Theorising race and racism

Question 1

Race definition:

Answer 1

• a term mobilised to classify people based on phenotypical features
• was established by european colonialism (Mason 2000)
• driven by biological determinism
• is an important ideological tool to justify practices of slavery, colonialism and genocide

Question 2

Race science -

Answer 2

Young 1994 = claims that non-whites are a different species

Garner 2010 = legitimised forced sterilisation programmes and genocide in Nazi germany

Question 3

critique of race:
It is a social construct - has no fixed meaning like class and gender...

Answer 3

Berger and Luckmann 1966 = society is a human product

Question 4

critique of race: Rex 1986 =

Answer 4

race is a crude biological concept which is sociologically meaningless

Question 5

critique of race: Hall 1996

Answer 5

• linguistic categorisation

- needs to account for intersections of class, sexuality, ethnicity and gender

Question 6

Racism definition:

Answer 6

• uses race to spearate groups of people witht he influential group using political, economic and social power to control and exploit the other groups
• tool to preserve the power of the dominant group

Question 7

sociological understanding of racism - Rex 1986 =

Answer 7

is a deterministic belief system about the differences between ethnic groups

Question 8

sociological understanding of racism - Solomos 1993 =

Answer 8

racism need not be based on any specific theory about biological or cultural superiority because racism is not static

Question 9

sociological understanding of racism - Richardson 1990 =

Answer 9

cultural racism: a cluster of cultural ideas which transmit mistaken notions about the attributes of racial groups

Question 10

Gilroy 1987 - no black in the union jack =

Answer 10

• racism is intimately linked to nationalsim, englishness and britishness
• this new form of racism involves specifying who may be regarded as a legitimate member of the ‘island race’ and who is considered an outsider
• theatening british life

Question 11

Solid Ground de nes Institutional Racism as…

Answer 11

“the systematic distribution of resources, power and opportunity in our society to the benefit of people who are white and the exclusion of people of colour.”

Question 12

Institutional Racism - Blauner 1972 =

Answer 12

racism is located in the existence of domination and hierarchy and built into the way that major american institutions work

Question 13

Macpherson report 1999 =

Answer 13

declared the met police to be institutionally racist

Question 14

Limitations to institutional racism:

Answer 14

• Sayyid et al 2013 = institutional racism is is not a specific system of oppression but a product of the clash of memebers from different racial groups

Question 15

critical race theory -

Answer 15

Delgado et al 2001 = interested in the power and construction of social roles as well as the unseen largely invisible collection of patterns and habits that make up domination in matters relating to race

Question 16

colour-blind racism - Bonilla-Silva 2003 =

Answer 16

colourblind racism as ‘smiling face discrimination’

Question 17

colour-blind racism - Rios et al 2006 =

Answer 17

denies the existance of the structural disadvantage of people of colour whilst obscuring the structural advantage of whites

Question 18

colour-blind racism - Sayyid et al 2013 =

Answer 18

refers to the end of racism and its explusion from the public domain

Question 19

colour-blind racism - Ahmed 2012 =

Answer 19

the idea that we are over race is exactly how racism is sustained