ANTH 23 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Anthony Giddens, Southern Poverty Law Center, Structuration Theory
17 January Wednesday
ANTH 23
Race and Racism!
•Race: A social mechanism invented in the 18th century to refer to those populations
brought together in colonial America. The English and other European settlers, the conquered
Indian people and those people of Africa brought in to provide slave labor. !
•Racial differences are socially constructed and reproduced and have no basis in biology,
differences in skin pigmentation do not correspond to any measurable biological differences.!
•Constructed connotations of difference in skin color affect socialization, expectations and
opportunity. !
•Race as we now know it has a legacy of separating populations that were disenfranchised
and the racial differences were socially constructed as segregating them by laws of marriage
and social practices. So even though it does not have strong roots in biology it has
significance enforced by centuries of separation.!
•We don’t have subspecies, but there are physically separable differences which were used to
rank people, done by white male europeans so they were placed at the top.!
•What is racism?
•Idealogical definition: Processes of racial signification and processes of racicalization. Or
attaching certain tendencies in the ways people act to their history or ideologies, skin color
becomes associated with essentialized traits that provoke racist practices. !
•Structuralist definition: Racial privilege as a function of social location of economic
organization.Economic and political division of labor allows one racial group to maintain
power over another. Ansell aims to combine and show the inadequacies of these. !
-It says this is enabled by a larger system of discrimination that has been going on for
centuries of cumulative effect of segregation. !
Winant-Omi Theory of Racial Formation:
•Racial significance: Associating race with a role, function of lack thereof in society.!
•Racial structuration: how society creates certain expectations and opportunities for
different racial groups and how individuals reinforce or challenge these roles.!
•Structuration: Social structure consists of the context and preconditions of action and the
cumulative result of human actions and interactions (structure shapes agency and agency
determines structure) (Anthony Giddens).!
•Racial formation: how cultural signification of race and structural effects of race interact in
racial projects.!
A racial project is racist if:
•“it creates or produces a racially unequal social structure... !
• “based on essentialized categories [and/or] !
•“essentializes or naturalizes racial identities or significations... !
• “based on a racially unequal social structure” (23) !
• Thus, what is racist can change with conceptions of race and power differentials in society!
Who is to blame for racism:
•In the 1960s, racism was believed to be a problem of individual bigotry. This can be fixed but
teaching tolerance and punishing discrimination. !
•Late 1960s, some came to see racism as an affect of broader patterns of socialization. !
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Race and racism: race: a social mechanism invented in the 18th century to refer to those populations brought together in colonial america. The english and other european settlers, the conquered. Ansell aims to combine and show the inadequacies of these. It says this is enabled by a larger system of discrimination that has been going on for centuries of cumulative e ect of segregation. Who is to blame for racism: in the 1960s, racism was believed to be a problem of individual bigotry. This can be xed but teaching tolerance and punishing discrimination: late 1960s, some came to see racism as an a ect of broader patterns of socialization. 17 january wednesday: institutional racism: redlining, racial pro ling, subconscious prejudice and systematic devaluation of minorities. Discrimination of housing: redlining: after wwii, the fha had to ensure housing for veterans and so they decided to label high risk as very racially diverse neighborhoods and low risk as all white suburbs.
