Sigh: Sociologists Dealing with Attributions of Racism

A response to how sociologists "deal" with race launched a heated exchange on Scatterplot at the end of February regarding attributions of racism. I was disappointed at the defensiveness present in the Scatterplot response to the “trauma” post and at the dismissiveness present in their response to the NY Post picture overall (not to say that all bloggers were defensive or dismissive, respectively, at one or all issues presented). In response to a healthy discussion already in place at Scatterplot, Skinny Malinky's original "trauma" post states:


I mean to pause and remember the force of the accumulated and collective traumas of racism, and to think about what sort of failure it is for sociology to refuse a consideration of that force, and to what new traumas that failure contributes.


As a POC who grew up in the Deep South (not to say this identity is definitively linked to the subsequent clause, but to provide sociological context to me saying that: Upon seeing the cartoon, I felt that I was the monkey the police were shooting , and my stomach turned as a result), I was keenly upset the day the picture was posted. I wrote up a long email rant and was prepared to send it out to EVERYONE I knew. Then, I checked myself, sent out only the picture to people in my inner circle, and let folks deal with it emotionally in their own ways. Still, I wanted everyone to be upset and to finally make the racial connections with the watermelon imagery, the death threats, and other racist imagery that have been employed against Obama throughout his campaign.


Still, the world we live in today with regards to things “racial” is one where no one wants to feel responsible for racial inequality. For this reason I empathize with the words of Attorney General Eric Holder: We are a “nation of cowards.” It is time we stop running from this truth.


Also, the world we live in today is one where no one wants to be called a “racist” explicitly or implicitly, especially people who feel they themselves are well-intentioned, objective, or un-invested in a particular set of actions. I believe this to be the position the Scatterplot poster felt the Sociology blog had been put in by the interpretations represented in the original “trauma” post.


Nonetheless, if we are to move beyond our cowardly/colorblind/faultless society, a new understanding of racism must gain currency in contemporary America: Racism is not about intentions. In fact, the most virulent forms of racism occur invisibly, as an inert structural force.



This inert structural force embodies both cultural symbols of whole peoples (e.g., blacks as monkeys (see Joseph Grave’s The Emperor’s New Clothing), Jews are rats (see Maus), or Muslims as terrorists) and the context of lived realities (e.g., racial residential segregation, racial differences in the quality of educational opportunities, racial profiling). The consequences brought about by this inert structural force is the "trauma" Skinny Malinky referred to in his/her post. As Grace Cho states [quoted by Skinny Malinky]:


an unspeakable trauma does not die out with the person who first experienced it. Rather, it takes on a life of its own, emerging from the spaces where secrets are concealed. [emphasis added]


While some racism is rooted in intention, narrowing the definition of racism as such dismisses the trans-institutional (Waitzkin's Second Sickness) and multi-dimensional (Blank, Dabady, and Citro's Measuring Discrimination) nature and consequence of racial hierarchy and the distribution of resources according to racial identity. Even in the Jim Crow era (and before then), this kind of institutional discrimination/structural racism was at work. See DuBois in The Philadelphia Negro and Omi and Winant in Racial Formation in the United States for earlier articulations of this perspective.



I apologize as a sociologist who studies race/ethnicity for my silence on this matter. I needed time to not speak from a gut-reaction sadness and anger. Moving forward, I have only a few words for sociologists "dealing" with attributions of racism.
  • First, expect to be offended and leave with hurt feelings when discussing issues of race in America. Use these moments to reflect critically on how you (and others) got to that point.

  • Second, we, across all positions of the racial hierarchy, contribute to the inert structural force of racism. This is "our" problem; not "theirs": If one of our body parts is wounded, the whole body fails to function optimally.

  • Third, the only way to move forward is to talk, write, and argue about it. It is when one voice (collectively or individually) defines what race/racism is that we have an insurmountable problem.


End sigh.

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