cloud object storage | store & retrieve data … › s3-euw1-ap-pe-… · web viewstudent...

Student eResources Chapter 1 of 18

Racist AmericaRoots, Current Realities, andFuture Reparations

STUDENT eRESOURCES

Joe R. Feagin and Kimberley Ducey


1Systemic Racism

A Comprehensive Perspective

Learning Objectives

After completing this chapter, students should be able to:

1. Describe the white racist foundations of the United States2. Conceptualize systemic racism3. Illustrate patterns of undeserved enrichment of white Americans and impoverishment

of Americans of color4. Understand social reproductions mechanisms that transmit wealth over generations5. Describe the extraordinary costs and burdens of racism6. Chart white elite dominance throughout U.S. history7. Understand the public and psychological wage of whiteness8. Understand the white racial frame and its sub-frames9. Describe resistance to systemic racism

Summary

From the systemic racism perspective, the United States can be viewed metaphorically as a “house” of racism, one with an economic and political foundation of racial oppression that was firmly constructed during the first centuries of colonial development. While many U.S. founders asserted in the Declaration of Independence and elsewhere that “all men are created equal,” they did not literally mean it. Their equality and liberty framing was conditional and hypocritical, for it excluded black Americans, Indigenous peoples, and white women. The real U.S. foundation was crafted to create wealth and privilege for transplanted Europeans and their descendants who often stole the lands of Indigenous peoples and enslaved African labor. In this process, Europeans and European Americans came to frame themselves and their society as a virtuous “white” republic.

Since this house of racial domination was created, it has periodically been remodeled. We observe remodeling in some reforms of the Reconstruction period after the 1860s Civil War and again during and after the 1950s-1960s civil rights movements. When progressive changes have come in the racist system, the white elite — always with debate and divisions among themselves — has typically worked to make the least significant changes necessary under conditions of mass protest. Never have they been interested in changes that would be substantial enough to build a new non-racist foundation and political-economic structure for the United States. Thus, under pressure from black and white abolitionists, and reacting to the impact of the Civil War, the more liberal wing of the white leadership finally saw to it that slavery was abolished in the 1860s by an


amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, in spite of this constitutional eradication of slavery, no new constitutional convention was called so that a governing document could be democratically written with the participation of all Americans, including those black Americans newly freed from enslavement. Moreover, factions of the white elite created, in the North and South, a new system of near-slavery called legal segregation (Jim Crow). Every major sector of U.S. society — the economy, politics and the law, education, and the media — was still run by and for whites, with the white elite generally making the most important decisions.

When large-scale black protest movements in the 1960s forced the white leadership to again consider significant societal changes, this elite made relatively modest changes in the racist system. They passed important civil rights laws and issued major court decisions against formal Jim Crow segregation, but over the next few decades they also made certain that the enforcement of antidiscrimination laws and regulations would mostly be weak. Legal segregation ended, but little reparative compensation for the massive past oppression of African Americans and other Americans of color was provided, and informal patterns of racial discrimination persisted in most major institutions and often on a large scale. Consider, too, that most antidiscrimination programs have only been intended as modest efforts designed to fit some black Americans, other people of color, and white women into the Procrustean bed of historically white male institutions. Today, most major U.S. institutions remain, mostly or disproportionately, white-male-controlled in their normative structures and white male in terms of those who hold the top decisionmaking positions.

Key Terms

actual or potential slaverybiological racismclass consciousness elite-white-male dominance systemthree-fifths compromisehierarchy of racespublic and psychological wage of whitenessracial consciousnessracial emotionssystemic racismwhite racial frame (WRF)

Study Tip

Equipping Students to Be Successful & Happy How to Get Motivated to Study: 23 Tips for Students Who Procrastinate [[https://www.daniel-wong.com/2018/04/23/get-motivated-to-study/]]

Web Resources

Click on the following links. Please note these will open in a new window.


Exercise 1.1

Learn about “White Fragility” and why it is so hard for most white people to talk about racism

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism [[https://compact.org/white-fragility-why-its-so-hard-to-talk-to-white-people-about-racism/]]

Exercise 1.2

Read Dear White America [[https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/dear-white-america/]] and then, imagine you are a professor. The fashion in which threats to white male power and privilege lead to conflict in educational settings is evidenced in email messages you receive after a lecture in which you read the African American philosopher George Yancy’s poignant “Dear White America” New York Times opinion editorial on white racism. One of these emails is reprinted below. It was written to you by a twenty-something white male undergraduate enrolled in your “Race and Ethnicity” course. Drawing on Chapter 1 and “Dear White America,” explain to the student that he has misinterpreted the conceptual scope, content, and aim of Yancy’s letter.

Subject: White America Letter

Hey, I’ve been doing some reflecting about the Dear White America letter and I have a few questions. As a white male, what am I supposed to do to not be racist or sexist? I fail to understand how and why this letter is appropriate as it creates an argument at which there is no discussion because any attempt to do so means that I am “hiding.” The logic is demeaning and entrapping for white males. This is a case of reverse racism and an instance of good old fashion name calling. Yancy is racially profiling whites in Dear White America, especially white men. I can easily tell you about my many friends of different races and how I try to not objectify women. But again this would be (according to the letter) hiding. I am hurt that this letter exists because I feel that it promotes blaming of white males — even though it claims that its purpose is to bestow a “gift” unto me. This letter is pernicious. After reading it I do not know what this gift is. I understand my privilege but just as you didn’t choose your gender or race, I didn’t choose mine. Yancy is judging all white men based on the color of their skin and their gender. Every day I treat my peers as just that — peers. Nothing more or less, regardless of anything. In fact, I constantly tell my Indigenous friends that they are just as good as white people. I AM an antiracist!!! I AM a good (white) person!!! I DON’T see color.

I have a gift for Yancy. It’s a simple message: He would get more white people to heed his message if he didn’t call them racists!!! He should follow Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s example. Dr. King would roll over in his grave if he knew Yancy was writing reverse racist crap like this and suggesting that there is nothing a white person can do about being racist. Whiteness is NOT a problem!!! All racists – whether they are white, black, or brown and especially members of supremacist organizations – are the problem!!!


Exercise 1.3

Learn about Sojourner Truth – African American evangelist, abolitionist, women’s rights activist, and author

Sojourner Truth [[https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/sojourner-truth]]

Exercise 1.5

Learn about some of the white women in the nineteenth century movement to end slavery and their legacy [[https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/white-women-abolitionists-more-19th-century-freedom-fighters]]

Exercise 1.6

Poet Clint Smith begins his letter to past presidents who owned slaves with the following: “When you sing that this country was founded on freedom, don’t forget the duet of shackles dragging against the ground my entire life.”

Read Clint Smith’s letter to five of the presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson) who owned slaves while they were in office

Why We Shouldn’t Forget that U.S. Presidents Owned Slaves [[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/shouldnt-forget-u-s-presidents-owned-slaves]]

Exercise 1.7

Learn more about W.E.B. Du Bois, U.S. civil rights activist, leader, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, educator, historian, writer, editor, poet, and scholar

NAACP History: W.E.B. Dubois [[https://www.naacp.org/naacp-history-w-e-b-dubois/]]

Exercise 1.8

Learn more about Ida B. Wells-Barnett

9 Things You Must Know About Ida B. Wells-Barnett [[https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-idabwells-nine-things-to-know-20180719-story.html]]

Exercise 1.9

Read about Oliver Cromwell Cox’s Caste, Class, and Race


Oliver Cromwell Cox’s Caste, Class, and Race [[https://monthlyreview.org/2001/02/01/race-and-class-in-the-work-of-oliver-cromwell-cox/]]

Exercise 1.10

Read the opinion piece titled, “James Madison’s Lessons in Racism,” from The New York Times

James Madison’s Lessons in Racism [[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/28/opinion/sunday/james-madison-racism.html]]

Exercise 1.11

A very unusual New York Times article presented photographs of elite white men ruling and other members of the U.S. elite. Unsurprisingly, it showed a huge sea of white and especially white male faces of societal decision-making power.1 Check it out.

The Faces of American Power, Nearly as White as the Oscar Nominees [[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/26/us/race-of-american-power.html?_r=2]]

Exercise 1.12

Learn more about the elite white men who rule the United States

The director of one media research project, Soraya Chemaly, summed up the extensive white male dominance across major economic, political, educational, and media institutions:

[Currently] white men make up more than 80% of Congress, 78% of state political executives, 75% of state legislators, 84% of mayors of the top 100 cities, 85% of corporate executive officers, 100% of CEOs of Wall Street firms, 95% of Fortune 500 CEOs, 73% of tenured professors, 64% of newsroom staffers, 97% of heads of venture capital firms, 90% of tech jobs in Silicon Valley, 97% of owners of television and radio licenses, 87% of police departments and 68% of U.S. Circuit Court Judges.2

Chemaly adds to her analysis, if a novelist presented a fictional story in which the gender of these elite decision-makers were reversed the “reviewers would describe this world as a violent and emasculating feminist tyranny or a frightening male dystopia.”3

Exercise 1.13

Learn about the gender and racial make-up of President Donald Trump’s first cabinet, which was more white and more male than any first cabinet since the Reagan administration in the 1980s.

Questions for: ‘Trump’s Cabinet So Far Is More White and Male Than Any First Cabinet Since Reagan’s’ [[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/learning/questions-for-trumps-cabinet-so-far-is-more-white-and-male-than-any-first-cabinet-since-reagans.html]]


Multiple-Choice

Introduction1. The white male elite delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention had which of the

following in common? a. They were all men of European origin.b. Most of the 55 men were well-off by the standards of their day.c. At least 40 percent of them had been or were slaveowners.d. All the above

Laying a Racist Foundation: The United States2. The white male elite delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention:

a. believed the trade in, and enslavement of, people of African descent was an important issue.

b. vastly disagreed on the idea that property is the “main object of Society.” c. vastly disagreed on the idea of rights for white women.d. opposed the idea that freedom meant the protection of unequal accumulation of property,

particularly property that could produce a profit in the emerging capitalist system. 3. Who among the delegates refused to sign the Constitution document, in part because of its

slavery provisions.a. George Mason b. George Washington c. George Wythe d. George Read e. George Clymer

A House Founded on White Racism4. Which of the following men enslaved people of African descent?

a. religious leader Cotton Mather, the famous Puritanb. religious leader William Penn, a Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania c. the founder of U.S. psychiatry, Dr. Benjamin Rush d. All the above

5. Which of the following men enslaved people of African descent? a. Thomas Jeffersonb. George Washingtonc. Alexander Hamiltond. All the above

6. Which of the following men enslaved people of African descent? a. Patrick Henryb. Benjamin Franklinc. Sam Houstond. All the above


7. Who freed all 500 of the African Americans he enslaved because he had come to view slavery as “contrary to the principles of religion and justice”?a. Wade Hampton IIIb. Robert Carter IIIc. David Rice Atchisond. William Aiken Jr.e. Judah P. Benjamin

Conceptualizing Systemic Racism8. Analyzing Europe’s extensive colonization of Africa, __________ demonstrated that extreme

poverty and degradation in the African colonies was a key source of wealth and luxury in Europe.a. W.E.B. Du Boisb. Frederick Douglassc. Oliver Coxd. Ida B. Wells-Barnette. Anna Julia Cooper

Social Reproduction: Transmitting Wealth over Generations9. White families’ median wealth is about ____ times that of black families, and ___ times that

of Latino families.a. 2; 4b. 4; 8c. 13; 10d. 19; 13e. 21; 17

Extraordinary Costs and Burdens of Racism10. Researcher Richard Reeves recently reported that ___ percent of black children born to

families with incomes below the middle of the U.S. income range will, as adults, likely have incomes substantially lower than their parents.a. 30b. 40c. 50d. 60e. 70

The White Elite: Centuries of Dominance11. White men in the U.S. (approximately 31 percent of the adult population) make-up:

a. 50 percent of owners of television and radio licenses.b. 50 percent of corporate executive officers.c. 92 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.


d. All the above

Ordinary Whites: The Public Wage of Whiteness12. W.E.B. Du Bois famously argued that whiteness serves as __________, delivering to poor

whites in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a valuable social status derived from their classification as “not-black.”a. blank checksb. an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions c. a public and psychological waged. skin privilege e. a licence to privilege f. a passport to dispensation

The White Racial Frame: Legitimating and Rationalizing Oppression13. The white racial frame encompasses not only the stereotyping, bigotry, and racist ideology

accented in other theories of race, but also ____________ that are still central to the frame’s everyday operation.a. visual imagesb. array of emotionsc. sounds of languaged. inclinations to discriminatee. All the above

True or False

Introduction1. Of the white male elite delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention none of them

profited from commerce in slave-produced agricultural products or by supplying provisions to slaveholders and slave traders.

a. Trueb. False

2. George Washington was one of the richest men in the colonies because of the hundreds of black people he held in bondage.

a. Trueb. False

Laying a Racist Foundation: The United States3. The white male elite delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention disagreed over whether

the new government should protect private property.a. Trueb. False

4. The white male elite delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention were vehemently opposed to existing economic inequality.


a. Trueb. False

5. The white male elite delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention consisted of a small left wing, with strong views on class equality and popular revolution.

a. Trueb. False

6. The white male elite delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention had less influence if they belonged to the center and the right wing of the elite than if they belonged to the left wing.

a. Trueb. False

7. The white male elite delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention believed the trade in, and enslavement of, people of African descent was an unimportant and acquiescent issue.

a. Trueb. False

8. The white male elite delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention mostly all accepted the view that people of African descent could be the chattel property of others and were not human beings with citizens’ rights.

a. Trueb. False

9. The white male elite delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention vastly disagreed on the idea that property is the “main object of Society.”

a. Trueb. False

10. The white male elite delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention opposed the idea that freedom meant the protection of unequal accumulation of property, particularly property that could produce a profit in the emerging capitalist system.

a. Trueb. False

11. Article 1 speaks only of only two groups in the new nation – “free persons” and “immigrants.”

a. Trueb. False

12. George Washington and Rufus King refused to sign the Constitution document, in part because of its slavery provisions.

a. Trueb. False

A House Founded on White Racism13. At a gathering in Massachusetts on July 4, 1854, the eminent abolitionist William Lloyd

Garrison burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution, uttering the words: “So perish all compromises with tyranny.”

a. True


b. False14. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Benjamin

Franklin, and Sam Houston all enslaved people of African. a. Trueb. False

15. Known to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington, all prominent slaveholders among the founders, Robert Carter III freed all 500 of the African Americans he enslaved; he had come to view slavery as “contrary to the principles of religion and justice.”

a. Trueb. False

Conceptualizing Systemic Racism16. Systemic racism includes a diverse assortment of racist realities, including the rationalizing

white-racist frame. a. Trueb. False

17. Oliver C. Cox was the first social scientist to analyze fully the emergence of the dominant idea of whiteness and of a white-racist order extending beyond the U.S.

a. Trueb. False

18. In a pathbreaking book, W.E.B. Du Bois argued that the anti-lynching crusade of her era, in which he was a leader, will determine “whether the precepts and theories of Christianity are professed and practiced by American white people as Golden Rules of thought and action, or adopted as a system of morals to be preached to heathen until they attain to the intelligence which needs the system of Lynch Law.”

a. Trueb. False

19. One of the first extended social science analyses of U.S. society as a well-institutionalized system of racism was that of W.E.B. Du Bois, who provided in the 1940s a well-researched argument showing how sustained labor exploitation of black Americans created a centuries-old structure of “racial classes.”

a. Trueb. False

20. Analyzing Europe’s extensive colonization of Africa, Ida B. Wells-Barnett demonstrated that extreme poverty and degradation in the African colonies was a key source of wealth and luxury in Europe.

a. Trueb. False


Social Reproduction: Transmitting Wealth over Generations21. For systemic racism to persist across many human generations, it must reproduce well and

routinely the necessary socioeconomic conditions. These conditions include substantial control by whites of major economic resources.

a. Trueb. False

22. White families’ median wealth is about 13 times that of black families.a. Trueb. False

23. White families’ median wealth is about 10 times that of Latino families.a. Trueb. False

Extraordinary Costs and Burdens of Racism24. Recent government reports signal the cumulative cost of several centuries of white racial

oppression, including a life expectancy for the average black person three to four years (female/male) less than the average white person.

a. Trueb. False

25. Inequality in life expectancy means that on average a black person secures significantly less lifetime support from close relatives in psychological terms (e.g., comfort and socialization for racial and other stress).

a. Trueb. False

26. Researcher Richard Reeves recently reported that 30 percent of black children born to families with incomes below the middle of the U.S. income range will, as adults, likely have incomes substantially lower than their parents.

a. Trueb. False

The White Elite: Centuries of Dominance27. White men in the U.S. (approximately 31 percent of the adult population) make-up 33

percent of owners of television and radio licenses.a. Trueb. False

28. White men in the U.S. (approximately 31 percent of the adult population) make-up 30 percent of corporate executive officers.

a. Trueb. False

29. White men in the U.S. (approximately 31 percent of the adult population) make-up 92 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.a. Trueb. False


Ordinary Whites: The Public Wage of Whiteness30. The claims embedded in W.E.B. DuBois’s “public and psychological wage” thesis include

that the value of whiteness depends on the devaluation of black existence.a. Trueb. False

The White Racial Frame: Legitimating and Rationalizing Oppression31. Since the eighteenth century, a powerful white racial frame has provided the vantage point

from which whites and others have regularly viewed and interpreted U.S. society.a. Trueb. False

32. The white racial frame includes racialized emotions (a “feelings” aspect) and inclinations to discriminatory action

a. Trueb. False

33. In the first extended social science analysis of powerful whiteness, the pioneering book Darkwater (1920), the influential sociologist Oliver C. Cox noted that “the discovery of personal whiteness among the world’s people is a very modern thing. … The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction … we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful!”

a. Trueb. False

34. Influential scholars and intellectuals like Friedrich Nietzsche in Europe and James Madison in the U.S. lent their authority to the “scientific” notion of a hierarchy of races.

a. Trueb. False

35. Reinvigorated biological racism developed by leading Western intellectuals in the late 1700s was spread by newspapers, pamphlets, and pulpits of the day to the general population.

a. Trueb. False

36. Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a strong biological view of a hierarchy of races came to accompany older anti-black views accenting black inferiority in culture, religion, and civilization.

a. Trueb. False

Study/Review Questions

Laying a Racist Foundation: The United States1. Explain how slavery was central at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, including James

Madison’s emphasis on slave/not-slave divisions among the states.


2. While all delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention agreed that the new government should protect private property, and thus existing economic inequality, the right wing, center, and left wing of the white male elite had opposing views. Explain. Be sure to include the similarities in thinking between conservative and center delegates at the convention and thus the limits on what the left wing of this white elite was able to specify.

3. Describe what was at “the heart of the Constitution”?4. Explain what historian Herbert Aptheker meant when he wrote that the Constitution was

a “bourgeois-democratic document for the governing of a slaveholder-capitalist republic.”

5. Joe Feagin and Kimberley Ducey write: “The harsh reality of slavery conditions and the often death-dealing slave trade hung over the convention like a demonic specter.” Explain.

6. Describe the three-fifths compromise.7. Joe Feagin and Kimberley Ducey write: “Enslaved blacks were to be counted as human

beings only when it suited whites to do so. Otherwise, they were just white property.” Explain.

8. At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, slavery intruded on important debates, including debates over representation in the new Congress. Northern and southern delegates vigorously argued the matter and reached the famous three-fifths compromise on counting those enslaved for the purpose of white representation. What significance, if any, does the compromise have today?

9. Discuss the following: “Enslaved blacks were to be counted as human beings only when it suited whites to do so. Otherwise, they were just white property.”

10. Explain how the “founders” built a racially based republic in the face of monarchial opposition and against those on the North American continent that they defined as inferior.

11. What was the significance of the compromise reached and placed in Article 1, Section 9?12. At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a few of the elite white male delegates spoke

critically of chattel slavery or the slave trade on the basis of political, not moral, grounds. Describe, for example, the protestations of George Mason and Elbridge Gerry.

13. On key votes, why did most northern delegations vote with southern delegations?14. Discuss how whites often described their own sociopolitical condition as one of actual or

potential slavery. 15. Generally speaking, according to the “founders,” were Indigenous peoples part of the

new nation? Explain.

A House Founded on White Racism16. Politicians, columnists, teachers, lawyers, executives, and ordinary Americans routinely

cite the U.S. Constitution, and the founders’ actions, as the glory of U.S. society. Explain how this is revisionist history.


17. Discuss how the elite framers reinforced and legitimated a system of racial oppression that they thought would ensure that whites, especially men of means, would rule for centuries.

18. Discuss how the white male founders’ decisions and understandings still shape our lives in a great many ways.

19. The social and political system the “founders” created was riddled with contradictions that have surfaced repeatedly over the course of U.S. history. Discuss.

20. Joe Feagin and Kimberley Ducey write: “The combination of white freedom and black enslavement is radically contradictory.” Explain.

21. Various contemporary U.S. analysts argue that it is unfair to judge early white enslavers by contemporary standards. Take the opposing side and explain why these contemporary U.S. analysts are mistaken.

22. Analyzing Europe’s colonization of Africa, what did W.E.B. DuBois demonstrate?23. W.E.B. Du Bois offered some of the first sociological analyses of a globalizing capitalism

and imperialism. Writing of the years around 1900, what did he argue?

Conceptualizing Systemic Racism24. Describe how thinker-activists Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois long ago put

white society and its established institutions at the center of critical analyses of white racism.

25. Mainstream social scientists have often examined the paired ideas of racial prejudice and discrimination. Explain why making heavy use of concepts such as prejudice, stereotyping, bias, and bigotry are skewed in practice toward an individualistic, cognitive, and/or non-systemic interpretation of racial issues.

26. Compare the black intellectual and activist tradition’s systemic view of U.S. racism to mainstream social science research.

27. Explain the link between the impoverishment (economic and otherwise) of African Americans and the enrichment and prosperity of white Americans.

28. Discuss how undeserved impoverishment and enrichment get transmitted and institutionalized over many generations.

29. Explain how slavery’s impact extended well beyond the local and national economy.30. Illustrate what Joe Feagin and Kimberley Ducey mean when they write: “Systemic

racism is about more than the construction of racial definitions, attitudes, and identities. It is centrally about the creation, development, and maintenance of white privilege, economic wealth, and sociopolitical power over centuries. It is about hierarchical interaction and dominance.”

Patterns of Undeserved Enrichment and Impoverishment31. Describe conservative white political officials’ questioning of reparative and affirmative

action. Using systemic racism theory, explain why such questioning is flawed.32. Recent national opinion surveys find that three-quarters of whites oppose affirmative

action in college admissions when such admissions directly consider racial backgrounds


to promote campus diversity. Using systemic racism theory, explain why such reasoning is in contradiction to genuine democracy and liberty.

33. Drawing on the vignette of “negro John” and “negro Mary” (no last name) versus the white twins “William Smith” and “Priscilla Smith,” explain how racial oppression is economically and systematically constructed over time. Be sure to include in your discussion how the termination of slavery and gains from the civil rights movements did not end the large-scale oppression faced by John’s and Mary’s descendants.

34. Once in place, oppressive institutions have demonstrated great social inertia and persistence. Explain this phenomenon in terms of how when the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution put an end to legal African American enslavement, systemic racism soon took the form of officially sanctioned segregation.

Social Reproduction: Transmitting Wealth over Generations35. How does prior wealth and privilege, once gained in an earlier generation, translate into

wealth and privilege for later generations? 36. What are the main forms of socioeconomic resources that are transmitted? 37. How is the whole societal system of racial inequality reproduced?38. Sociologist Jennifer Mueller’s research on white families and families of color in a

southwestern state has demonstrated in dramatic detail the reality of the highly racialized inheritance process at play in U.S. society. Explain.

39. Explain why whiteness itself is a major social resource.

Extraordinary Costs and Burdens of Racism40. Explain how unjustly gained wealth and privileges for white Amercians are often linked

directly to economic impoverishment for black Americans. 41. Racism is a lived experience. Drawing on the interview with the black female dental

assistant who describes a black child’s experience, explain why when black people speak of being black, they typically do not speak in abstract concepts learned from books, but voice accounts of racialized encounters with whites.

The White Elite: Centuries of Dominance42. Describe the elite-white-male dominance system.

Ordinary Whites: The Public Wage of Whiteness43. In the U.S., class consciousness among white workers has to a substantial degree been

lessened by a very strong racial consciousness among white workers. Explain. 44. Describe examples of biracial coalitions of workers that was of serious concern to elite

white leaders.45. Once slavery was abolished, and the movement for white women’s rights accelerated in

the late nineteenth century, what did numerous white leaders in this women’s movement do in regards to significant concerns of black women and men?


The White Racial Frame: Legitimating and Rationalizing Oppression46. In a chapter in Darkwater (1920), the first extended analysis of whiteness in the social

science literature, W.E.B. Du Bois discusses racial emotions. What are racial emotions? 47. Illustrate the white racial frame and its subframes by drawing on the diary of the white

college student, called Trevor, at a midwestern college. In your illustration be sure to discuss how this brief account reveals a broad white racial framing of certain societal groups, numerous racial stereotypes and images signaling the inferiority of Americans of color, racialized images, and emotion-laden joking.

48. Nowadays, many social scientists and popular analysts view racism as mainly about individual racial animus, biases, attitudes, and prejudices “directed at people because of their race.” They focus on the micro-level of the bigoted individual. Explain why this common approach is far too individualistic, limited, and limiting.

Resisting Systemic Racism49. Joe Feagin and Kimberley Ducey write: “A comprehensive theory of systemic racism

should encompass the dialectical idea that oppression creates seeds of its own destruction.” Explain.

50. The social process that reproduces systemic racism has contradictions. Explain.

1 Haeyoun Park, Josh Keller, and Josh Williams, “The Faces of American Power, Nearly as White as the Oscar Nominees,” New York Times, February 26, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/26/us/race-of-american-power.html?_r=2 (accessed August 22, 2018).2 Soraya Chemaly, “Why Aren’t We Talking About How Boys and Men Feel About a Woman President?” RoleReboot, February 26, 2016, http://rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2016-02-arent-talking-boys-men-feel-woman-president/ (accessed August 22, 2018).3 Chemaly, “Why Aren’t We Talking About How Boys and Men Feel About a Woman President?” RoleReboot, February 26, 2016, http://rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2016-02-arent-talking-boys-men-feel-woman-president/ (accessed August 22, 2018).

cloud object storage | store & retrieve data … › s3-euw1-ap-pe-… · web viewstudent...

Documents