuals living in a given society.
• In other words, the “economy” is how “work” is organized.
• In contemporary industrial societies, much (even most!) work is an “occupation” = any form of paid employment in which an individual regularly works.
• Examples: doctor, mason, teacher.
• Exceptions: “emotion work,” hobbies.

A (very) brief history of economic life

• Humans societies exhibit two universal economic characteristics.
• A division of labor of various degrees of complexity.
• Division of labor = the specialization of work tasks by means of which different occupations are combined within a production system. In hunter-gatherer societies, this is often expressed in a gendered division in who hunts and who gathers.
• In under complex divisions of labor (like ours), this leads to economic interdependence, or the fact that you would perish quickly in the event of a fundamental breakdown of the economy.
• The application of technology to nature.
• Technology = the application of knowledge of the material world to production and the creation of instruments to effect that application.
• Examples: stone axe heads, marshalling quantum superposition for computing.

A (still very brief) history of economic life