The Matrix of Race

The Matrix of Race

Social Construction, Intersectionality, and Inequality

Rodney D. Coates
Miami University of Ohio
Abby L. Ferber
University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
David L. Brunsma
Virginia Tech
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Brief Contents

1. Preface
2. Acknowledgments
3. About the Authors
4. ■ PART I Introduction to Race and the Social Matrix
1. Chapter 1. Race and the Social Construction of Difference
2. Chapter 2. The Shaping of a Nation: The Social Construction of Race
in America
5. ■ PART II The Matrix Perspective on Social Institutions
1. Chapter 3. The Social Construction and Regulation of Families
2. Chapter 4. Work and Wealth Inequality
3. Chapter 5. Health, Medicine, and Health Care
4. Chapter 6. Education
5. Chapter 7. Crime, Law, and Deviance
6. Chapter 8. Power, Politics, and Identities
7. Chapter 9. Sports and the American Dream
8. Chapter 10. The Military, War, and Terrorism
9. Conclusion
6. Glossary
7. References
8. Index
Detailed Contents

1. Preface
2. Acknowledgments
3. About the Authors
4. ■ PART I Introduction to Race and the Social Matrix
1. Chapter 1. Race and the Social Construction of Difference
1. The Social Construction of Race
1. Defining Race
2. Constructing Race around the World
3. Constructing Race in the United States
4. The Role of Ethnicity
5. Racial and Ethnic Compositions in the Future
2. The Social Matrix of Race
1. Race Is Inherently Social
2. Race Is a Narrative
3. Racial Identity Is Relational and Intersectional
4. Race Is Institutional and Structural
5. We Are Active Agents in the Matrix
3. The Operation of Racism
1. Prejudice and Discrimination
2. Racism
3. Understanding Privilege
4. Our Stories
1. Rodney
2. Abby
3. Dave
5. Key Terms
6. Chapter Summary
2. Chapter 2. The Shaping of a Nation: The Social Construction of Race
in America
1. Race Today: Adapting and Evolving
1. Changing Demographics
2. The Influence of a Changing World
3. Revising the Experience of Work, Gender, and Race
4. Sources of Change and Diversity
 5. The Evolving Narrative of Popular Culture
6. The Impact of Social Media and Technology
2. Indigenous Peoples: The Americas before Columbus
1. The Earliest Americans
2. A Rich History
3. Discovery and Encounters: The Shaping of Our Storied Past
1. Understanding Colonialism
2. Spanish Colonialism (1492)
3. French Colonialism (1534)
4. British Colonialism (1587)
5. Borderlands and Frontiers
4. The U.S. Matrix and Intersectionality—Where Do We Go from
Here?
1. Investigating Institutions and Their Narratives
2. Examining Intersecting Identities
3. Analyzing Historical Roots and Geographic Differences
4. Appraising Difference, Resistance, and Transformation
5. Key Terms
6. Chapter Summary
5. ■ PART II The Matrix Perspective on Social Institutions
1. Chapter 3. The Social Construction and Regulation of Families
1. Historical Regulation of the Family
1. Early Families
2. Domesticity: The Emergence of the Ideology of Separate
Spheres
3. The Legacy of Immigration
4. Changing Families, Changing Attitudes
2. Family Inequality Theories
1. Stock Stories and Assimilation
2. Concealed Stories: The Legacy of Slavery
3. Applying the Pathology Narrative to Latino/a Families
3. Family Inequality through the Matrix Lens
1. Women’s Concealed Stories
2. Invisible Fathers
3. Oppression and Privilege: Support for White Families
4. The Socialization of Children
4. Transforming the Ideal Family Narrative
1. When the Ideal Family Is Not Ideal
2. Transmigration
 3. New Reproductive Technologies
4. Interracial Marriage
5. LGBT Families
5. Key Terms
6. Chapter Summary
2. Chapter 4. Work and Wealth Inequality
1. Recent Trends in Work and Wealth
1. Increasing Inequality
2. Economic Restructuring and Changing Occupations
3. A Disappearing Social Safety Net
4. Race, Recession, and Recovery
5. The Wage Gap and Occupational Segregation
2. Theories of Economic Inequality
1. Neoliberal Theory
2. Marxist Theories
3. Applying the Matrix to the History of Economic Inequality in the
United States
1. The Shifting Organization of Work and Wealth
2. The Effects of Social Policy
4. Transforming the Story of Race and Economic Inequality
1. Workplace Discrimination
2. Immigration Stories
3. Many Stories Lead to Many Solutions
4. Transforming a History of Wealth Inequality
5. Key Terms
6. Chapter Summary
3. Chapter 5. Health, Medicine, and Health Care
1. Patterns of Inequality in Health and Health Care
1. Traditional Healing
2. Modern Medicine and Discrimination
3. The Social Construction of “Fit” and “Unfit” Bodies
2. Theorizing Inequality in Health and Health Care
1. Historical Advances in Health and Life Expectancy
2. The Role of Objectivity in Medicine
3. Applying the Matrix to Health Inequity and Inequality
1. An Intersectional Approach to Health and Health Care
2. A Legacy of Mistrust
3. The Role of Place and Environmental Racism
4. The Human Genome Project
 4. Resisting and Transforming Inequality in Health and Health Care
1. Urban American Indian Health Care
2. Race, Reproduction, and the Women’s Health Movement
3. A Path to the Future
5. Key Terms
6. Chapter Summary
4. Chapter 6. Education
1. The Shaping of the Matrix of U.S. Education
1. Education Today
2. A Short History
2. Theories of Education
1. Social-Functional Theory: Education as a Socialization
Process
2. Human Capital Theory: Education as Skills Acquisition
3. Examining the Concealed Story of Race and Education through
the Matrix
1. Education as a Conversion Tool
2. Education as a Site of Class Construction
3. Education as a Means of Creating Workers
4. Education as a Citizen Machine
5. Education, Race, and Intersectional Realities
4. Alternative Educational Movements and the Future of Education
1. Imagining New Educations
2. Education as a Human Right
5. Key Terms
6. Chapter Summary
5. Chapter 7. Crime, Law, and Deviance
1. A History of Race, Crime, and Punishment
1. Building a Foundation of Whiteness
2. A Legacy of Racial Profiling
2. Sociological Stock Theories of Crime and Deviance
1. Biosocial Theories of Deviance
2. Ecological Perspectives on Crime
3. Applying the Matrix to Crime and Deviance
1. The Spaces and Places of Crime and Deviance
2. The Structure and Context of Crime and Deviance
3. Identifying Types of Crime
4. Transforming the Narrative of Race, Crime, and Deviance
1. Scientific Advances
 2. Alternatives to Incarceration
3. Emphasizing Choice
4. Adjusting the Narrative of Race and Deviance
5. Key Terms
6. Chapter Summary
6. Chapter 8. Power, Politics, and Identities
1. Contemporary Political Identities
1. Understanding the Electorate
2. Regional Differences
3. The Role of Race, Class, and Gender
4. Analyzing the 2016 Presidential Election
2. Critiquing Sociological Theories of Power, Politics, and Identity
1. The Pluralist Approach
2. The Power Elite Model
3. The Class Approach
3. Applying the Matrix of Race to U.S. Political History
1. Building a Nation’s Identity
2. Civil War and Its Aftermath
3. The Rise of Coalitional Politics and Social Movements
4. Building Alternatives to the Matrix of Race and Politics
1. The Power of Political Activism
2. Creating Change
5. Key Terms
6. Chapter Summary
7. Chapter 9. Sports and the American Dream
1. The State of Sport Today
1. The Sports Industry
2. Sports Media
3. Players and Coaches
2. Examining Stock Sociological Theories of Sport
1. The Nature Perspective
2. The Nurture Perspective
3. The Functions of Sport
4. Identity through Competition
3. Applying the Matrix to Sports in the United States
1. Analyzing Space and Place: Early American Sports
Narratives
2. Institutionalizing Sport: Industrialization, Immigration, and
Team Sports
 3. Identities and Resistance
4. Creating a New Playing Field
1. The Role of Agency and Resistance
2. Closing the Athlete Graduation Gap
3. Creating Change
5. Key Terms
6. Chapter Summary
8. Chapter 10. The Military, War, and Terrorism
1. Class, Gender, and Race in the U.S. Military
1. Socioeconomics and Recruiting
2. Gender and Enlistment
3. Racial Minority Representation
2. Military Sociology Stock Theories
1. Functionalism
2. Symbolic Interactionism
3. Monopoly and Materialist Perspectives
3. Applying the Matrix Approach to U.S. Military History, War, and
Terrorism
1. Revolutionary War
2. Wars and Native Americans
3. Civil War
4. World War II
5. Vietnam War
6. Wars on Terrorism
4. A More Inclusive Future
1. Strength through Diversity
2. World Security through Sustainable Economies
5. Key Terms
6. Chapter Summary
6. Conclusion
7. Glossary
8. References
9. Index
Preface

Almost 16 years ago, the three of us (Rodney, Abby, and Dave) began a series of
conversations that led ultimately to the production of this volume, The Matrix of
Race: Social Construction, Intersectionality, and Inequality. Two events,
separated by more than 7 years, served as stimuli for these conversations. These
events, not quite bookends, but rather landmarks, served to highlight the need for
such conversations. The first of these events was 9/11, with all of its associated
terror; the second was the election, in November 2008, of the first African
American to the presidency of the United States. Collectively, these landmarks
and the events surrounding them challenged our notions of race, its relevance,
and its continual transformation. Scholarship on race and ethnicity exists to help
humanity think through collective events such as these and how they move us
forward or further entrench us. As we considered contemporary and classic work
on race and ethnic relations along with the prominent textbooks on race and
ethnicity, we began to question whether a better approach was needed.

Our review of these works identified a significant group of texts that provide a
plethora of theoretical expositions of race in the United States. Most provide
syntheses of theory, histories, and structures that present cross-cultural analyses
of race and ethnicity involving multiple groups—opting, often, for approaches
that offer voyeuristic walks through the “races” and “ethnicities,” as if readers
were walking through a museum. Some of these texts highlight a concern for
hate crimes, racial conflict, structural and systemic patterns of animosity,
segregation, and inequality that duplicates racial and ethnic hierarchies across
histories and societies. We also note the prevailing logic that racism and ethnic
discrimination are bad, and multiculturalism, diversity, and integration are good.
Since the terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon on September 11,
2001, there has also been increased attention given to the changing nature of
racism, particularly as many additional groups have now become racialized, such
as Muslims and other Middle Easterners. Similarly, increased attention has been
paid post-9/11 to issues such as immigration, assimilation, racial profiling,
terrorism, domestic security, and globalization. The election of Barack Obama
was heralded by many as evidence that we, the United States, had made a
significant step toward, if not actually arrived at, a postracial society. Such
reactions were not only naive but also harmful, as they served to marginalize and
minimize ongoing racial and ethnic problems that have developed over
centuries, as seen in wealth gaps, education gaps, entrenched poverty, and
inequities in criminal sanctioning and policing. Once again, as we were writing
this textbook, we began witnessing protests and riots, charges of police brutality
and political indifference, and the killing of people of color. These events and
realities, then and now, convinced us that what we were witnessing was not
limited to a simplistic concern for race and ethnicity—it was something far
deeper, more complex, and nuanced.

We began envisioning a different approach: one of increased breadth and scope;

one that would more closely reflect people’s personal and lived experiences; and
one that would dispense with the static categories of race and ethnicity, looking
instead at the intersecting, multilayered identities of contemporary society. Not
only are racial and ethnic groups socially constructed, but they also intersect
with other aspects of identity (including gender and sexuality, age, and social
class) that vary across both temporal and geographical spaces. We decided to use
the core concept of the matrix to capture these complex intersections. Many texts
concerned with race and ethnic relations are written by academics who provide
excellent scholarly treatments of the subject, but all too often students perceive
such treatments as removed from their own lives, or sterile. We decided to also
add a concern for the reader’s personal identity and its intersection with society.
It is our view that such an approach will not only stir emotion but also compel
self-appraisal. We believe that this approach will enable our discussion to be
closer to the reader’s lived experiences. We have deliberately tied our text not
only to current research but also to a wide array of media and other supplements,
making it more dynamic than what is typically offered. In the process, we have
discovered that our identities are not separate from the various social settings
and structures that occupy us from birth to death. These social settings and
structures, which govern our personal and lived experiences, are typically
associated with the major institutions of our society.

The Matrix of Race is a textbook that helps instructors navigate the diversity of
students in their race/ethnic relations courses—both members of minority groups
who have experienced the impact of race in their own lives and members of
dominant groups who might believe that we now live in a “color-blind” society,
in which race and racism are relics of the past. Our goal is to make race and
racial inequality “visible” in new ways to all students, regardless of their
backgrounds.
The “matrix” in the title refers to a way of thinking about race that can help
readers get beyond the familiar “us versus them” arguments that can lead to
resistance and hostility. This framework incorporates a number of important
theories and perspectives from contemporary sociologists who study this subject:
(a) Race is socially constructed—it changes from one place to another and across
time. (b) When talking about racial inequality, it is more useful to focus on the
structures of society (institutions) than to blame individuals. (c) Race is
intersectional—it is embedded in other socially constructed categories of
difference (like gender, social class, ethnicity, and sexuality). And (d) there are
two sides to race: oppression and privilege. Both are harmful, and both can be
experienced simultaneously.

We are sure that as you work through this text while considering your own story,
you will come to the same conclusions that we have: We are all active agents in
maintaining or challenging the matrix of race. How successful have we been?
Tell us your story.
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Acknowledgments
Rodney’s Acknowledgments
I honor the ancestors of all races, ethnicities, genders, and periods who not only
survived but also challenged, transformed, and thrived in spite of the racial
matrix. I stand on the shoulders of these giants. There are many whose names,
input, and insights go unmentioned here, but not forgotten. Throughout my life I
have been blessed to have a continual stream of teachers, mentors, colleagues,
and heroes who refused to let me be mediocre. So I must thank Clifford Harper,
Judith Blau, William J. Wilson, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Darnell Hawkins,
Douglas Parker, Corey W. Dolgan, Joe Feagin, Al Long, and C. Lee Harrington
for always being there. Where would I be without the constant support, love, and
companionship of my family? I could not, nor would I want to, make it without
you, Sherrill, Angela, Chris, and Avery. And to the hundreds of students who
read, studied, asked critical questions about, and reflected on multiple drafts of
these chapters—you have my thanks and sympathies. Some of those early drafts
were truly murder. My coauthors, Abby and David, what can I say, no words, no
tributes can equal your devotion and faith in this project. Thanks, my friends.
Abby’s Acknowledgments
I was honored and humbled when Rodney Coates invited me to join this project.
I have learned and grown, both personally and professionally, working with
Rodney and David. None of us expected that we would still be writing this text
in 2017, and it is due to Rodney’s persistence and brilliant leadership that we
have continued on this journey. I am incredibly grateful for the many colleagues
and mentors who have touched my life and strengthened and supported both my
professional and personal growth. A few of the people I want to especially
acknowledge are Donald Cunnigen, Joe Feagin, Andrea Herrera, Elizabeth
Higginbotham, Michael Kimmel, Peggy McIntosh, Eddie Moore Jr., Wanda
Rushing, and Diane Wysocki. Personally, I dedicate this book to the late Joan
Acker, Miriam Johnson, and Sandra Morgen. When I was a graduate student at
the University of Oregon, each of these faculty mentors changed the course of
my life as a scholar/teacher, along with Mary Romero, Rose Brewer, and John
Lie. I am grateful for my teammates and coconspirators at the Matrix Center
(and especially the Knapsack Institute), who have contributed to building the
matrix model over the past 18 years; to the many folks I have had the honor of
building relationships with in my service to the White Privilege Conference and
the Privilege Institute; and to the many people who have invested their time and
passion in creating, nurturing, and growing Sociologists for Women in Society. I
do not take for granted the gift of this wide community of social justice activists
and academics, both those who have preceded me and those I work and grow
beside. Finally, and most important, I thank my husband, Joel, and daughter,
Sydney, for their patience, support and boundless love. I love you more than
words can tell.
David’s Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my longtime brother Rodney Coates for reaching out to me
in the summer of 2011 to ask if I wanted to join him in creating a unique,
critical, and intersectional race textbook. Our early discussions centered on
changing the way we teach race and ethnicity to undergraduate students and
inspired this textbook. I was equally enthralled when Abby Ferber agreed to join
us on this journey. The journey has been a long one, with many twists and turns.
Along the way several people have been there to lean on, to discuss with, to
commiserate with, and to bounce ideas off of. No list is ever complete, but I
would like to acknowledge my deeply supportive partner, Rachel, and my three
wonderful children, Karina, Thomas, and Henry—I love you all more than you
will ever know. I also must acknowledge the following people for their support
along the way: David Embrick, Jennifer Wyse, James Michael Thomas, John
Ryan, Sarah Ovink, Jaber Gubrium, Ellington Graves, Minjeong Kim, Petra
Rivera-Rideau, Kerry Ann Rockquemore, Slade Lellock, Nate Chapman,
Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl, Megan Nanney, Carson Byrd, and Anthony Peguero.
All of these people, and many, many graduate students and undergraduate
students, have heard me discuss “the textbook” that I am writing—well, here it
is. I also want to thank my inspirations, among many: Gloria Anzaldúa, Charles
Mills, Patricia Hill Collins, Immortal Technique, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Lauryn
Hill, Michael Omi, Paulo Freire, Joey Sprague, J. R. R. Tolkien, and my
grandfather, Wilbur Nachtigall.
From All Three Authors
Jointly, we thank the SAGE crew—Jeff Lasser, Jessica Carlisle, and a host of
others—thanks for being there, pushing us, and walking with us down this path.
We would also like to thank the reviewers who contributed their many
suggestions, critiques, and insights that helped us write The Matrix of Race:

Thea S. Alvarado, Pasadena City College

Steven L. Arxer, University of North Texas at Dallas
Celeste Atkins, Cochise College
Laura Barnes, Lenoir Community College
Joyce Bell, University of Pittsburgh
Michelle Bentz, Central Community College Nebraska, Columbus Campus
Jacqueline Bergdahl, Wright State University
Latrica Best, University of Louisville
Devonia Cage, University of Memphis
Elizabeth E. Chute, Carroll College
James A. Curiel, Norfolk State University
Melanie Deffendall, Delgado Community College
Sherry Edwards, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
David G. Embrick, Loyola University Chicago
Katherine Everhart, Northern Arizona University
Amy Foerster, Pace University
Joan Gettert Gilbreth, Nebraska Wesleyan University
Robert W. Greene, Marquette University
Denise A. Isom, California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo
Shanae Jefferies, University of North Texas
Shelly Jeffy, University of North Carolina Greensboro
Hortencia Jimenez, Hartnell College
Gary Jones, University of Winchester
Tony S. Jugé, Pasadena City College
Henry Kim, Wheaton College
Jeanne E. Kimpel, Hofstra University
Phil Lewis, Queens College
David Luke, University of Kentucky
Ying Ma, Austin Peay State University
Keith Mann, Cardinal Stritch University
Lynda Mercer, University of Louisville
Dan Monti, Saint Louis University
Sarah Morrison, Lindenwood University and Southern Illinois University
Edwardsville
Kaitlyne A. Motl, University of Kentucky
Zabedia Nazim, Wilfrid Laurier University
Mytoan Nguyen-Akbar, University of Washington
Godpower O. Okereke, Texas A&M University-Texarkana
Mary Kay Park, Biola University
Chavella T. Pittman, Dominican University
Jennifer Pizio, Mercy College
Janis Prince, Saint Leo University
Allan Rachlin, Franklin Pierce University
Heather Rodriguez, Central Connecticut State University
Penny J. Rosenthal, Minnesota State University, Mankato
Enrique Salmon, California State University East Bay
Allison Sinanan, Stockton University
Don Stewart, College of Southern Nevada,
Mary Frances Stuck, State University of New York Oswego
Paul Sturgis, William Woods University
Rita Takahashi, San Francisco State University
Michelle Tellez, Northern Arizona University
Santos Torres Jr., California State University, Sacramento
Kathryn Tillman, Florida State University
Gerald Titchener, De Moines Area Community College
Catherine Turcotte, Colby-Sawyer College
Curt Van Guison, St. Charles Community College
About the Authors

Rodney D. Coates
is a professor in the Department of Global and Intercultural Studies at
Miami University (Ohio). He specializes in the study of race and ethnic
relations, inequality, critical race theory, and social justice. He has served
on the editorial boards of the American Sociological Review, Social Forces,
and Race, Class and Gender; on the executive boards of the Southern
Sociological Society and Sociologists without Borders; and as chair of the
American Sociological Association’s Section on Race and Ethnic
Minorities. Rodney has published dozens of articles and several edited
books, and he writes frequently on issues of race and ethnicity, education
and public policy, civil rights, and social justice. His 2004 edited book,
Race and Ethnicity: Across Time, Space, and Discipline, won the Choice
Award from the American Library Association. He is also a recipient of the
Joseph Himes Career Award in Scholarship and Activism from the
Association of Black Sociologists.
Abby L. Ferber
is Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Ethnic Studies at the University
of Colorado, Colorado Springs, where she teaches both undergraduate and
graduate courses on privilege, race, gender, and sexuality, all from an
intersectional perspective. She is the author of White Man Falling: Race,
Gender, and White Supremacy (Rowman & Littlefield) and coauthor of
Hate Crime in America: What Do We Know? (American Sociological
Association) and Making a Difference: University Students of Color Speak
Out (Rowman & Littlefield). She is the coeditor, with Michael Kimmel, of
Privilege: A Reader (Westview Press), and also coedited The Matrix Reader
(McGraw-Hill) and Sex, Gender, and Sexuality: The New Basics (Oxford
University Press). Abby is the associate director of the university’s Matrix
Center for the Advancement of Social Equity and Inclusion and has served
as cofacilitator of the Matrix Center’s Knapsack Institute: Transforming
Teaching and Learning. She is also the founding coeditor of the journal
Understanding and Dismantling Privilege, a joint publication of the Matrix
Center and The Privilege Institute (TPI), the nonprofit organization that is
the home of the annual White Privilege Conference (WPC). She is a
founding board member of TPI and on the national planning team for the
 WPC.
David L. Brunsma
is professor of sociology at Virginia Tech, where he teaches and researches
in the areas of race, racism, multiracial identity, and human rights. He is the
author of Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America (Rowman &
Littlefield), A Symbolic Crusade: The School Uniform Movement and What
It Tells Us about American Education (Rowman & Littlefield Education),
and The Handbook of Sociology and Human Rights (Routledge). His work
has appeared in American Teacher Magazine, Principal Magazine, and the
Audio Journal of Education. David is the founding coeditor of the journal
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity and executive officer of the Southern
Sociological Society. He is also a recipient of the W. E. B. Du Bois Award
from Sociologists without Borders.
Part I Introduction to Race and the Social Matrix
Chapter 1 Race and the Social Construction of
Difference

The city of New Orleans’s decision to remove this statue of Robert E. Lee, and
three others celebrating Confederate figures, led to protests, with some
celebrating the removal and others claiming the move was disrespectful of the
heritage of the South.

David Rae Morris / Polaris/Newscom

Chapter Outline

The Social Construction of Race

Defining Race
Constructing Race around the World
Constructing Race in the United States
The Role of Ethnicity
Racial and Ethnic Compositions in the Future
The Social Matrix of Race
Race Is Inherently Social
Race Is a Narrative
Racial Identity Is Relational and Intersectional
Race Is Institutional and Structural
We Are Active Agents in the Matrix
The Operation of Racism
Prejudice and Discrimination
Racism
Understanding Privilege
Our Stories
Rodney
Abby
Dave
 Learning Objectives

LO 1.1 Explain how race and ethnicity are socially constructed.

LO 1.2 Evaluate the relationship between social contexts and race.
LO 1.3 Identify the concepts and operation of racism.
LO 1.4 Examine the link between our personal narratives and the broader “story” of race.

Our country has a history of memorializing wars and the people who fought
them with medals, holidays, and monuments. The Civil War (1861–65) between
the North and the South was quite possibly the bloodiest and subsequently the
most commemorated four years in U.S. history. After the final shot was fired,
some 1,500 memorials and monuments were created, including many
commemorating the heroes of the Confederacy, the seven slaveholding Southern
states that formally seceded from the Union in 1861 (Graham 2016). Over the
past few years, protests around the appropriateness of these monuments have
highlighted the racial fault lines in America.

In 2016, New Orleans, Louisiana, became a racial seismic epicenter as protests

rocked the city. At issue was the city’s decision to remove four landmark Civil
War–related monuments: a statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the
Confederacy; statues of Confederate generals P. G. T. Beauregard and Robert E.
Lee; and a monument memorializing a White supremacist uprising during the
Reconstruction era.

As the city pondered how and what to rebuild after the devastation of Hurricane
Katrina in 2005, anti-Confederate sentiment began to simmer. It reached a
boiling point in June 2015 when nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South
Carolina, were killed by a gunman waving a Confederate flag (Wootson 2017).
To many, these monuments represented not only the racially-based terrorism of
groups like the Ku Klux Klan but also a sanitized history that “whitewashed” the
Confederacy cause and glorified slavery and White supremacy (Landrieu 2017).
After the monuments were successfully removed, under the cover of darkness
and with snipers stationed nearby to protect the workers, lawmakers in Louisiana
and Alabama immediately responded by passing laws to make it more difficult
to remove Confederate monuments in the future (Park 2017).
Confederate monuments are a symptom of a much deeper set of issues that mark
our nation’s troubled history with race. The mayor of New Orleans, Mitch
Landrieu (2017), remarked that we as a nation continue to confuse the
“difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.” Our collective
memories often reflect this same distortion as we attempt to reconcile our
democratic principles of freedom, justice, and equality with the racial realities of
prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination. Landrieu’s statement and the controversy
surrounding the removal of Confederate monuments mirror concerns that are
deeply rooted within the social fabric of our country. They highlight the
promises and the problems associated with race in the United States. What is
race, and how has it become so central to our experiences? Is race so ingrained
in our basic identities that it is now a permanent fixture of our social landscape?
Alternatively, if race is a social invention, with a set of origins, purposes, and
realities, then is it within our ability to influence, change, or eliminate it? The
answers to these questions drive the purpose of this book.
The Social Construction of Race
Nothing better demonstrates the complexity and social dynamics of race than
performing an Internet image search using the term “biracial twins.” When most
children are born, they are assumed to belong to particular races because of the
color of their skin. But race is not so simple. Even twins can have very different
skin colors, and this can raise some interesting questions. Some twins who have
one Black parent and one White parent are routinely asked to produce their birth
certificates to prove that they are not only related but also twins. So are they
White, or are they Black? It depends. In some cases, the twins self-identify
according to their perceived racial identities (Perez 2015).
Defining Race
The term race refers to a social and cultural system by which we categorize
people based on presumed biological differences. An examination of genetic
patterns across the major world population groups reveals that while Africans
have some genes unique to them as a group, all other groups share genetic
patterns with Africans. This leads to the conclusion, held by most geneticists,
anthropologists, and sociologists, that all humans are derived from Africans and
that Africa is the cradle of humanity. Geneticists go further, declaring that the
differences we observe between various groups are the results of geographical
and social isolation, and that if such populations were to mix freely, then even
these differences would disappear (Yudell, Roberts, DeSalle, and Tishkoff 2016).

Lucy and Maria Aylmer are twins, born to a half-Jamaican mother and a white
father. Lucy identifies as white and Maria as black, despite their shared
parentage.

AP Photo / Ken McKay

Since human genes have changed, or mutated, over time, we must question if
race is either natural or static. If race were indeed a fact of nature, it would be
simple to identify who falls into which racial category, and we would expect
racial categories to remain static across history and societies. Differences in
physical features, such as skin color, hair color, eye color, and height, exist both
within and between groups. And as we’ve seen, physical features can vary even
within families. However, these differences are not due to an underlying
biological basis of race. There is more biological variation within our so-called
racial groups than there is between them. Race must derive from human
interventions. These interventions reflect the social construction of race.
Racial classifications have persisted as a means of advancing specific hierarchies
through attention to the reputed differences in behaviors, skill sets, and inherent
intelligence attributed to people according to their classifications. As a
consequence, what social scientists and geneticists alike have come to
understand is that race and racial categorizations are uniquely social creations
that have been purposefully constructed. Specific rewards, privileges, and
sanctions have been used to support and legitimate race. The systematic
distribution of these rewards, privileges, and sanctions across populations
through time has produced and reproduced social hierarchies that reflect our
racial categorizations. We collectively refer to these systematic processes as the
social construction of race.
Constructing Race around the World
If we examine the social construction of race across geographical spaces and
historical periods, then an interesting range of constructions is immediately
apparent.

South Africa
Many countries have historically instituted laws that dictated where the members
of different racial groups could live and work, and how they must behave. Once
such system, known as apartheid, existed in South Africa until 1994. One of the
measures of determining race in South Africa was the so-called pencil test. If a
pencil pushed through the hair stayed put, the person was deemed to have Afro-
textured hair and might be classified as Black or Colored (of mixed racial
heritage). If the pencil fell to the floor, the person was classified as White. A
Colored classification allowed a person to have significantly more rights than
those who were considered Black, but still fewer rights and responsibilities than
those considered White. Given the multiple products and processes used to
“straighten” Black hair, and the social benefits associated with enhanced social
status, is it any wonder that many Black South Africans sought to have their
identify changed to Colored? Apartheid allowed a racial hierarchy to be reified
into law—an illustration of how race was socially constructed in South Africa.
While technically illegal, these racial hierarchies are still a part of South African
cultural identity and heritage, and the legacies of apartheid still haunt South
Africa more than 20 years after the system officially ended.

South America
The Southern Cone of South America is a geographic region composed of the
southernmost areas of the continent, including the countries of Argentina, Brazil,
Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay (see Figure 1.1). Among these Latin American
countries, phenotypical traits—physical traits such as skin color, hair texture,
and facial features typically used to characterize people into racial groups—are
linked to socioeconomic status.

At the top of the hierarchy are White Hispanics and others with light skin. Mixed
indigenous and African ancestry, often referred to as mulatto, is associated with
less opportunity, higher levels of poverty, and lower social status. Those
individuals who claim both indigenous and Hispanic ancestry, called mestizos,
occupy a middle position and tend to have slightly more opportunities for social
and economic advancement than do mulattos.

There are also nation-specific racial categorizations. The Brazilian census

identifies six racial categories: Brancos (White), Pardos (Brown), Pretos
(Black), Amarelos (East Asian), indigenous, and undeclared. Such categories and
their links to the social and economic hierarchies in Latin American countries
exist to this day in what scholars refer to as pigmentocracies—governments and
other social structures that grant political power based on a hierarchy defined by
skin tone, regardless of race or social status (Telles and the Project on Ethnicity
and Race in Latin America 2014). But these are not exclusive categorizations.
One study conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, the
governmental entity responsible for the census, asked people what racial
categories they would place themselves in, and the researchers received 134
different answers (Fish 2011).

Figure 1.1 The Southern Cone of South America Has Unique Racial Categories
 Source: Wikimedia Commons,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Southern_Cone_Ethnography.jpg.

Australia
Race was similarly constructed in Australia when Britain began to colonize and
marginalize the indigenous population in 1791. In the early phase of
colonization, Britain declared much of Australia’s most valuable land to be terra
nullius, or “empty land.” Under this determination, all of the natives, or
Aboriginals, saw their rights to land revoked, as the Europeans declared the
indigenous population’s 50,000 years of residency null. Thus began an
apartheid-like social structure, where Europeans were accorded all the rights,
privileges, and status, while Aborigines were reduced to living in poverty on
settlements. This segregated racial structure has been successfully challenged
only in the last 20 years, as courts have begun to grant rights and privileges to
Australia’s Aborigines. The historical legacy of such a racialized structure has
not been limited to Australia. Of note, several European nations used the
declaration of terra nullius as a means of justifying colonial expansion and the
subsequent racialization of indigenous peoples in many places, including, but not
limited to, New Zealand, Grenada, Singapore, South Rhodesia, Tobago,
Trinidad, Guano Islands, Burkina Faso, and Niger. In each case, a racial
hierarchy favoring Europeans was socially constructed. Indigenous populations
were subject to subjugation, isolation, or genocide. The United States is another
one of these cases.
Constructing Race in the United States
Whiteness came into being as a way for European colonists to explain and
justify imperialism, genocide, slavery, and exploitation. In Chapter 2, we will
discuss the extent to which the construction of race in the United States follows
the pattern of European settler colonialism and imperialism. For now, we present
a brief explanation of how racial categorizations became significant within the
United States.

The Significance of Where and When

The United States has its roots in three separate colonial settlements. These
settlements, associated with the Spanish, French, and English, developed
different types of racial classification structures. While all of them reserved the
highest category for Europeans, they varied in how they accommodated other
groups. This variability accounts for the slight differences we can still often
observe between the former Spanish and French colonial regions (e.g., in
California and Louisiana) and the former English colonial areas. These
differences are most reflected in the heightened status of Creoles (people of
mixed race, European and indigenous) in the former Spanish and French
colonies and the more rigidly defined racial categories within the English. The
reasons for these differences, as we will discover, are associated with the
differences in settlement types. Here, it is important simply to note that these
differences were real and that they further demonstrate the processes of the
social construction of race.
Constructing race in 1899. The caption that appeared with this image in an 1899
edition of Harper’s Weekly reads: “The Iberians are believed to have been
originally an African race, who thousands of years ago spread themselves
through Spain over Western Europe. Their remains are found in the barrows, or
burying places, in sundry parts of these countries. The skulls are of low
prognathous type. They came to Ireland and mixed with the natives of the South
and West, who themselves are supposed to have been of low type and
descendants of savages of the Stone Age, who, in consequence of isolation from
the rest of the world, had never been out-competed in the healthy struggle of life,
and thus made way, according to the laws of nature, for superior races.”

Drawing by: H. Strickland Constable. 1899, Ireland from One or Two Neglected
Points of View

The social construction of race also varies across time, as the sets of descriptors
used to create racial categories have varied in different historical periods. At an
earlier time in U.S. history, for example, the Irish were considered to be of
African descent. The “Iberian hypothesis” purported that the “Black Irish” were
descendants of Africans and those from the Gaelic island. Although the Iberian
hypothesis has since been discredited (Radford 2015), in 1899 it was considered
fact. Irish immigrants experienced a tremendous amount of prejudice in the
United States and were not considered to be among the country’s elite White
ethnics. In Chapter 2 we shall see that these biases underscored many of our
attitudes toward race and how Whiteness came into being.

In 1924, the Racial Integrity Act defined a “colored person” as anyone with any
African or Native American ancestry at all; this is often referred to as the one-
drop rule. The rules for defining who falls into what racial categories have long
been inconsistent across the United States. Over time and in different states, the
amount of ancestry required to make someone Black has variously been defined
as one drop (of Black blood) and by fractions ranging from 1⁄4 to 1⁄8 to 1⁄32. A
person could “change” races by simply stepping over a state line. Why did
having 1⁄32 Black ancestry make someone Black, yet having 31⁄32 of White
ancestry not make someone White? And why have such clear-cut rules never
been established for other racial groups? How many Asian ancestors are required
to define someone as Asian? These inconsistencies exist because racial
classifications are based not on biology but on social, political, and economic
dynamics and power relationships. Under the one-drop rule, Native Americans
of mixed ancestry were systematically classified as Negro (or Black) and denied
tribal rights, and those who crossed the color line were subject to criminal
punishments.

Race in the Contemporary United States

So what does this racially constructed system look like in the contemporary
United States? Try this exercise: First, create a list of the racial groups in the
United States. Then, write down your estimate of the percentage of the U.S.
population that is accounted for by each group.

When we ask our students to attempt this exercise, the answers we get are
varied. Some list four races; some list ten. Some include Hispanics/Latinos, and
some do not. Some include Middle Easterners, while some do not. Some include
a category for multiracial identity. Race is something we assume we all know
when we see it, but we may in fact be “seeing” different things. Race cannot be
reduced to physical features like skin color—in fact, while skin tone is often the
first item we “check off” on our racial checklist, we then move to other social
and visual clues.

The U.S. Constitution requires that a counting of the nation’s population be

conducted every 10 years—a national census (see Figure 1.2). The purposes and
uses of the census have both changed and expanded across the years. The census
was originally necessary to determine voting representation, including the
numbers of representatives states could elect to Congress, the allocation of
federal and state funds, and more. Over time, the census categories of race and
other cultural and language groups have changed to reflect the nation’s evolving
population as well as, importantly, the political interests and power relations of
the time.

So what have we discovered? Race is a social construction that artificially

divides people into distinct groups based on characteristics such as physical
appearance, ancestry, culture, ethnic classification, and the social, economic, and
political needs, desires, and relations of a society at a given historical moment
(Adams, Bell, and Griffin 1997; Ferrante and Brown 2001). The U.S. Census
Bureau, for instance, currently recognizes five racial categories, along with a
“some other race” option (which was added in 2000 in response to public
pressure). The five categories are as follows:
 1. American Indian or Alaska Native
2. Asian
3. Black or African American
4. Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander
5. White

Not only have our official designations for race and ethnic groups differed over
time, but how people identify themselves has also shown a great deal of
variability. For example, from the 2000 census to that of 2010, almost 10 million
U.S. residents changed how they identified their race when asked by the Census
Bureau (Linshi 2014). This clearly demonstrates the fluidity of racial groups.

People often associate an elaborate array of behaviors, attitudes, and values with
particular racial groups, presuming that these reflect innate or culturally specific
traits. As one observer has noted: “What is called ‘race’ today is chiefly an
outcome of intergroup struggles, marking the boundaries, and thus the identities,
of ‘us’ and ‘them’ along with attendant ideas of social worth or stigma. As such,
‘race’ is an ideological construct that links supposedly innate traits of individuals
to their place in the social order” (Rumbaut 2011).

We often assume that racial differences have existed throughout history, but race
is a relatively new concept. Human differences exist along a continuum, and
racial classifications have been arbitrarily imposed on that continuum, separating
people into seemingly distinct groups, much as we separate the color spectrum
into distinct categories that we have selected to label red, orange, yellow, green,
and so on—though there is only one spectrum of color.

Recent genetic evidence presents a much more varied set of human identities.
For example, most of us derive from multiple ancestries. Genomes reveal that
the average African American can identify not only with African ancestry (about
73.2%) but also with European (24%) and Native American (0.8%). Latinos
average about 18% Native American ancestry, 65% European ancestry (mostly
from the Iberian Peninsula), and 6.2% African ancestry. And about 3.5% of
European Americans carry African ancestry. These are more likely to be in
southern states, such as South Carolina and Louisiana (where 12% of European
Americans have at least 1% African ancestry). In Louisiana, about 8% of
Europeans derive at least 1% of their ancestries from Native Americans (Wade
2014).
Figure 1.2 Racial and Ethnic Categories Have Changed Over the Past 220 Years

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, “Measuring Race and Ethnicity across the
Decades: 1790–2010,”
http://www.census.gov/population/race/data/MREAD_1790_2010.html.
Note: According to the 2000 Census, as the 2010 Census did not ask
questions about ancestry. Please note that respondents may have selected
more than one ancestry group.
The Role of Ethnicity
While race has been imposed on physical bodies, ethnicity encompasses cultural
aspects of individuals’ lives, including religion, tradition, language, ancestry,
nation, geography, history, beliefs, and practice. Ethnic groups often see
themselves, and are seen by others, as having distinct cultural identities. Physical
characteristics are not usually tied to definitions of ethnicity. For example,
Blacks in the United States come from many different ethnic backgrounds,
including African Americans whose ancestors arrived enslaved generations ago
and recent immigrants from Ethiopia, Jamaica, and other parts of the world.
Often we confuse ancestry with ethnicity and race. The term ancestry typically
refers to point of origin, lineage, or descent. For instance, Abby, one of the
authors of this text, is racially White, ethnically Jewish, and of Eastern European
ancestry. Ancestry is often one characteristic in definitions of ethnicity or race
(see Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3 The Nine Largest Ancestry Groups in The United States

Source: Derived from data in Liz O’Connor, Gus Lubin, and Dina Spector,
“The Largest Ancestry Groups in the United States,” Business Insider,
August 13, 2013, http://www.businessinsider.com/largest-ethnic-groups-in-
america-2013-8.

Often when we concentrate on large racial groups in the United States, we tend
to ignore just how diverse we are as a nation. Although the most recent census,
in 2010, did not ask a question regarding ancestry, the Census Bureau’s
American Community Survey tracks most major ancestry groups on an ongoing
basis. The data collected by that survey reveal that Germans and Blacks make up
the largest single ancestry groups within the United States.

When we focus on racial groups as distinct groups whose members supposedly

have much in common while ignoring the ethnic and ancestral diversity within
the socially constructed categories, we further exaggerate the significance of
racial designations. Furthermore, we erase the differences among the various and
diverse ethnic peoples grouped into these racial categories. The only thing that
people grouped together under a racial designation share is a history of
oppression based on their racialization. Other than that, racial categories
themselves tell us very little about the people classified into them.

Native Americans
The original, indigenous inhabitants of the Americas, Native Americans (or
American Indians) and Alaska Natives, do not constitute one single race. As of
the 2010 census, members of these groups made up 2% of the total U.S.
population. Of these, about 49% exclusively defined themselves as either
American Indians or Alaska Natives. The remaining 51% identified as some
combination of American Indian or Alaska Native and one or more other races
(U.S. Census Bureau 2012). A total of 630 separate federally recognized
American Indian and Alaska Native reservations existed in 2012, excluding the
Hawaiian Home Lands. There are 566 federally recognized American Indian and
Alaska Native tribes, with the five largest tribal groupings being the Cherokee,
Navajo, Choctaw, Mexican American Indian, and Chippewa groupings (see
Figure 1.4). At the time of the 2010 census, the majority of Native Americans
were living in 10 states: California, Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas, New York, New
Mexico, Washington, North Carolina, Florida, and Michigan (U.S. Census
Bureau 2012).

Asian Americans
All racial categories can be described as “panethnic.” Yen Le Espiritu coined the
term panethnicity in 1992 in reference to Asian Americans (see Espiritu 1994).
It is generally applied to regional groups who are placed into a large category. As
Espiritu points out, many Asian groups—including Chinese, Hmong, Japanese,
Korean, Bangladeshi, Asian Indian, and Vietnamese—have been lumped
together and viewed as an artificial whole.
Asians make up 5.8% of the total U.S. population. While many Americans are
aware of the increasing presence of Hispanic-origin immigrants, Asians actually
now make up an even larger share of immigrants to the United States. In 2014,
the Asian share of the U.S. foreign-born population increased to 30% of the
nation’s 42.4 million immigrants (Zong and Batalova 2014). In that year, most of
the 4.2 million Asians entering the United States came from Southeast Asia,
followed by East Asia, South Central Asia, and Western Asia. India and China
accounted for the largest share of these immigrants (17% each), followed by the
Philippines (15%), Vietnam (10%), and Korea (9%). Asian immigrants also
come from dozens of other countries in the Far East, Southeast Asia, and the
Indian continent (Zong and Batalova 2016).

Figure 1.4 American Indians and Alaskan Natives Identify Across Different
Tribal Groupings

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, “25 Largest Tribal Groupings among

American Indians and Alaska Natives,” 2010,
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/facts-for-
features/2014/cb14-ff26_aian_graphic.jpg.
Black Americans
Historically, scholars have rarely discussed ethnicity among Blacks. This further
highlights racial designations while marginalizing the differences among various
ethnic groups. Some Blacks in the United States can trace their roots back to
slavery, while others are recent immigrants from Africa. People defined as Black
may have African, Caribbean, Haitian, Filipino, and other diverse ancestries. In
fact, racial designations based on geography become meaningless as we attempt
to apply them to North Africans, such as Egyptians, Moroccans, and Algerians
(groups frequently defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as White). According to
the U.S. Census Bureau (2015), in 2014 Blacks constituted an estimated 13% of
the U.S. population.

As of 2015, 2.1 million African immigrants were living in the United States,
accounting for 4.8% of the U.S. population, compared to just 0.8% in 1970.
While typically these immigrants are lumped into the racial category of Black,
Figure 1.5 shows that such racial homogenization hides much of the ethnic
diversity among them (Anderson 2017).

White Ethnic Groups

White ethnics, who have until recently provided the largest share of immigration
to these shores, derive mostly from European countries. Many of these today
simply refer to themselves as “American.” In fact, major streams of European
immigration can be identified during the colonial era, the first portion of the 19th
century, and the period from the 1880s to 1920. European immigrants were
granted increased access to the United States as stipulated in the 1882 Chinese
Exclusion Act. This quota system was not effectively ended until the passage of
the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. White ethnic groups include
people of British, Greek, Russian, German, and Norwegian ancestry, as well as
many others. Figure 1.6 shows that European immigration has been relatively
stable over the past 20 years. In 2010, the top five countries of origin for
European immigrants were the United Kingdom (670,000, or 14%), Germany
(605,000, or 13%), Poland (476,000, or 10%), Russia (383,000, or 8%), and Italy
(365,000, or 8%) (Russell and Batalova 2012).

Hispanics
If an individual identifies with an ethnic group that speaks Spanish, then the U.S.
Census Bureau labels that person as Hispanic. Hispanics may have families that
came to the United States from Spain, Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, or one of
many other Spanish-speaking countries (see Figure 1.7). They may be White,
Black, or some other race. Other than language, they may have nothing in
common. Hispanic is a category created by the government, and many people
classified as Hispanic prefer to define themselves as Latino/a, Chicano/a, or
Mexican American, Cuban American, or the like. Some sociologists argue that
Latino/as have been historically racialized and defined as inferior by Whites and
should be classified as a race rather than an ethnic group. Much of the rich
contemporary literature on racial inequality in the United States adopts this
definition of Hispanics/Latino/as as a racialized group (Feagin and Cobas 2013;
Ortiz and Telles 2012). We also generally treat them as a racial group in this
book, and, indeed, many Hispanics have recently organized to push for
categorization as a racial group in the next census, in 2020. Throughout this text,
we will frequently use the terminology adopted by the research under discussion,
thus referring at times to Hispanics and at other times to Latino/as (also, at times
we will refer to Blacks and at other times to African Americans).

Figure 1.5 African Immigrants in the United States are Ethnically and
Geographically Diverse

Source: Chart and Map: “Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt are top birthplaces for
African immigrants in the U.S.” From African immigrant population in
 U.S. steadily climbs by Monica Anderson, Pew Research Center Fact Tank,
February 14, 2017.

Figure 1.6 European Immigration to the United States Has Been Steady Over
the Past Twenty Years

Source: Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova, “European Immigrants in the United
States,” Migration Policy Institute, December 1, 2015,
http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/european-immigrants-united-states.
Data from U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Surveys, 2006,
2010, and 2014; and Campbell J. Gibson and Kay Jung, “Historical Census
Statistics on the Foreign-Born Population of the United States: 1850–2000,”
Working Paper 81, U.S. Census Bureau, February 2006.

Although it is surprising to many, the U.S. Census Bureau does not currently list
Hispanic as a race, instead defining Hispanics as an ethnic group. The census
includes a separate question specifically about Hispanic origin, asking self-
identified Hispanics to select Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, or other. The
census form then asks them to identify their race.
Racial and Ethnic Compositions in the Future
So what will our country look like in the next 50 years? Projections of
population growth indicate that minorities (including Hispanics, Blacks, Asian
Americans, and Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders) will make up
slightly more than 50% of the U.S. population. The most significant changes will
be seen in the reduced numbers of Whites and the almost doubling of the
numbers of Hispanics and other minorities. We often read headlines predicting
that Whites will become a minority. However, these are misleading. Whites will
still be the single largest group in the United States, constituting 49.4% of the
population in 2060 (Figure 1.8). The United States will become a minority-
majority nation, which means that the total of all minority groups combined will
make up the majority of the population. We may see little change in the
dynamics of power and race relations, however, as the proportion of Whites will
still be nearly twice that of any individual minority group.

Figure 1.7 The United States Census Labels Individuals From any Spanish
Speaking Country as Hispanic
 Source: Figure 2, “U.S. Hispanic Origin Groups, by Population, 2013. In
The Impact of Slowing Immigration: Foreign-Born Share Falls Among 14
Largest U.S. Hispanic Origin Groups, by Gustavo Lopez and Eileen Patten,
Pew Research Center Hispanic Trends, September 15, 2015.

Figure 1.8 Population Growth Projections Over the Next Fifty Years Predict a
Minority-Majority Nation
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, “Projections of the Size and Composition of
the U.S. Population: 2014–2060,” Population Estimates and Projections,
Current Population Reports, March 2015.
 Critical Thinking

1. History has shown that race and ethnicity are socially constructed. What do current trends suggest
about how these social constructions may change in the future?
2. How might these changes affect social institutions such as marriage and family, education, and the
military?
3. In what ways might these changes affect how we, as Americans, view ourselves? How might this
affect how individuals categorize others and how they self-identify?
4. Can you trace your roots? What different racial and ethnic groups are in your family tree? What does
this say about how we define racial and ethnic groups?
The Social Matrix of Race
Our goal in this book is to provide you with historical perspectives, theoretical
frameworks, and diverse views of race and racial ideologies so that you can
intelligently participate and contribute to such dialogues. We will offer you a
variety of ways in which you can understand your identity, your environments,
the relationships between those, and the ways you can change yourself and your
society with dignity and self-determination. We focus particularly on race and
the way it shapes our identities, society and its institutions, and prospects for
change. But we also examine race within the context of gender, class, and other
social identities that interact with one another and reflect the way we live as
social beings.

A number of scholars have embraced the image of racial identity as a matrix

(Case 2013; Collins 2000; Ferber, Jiménez, O’Reilly Herrera, and Samuels
2009). Generally, a matrix is the surrounding environment in which something
(e.g., values, cells, humans) originates, develops, and grows. The concept of a
matrix captures the basic sociological understanding that contexts—social,
cultural, economic, historical, and otherwise—matter. Figure 1.9 is our visual
representation of the social matrix of race, depicting the intersecting worlds of
identity, social institutions, and cultural and historical contexts, connecting with
one another on the micro and macro levels.

If our primary focus were gender, we could center the gendered self in such a
matrix. In this text we center the concepts and experiences of race within the
context of our many shifting social identities and systems of inequality. Our
social identities are the ways in which our group memberships, in such things as
races, classes, and genders, help define our sense of self. While we often assume
a concrete or single group identity, the reality is that identity is seldom so simple.
For example, while many of us identify as being White, Black, Hispanic, Asian,
or Native American, few of us are racially or ethnically homogeneous.
Consequently, how we derive our racial identity is actually a result of both
historical and contemporary social constructions. The same can be said
regarding our social status, class, gender, and other identities. We also recognize
that these identities interact in ways that produce extremely nuanced and
complex, dynamic identities. The third ring of the social matrix of race consists
of the social institutions in which we live and interact. Social institutions are
patterned and structured sets of roles and behaviors centered on the performance
of important social tasks within any given society. These institutions help order
and facilitate social interactions. That being so, many of our activities happen
within social institutions such as marriage and family, education, sports, the
military, and the economy. In Figure 1.9 we have included only the social
institutions we examine in this text; this is not an exhaustive list. Finally, all of
these systems are shaped by place and time.

Figure 1.9 Race Intersects with Cultural and Historical Contexts, Social
Institutions, and Other Identities

Source: Copyright Rodney D. Coates, Abby L. Ferber, and David L.

Brunsma.

To support an understanding of race within the context of a social matrix, in the

following sections we introduce the five key insights about race that we will
develop throughout this text (see Table 1.1).
Race Is Inherently Social
We have already introduced the argument that race is a social construction. As
race theorists Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer (2010, 51) put it, “You
do not come into this world African or European or Asian; rather, this world
comes into you.” If races are constructed, it makes sense then to ask: When does
this happen, and why? The creation of “races” occurred at a specific point in
time to advance specific relations of inequality. The classifications were invented
by those they were created to serve, not by those who came to be defined as
“Others” by Whites. We will examine this history in Chapter 2.
Race Is a Narrative
As we have established, race is not real; it is a fiction with very real
consequences. Because it is fictional, scholars across many disciplines have used
the language of storytelling to discuss race. For example, perhaps one of the
most dominant stories we hear today is that race is a taboo topic. When children
ask their parents about racial differences, they are often hushed and told not to
talk about such things in public. Perhaps the most significant racial narrative is
the story that races exist in nature. We have just shown that this is not true. Yet
until we are taught otherwise, most of us go through life assuming that biological
racial differences exist. This is the power of narrative in our lives as social
beings.

Anthropologist Audrey Smedley (2007) has identified some of the key features
of this narrative. In it, racial classifications are constructed as follows:

1. They are exclusive, discrete classifications.

2. They involve visible physical differences that reflect inherent internal ones
(such as intelligence, disposition, morals).
3. They are inherited.
4. They are unchanging, determined by nature and/or God.
5. They are valued differently and ranked hierarchically (in terms of
superiority, beauty, degree of civilization, capacity for moral reasoning, and
more).

This narrative makes clear that the ideology of race privileges some groups by
dividing people into artificial, hierarchical categories to justify inequitable
access to resources.

The ideology of race is part of what Joe Feagin (2010) identifies as the “white
racial frame.” In societies characterized by racial hierarchies, racial frames are
constructed from the ideological justifications, processes, procedures, and
institutions that define and structure society. They are the “comprehensive
orienting structure or tool kit by which dominant racial groups and others are
understood,” and their actions are interpreted within social settings (Feagin
2010, 13). According to Feagin (2010, 10–11), a racial frame consists of the
following:
 1. racial stereotypes (a beliefs aspect);
2. racial narratives and interpretations (integrating cognitive aspects);
3. racial images (a visual aspect) and language accents (an auditory aspect);
4. racialized emotions (a “feelings” aspect); and
5. inclinations to discriminatory action.

The repetition of the White racial frame over generations, in fact since the
founding of the United States, is the key to its power. When the same messages
are repeated over and over, they appear to be part of our social being; they
become “natural” to us.

In her popular book Storytelling for Social Justice (2010), educator and activist
Lee Anne Bell provides a model for analyzing stories about race. She argues that
there are essentially four different kinds of stories that we encounter in our lives:
stock stories, concealed stories, resistance stories, and transforming stories.

Stock stories: “Stock stories are the tales told by the dominant group,” but
they are often embraced by those whose oppression they reinforce (Bell
2010, 23). They inform and organize the practices of social institutions and
are encoded in law, public policy, public space, history, and culture. Stock
stories are shaped by the White racial frame.
Concealed stories: We can always find concealed stories if we look closely
enough. These consist of the data and voices that stock stories ignore and
often convey a very different understanding of identity and inequity. In the
case of concealed stories, “we explore such questions as: What are the
stories about race and racism that we don’t hear? Why don’t we hear them?
How are such stories lost/left out? How do we recover these stories? What
do these stories show us about racism that stock stories do not?” (24).
Resistance stories: Narratives that directly challenge stock stories are
resistance stories. They speak of defying domination and actively struggling
for racial justice and social change. “Guiding questions for
discovering/uncovering resistance stories include: What stories exist
(historical or contemporary) that serve as examples of resistance? What role
does resistance play in challenging the stock stories about racism? What
can we learn about antiracist action and perseverance against the odds by
looking at these stories?” (25).
 Transforming stories: Once we examine concealed and resistance stories,
we can use them to write transforming stories that guide our actions as we
work toward a more just society. “Guiding questions include: What would it
look like if we transformed the stock stories? What can we draw from
resistance stories to create new stories about what ought to be? What kinds
of stories can support our ability to speak out and act where instances of
racism occur?” (26).

Many people claim color blindness in regard to race and ethnicity—that is, they
assert that they do not see race or ethnicity, only humans—and the idea of color
blindness informs many of our most prevalent stock stories today. According to
this ideology, if we were all to embrace a color-blind attitude and just stop
“seeing” race, race and its issues would finally become relics of the past. This
approach argues that we should treat people simply as human beings, rather than
as racialized beings (Plaut 2010). In fact, White people in the United States
generally believe that “we have achieved racial equality,” and about half believe
that African Americans are doing as well as, or even better than, Whites (Bush
2011, 4). But pretending race does not exist is not the same as creating equality.

Just when the blatantly discriminatory policies and practices of Jim Crow
racism, the laws and practices that originated in the American South to enforce
racial segregation, were finally crumbling under attack, the early foundations of
a “new racism” were taking form (Irons 2010). This new racism is much less
overt, avoiding the use of blatantly racist terminology. Sociologist Eduardo
Bonilla-Silva (2010) has labeled this ideology color-blind racism. According to
Bonilla-Silva, color-blind ideology has four components:

Abstract liberalism: Abstract concepts of equal opportunity, rationality, free

choice, and individualism are used to argue that discrimination is no longer
a problem, and any individual who works hard can succeed.
Naturalization: Ongoing inequality is reframed as the result of natural
processes rather than social relations. Segregation is explained, for
example, as the result of people’s natural inclination to live near others of
the same race.
Cultural racism: It is claimed that inherent cultural differences serve to
separate racialized groups.
Minimization of racism: It is argued that we now have a fairly level playing
field, everyone has equal opportunities to succeed, and racism is no longer a
 real problem.

While many embrace color blindness as nonracist, by ignoring the extent to

which race still shapes people’s life chances and opportunities, this view actually
reinforces and reproduces the subtle and institutional racial inequality that
shapes our lives. Throughout this text, we will examine the extent to which
racial inequality is still pervasive, as well as many stock stories in circulation
today that make it difficult for us to see this reality. We will challenge many
stock stories by exploring concealed and resistance stories, and by considering
the possibilities for constructing transformative stories.

Color-blind ideology leads to the conclusion that we’ve done all we can in
regard to racial inequality. Many Whites invoke the election of Barack Obama to
the presidency as confirmation of their assumptions of a color-blind nation
(Bonilla-Silva 2010; Cunnigen and Bruce 2010). The concealed story revealed
by sociology, however, is that racial inequality has been and remains entrenched
in the United States.

Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images

Racial Identity Is Relational and Intersectional
As philosopher Elizabeth Spelman (1988) points out, we often think about our
various identities—race, gender, sexuality, class, ability—as though they are
connected like the beads of a necklace. But unlike the beads of the necklace, our
separate identities can’t just be popped apart. They intersect and shape each
other; they are relational and intersectional (Crenshaw 1991).

The relational aspects of race are demonstrated by the fact that categories of
race are often defined in opposition to each other (for example, to be White
means one is not Black, Asian, Hispanic, or Native American) and according to
where they fall along the continuum of hierarchy. Race is also relational in its
intersections with other social identities, such as gender and class.

Intersectional theories argue that race, gender, and other salient social identities
are intertwined and inseparable, and cannot be comprehended on their own.
Sociologist Ivy Ken offers a useful metaphor. If we think about race as sugar,
gender as flour, and class as baking soda, what happens when we mix them and a
few other ingredients together? If we are lucky, we end up with cookies; we
“produce something new—something that would not exist if that mixing had not
occurred” (Ken 2008, 156). When these ingredients are combined, they are
changed in the process.

David J. Connor (2006), a special education teacher in New York City, provides
an example. He wondered why his classes were filled overwhelmingly with
African American and Latino males despite the fact that learning disabilities
occur in both males and females across class and race. Connor found that he
needed an intersectional perspective to understand: “I noticed that the label
[learning disabled] signified different outcomes for different people. What
seemed to be a beneficial category of disability to middle-class, white students,
by triggering various supports and services—served to disadvantage black
and/or Latino/a urban youngsters, who were more likely to be placed in
restrictive, segregated settings” (154). Here, race, class, and gender intersect to
produce different consequences for differently situated youth.

As this example demonstrates, sources of oppression are related, and

interrelated, in varied ways. There is no single formula for understanding how
they work together. We are all shaped by all of these significant constructs,
whether they privilege us or contribute to our oppression; we all experience
specific configurations of race, class, and gender that affect our subjectivities,
opportunities, and life chances.

Although its name is new, intersectional theory has a long history. Early theorists
like Maria Stewart, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and Anna
Julia Cooper struggled with the ways race divided the women’s suffrage
movement, and gender limited Black women’s participation in the antislavery
movement. Decades later, women of color waged battles for full inclusion within
the civil rights and women’s movements. African American sociologists like
Belinda Robnett (1999) and Bernice McNair Barnett (1995) have examined the
ways in which the foundational leadership activities of Black women in many
civil rights organizations have been ignored or written out of history (becoming
concealed stories). Vicki Ruiz (1999) has examined similar dynamics in her
research on the work of Chicanas in the Chicano movement. We can find many
resistance stories in the lives of women of color who have refused to direct their
energies toward just one form of oppression, arguing that their lives are shaped
by their race and their gender simultaneously.

An intersectional approach does not require that we always examine every form
of inequality. Instead, we need to recognize that intersectionality permeates
every subject we study, and that even when we choose to focus on a single
system of inequality, such as race, we must bring an intersectional lens to the
work or we will never get a full picture of the experiences and dynamics of race.

Over the past few decades, research involving explicitly intersectional analysis
has accelerated. Sociologists and others have examined the ways our various
social locations intersect and interact in shaping our lives and society at every
level. These represent interconnected axes of oppression and privilege that shape
all of our lived experiences (Collins 2000).
Race Is Institutional and Structural
To say that race is institutional is to recognize that it operates alongside and in
tandem with our dominant social institutions. For instance, education is a social
institution in which there are roles (e.g., teachers and students) and expected
behaviors (e.g., teaching and learning) that come together as a social structure to
educate. But schools also contribute to other important social tasks, including
socialization and social control (Spade and Ballantine 2011).

From the perspective of an individual in a human community, we might think

about an institution by completing the following statement: “In this
society/community, there is a way to do [fill in the blank].” In a society, like the
United States, there is a way to do marriage, for example. When we mention the
word marriage we are invoking a cultural script as well as a social structure—
certain bodies come to mind, certain expectations, certain relationships, certain
beginnings and outcomes. This is, perhaps, why gaining the right to marry has
been such an amazing uphill battle for same-sex couples—as “same-sex
marriage” runs counter to the prevailing sense of the institution of “marriage”
(Baunach 2012). All of our dominant social institutions organize our lives, and
they do so in deeply powerful ways that are intimately tied to how race (as well
as gender, class, and sexuality) fundamentally structures and organizes our lives
within society.
We Are Active Agents in the Matrix
While constructs of race and ethnicity shape us, we also shape them. Stories are
often simply internalized, processed and made sense of by individuals and
groups. Human beings, as active agents, have the potential to question inherited
stories. Throughout this text we will examine various kinds of stories so that
each of us may be better educated and informed in order to develop and support
the stories by which we want to live our lives. It is only in this way that we can
contribute to the construction of transformative stories that might produce a
more equitable society.

Once we realize that race is socially constructed, it follows that we recognize our
role as active agents in reconstructing it—through our actions and through the
stories we construct that inform our actions (Markus and Moya 2010, 4).
Emphasizing the concept of agency is also essential to creating social change. If
race is something we do, then we can begin to do it differently. Yet many people
believe that race is biological, and so they believe it is inevitable. If people
believe that they can make changes, then they inherently understand the complex
factors that shape their own possibilities (Bush 2011). Such agency empowers
people to resist and transform the economic, political, and social realities
associated with racial frames and other forms of inequality.

It is because we, too, embrace the concept of agency that we have written this
text. We hope to make visible the stock stories that perpetuate racial inequality,
and to examine the ways in which those narratives govern the operations of
organizations and institutions. All of us, as individuals, play a role in
reproducing or subverting the dominant narratives, whether we choose to or not.
While we inherit stories about race that help us to explain the world around us,
we can also seek out alternative stories. All of us, as individuals, play a role in
the reproduction of institutional structures, from our workplaces to our places of
worship to our schools and our homes.

Each of the key insights that inform our framework, discussed above, is
essential. Each provides just one piece of the puzzle. Further, these elements
interact and work together, constantly influencing one another from moment to
moment, so that it is often difficult to look at any one piece in isolation. Racial
attitudes and racialized social structures need to be examined in relationship to
one another. For example, many scholars have argued that economic insecurity
and resource scarcity often fan the flames of race prejudice. Critical knowledge
is gained when we understand how dominant discourses and ideology preserve
and perpetuate the status quo. Understanding how these dominant discourses are
framed and how they are buttressed by our institutional practices, policies, and
mechanisms allows us to see not only how these patterns are replicated and
reproduced but also how they can be replaced (Bush 2011, 37).
 Critical Thinking

1. If race is a social construction, how might different institutions affect how race is perceived? How
might these perceptions vary across time and place?
2. Using yourself as an example, how has your identity changed as you shifted from being a preteen to a
teen to a college student? Do these changes remain constant across different institutions? (Think
about the various clubs, committees, and groups to which you belong.)
3. What kinds of impacts can you have in the various groups to which you belong? In what ways do
your possible impacts reflect your various identities?
4. Are there some groups to which you have greater or lesser access? What does your degree of access
suggest about your level of agency?
The Operation of Racism
In the first half of this chapter, we have examined what race is, how it is
constructed, and how it is reproduced. We now shift our focus to the concept and
operation of racism.
Prejudice and Discrimination
Anyone can be the victim of prejudice. Prejudice is a judgment of an individual
or group, often based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, class, or other social
identities. It is often shaped by, and also leads to, the promotion of stereotypes,
which are assumptions or generalizations applied to an entire group. Even
seemingly positive stereotypes put people in boxes, like the myth of Asian
Americans as the “model minority,” which includes the stereotype that all Asian
Americans are gifted in math and science. How might this stereotype affect
Asian American students who are not doing well in school? How does it prevent
us from seeing the poverty that specific Asian American groups, such as the
Hmong, Cambodians, and Thais, are more likely to experience (Takei and
Sakamoto 2011)?

Prejudices and stereotypes are beliefs that often provide foundations for action in
the form of discrimination—that is, the differential allocation of goods,
resources, and services, and the limitation of access to full participation in
society, based on an individual’s membership in a particular social category
(Adams et al. 1997). Prejudices and stereotypes exist in the realm of beliefs, and
when these beliefs guide the ways in which we treat each other, they produce
discrimination. Anyone can be the victim of prejudice, stereotyping, or
discrimination, including White people, and for a wide variety of reasons, such
as clothing, appearance, accent, and membership in clubs or gangs. Put simply,
discrimination is prejudice plus power.

Prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination are probably what first come to mind
when we think about racism. But the study of racism goes far beyond these. Like
sexism, racism is a system of oppression. Oppression is more than simply
individual beliefs and actions—it involves the systematic devaluing,
undermining, marginalizing, and disadvantaging of certain social identity groups
in contrast to a privileged norm (Ferber and Samuels 2010). Oppression is based
on membership in socially constructed identity categories; it is not based on
individual characteristics.

One sociologist describes racial oppression as a birdcage: an interlocking

network of institutional barriers that prevents escape (Frye 2007). Alternatively,
others point out the systemic nature of racial oppression. This view posits that
core racist realities, values, and ideologies are manifested in all of the major
institutions within society (Feagin 2001, 6). Throughout this text we will
demonstrate how race exists both historically and contextually as an ongoing
form of inequality that pervades every major social institution, including
education, employment, government, health care, family, criminal justice, sports,
and leisure. Thinking about oppression as a birdcage helps us to understand how
it limits people’s lives. For example, the gendered wage gap is just one wire in
the birdcage that constrains women. If it were the only wire, women could fly
around it and escape. However, women face inequality in the home (in domestic
labor, child care, elder care, and more), in education, in health care, in the
workplace, in the criminal justice system, and more. They are trapped by an
entire system of wires that form a cage.
Racism
Racism is a system of oppression by which those groups with relatively more
social power subordinate members of targeted racial groups who have relatively
little social power. This subordination is supported by individual actions, cultural
values, and norms embedded in stock stories, as well as in the institutional
structures and practices of society (National Education Association 2015). It is
inscribed in codes of conduct, legal sanctions, and organizational rules and
practices. Specifically, racism is the subordination of people of color by those
who consider themselves White; by implication, the practice of racism defines
Whites as superior and all non-Whites as inferior.

The Sociology of Racism

Racism is systemic. It is not about isolated individual actions; individual actions
take place within a broader, systemic, cross-institutional context. People of color
may themselves harbor prejudices and discriminate on the basis of race;
however, without the larger social and historical context of systemic, systematic
differences in power, these individual actions do not constitute racism. While
this may seem counterintuitive, keep in mind that we are looking at racism from
a sociological perspective, focusing on the importance of social context,
research, and group experience, rather than on individual behavior. Individual
experiences of race and racism will vary. We find it less important to focus on
“racists” than on the social matrix of racism in which we live. Additionally,
while White people do not experience racism, they may face oppression based
on sexual orientation, class, or other social identities.

Who Practices Racism?

Racism in the United States is directed primarily against Blacks, Asian
Americans, Latino/as, and Native Americans. Some argue that Muslims may
also be considered targets of racism, as they are becoming a racialized group.
Racism is the basis of conflict and violence in societies throughout the world,
and the forms it takes are varied. Racism is practiced by Whites against Blacks,
Coloreds, and Indians in South Africa; by Islamic Arabs against Black Christians
in the Sudan; by East Indians against Blacks in Guyana; by those of Spanish
descent against those of African and Indian descent in Brazil and Paraguay; by
White “Aryans” against Jews and the Romani (Gypsies) in Germany; by the
Japanese against the Eta, or Burakumin, in Japan; and by Whites against
Africans, Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus in Great Britain. Racism can take many
forms, and it changes over time.

Types of Racism
Formal or overt racism occurs when discriminatory practices and behaviors are
sanctioned by official rules, codes, or laws of an organization, institution, or
society. Many of the most obvious forms of racism are no longer legally or
openly accepted in U.S. society. Such racist practices as slavery, Jim Crow laws,
the Black codes, the Indian Removal Act, the internment of Japanese residents
during World War II, and the Chinese Exclusion Act are now condemned (but
also too conveniently forgotten). Debate is ongoing regarding whether or not
other practices—such as immigration policy, the display of the Confederate flag,
and the use of American Indian sports mascots—are racist in intent or impact.

Informal or covert racism is subtle in its application, and often ignored or

misdiagnosed. It acts informally in that it is assumed to be part of the natural,
legitimate, and normal workings of society and its institutions. Thus, when we
discuss student learning outcomes we may talk about poor motivation,
inadequate schools, or broken homes. We ignore that these characteristics are
also typically associated with poor Black and Latino/a neighborhoods (Coates
2011). Microaggressions are subtle insults (verbal, nonverbal, and/or visual)
directed toward individuals of oppressed social groups, sometimes made
unconsciously. Research on college campuses finds that even when things look
fine on the surface, inequality and discrimination still manifest themselves in
“subtle and hidden forms” that shape interactions and experiences in dorms,
classrooms, dining halls, and student health centers. Over time, these can affect
students’ performance, and even their mental and physical health (we discuss
microaggressions in more depth in Chapter 5).
The subtle insults known as microaggressions are common in everyday
interactions, like at the post office, even when things seem fine on the surface.

Education Images / UIG via Getty Images

Understanding Privilege
When we study racism, we most often study the experiences of marginalized and
oppressed groups. However, everyone’s life is shaped by race. Privilege is the
flip side of oppression—it involves the systemic favoring, valuing, validating,
and including of certain social identities over others. Whiteness is a privileged
status.

The Privilege of Whiteness

To be White is to have greater access to rewards and valued resources simply
because of group membership. Because they exist in relationship to each other,
oppression and privilege operate hand in hand; one cannot exist without the
other. Just like oppression, privilege is based on group memberships, not
individual factors. We do not choose to be the recipients of oppression or
privilege, and we cannot opt out of either one. A White person driving down the
street cannot ask the police to pull her over because of her race. Experiences of
racism can affect some people and not others independent of their desires and
behaviors.

Making Whiteness visible by acknowledging privilege allows us to examine the

ways in which all White people, not just those we identify as “racist,” benefit
from their racial categorization. Accepting the fact that we live in a society that
is immersed in systems of oppression can be difficult, because it means that
despite our best intentions, we all participate in perpetuating inequality. In fact,
privilege is usually invisible to the people who experience it until it is pointed
out. The reality is that White people do not need to think about race very often.
Their social location becomes both invisible and the assumed norm.

Research on White privilege has grown over the past three decades, along with
the interdisciplinary subfield of Whiteness studies. Works by literary theorists,
legal scholars, anthropologists, historians, psychologists, and sociologists alike
have contributed to this burgeoning field (Brodkin 1998; Case 2013; Jacobson
1998; Haney López 2006; Moore, Penick-Parks, and Michael 2015; Morrison
1992). However, people of color have been writing about White privilege for a
long time. Discussions of White privilege are found in the works of writers such
as W. E. B. Du Bois, Anna Julia Cooper, and Ida B. Wells.
Whites are seen as the average, normal, universal human: the “mythical norm”
(Lorde [1984] 2007). Descriptions in newspapers and books assume that subjects
are White unless other racial identities are made clear. Some were outraged
when Noma Dumezweni was cast as Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the
Cursed Child, despite the character’s race being neither relevant nor specified in
the Harry Potter series.

David M. Bennett / Getty Images Entertainment / Getty Images

Peggy McIntosh’s (1988) classic article “White Privilege and Male Privilege”
was one of the first attempts by a White person to document the unearned
advantages that Whites experience on a daily basis. For example, White
privilege means being able to assume that most of the people you or your
children study with in school will be of the same race; being able to go shopping
without being followed around in the store; never being called a credit to your
race; and being able to find “flesh-colored” bandages to match your skin color.
McIntosh also identifies a second type of privilege that gives one group power
over another. This conferred dominance legitimates privileges that no one should
have in a society that values social justice and equity, such as the right to “own”
another human being.

Most of us are the beneficiaries of at least one form of privilege, and often many
more. Recognizing this often leads people to feel guilt and shame. However,
privilege is derived from group membership; it is not the result of anything we
have done as individuals. We are born into these systems of privilege and
oppression; we did not create them. Once we become aware of them, though, we
must be accountable and work to create change. We can choose whether to
acknowledge privilege as it operates in our lives, and whether to use it as a
means of creating social change. As Shelly Tochluk (2008, 249–50) notes, this
requires that we “begin with personal investigation. . . . If we are going to take a
stand, we need to feel prepared to deal with our own sense of discomfort and
potential resistance or rejection from others.”

The Impact of Stock Stories

The enduring stock story of the United States as a meritocracy makes it very
difficult for us to see inequality as institutionalized (McNamee and Miller 2014).
An “oppression-blind” belief system ignores the reality of inequality based on
social group memberships and sees the United States as the land of equal
opportunity, where anyone who works hard can succeed (Ferber 2012).

It is no wonder that individuals, especially those who are most privileged, often
resist acknowledging the reality of ongoing inequality. We are immersed in a
culture where the ideology of oppression blindness is pervasive. The news and
entertainment media bombard us with color-blind “depictions of race relations
that suggest that discriminatory racial barriers have been dismantled” (Gallagher
2009, 548). However, these institutionalized barriers still exist. Individuals often
experience some cognitive dissonance when confronted with the concept of
privilege. We often turn to our familiar stock stories to explain how we feel,
countering with responses like “The United States is a meritocracy!” or “Racism
is a thing of the past!” Table 1.2 lists some common responses, informed by our
stock stories, to learning about privilege (Ferber and Samuels 2010). Do you
share any of these feelings?

While our stock stories serve the interests of the dominant group, they are a part
of our socialization and social fabric and become perceived as natural, normal,
and the way of the world. It is easy to forget that these stories were created at
specific moments to justify specific sets of interactions. Race, as part of our
structured social system, has become realized as residential segregation,
differential educational outcomes, income gaps, racially stratified training and
occupational outcomes, social stigmas, and restrictions on social relationships
(Smedley 2007, 21–22).

It is only through a deliberate process of critical inquiry that we can deconstruct

these seemingly normal relationships to reveal the intentional and unintentional
processes of construction and their underlying context. Critical sociological
inquiry into the creation and maintenance of difference helps make the familiar
strange, the natural unnatural, and the obvious not so obvious, and, in a world
where things are often not what they seem, it allows us to see more clearly and
deeply.
Our Stories
As we learn to understand ourselves and others, we can break down the divisions
between us and build a foundation for transformative stories and new
relationships. That is our goal for you, and we have designed this textbook to
guide you through that process. We will journey together to see ourselves, each
other, and our society at a deeper level. Our goal is not only to share information
and knowledge about the dynamics of race and racism but also to connect this
knowledge with our individual lives.
 Critical Thinking

1. Racism is dynamic across geographic and social places and across historical periods. Consider some
recent events either in the news or at your university: How do they reflect these dynamic processes?
(Hint: Do you believe that the same types of events would have taken place, say, 50 years ago?)
2. Consider some common stereotypes about athletes, academics, or other professionals. Can you
identify any racial stereotypes about which groups might be better at certain sports, disciplines, or
professions? What might account for the prevalence of these stereotypes? Do you believe that they
have changed over time, or that they would be similar to those in, say, England or Nigeria? What
may account for either the similarities or the differences you observe?
3. At your institution are there any student groups that appear to have greater access to rewards and
resources than other groups do? If so, what might account for their privilege?
4. Are there any common features (racial or gender or class) among the privileged student groups that
you can identify? If so, what does this suggest about privilege?

Now, we want to share some of our own stories. Race is deeply personal for each
one of us, yet, as sociologists, we have learned much more about ourselves by
situating our own lives within a broader context. We hope to help you do the
same. We are all situated somewhere in the matrix, so this text is about each of
us. We are all in this together.
Rodney
My grandfather was a sharecropper from Yazoo, Mississippi. In 1917, he arrived
in East St. Louis, Illinois, a city with a robust industrial base that benefited
significantly from World War I, and where much of the mostly White labor force
was either in the military or on strike. Many Black men were migrating to East
St. Louis at the time, looking for work.

White organized labor, fearful of losing job security, became hostile and targeted
the new arrivals. On May 28, at a White union meeting, rumors began
circulating that Black men were forcibly seducing and raping White women. A
mob of more than 3,000 White men left this meeting and began beating random
Black men on the street. The violence claimed the life of a 14-year-old boy, his
mother was scalped, and 244 buildings were destroyed—all before the governor
called in the National Guard. Rumors continued to circulate, and Blacks were
selectively attacked by roving groups of White vigilantes.

But it wasn’t over. On July 1, 1917, a Black man attacked a White man. The
retaliatory response by Whites was massive, and an entire section of the Black
community was destroyed while the police and fire departments refused to
respond. My grandfather said that “blood ran like water through the streets.”
Many residents were lynched, and the entire Black section of the city was
burned. No Whites have ever been charged with or convicted of any of these
crimes. For the next 50 years, segregation maintained an uneasy peace in this
troubled city.

Rodney Coates
Racial segregation, not only in housing but also in hospitals, dictated that I could
not be born in the city where my parents resided (East St. Louis, Illinois),
because the only hospital that would allow Negro women access was in St.
Louis, Missouri. I grew up in a segregated city and went to all-Black elementary,
middle, and high schools. Since mainstream educational institutions tended not
to hire Black professionals, many of my English, math, and science teachers had
advanced degrees, so I received the equivalent of a private education. Given my
Blackness and the presumption that I would be a laborer and not a scholar, I also
was equally trained in carpentry and sheet metal work. A system designed to
keep the races separate provided an outstanding education—one that I was more
than ready to take advantage of during the height of the civil rights movement.

The landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education

(1954) had desegregated the schools, and suddenly places like Southern Illinois
University, the University of Illinois, and the University of Chicago were open to
someone like me, a kid from a city that would soon become defined as a ghetto.
As Blacks asserted their rights and the courts supported them, more doors
opened to Blacks, and many Whites began to flee to the suburbs. This White
flight, and the loss of business and industries, served to create ghettos where just
a few short years before there had been thriving urban centers. I eventually
obtained a bachelor’s degree, two master’s degrees, and a PhD from some of the
best educational institutions in this country. My story has sensitized me to the
ways in which race, class, and gender are intertwined in the great American
narrative. I specialize in critical pedagogy, critical race theory, race and ethnic
relations, stratification, human rights and social justice, educational sociology,
political processes, urban sociology, political sociology, and public sociology.

After the first wave of racial violence in East St. Louis in 1917, in which
hundreds of buildings were burned and a boy was killed, the governor called in
the National Guard, seen here escorting a Black citizen through the rubble.

Bettmann / Bettmann / Getty Images

Abby
I never had reason to think about race, or my own racial identity as White, until I
became a graduate student. Instead, throughout my childhood, my Jewish
identity was much more salient. My family was not very religious, but we were
“cultural Jews.” Growing up in a White, Jewish, upper-middle-class suburb of
Cleveland, Ohio (one of the most segregated U.S. cities), I attended religious
school on Sunday mornings and services at the synagogue on the High Holy
Days. I learned about the Holocaust, the Inquisition, and the long history of
pogroms. When I was in elementary school, the school building was bombed one
night, and anti-Semitic epithets were scrawled on the walls. The message I
internalized was that Jews were the universal scapegoat, and even when they
were fully assimilated and successful, their safety was never secure. So even
though I have never considered myself religious, I learned that what often
matters more is whether other people see me as Jewish.

My great-grandmother fled her small Russian village when she was 16 years old
to avoid an arranged marriage. Her parents disowned her, and she never spoke to
them again. After she immigrated to the United States, she learned that her entire
family had perished in concentration camps. My grandmother grew up in a
Catholic community where her Jewish family was ostracized. At Ohio State
University in the 1960s, my mother’s roommate asked to see her horns. Last
year, on a family vacation with my adolescent daughter, another member of our
tour group took the guide’s microphone and entertained the group with anti-
Semitic jokes.

Abby Ferber

Yet I am also the beneficiary of White privilege, and this has had a greater
impact on my life. I have never had to worry about being pulled over by police,
not getting a job, or not being able to rent or purchase a home because of my
race. I did not have to teach my daughter how to behave around the police for
her own security. As Jews became defined as White, my grandparents were able
to take out loans and start a small business. My parents were both able to attend
college. Today, Jews are accepted as White in the United States.

In the years before and after World War II, many Jews fled their homes in Russia
and Europe. These Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe sought visas at the
U.S. embassy in Paris, hoping to reach the United States.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo / Alamy Stock Photo

My dissertation research examined the construction of race and gender in the

context of the organized White supremacist movement. My research made my
White privilege much more visible and real to me, ironically, because for White
supremacists I am not White. Their ideology lumps Jews into the broad category
of non-Whites, along with African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans.
Studying this movement was the first time I really became aware of my White
privilege, as I finally understood that it could be taken away. Privilege and
oppression are not the result of anything a person has done as an individual. For
instance, I have no control over who recognizes me as White or non-White, or
when.

I also grew up acutely aware of gender oppression, even if I did not have the
language to name it. I experienced sexual harassment at every job I held between
middle school and graduate school, experienced numerous attempted rapes, and
have received unequal pay compared to men doing the same job as me.

As a graduate student, I first learned about privilege and intersectionality, and

this provided a framework that allowed me to better understand the complexity
of who I am, not only a Jewish female, but a White, heterosexual, middle-class,
temporarily able-bodied and -minded, Jewish woman. I now have a greater
understanding of how all of those identities intersect in shaping my life
experience. And I now realize, as a person who benefits from White privilege,
that it is my responsibility to work to reduce racial inequality. I never
experienced guilt or shame when I learned of my privilege, but instead started
asking how I could be a part of the solution.

Goshen College is a Mennonite institution that focuses on outreach, study

abroad, and missionary and/or “development” work.

MEC Collection / Alamy Stock Photo

Dave
I was born in Des Moines, Iowa, to a Puerto Rican mother and a largely
unknown White father. My mother and her brothers and sisters had been adopted
and raised by my solidly White, privileged, Christian grandparents in mostly
White neighborhoods. While there were some variations in the degree of Puerto
Rican identity felt among my family members, by and large they were White. I
too was raised White. I have come to embrace my Puerto Rican identity, but I
did not really know about it until the stories and structures of my life were
already quite fully built along White lines.

David Brunsma

As I grew up, although I delved into critical literatures, music, and film outside
the scope of public school and family, it was expected that I would be White—
talk White, dress White, and, ultimately, think and live White. I was also
destined to reproduce the structures of White privilege and racism, despite the
fact that I could see them then, and can see them even more clearly now. My life
as a White American preordained my complacency and tacit agreement with the
exploitative racial contract in White America, even while I fully disagree with it.
I went to a Mennonite college that preaches a kind of liberation theology, from
which many go on to serve in missionary or “development” capacities all around
the world—with good intentions but often ending up as color-blind extensions of
American (or Jesus) imperialism. There were few people of color there, or in
graduate school. Meanwhile, my critical, social justice lenses were becoming
more sharply focused. I am still learning to “see” myself, my story, my place in
the matrix; this is an important step in seeing others deeply as well. My research
is focused on (multi)racial identity, race and ethnicity, human rights, sociology
of education, and the sociology of culture.
 Critical Thinking

1. Each of us has a story. In what ways does your story reflect a particular narrative? How might your
story be different from the stories of your parents or grandparents, or from those of your peers?
2. Are you a first-generation college student or did your parents also attend college? How are your
college experiences different from their experiences (either as students or not)?
3. In what ways might your race, class, and gender affect your experiences? What does this suggest
about how time and space interact with identity?
4. What changes do you envision for your children or the next generation? What stories do you think
they will tell? And how might they interpret your story?
Key Terms

ancestry, p. 14
color blindness, p. 26
color-blind racism, p. 27
concealed stories, p. 26
discrimination, p. 31
ethnicity, p. 14
formal or overt racism, p. 33
informal or covert racism, p. 33
intersectional theories, p. 28
Jim Crow racism, p. 27
matrix, p. 22
one-drop rule, p. 10
oppression, p. 32
panethnicity, p. 15
phenotypical traits, p. 6
pigmentocracies, p. 8
prejudice, p. 31
privilege, p. 34
race, p. 5
racial categorizations, p. 5
racial frames, p. 25
racism, p. 27
relational aspects of race, p. 28
resistance stories, p. 26
social construction of race, p. 5
social institutions, p. 24
stereotypes, p. 31
stock stories, p. 26
systemic nature of racial oppression, p. 32
transforming stories, p. 26
White flight, p. 40
Whiteness studies, p. 35
Chapter Summary
LO 1.1 Explain how race and ethnicity are socially
constructed.
Race changes over time and across geographical spaces. It is an unstable and shifting concept.
The U.S. Census Bureau attempts to identify the major racial groups in the United States, but
it changes its definitions often. Defining a race is an example of the process of “Othering.”
Ethnicity and panethnicity are much more nuanced and layered concepts than those reflected
in typical race categories. Within the United States, White ethnics have consistently been
dominant, in terms of power as well as in numbers. This dominance owes its origins to
practices, ideologies, and institutions that derive from our colonial past. And these practices,
ideologies, and institutions have served to reinforce racial categorizations while obscuring the
fluidity of race and ethnicity. Race definitions, structures, and practices are not applied
consistently across the globe.
LO 1.2 Evaluate the relationship between social contexts
and race.
The social context of race illustrates the reality of race in our society. Our focus on race helps
us to understand how it shapes our identities, institutions, societies, and prospects for change.
We use the concept of the matrix of race to help us see how the social construction of race is
realized within our society. Our identities intersect along race, gender, and other axes, and
these intersectional identities operate across various institutional and geographical spaces and
historical periods. Looking at race in the social matrix highlights it as a social construct, as
narrative, as relational and intersectional, and as institutional and structural, and it also
emphasizes the role of humans as active agents in the process of racialization.
LO 1.3 Identify the concepts and operation of racism.
We use a variety of narrative types to highlight the operation and potential for transformation
of race and racial structures. Our stock stories narrate how reality works. These stories often
obscure or legitimate various types of oppression. Concealed stories are uncovered as we
attempt to understand the actual ways in which race operates. By uncovering these narratives
we often become aware of stories of resistance (where individuals or groups have attempted to
circumvent or overcome racial structures) and/or stories of transformation (where individuals
or groups have actually facilitated changes to race and racial structures). Prejudice,
stereotyping, and discrimination, which anyone may encounter, are part of racism, but racism
reaches beyond those practices and is systematic and institutional. Racism is a system of
oppression.
LO 1.4 Examine the link between our personal
narratives and the broader “story” of race.
We all have stories. Understanding our own narratives helps us examine how race, the matrix,
and intersectionality operate within our lives.
Chapter 2 The Shaping of a Nation The Social
Construction of Race in America

Hundreds of Sudanese refugees have fled civil war and settled in the U.S., where
they have a great deal to learn. Many cities have nonprofit organizations
dedicated to helping these refugees acclimate to their new home towns.

John Moore / Getty Images News / Getty Images

Chapter Outline

Race Today: Adapting and Evolving

Changing Demographics
The Influence of a Changing World
Revising the Experience of Work, Gender, and Race
Sources of Change and Diversity
The Evolving Narrative of Popular Culture
The Impact of Social Media and Technology
Indigenous Peoples: The Americas before Columbus
The Earliest Americans
A Rich History
Discovery and Encounters: The Shaping of Our Storied Past
Understanding Colonialism
Spanish Colonialism (1492)
French Colonialism (1534)
British Colonialism (1587)
Borderlands and Frontiers
The U.S. Matrix and Intersectionality—Where Do We Go from Here?
Investigating Institutions and Their Narratives
Examining Intersecting Identities
Analyzing Historical Roots and Geographic Differences
Appraising Difference, Resistance, and Transformation
 Learning Objectives

LO 2.1 Explore how recent events have affected how we experience race.
LO 2.2 Describe the Americas before Columbus.
LO 2.3 Examine the patterns of Spanish, French, and British colonialism in the Americas.
LO 2.4 Evaluate the intersections of race, identities, institutions, and resistance.

Thon Marial Maker was born in the midst of the Sudanese civil war in 1997. He
fled the turmoil, along with some family members, and escaped into Uganda.
From there he immigrated as a refugee into Australia. At the age of 14, Maker
was discovered by Edward Smith, an Australian basketball coach who works
with children from immigrant backgrounds to help them excel in the sport.
Smith had previously worked with Ater Majok and Mathiang Muo, who went on
to become professional basketball players, Majok for the Los Angeles Lakers
and Muo for the Perth Wildcats in Western Australia. Smith offered Maker and
his family the same opportunities, providing food, clothing, and education. In
2011, Maker and Smith traveled to Texas to attend a basketball talent camp,
where he was recruited to play. Maker played high school basketball first in
Louisiana, then at Carlisle High School in Martinsville, Virginia. He was named
the Gatorade Virginia Boys Basketball Player of the Year in 2014. The following
year, cable sports channel ESPN ranked him as the top high school basketball
player in the United States (Biancardi 2015). He was drafted by the Milwaukee
Bucks in 2016. As a pro, Maker has averaged 9.6 rebounds and 14.2 points per
game (Gardner 2017).

Maker was one of the almost 20,000 Sudanese boys uprooted because of civil
war over the past three decades. Of this group, who have come to be known as
the Lost Boys of Sudan, some 4,000 came to the United States. Hundreds would
eventually settle in areas such as Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Phoenix, Salt Lake
City, San Diego, Seattle, and Tucson. Maker and the Lost Boys joined millions
of immigrants who have come to the United States seeking peace, justice,
freedom, and the American Dream. Their story is at the heart of our story and
the shaping of a nation. As we will see, it is a story that has defined the racial
matrix, created intersectionality, and set us on the path that we continue to walk
to this day.
Race Today: Adapting and Evolving
Turn on a television, scroll your social media feed, or watch any movie, and you
will discover that it is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that race is
intricately involved in most current events and issues. In fact, it often seems that
our nation is consumed with race. How did we get here, and what does this
obsession suggest about who we are as a people? In this chapter we will discuss
the unique set of circumstances that started us down this path. But first, let’s take
a look at the current realities of race. While race seems both elusive and static, it
is continually adapting and evolving.
Changing Demographics
The United States, as a nation of immigrants, has historically been defined by
racial and ethnic diversity. Close to 60 million immigrants have arrived in the
United States over the past 50 years. In 2016, nearly 14% of U.S. residents were
foreign-born, most hailing from Latin America and Asia (Cohn and Caumont
2016).

The U.S. population is projected to grow from 422 million to 458 million in the
next 40 years. During this period, as the baby boomers—that is, those who are
part of the demographic group born right after World War II—age, our nation
will also become slightly older. The proportion of the population made up of
people age 65 and older will increase from 13% to about 20%. During this same
period, total births will reach their highest level, with an estimated 4.3 million
births. Much of this increase will be due to recent immigrants, who average
higher fertility rates than the general population. The proportion of the
population ages 15 to 64 is also expected to increase by 42% (Kotkin 2010).

Figure 2.1 The Face of America is Changing

Source: D’Vera Cohn and Andrea Caumont, “10 Demographic Trends That
Are Shaping the U.S. and the World,” Fact Tank, Pew Research Center,
March 31, 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/03/31/10-
demographic-trends-that-are-shaping-the-u-s-and-the-world.
These demographic changes will have significant impacts on most of our
institutions. As we will see in Chapter 10, the 2016 electorate was the most
diverse in U.S. history, and it was the increasing growth in the numbers of racial
minority voters that gave Barack Obama victories in both 2008 and 2012. But
while younger voters are becoming increasingly diverse, one of the fastest-
growing voting groups consists of the older Americans of the baby boomer
generation. Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory was a result of these older
voters supporting him with 53% of their votes (Tyson and Maniam 2016).

These demographic changes will also have an immediate impact on colleges and
universities across the nation. We can forecast these trends by examining the
current racial makeup of grade school classrooms. In 2014, for the first time, the
number of Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and
Native Americans combined exceeded the number of Whites in public grade
school classrooms (Williams 2014). Non-Hispanic Whites are currently in the
minority in the populations of four states: California (which has a 61% minority
population), Hawaii (77% minority), New Mexico (61% minority), and Texas
(56% minority). And Nevada (48.5% minority), Maryland (47.4% minority), and
Georgia (45% minority) are not that far behind (Maciag 2015).

Figure 2.2 shows that since 2000, 78 counties in 19 U.S. states became majority-
minority. Of these, 14 had been at least 60% White (Krogstad 2015).

Figure 2.2 States Where Minority Groups Became the Majority Between 2000
and 2013
 Source: “Where Minorities Became the Majority Between 2000 and 2013.”
In “Reflecting a Racial Shift, 78 Counties Turned Majority-Minority since
2000,” by Jens Manuel Krogstad, Pew Research Center Fact Tank, April 8,
2015. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/08/reflecting-a-racial-
shift-78-counties-turned-majority-minority-since-2000.

The most diverse counties are concentrated in California, in the South, and on
the East Coast. And in 19 of the 25 largest U.S. counties (measured by
population), Whites made up less than half of the population. Six of these that
were majority White in 2000 are no longer so. These are San Diego, Orange,
Riverside, and Sacramento Counties in California; Clark County, Nevada;
Broward County, Florida (Krogstad 2015). As such changes take place, they will
have impacts on everything from work and the economy to family structures to
who serves in the military. Our media and other forms of entertainment,
including sports, will also be affected. Some impacts are even now becoming
apparent.
The Influence of a Changing World
The United States has been experiencing a particularly turbulent period since the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that resulted in the deaths of more than
3,000 people. This single event has fundamentally altered the experiences of
everyone in this country and in the world. During this period we have also
witnessed four separate wars, as well as countless other military operations from
Haiti to Libya, Afghanistan to Iraq—many of them rooted in notions of “the
Other” and difference.

During the past few decades, ethnic violence has erupted into genocide—the
large-scale, systematic destruction of a people or nation—among the Tutsis and
Hutus in Rwanda and among the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in Bosnia. Racial
violence, violence that pits one racial group against another, has occurred around
the world, including in places like Australia, India, Belgium, France, and the
United Kingdom. Closer to home, riots and civil unrest stemming from issues of
race have disrupted a number of U.S. cities, including Cincinnati, Ohio (2001);
Benton Harbor, Michigan (2003); Oakland, California (2009); Hempstead, New
York (2010); Ferguson, Missouri (2014–15); and Baltimore, Maryland (2015).
And we have witnessed the public reactions to violence between police forces
and people of color, reactions that reveal our anxieties and frustrations about
race.

After Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black Baltimorean, died from injuries he

sustained while in police custody in 2015, the city erupted in protests.

Andrew Burton / Getty Images News / Getty Images

Not all of the change has been violent. We have also witnessed several firsts for
women and persons of color. Many of you may have experienced the euphoria of
the 2003 launch of the space shuttle Columbia, carrying possibly the most
diverse flight crew ever seen, and also experienced the tragedy of that crew’s
loss as the shuttle disintegrated during reentry. We celebrated the fall of the
Berlin Wall in 1989, and the election of the first Black president of the United
States in 2008. In 2005, the deadly force of Hurricane Katrina revealed the ugly
underbelly of race, class, and gender as thousands of New Orleans residents
were displaced—the largest internal displacement in American history (Kromm
and Sturgis 2008). America has discovered new phrases such as “racial
profiling,” “subprime loans,” and “dining while Black”—all of which
demonstrate our continued obsession and problems associated with difference
and solidify the idea that each of us experiences the world from our own position
within the matrix (Goyette and Scheller 2016). Compared to Americans living in
previous periods, we are generally more fashion conscious, upbeat, diverse,
liberal, confident, self-expressive, and open to change (Taylor and Keeter 2010).
As we learned earlier, Latinos are quickly emerging as a population that is
significantly altering what it means to be American, and college enrollment
among Hispanics is now the largest and fastest growing of all student groups
(Fry 2011).
Revising the Experience of Work, Gender, and Race
Women currently make up only about 4% of CEOs in Fortune 500 firms, and
Asians, Hispanics, and Blacks account for slightly more than 1% (Zarya 2016).
Alongside some gains, women of all social groups have on average lost ground
over the past few years due to the triple glass ceiling, or three-pronged
workplace discrimination based on race, gender, and class (Gutiérrez, Meléndez,
and Noyola 2007). This and other disparities have been aggravated by the
financial recession that began in 2008.

Wage disparities affect all women, but Hispanic, African American, American
Indian, Native Hawaiian, and other native women are the lowest paid. For the
women in these groups, however, the gender gap—the difference between their
wages and those of men in the same groups—is not as great as the gap for White
non-Hispanic women, who experience the largest gender gap.

Closer examination reveals that among all groups, Hispanic women, followed by
African American women, have the largest earning gap when compared to White
men (54% and 63%, respectively). These gaps increase with age: Median
earnings of women ages 16–19 are 89% of the earnings of their male
counterparts, compared to 74% for those 65 and older. Finally, while education
does improve the earnings of women of all races and ethnicities, racial and
gendered differences remain. Among educated women, Asian Americans lead all
other women in median annual earnings regardless of education.
Sources of Change and Diversity
Although Americans as a nation are more diverse than ever before, many of us
find our realities still structured by race. For instance, White students are only
slightly less likely than students of previous generations to attend nearly all-
White primary and secondary schools, while minority students, including Latino
and Black students, are actually more likely to attend nearly all-minority schools
(Childress 2014). In fact, some researchers have documented that American
primary and secondary schools are even more segregated by race and class today
than they were in the late 1950s after the landmark Supreme Court desegregation
case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (Orfield 2009). This
apparent contradiction is a by-product of the civil rights movement, which led
more affluent families of color to move from the cities to the suburbs, while
urban schools became increasingly less diverse. As middle-class women and
women of color have, on average, reversed the achievement gap for college
completion and graduate school admissions, among lower-class women and men
of color these gaps have become even more entrenched. As a result of these
shifts, young Latinos for the first time now outnumber young Blacks on campus,
even though Black college enrollment has also grown steadily for decades, and
it, too, has surged in recent years (Fry 2011).
The Evolving Narrative of Popular Culture
Two recent popular book series, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and
Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga, demonstrate how race, class, and gender issues
prevail even in fictional universes (Moje, Young, Readence, and Moore 2000;
Strommen and Mates 2004). Some of the allure of the Twilight series might be
that it weaves together concerns about sex, race, and class as the human
protagonist violates racial-like norms and falls in love with a vampire. The story
suggests that our society can overcome both racism and sexism in this
fictionalized world where vampires, werewolves, and humans get along and
battle for gender equality (Wilson 2011). Unfortunately, this fictionalized social
reality is just that—fictionalized (Bonilla-Silva 2008). Other popular books
feature worlds where race, power, oppression, and liberation are clearly etched
into the narratives. Take the case of the Harry Potter books, which present a
strikingly racialized narrative where the world is divided among the “pure-
blood” wizarding families; the “half-bloods,” or wizards born of nonwizarding
families, and the “Muggles,” or nonmagical humans.

In recent years the international phenomenon of the Hunger Games trilogy has
brought the topics of the structures of inequality, the excesses of power, and the
promises of liberation struggles and uprisings back into the popular discourse.

Moviestore Collection Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

The Impact of Social Media and Technology
About 7 out of 10 Americans now use online social networks (Perrin 2015). You
might assume that our online experiences would reflect society’s increasingly
diverse demographic structure. However, research shows that even online, our
experiences are structured by race, class, and gender. Facebook friendships
among college students are not only more likely to be among those living in the
same dorm and studying the same subject but also self-segregated by gender,
race, class, and even hometown (Lewis, Gonzalez, and Kaufman 2011). Rather
than challenging the racial status quo, the online world has ultimately
reproduced it. Perhaps it is not so strange that this is so; human beings have been
grappling with issues of difference since the dawn of civilization.

With more than 316 million residents and a history of immigration that goes
back more than 500 years, to long before the founding of the nation, the United
States is one of the most ethnically and racially diverse countries in the world.
We are a nation of immigrants. While English is the dominant language, more
than 300 other languages are spoken here (Shin and Kominski 2010). In fact, the
United States has no official language. Examining the nation’s story helps us
understand why.
 Critical Thinking Questions

1. Why do current demographic shifts define us as a nation? How might these changes differ across
different geographical areas?
2. How do demographic shifts affect various social institutions?
3. How might future demographic changes affect different areas and institutions? How can social media
become an instrument of change?
4. How will the demographic evolution affect you? Are you ready for the changes that are coming?
Indigenous Peoples: The Americas before Columbus
As a nation, we rely on certain stories to bind us together, the most central of
which has to do with the founding and discovery of our country—our own
“stock story”:

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

According to this story, a brave and daring Christopher Columbus set off from
Europe with three ships to find a shorter route to Asia. Columbus, often
portrayed as a scientific and astronomical genius, proved not only that the world
is round but also that its circumnavigation was feasible.

Figure 2.3 European Colonization Began with Viking Exploration in 986

Source: Kimberly Burgess, “The Age of Discovery,”

http://theageofdiscoverykbsp14.weebly.com/european-colonization-
timeline.html.

Recent historical revisions have challenged this story, suggesting that this
“discovery” was more like an invasion. Though vastly outnumbered by the
natives of the Americas, the Europeans benefited greatly from “guns, germs, and
steel”—the superior weaponry and disease-causing microbes they brought from
Europe that allowed them to impose their wills on the indigenous Americans
(Diamond 1999).
The Earliest Americans
Prior to Columbus, the Americas was inhabited by Native Americans. From the
Abenakis of Maine to the Zunis of New Mexico, Native Americans are
descendants of an even earlier group of immigrants to the Americas. These
Asian immigrants were the first Americans, arriving more than 20,000 years ago.
There is a good chance that they came via two different routes:

1. People on foot, traversing the glacial land bridge between Siberia and
Alaska, were mostly hunters and gatherers who followed the mastodon and
long-horned bison, and might have been responsible for their eventual
extinction.
2. Fishers and hunters utilizing boats from the Pacific Islands allowed the
currents to guide them to these shores (Arnaiz-Villena et al. 2010).

Many geographical place names help identify the first peoples of the Americas.
More than half of U.S. state names are representative of the original inhabitants
of those areas. The following are just a few:

Michigan, from the Allegany language, meaning “big water”

Minnesota, from the Siouan language, meaning “water that reflects the sky”
Missouri, from the Siouan language, meaning “water flowing along”
Ohio, from the Iroquois language, meaning “good river”

Many state names reflect the dominance of particular tribes, such as

Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, and Dakota. While Native Americans
rarely gave a single name to an entire river or mountain, they typically gave
names to specific features, such as the mouth or bend of a particular river. They
tended to name each peak or crag rather than the whole mountain. We have
many of these names still with us today, such as Potomac (Iroquois, meaning
“the place to which tribute is brought”) or Allegheny (Iroquois derived from
monongahela, which means “falling banks”).

Many of the early Native American communities were urban, with populations
reaching the tens of thousands. Archaeologists and anthropologists have
identified several towns, with temples and evidence of a priestly class, along
with nobles, merchants, and artisans, demonstrating highly stratified,
hierarchical, and technologically sophisticated civilizations.

Native Americans typically gave specific names to each feature of a river or

mountain. Many of these names are still in use today.

MPI / Archive Photos / Getty Images

A Rich History
Hundreds of years before Columbus, North America was home to millions of
people and hundreds of population groups, tribes, and linguistic and cultural
systems. These people called themselves Iroquois and Mohawk, Miami and
Illini, Lakota and Apache, and hundreds of other names. As noted above, many
areas in our country retain the names of this rich history. In the Northeast, the
Iroquois and the Algonquin, two major language and cultural groups, occupied a
region now known as the Northeastern Woodlands. The Algonquin controlled
two major areas, one encompassing the Great Lakes and the other near the
Atlantic Ocean. Several tribes constituted the Algonquin. The Wampanoag were
the first tribe in this region encountered by the Europeans. Both the Illini and the
Potawatomi occupied the Illinois region. The League of the Iroquois, formed as
early as 1090, comprised five tribes who lived in the areas today known as New
York State and the Southeastern Woodlands (which stretched from the Atlantic
Ocean to the Mississippi River and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Ohio River).
The largest northern groups in the confederation were the Cherokee, the
Chickasaw, and the Creek. The southern regions were dominated by the Natchez,
Biloxi, and Seminole—known as the Mound Builders (Lord and Burke 1991).

Their histories are reflected in the many names they gave this land—such as the
Lakota and Mohawk’s Anowarkowa (Turtle Island), the Powhatan’s
Tsenacommacah (densely inhabited area), and the Shawnee’s Kantukee (the
great meadow, or the dark and bloody ground). They lived in teepees and huts,
cities and villages; they built burial mounds, temples, and multistory buildings.
And they routinely and systematically planted and harvested more than 100
kinds of crops (including tomatoes, quinoa, and peaches) using crop-rotation
techniques and an understanding of the importance of seasonal flooding for the
enrichment of nutrient-poor soil (Mann 2005).

In their farming, these original Americans added charcoal and broken pottery to
the tropical red clays—an agricultural method recognized today. Skilled at
metallurgy, they examined metals for their malleability and toughness (Mendoza
1997).

The earliest Americans hunted buffalo, boar, turkey, rabbit, and deer. Their diet
also included perch, catfish, oysters, and salmon. They mastered carving,
weaving, tanning, and pot making. Not only did they develop highly
sophisticated artistry in jewelry, weaving, and textiles, but they also created
pictorial art on cave walls and rocks. Their works are displayed in some of the
finest museums across the world today. These peoples had highly developed
written, oral, and symbolic languages; math and calendar systems; religions;
political systems; and constitutions. Their civilizations were hundreds of years
older than the oldest European nation, richer than we will ever know, and more
varied than has ever been captured in the stock stories of “cowboys and Indians.”

These Native Americans were neither brutes nor savages, neither pagans nor
infidels. They were not prototypical environmentalists or solitary figures in
contest with the forces of progress—they were humans, with all of the creative
and marvelous social inventions we have come to recognize as human, such as
democratic governance and constitutional bodies, federations and
confederations, family and community. They had both philosophies and
mythologies, prophecies and paradigms, educational systems and beliefs about
the cosmos, hopes and dreams. They had wars and civil unrest, and military,
political, civil, and religious leaders. They bartered and traded and had many
types of coinage and economies. Ultimately, they lived full, expansive, rich, and
complete lives long before Columbus and the Europeans discovered them and
entered their matrix to create a new one.
Discovery and Encounters: The Shaping of Our
Storied Past
European colonization of the Americas actually began in the 10th to 11th
centuries, when Viking sailors explored what is currently Canada (Figure 2.3). In
their explorations, they settled Greenland, sailed up the Arctic region of North
America, and engaged in violent conflict with several indigenous populations.
More extensive European colonization began in 1492, when Spanish ships
captained by Christopher Columbus inadvertently landed on the northern tip of
Cuba. In all instances, colonial adventures were particularly nationalistic, as
evidenced by the names of Nueva Española, Nouvelle-France, and New
England. Settlement of this so-called New World centered on transplanting,
cloning, and grafting European institutions into the Americas. These
particularities were aggravated by competition over control of land, ports, raw
resources, and native peoples.
Understanding Colonialism
Colonialism is a set of hierarchical relationships in which groups are defined
culturally, ethnically, and/or racially, and these relationships serve to guarantee
the political, social, and economic interests of the dominant group (Barrera 1976,
3). Under the guise of advancing the “kingdom of God,” the Spanish, French,
and English pursuit of colonies was more closely aligned with greed and fame.

Religious ideology was used to justify wars of aggression, exploitation,

subjugation, extermination, enslavement, and colonization. The structures,
ideologies, and actions that form patterns of colonialism shape groups’
interrelated experiences in profound ways—the realities behind colonialism are
complex, and usually structurally and culturally catastrophic for the colonized.
We can view colonialism through three primary lenses:

1. As a structure of domination subjugating one group of people to another

across political entities
2. As “internal” or “domestic” colonialism, a similar structure occurring
within a given nation-state, typically against socially marked groups
3. As a “colonialism of the mind,” wherein the colonized are institutionally,
pedagogically, linguistically, and cognitively conquered by the colonizer

The colonies that developed within the Americas are best classified as settler
colonies. Settler colonies are distinguished by the colonizing nation’s control of
political, economic, social, and cultural mechanisms in the colonies, which
creates a colonial elite. The European elite who migrated to the settler colonies
in the Americas were intent on settlement, creation of a self-sustaining
independent political/economic system, and domination of both geography and
indigenous populations. Even while settler colonies maintained dependency
relationships with their respective European nations, they nevertheless achieved
significant autonomy (Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis 1995).

European settlements and population dynamics varied considerably both across

different European groups and compared with those established by Native
Americans. Pre-Columbian population estimates suggest that Native Americans
were generally distributed throughout the Americas, with most occupying the
areas that are now Mexico and Central America (47%), followed by South
America (35%) and the Caribbean (10%). The remainder were scattered across
what would become the United States and Canada. The first groups of
colonizers, the Spanish and Portuguese, settled in the most densely populated
areas. Later colonizing efforts by both the French and the English created
settlements in the less densely populated areas primarily in North America and
Canada (Figure 2.4). Such dynamics produced very different sets of
opportunities and issues for both the colonizers and the colonized.
Spanish Colonialism (1492)
We must be willing to confront the history of the Americas in terms that are
more complex and nuanced than those often provided by simple historical
accounts. At no time were the colonies ever fully independent of or politically
isolated from what was happening in Europe or among the various Native
American nations. In 1492, when Columbus stumbled on a set of islands off the
coast of Florida, he named them Hispana, the Latin name for Spain. Despite the
fact that this land was home to a significant population, Columbus declared it
terra nullius (empty land), revealing much about how explorers and, later,
colonists saw themselves in relation to others and the world around them.

Constructing a Racial Ideology

The Spanish encountered a significantly different people with specific cultural,
political, and gender systems. Native American gender systems varied across
tribal groups. Gender relations within the Taino tribes, for example, were both
egalitarian and nonexclusive. Women were able to own property and often
served as ritual leaders and organized most of the subsistence work (Deagan and
Cruxent 2002, 31–32; Deagan 2004).

Figure 2.4 European Colonizers Settled in Distinct Geographic Areas

 Source: Wikimedia Commons,
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Colonization_of_the_Ame
Colonization_of_the_Americas_1750.PNG.

By 1570, the Spanish colonies were utilizing two racial distinctions:

1. Spanish-born or –descended: This group consisted of those born in either

Spain or the colonies and included both those of mixed heritage and those
considered to be “purebloods.”
 2. Native-born or –descended: This group consisted of all Native Americans,
who were considered vassals of the king.

Each of these groups had different rights, obligations, and privileges. Natives,
under Spanish laws, were obliged to provide labor for both government and
private enterprises deemed vital to colonial interests, and to pay special poll
taxes or tributes. While these laws were intended to create two distinct classes,
the flexible laws of both marriage and residence allowed many Native
Americans to adopt European-style dress and “pass” as purebloods (Jackson
2006, 902).

The Catholic Church, notably through the Spanish Inquisition and the Franciscan
order, used purity certifications to impose barriers on some Spaniards who
sought to immigrate to the Americas. The church would use these same purity
levels to label both Africans and Native Americans as “New Christians” and
mark both as “impure” (Martinez 2004, 483). Any offspring of interracial unions
involving New Christians would thus be less valued. Put simply, Blacks, Native
Americans, and others could be redeemed and baptized, but they still could not
mix with “purebloods.”

Grounded in vague notions of purity and supposed biological differences, these

rules would later become the basis for the racial caste system, a permanent
hierarchy based on race, that developed in Spanish America (Martinez 2008).
These laws also reveal the centrality of gender relations to the construction of
culture and race. In order to distinguish one culture from another and define one
as superior, societies must maintain borders. These borders are inscribed onto
women’s bodies and then policed by regulating sexual relationships. The bodies
and wombs of White women were considered sacred—they were the only source
of future generations of Whites (Martinez 2008, 483–84). European men, on the
other hand, maintained for themselves access to all women’s bodies. Ultimately,
this racial caste system would be linked to the social and economic hierarchies
that exist today in Latin American countries in what scholars refer to as
pigmentocracies, as discussed in Chapter 1 (Telles and the Project on Ethnicity
and Race in Latin America 2014).

The Slave System

Columbus was the first to employ slavery in the colonies. Two days after he
“discovered” America, Columbus wrote in his journal that with 50 men he could
order that “the entire population be taken to Castile, or held captive.” On his
second voyage in December 1494, Columbus captured 1,500 Tainos on the
island of Hispaniola and selected 550 of “the best males and females” to be
presented to the Spanish queen, Isabella, and sold in the slave markets of Seville,
Spain (Beal 2008, 60). In 1525 a total of 5,271 slaves appeared on the notarial
records of Seville; almost 400 were listed as Blacks or mulattoes (Phillips 1985,
161).

The Spanish colonies were considered lenient with regard to racial classification,
for multiple reasons:

The colonial laws accorded protections to Native Americans and to slaves.

Slaves’ rights were protected by both judicial and ecclesiastical authority.
Spanish slave laws were derived from Roman legal traditions.
Manumission (the freeing of slaves) did not require prior approval from the
crown.
Slaves could purchase their own freedom.
Slaves had legal recourse through the Spanish courts, even for grievances
against their masters. (Parise 2008, 13–14)

Ultimately, the supply of Native American labor in the Spanish colonies was
decimated by continual warfare, disease, and sheer overwork. Under the
licensing system established by King Ferdinand in 1513, an estimated 75,000 to
90,000 African slaves were sent to Spanish America by 1600. This figure would
more than triple by the end of the 17th century, accounting for approximately
350,000 enslaved Africans (Landers 1997, 85). With these massive increases in
the labor force, the Spanish colonies shifted to plantation economies, which also
fundamentally altered Spanish slavery. Blacks began to outnumber Whites in
Hispaniola and Mexico by an estimated ratio of 10 to 1 by the early to mid-16th
century. Many of the medieval slave protections were stripped away, and
Spanish officials’ worst nightmares were realized as slave insurrections
repeatedly threatened one colonial settlement after another.
Black slaves were the major source of labor on sugar plantations in Spanish
America, particularly after Native American populations were decimated.

© British Library Board / Robana / Art Resource, NY

French Colonialism (1534)
New France, the first site colonized by France in North America, was created by
the 1534 expedition headed by Jacques Cartier along the Saint Lawrence River
in what is now Quebec (Figure 2.5). Cartier’s explorations allowed France to
claim the land that would later become Canada. The French sought gold along
the Saint Lawrence River, but settled for fishing and fur trading instead. And it
was here, in 1608, that Quebec was established as the first French colony (Greer
1997, 6).

The French attempted to colonize a large chunk of the Americas with an

extremely small and mostly male colonial force. The fact that the Frenchmen
were outnumbered and unable to establish cultural dominance and stable
communities helps explain their eventual failure.

Among financiers and merchants, the French colonial expansion into the
Americas was conceived of as a business venture, and profits were often seen as
more important than colonial development. Officially, the primary goal of these
ventures was the Christianization of the natives, but it was not until after the first
successful settlements were established that this royal rhetoric was given serious
consideration. The thrust of the efforts, inspired by the fur trade, provided the
motivation to integrate the indigenous population into the French colonial policy,
as governors and foreign missionaries were determined to save the “savages”
(Belmessous 2005).

Figure 2.5 France Claimed Much of the Land that Would Later Become Canada
Labor Crisis and Slavery
The French, like the Spanish, soon discovered that Native American slaves could
not provide sufficient labor. As the plantations and economies expanded, so did
labor needs. French colonies like Louisiana encountered labor crises as they
attempted to shift their economies to tobacco and sugar production. On May 1,
1689, King Louis XIV gave royal approval for the trade and use of Africans as
slaves. Twenty years later, in 1709, slavery was declared legal in New France.

The first groups of imported slaves came from both France and Africa between
1717 and 1720. The group from France consisted of more than 1,400 White men
and women who had been convicted as thieves and deported to New France.
Riots by these French slaves caused a sudden halt to this form of slavery.
Ultimately, it was Africans who filled the labor needs of New France,
particularly in Louisiana. During this period close to 4,000 Africans were
forcefully brought to the colony (Hall 1992). As this history demonstrates,
Africans did not become slaves because they were Black; many other cultural
groups were also forced into slavery (Pitts 2012).

France produced a set of laws governing slaves and Blacks that were
qualitatively different from the laws of Spain. France’s Colonial Ordinance of
1685, also known as the Black Code (Code Noir), legislated the life, death,
purchase, marriage, and religion of slaves, as well as the treatment of slaves by
their masters. It formally required all slaves to be baptized and educated in the
Catholic faith and prohibited masters from forcing slaves to work on Sundays
and religious holidays. It required masters to provide slaves with food, shelter,
and clothing, and with care when sick. It held that slaves could not own property
or have any legal recourse. It further established when they could marry, where
they could be buried, what punishments could be meted out to them, and under
what conditions they could be freed (Buchanan 2011). These laws were an
attempt to curtail the sexual and moral problems generated by frontier society,
which tended to blur the lines between groups with differing status. The Black
Code prohibited Whites, as well as free Blacks, from having sexual relationships
with slaves. Any children who might have been born of such unions were to
become wards of the state and held in perpetual slavery. In other words, a slave’s
status could not be altered based on marriage, and the child of a slave would
become a slave. In legalizing the status of the slave, the code created a firm
border between slaves and free persons. The only loophole applied to any
existing sexual relationships between free Black men and Black women who
were slaves. Any children born of these unions would be rendered legitimate and
free.

Left-Handed Marriages and Plaçage

Within these frontier situations, “social relations were more fluid and social
hierarchies less established than they would become with the entrenchment of
plantation agriculture” (Spear 2003, 90). Under these circumstances, a strange
norm developed whereby men often formed alliances with Creole women in
what were termed left-handed marriages. These “marriages,” temporary in
nature, often resulted in children who served as interpreters and mediators
(Shippen 2004, 358). While such relationships were equivalent to common-law
marriages, the women were not legally recognized as wives; among free people
of color, these social arrangements were referred to as plaçage.

Plaçage flourished throughout both French and Spanish colonies. Such

relationships were celebrated as part of high society in New Orleans during what
became known as the city’s “quadroon balls.” Quadroon literally means one-
quarter Black by descent. These balls provided a carnival atmosphere where elite
White males could make their selections from a collection of light-skinned free
women of color. A woman selected was accorded a household, typically with
servants, where her status was slightly less than that of a wife and greater than
that of a concubine. Plaçage therefore constituted a socially sanctioned form of
miscegenation, or the mixing of different racial groups, often lasting even after
the man was legally married to a White woman. While technically free, the
women involved in plaçage were both economically and socially dependent on
their sexual objectification, availability, attractiveness, and ability to satisfy the
fantasies of elite White men (Li 2007, 86). Eventually, the large number of free
people of color and their relationships to others of mixed heritage caused the
Louisiana Supreme Court to declare all such mixed-race people to be free (Hall
1992). This group had greater access to education and wealth and used both to
become advocates for racial reform and freedom.

Under the plaçage system, white men would take light skinned free women of
color as their common law wives and establish them in household, often with
servants.

Paul Fearn / Alamy Stock Photo

British Colonialism (1587)
After some failed attempts, the Plymouth Company’s Mayflower finally reached
the New World in 1620, where the ship’s passengers established the next set of
English colonies in a place they declared to be Plymouth in Massachusetts
(Figure 2.6). These settlers shared the European rationalization for imperial
expansion by declaring the indigenous peoples barbaric—and saving these
pagans via Christian civilization was the goal.

Building a Tradition of Slavery

The first group of non–Native Americans to wear chains in New England were
poor Whites, primarily from Ireland. These slaves began arriving in New
England in the early 1600s. English slave masters looked upon the Irish as
backward, lazy, unscrupulous, and fit to be enslaved (Beckles 1990, 510–11).
Upwards of 50,000 Irish people, mostly women and children, were forcibly
deported to the Americas. Harsh treatment, hostility, and degradation led Irish
and Black slaves to engage frequently in collaborative rebellions (Bernhard
1999, 89–91).

In all likelihood, the first Blacks entered Jamestown, in the colony of Virginia, in
1619 as indentured servants, but by 1661 they were legislated servants for life.
In the next year, a revised statute linked slavery to maternity by declaring that all
children would be free or slave according to the status of their mothers. This
Virginia law was a significant departure from previous British laws, which
traced the status of children to their fathers. The lucrative commerce in Native
American slaves commenced among the English with the founding of Carolina
in 1670 and lasted through 1717. What emerged was a distinct racial hierarchy in
which male European landowners dominated both Native American and African
slaves (Gallay 2002). Thus, on the backs of African slaves, a racial hierarchy
was constructed.

Figure 2.6 There Were 13 Original English Colonies

 Source: U.S. Geological Survey, National Atlas of the United States of
America (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1970).

Like the Spanish and French, the English manipulated the ethnic conflicts among
the various Native American groups. The English encouraged the Native
Americans to avoid slavery by enslaving their adversaries and selling them to the
English for trifles of cloth and beads, and, of course, guns (Gallay 2002, 6).

This new racial system finally gave birth to racial classification and defined race
relations throughout the nation until the dawn of the Civil War. These new laws
and new hierarchies were also motivated by attempts to divide those who
otherwise might be inclined to join together in revolt.

Slave Rebellions: Voices of Resistance

Slave rebellions represented a continual and persistent source of both strain and
stress for the White planter class. The response was the continual evolution of
racial hierarchies buttressed by laws, sanctions, and privileges that pervaded the
entire colonial social structure. Throughout this text, we will show how these
resistance stories have become an integral part of Americans’ national identity.

The first significant slave rebellion against the English occurred in Gloucester
County, Virginia, in 1663. This conspiracy, which included both White
indentured servants and slaves, aimed to overthrow the White masters. The plot
was exposed by an informant, which led to the execution of several of the
plotters and the passage of a series of laws that began to emphasize the
ineradicable distinctions between slave masters and slaves.

Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 was the most significant challenge to the class
structure (Breen 1973). The elite response to Bacon’s Rebellion was to create
new identities of color and race to usurp divisions of class and status. In order to
understand this threat, we must understand the labor situation in 17th-century
Virginia. In this revolt, Black, Irish, Scottish, and English bond servants were
pitted against a small and nervous group of planter elites. Bacon, a member of
displaced White labor, found himself and his group literally between a rock and
a hard place. The real issue was that the increasing use of Africans as bonded
labor had forced a large number of White laborers out of their positions. The
irony of this is that while the members of the planter class were gaining land
grants with each new allotment of workers, no such provisions were being made
for those displaced by the increasing numbers of cheaper laborers.

Crop failures in 1676 provided the fuel for the violence that followed. The revolt
quickly became a mass rebellion of bond servants who aimed to level the
government and the entire class structure. More than 6,000 European Americans
and 2,000 African Americans took up arms and fought against a tiny Anglo-
American slave-owning planter class. They marched to West Point, where they
took over the garrisons and military arsenal. They forced the military governor
to flee and shut down all tobacco production for the next 14 months.

The rebellion threatened the very heart of the British colonial system by
challenging the power of the Anglo-American slave-owning planter elite. The
members of the planter class responded by solidifying slavery into a racial caste
system. In the process, Whiteness was created.

Bacon’s Rebellion, in Virginia in 1676, remade class and status distinctions and
hardened slavery into a racial caste system.
MPI / Archive Photos / Getty Images
Borderlands and Frontiers
At the time of European colonization, most of the land in the Americas was
formally under the control of various Native American federations. Europeans
purposefully defined these lands as frontiers or borderlands. This designation,
often preserved and presented as historical fact, fails to appreciate the reality of
these contested spaces (Haan 1973). Under the guise of protecting the interests
of weaker states, the Europeans placed the Native Americans and their lands into
“protectorate” relationships, in which the stronger European nations took on the
responsibility of protectors (Haan 1973, 146). Concurrently, these same
“protected” spaces became universally known as frontiers or borderlands. This
designation also provided convenient camouflage for the more aggressive
actions of the various European colonial systems.

These contested spaces between the Spanish, French, and English colonies
provided the colonial powers with three important benefits:

They created the illusion of Native American national sovereignty.

They served as an outlet or safety valve for excess and displaced colonial
labor and capital accumulation.
They served as spaces where the European powers could wage imperialistic
wars against each other. These wars, in which the Europeans typically
encouraged or manipulated Native American tribal differences, can be
viewed as proxy wars.

In this section we shall explore how frontiers and borderlands came to fulfill
these functions.

The Turner Thesis—Our First Stock Story

Perhaps no single idea has so captured the American imagination, summarized
and serialized the nation’s official story, and misrepresented U.S. imperialistic
ambitions as what is euphemistically called the Turner thesis. What makes
historian Frederick J. Turner’s argument so important to our narrative is that it
became the dominant narrative of the United States. It represents our first stock
story. Turner’s basic thesis, developed in 1893, was that the American identity,
which included democratic governance, rugged individualism, innovative
thinking, and egalitarian viewpoints, was forged in the American frontier
experience. According to Turner, the American frontier provided not only the
encouragement but also the spaces to unleash the progressive spirit of freedom
envisioned by various European revolutionary systems (i.e., specifically the
French and English Revolutions). As significant as the Turner thesis was to the
“official” narrative, it took more than 70 years for the nondominant
counternarratives to be heard again. These voices told a different story, one that
rejected the idea of a frontier and all of its presumptions. Rather than a blank
slate of free land that was just waiting to be settled, developed, and occupied, the
“frontier” was made up of sovereign lands controlled by other nations and
protected by treaties. In this counternarrative, we learn of deceit and corruption,
broken treaties and forgotten promises. This is the story of the frontier.

Understanding Contested Spaces

The rhetorical and political designation of the spaces between European colonies
as frontiers or borderlands is central to an understanding of what and how these
areas and their peoples were viewed. The crossing of frontiers and the loss of
their people are typically viewed as some kind of cosmic inevitability or
evolutionary truth. Such a truth positions the Native Americans as victims who
passively accepted their fate. Their fate, viewed as irreversible, was that the
exotic, yet inferior, native cultures would lose against the more powerful forces
of civilization. While appropriately and passively sorrowful, we are left
believing that these events were necessary and the natural consequences of
nature, evolution, and/or civilization (Jennings 1975, 15–16). The idea of
borderlands helps clarify how the three European colonial powers constructed
race and space as conflicting rivalries. These conflicting rivalries not only
shaped our nation but also started us on our troubled path toward a racial state
(Adelman and Aron 1999, 815–16).

It is strange that our myths regarding these spaces often bring to mind such
people as Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and James Bowie. As defenders of all
that we hold dear, these men are the only forces of civilization holding back the
frontier. Reality rarely lives up to such hyperbole. The Boones, Crocketts, and
Bowies—as we have seen—were often displaced Whites forced into the
“frontier.” In this scenario, the Native Americans, defined as weak savages, are
characterized as expendable and secondary to the interests of frontier survival.
This feat is accomplished through the extension of the racial categories
developed over time within the colonies and, by virtue of this extension, the
necessity to continually extend the boundaries of civilization.

The images conjured up by the names Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and James
Bowie—memorialized, serialized, and fantasized in both film and school
curricula—capture the essence of Turner’s thesis. These men are depicted as
rugged individualists and noble warriors, honest and fiercely independent. And
just as typically, they are juxtaposed against a prideful, ignoble, band of savages
hell-bent on destruction.

Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo

 Critical Thinking Questions

1. How might the racial matrix developed by the Spanish colonies have affected the racial matrices of
the French and English colonial powers? What does this suggest about the social construction of race
in the Americas?
2. Many institutions were created along with the American colonial systems. List some that were born
during this early period.
3. What does the idea of borders as contested spaces in which race and conflict were orchestrated by
European colonial elites suggest about the nature of these spaces and racial dynamics? What current
events might reflect some of those same racial dynamics in the interaction of race and geography?
4. Neither Native Americans nor African slaves were passive during the colonial era, and they often
worked together to challenge the racial matrix even as it was being constructed. What does this
agency suggest about the racial matrix, identity, and the likelihood of change?
The U.S. Matrix and Intersectionality—Where Do We
Go from Here?
In this chapter we have explored how the matrix of race and the intersecting
realities of race, identities, institutions, and space are the products of European
colonialism. Race is not only socially constructed, but in many ways it is also
woven into the fabric of our nation. As we have examined the three original
colonial roots associated with the founding of the United States, we have also
seen how several of the earliest institutions—family, community, the military,
the legal system, and the political system—were created within this matrix of
race. In the chapters that follow we will continue to explore how race influences
other major identities, such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and class, by
examining our dominant social institutions.
Investigating Institutions and Their Narratives
In the following chapters, we will present the dominant narratives around
particular social institutions in the United States. Just as the institutions of
gender and race have prominent, legitimated, and powerful institutional
narratives that determine bodies, identities, practices, and interactions, so too do
the central institutions of social life have their own orienting stories, myths, and
cultural blueprints. For instance, a dominant narrative of the institution of
education is that schools are great equalizers—that education can equalize life
opportunities and life chances, regardless of students’ social and economic
station. Similarly, the dominant narrative of American sports is that it provides a
level playing field where the only factor that merits attention is an individual’s
talent.
Examining Intersecting Identities
It is important to gain a picture of the contemporary realities for individuals
within the matrix as related to each institution. To that end, in each chapter we
will provide the most recent data available—for instance, data on how Black
women experience the family, on how Whites compare to Latinos within the
housing sector, and on the disparities between gays and lesbians within the
educational institutions of the United States. This data-rich section of each
chapter will give you a glimpse into the ways in which institutional life is
experienced differently depending on a person’s place in the matrix, with a
particular emphasis on the institution of race within each. For example, when we
consider sports we identify a history of Black, Hispanic, and female athletes who
have overcome both racial and gender stereotypes to dominate the sports from
which they were once excluded.
Analyzing Historical Roots and Geographic Differences
Once we have established a picture of the contemporary situation faced by
individuals and communities in the matrix of experience, and an understanding
the nature of institutions, we can analyze the historical roots and trajectories of
each. In each of the following chapters we will investigate how we as a society
arrived at this contemporary moment and identify key historical moments that
helped define, for instance, the shape of families and the shape of the
intersectional experience within them. In our investigation of the institution of
education we learn about the role of boarding schools in the cultural genocide of
the indigenous communities in the United States. In contrast, we also learn about
the role played by historically Black and Hispanic colleges and other institutions
in helping to preserve culture and identity.
Appraising Difference, Resistance, and Transformation
Since we know that institutions construct identities, we will be looking closely at
the social construction of difference within each institutional realm. How is
difference constructed and utilized in the military, or in sports, or in the
institution of health care? Furthermore, how do these institutions build the
“perfect” soldier, athlete, or patient in order to most effectively do their work
and, perhaps, in the process, support the logic of White supremacy and race? We
shall repeatedly show how Blacks, Hispanics, and women have found ways to
creatively engage and construct identities and cultural institutions that counteract
these identities and provide integral spaces for agency. We will explore some of
these sites of resistance, including the various slave rebellions and civil rights
movements that have helped shape our American story.

It is important to remember that while multiple people may occupy the same
position within the matrix, they still may experience it differentially. Experiences
and how people perceive events are made up of a complex array of histories,
geographies, and influences of family, school, friends, and other social
institutions, affecting how they are viewed or remembered. People and groups
are not monoliths; rather, they are varied and highly complex wholes that do not
equal the sum of their parts. Thus, in the following chapters we will also pursue
these variations as well as the commonalities within each institution. While
institutions seem to prefer constancy, consistency, and predictability to continue
doing their work, individuals and communities do not always follow suit. Both
institutions and the people within them can, and often do, present new,
inconsistent, and chaotic elements. For example, while Asian Americans are
considered the “model minority” in the U.S. context, in schools and the
institution of education, how this racialization is experienced varies. Similarly,
we will consider who gets to have crimes and other forms of deviance excused
and who gets accused—a difference that often reflects race, gender, sexuality,
and class.
American sporting events, like professional football games, regularly feature the
military and often allow service members to bring their families to “Military
Appreciation” events.

Boston Globe / Boston Globe / Getty Images

Following from this discussion, we will also look at a couple of key examples of
social movements and collective expressions of agency aimed toward changing
the way that particular institutions are experienced within the matrix. Although
the logic of race has encouraged certain forms of institutionalization of the
family, and schools, and the media, those who suffer from these structures often
demand change, both individually and collectively. We will explore the hidden
and emergent resistance stories that detail the many Black, Hispanic, Asian, and
female veterans who have not only survived but also excelled in times of both
war and peace.

Institutions exert a considerable amount of power within society. Most of our

daily activities are governed by these institutions—it would be difficult to
identify any regular activities or societal functions that are not involved in some
way or another with institutions. This is equally true for groups that we identify
with, such as racial, ethnic, class, and gender groups. Institutions not only
regulate racial groups but also differentially reward them. In this way,
institutions become the vehicles by which racial structures and processes are
reproduced and the sites through which marginalized groups can transform the
system.

Finally, following each chapter’s critical walk-through of a central institution,

we will briefly discuss the possible futures for that institution, given what we
now know.
 Critical Thinking Questions
(We do not expect you to be able to answer these questions now, but you should consider them as you
go through the rest of this volume.)

1. How does knowing that race is socially constructed inform us regarding our everyday lives? What
might this suggest about how race operates? How might we change these realities?
2. Race and institutions occur both historically and geographically. How might these differences be
perceived?
3. How have changes in institutions historically affected the significance or perception of race? What
does this suggest about the permanence of race?
4. Agency has been and continues to be seen among various individuals and groups. What key changes
have the actions of individuals and groups made in how race operates? What does this suggest
regarding your ability to change these same structures?
Key Terms

Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676, p. 67

Black Code, p. 64
colonialism, p. 58
frontiers, p. 68
genocide, p. 51
left-handed marriages, p. 65
miscegenation, p. 65
plaçage, p. 65
quadroon, p. 65
racial caste system, p. 61
racial violence, p. 51
settler colonies, p. 59
triple glass ceiling, p. 52
Turner thesis, p. 69

Chapter Summary
LO 2.1 Explore how recent events have affected how we
experience race.
The United States is a nation that has historically been defined by racial and ethnic diversity.
As the U.S. population increases to an estimated 458 million by 2065, we expect immigrant
births and diversity to increasingly define who we are. As much of the world, including the
United States, has repeatedly been traumatized by racial and ethnic violence, our continued
struggle toward equality remains a dream for some. This is especially true as we look at the
triple glass ceiling and other disparities that women, especially those of color, must grapple
with continuously. While Asian American women lead all other U.S. women in education, all
women experience income gaps relative to White men. More than half of all Americans use
online social networks and media like Facebook, and the Internet, and the racial status quo is
preserved.
LO 2.2 Describe the Americas before Columbus.
Before Columbus sailed the seas, the continents now known as the Americas were home to
millions of indigenous peoples whose cultures spanned 12,000 to 20,000 years. The first
immigrants to the Americas possibly arrived on foot from Siberia and Alaska or on boats
following the currents from the Pacific Islands. More than half of U.S. state names (including
Michigan, Minnesota, and Missouri) reflect these rich histories, cultures, and peoples.
Contrary to both myth and Hollywood, these original Americans were skilled, knowledgeable,
and sophisticated, with highly advanced agricultural and animal husbandry skills, metallurgy
knowledge, and a rich tradition of pottery, weaving, and textiles. Their art decorates caves and
can be found in museums all over the world.
LO 2.3 Examine the patterns of Spanish, French, and
British colonialism in the Americas.
European colonization of the Americas was most intense after the Spanish explorations of
Christopher Columbus that began in 1492. Each of the major European colonial systems
produced unique racial structures that ultimately blended to shape the racial fabric of the
United States. Each colonial power was concerned with re-creating an image of the home
country within the colonies, and each failed in its attempts. The colonizing Europeans
encountered significantly different peoples with different cultural, political, and gendered
systems. Their responses to these account for the variability in racial structures and the racial
conflict that came to define borders and frontiers. Slave rebellions occurred in all of the
colonial lands. Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 linked White and Black bond servants and almost
spelled the doom of the English colonies. The racial structures that came into being in reaction
to this were intended to preclude labor organizing and revolt across racial lines. In fact,
Whiteness was created as a result of this rebellion. Other racial strife was associated with
frontiers, or the areas that bordered the various European colonies. Three separate European
colonial powers used these borderlands to extend and expand their land and power bases. The
conflicting rivalries not only shaped our nation but also started us down the troubled path
toward a racial state.
LO 2.4 Evaluate the intersections of race, identities,
institutions, and resistance.
The matrix of race and the intersecting realities of race, identities, institutions, and space are
by-products of European colonialism. All of the social institutions that followed have been
infused with the matrix of race. Our goals in this text are to explore several key institutions
through the lens of the matrix and the experiences of intersecting identities, and to understand
how space and time have influenced both the matrix and identities across these institutions.
Part II The Matrix Perspective on Social Institutions
Chapter 3 The Social Construction and Regulation of
Families

Interracial families and those with same-sex parents face additional challenges as
they rebut the idea of the traditional or ideal family.

Design Pics Inc / Alamy Stock Photo

Chapter Outline

Historical Regulation of the Family

Early Families
Domesticity: The Emergence of the Ideology of Separate Spheres
The Legacy of Immigration
Changing Families, Changing Attitudes
Family Inequality Theories
Stock Stories and Assimilation
Concealed Stories: The Legacy of Slavery
Applying the Pathology Narrative to Latino/a Families
Family Inequality through the Matrix Lens
Women’s Concealed Stories
The Concealed Story of Invisible Fathers
Oppression and Privilege: Support for White Families
The Socialization of Children
Transforming the Ideal Family Narrative
When the Ideal Family Is Not Ideal
Transmigration
New Reproductive Technologies
Interracial Marriage
LGBT Families
 Learning Objectives

LO 3.1 Describe the historical forces that have influenced the intersection of race and family in the
United States.
LO 3.2 Examine the current stock theories that explain family inequalities across racial and ethnic
lines.
LO 3.3 Apply the matrix lens to an understanding of family inequality.
LO 3.4 Identify alternatives to the current matrix of inequality among families.

Interracial couple Don and Joey always knew they wanted to have children.
They contacted a private Black adoption agency, and were thrilled when they
learned that a 3-year-old boy in county custody needed a home. They prepared
for his arrival by decorating a nursery and purchasing toddler gear. But their
dreams were crushed when the county agency refused to place the boy in their
home because they could not provide him with a mother.

Eventually the private adoption agency identified a birth mother who was
thrilled to find two loving parents for her infant. Don and Joey welcomed 4-
month-old Brent into their home, but it took 2 years of navigating a state legal
system and bureaucracy ill equipped to handle adoptions by gay or lesbian
couples for them to adopt him legally. When Brent was 3, the couple adopted a
second son, 14-month-old Jorian, who had been born to an addict and faced a
number of health issues as a result.

Brent and Jorian are Black. The family has had to maneuver through a society
imbued with racial and sexual inequality, prejudice, and discrimination. Don and
Joey realized the importance of providing a strong family support system, so
they committed themselves to starting a nonprofit organization to address this
need, not only for themselves and their boys but also for their community as a
whole. “It’s a combination support group, babysitting co-op, and community
organization. It’s made up of some 70 families ‘who value diversity.’ . . . The
group has become an extended family for all the adults and children in it” (Strah
2003, 128).

In this chapter we explore the stock story of the ideal family, its historical
development, and the ways in which the concept has been used as an instrument
of power and social control.
Historical Regulation of the Family
When you hear the word family, what image comes to mind? In American
society’s idealized family, the father is the head of household and breadwinner,
and the mother is comfortably enshrined in the domestic sphere, where she
nurtures the couple’s biological children and socializes them for middle-class
adulthood. This stock story depicts the family as a private haven, separate from
the public sphere. We tend to think of this family form as having a long history
and being somehow natural. However, the specific family form of a married
couple and their children did not rise to prominence until the mid-1800s (Coontz
2010a). Families are, in fact, in flux and constantly changing. A brief look at
history demonstrates not only the wide diversity of successful family forms over
time but also the pace and direction of change.
Early Families
In 1500, an estimated 10 to 20 million indigenous people lived on the land we
now call the United States, and even greater numbers ranged across the rest of
the Americas (Vizenor 1995; Feagin 2000). Historians have documented great
variation both in family forms and in the division of labor and power within the
family. The Iroquois Confederacy’s 1390 constitution gave all members of the
confederacy’s participating nations, including women, the right to vote (Amott
and Matthaei 1996, 33). Many tribes were fairly egalitarian. In some tribes
women were recognized as warriors, and in others they served as peacemakers.

Families themselves played various roles within each community. Among many
North American indigenous tribes, kin groups—groups of people related by
blood or marriage—were a central means of community organization. Most
economic production and distribution, political structures, disputes, conflicts,
and battles were handled by extended kin groups.

When European settlers, overwhelmingly men, began colonizing the Americas,

they encountered a wide range of Native American nations with diverse family
formations. Beginning in the 1600s, European women who immigrated to the
Americas generally entered their new homeland with their families, while some
single women came as indentured servants. The newcomers gradually became
more stable and successful as they stole Native American lands and began food
and crafts production and home building. The theft of these lands and other
resources was justified by an ideology that defined Native Americans as not
fully human (Drinnon, cited in Vizenor 1995). As one researcher has observed:
“The European families that came to North America were products of a
developing market economy and international mercantile system. The way they
organized production, exchange, land ownership, and social control put
Europeans on a collision course with Indian patterns of existence” (Coontz
2010a, 34).

For the European colonists, marriage was an economic relationship, and wives
and children were essential family workers. On average, a White woman in
colonial America gave birth to five to eight children, and it was not uncommon
for women to have eleven or twelve children (Hill 2005; Hymowitz and
Weissman 1978; MacLean 2014). A woman’s risk of dying in childbirth could be
as high as one in eight, and most families experienced the death of one to two
children (MacLean 2014). The definition of family at this time was not based on
blood ties but included all those living in the same household under a male
household leader.

The colonists in the Americas interpreted the cultures they encountered through
their own ethnocentric lens, viewing their own ways of life as natural and
commanded by God. Many were offended to see the difficult work many Native
American women did, which conflicted sharply with their own ideals about
appropriate work for women and men. Upper-class Europeans also thought of
hunting and fishing as leisure activities and stereotyped the Native American
men who performed this sustenance work as lazy and effeminate.

Bettmann / Bettmann / Getty Images

Those who could not support multiple dependents often sent their children to
live with other families as apprentices. Mothers performed essential labor,
meeting families’ basic needs. Husbands and wives often worked side by side,
and both engaged in child rearing and training their children in gender-
appropriate skills (Amott and Matthaei 1996, 98–99). Some women worked
outside the home in various trades, and many lived very public lives.
Nevertheless, a gendered division of labor prevailed (Hymowitz and Weissman
1978).

White women had no legal rights to property. English common law prevailed,
and upon marriage wives lost all legal status and all rights to their belongings,
property, and income. They could not sign contracts or file lawsuits. If widowed,
they could not be legal guardians to their own minor children. The notion that
women literally disappeared as individuals is perhaps best demonstrated by the
law’s failure to recognize marital rape (Zaher 2002).

Resistance and Assimilation

After the American Revolution, settlers pushed west, and Native Americans
were forced to give up lands in the Midwest in exchange for promises that they
could retain their remaining lands. By the late 1800s, however, Native
Americans had largely been forced to reside on reservations located in barren
lands the Europeans saw as the least valuable.

Surviving Native Americans were expected to assimilate—to adopt European

lifestyles and modes of organization in their communities and families, and to
abandon their own cultural traditions and practices. They resisted at every stage.

Missionaries also played a key role in destroying indigenous culture and family
formations. In the 1870s, the reservations were divided among 13 Christian
denominations, and a federal boarding school system was created to fully
assimilate the next generation of Native Americans. Children were taken from
their families and cultures, forced to abandon their native languages and
religious beliefs, and given new names (Vizenor 1995). This policy of forced
assimilation destroyed many families and future generations’ family
relationships. Many Native Americans resisted attempts to force them to
assimilate into European cultural roles, while others saw their boarding school
experiences as a path to becoming successful among the Whites.

In 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act, requiring Native American nations to
divide their communal reservations into individual plots of 160 acres, with each
assigned to a family head. The remaining land was given to White homesteaders
and various corporations, such as railroads and ranching companies. In response
to strong Native American resistance, one compromise was made: The
allotments would be made to each person, rather than only to male family heads,
in acknowledgment of the fact that native cultures recognized the rights of native
women to own property (Amott and Matthaei 1996).

Colonial practices and Eurocentric notions of family had negative impacts on

every minority racial and ethnic group. The culture and practice of slavery tore
apart many African families, beginning with the separation of individuals from
their families in Africa and the common experiences of loss on slave ships.
Pregnant women and infants born on the transatlantic voyage were often thrown
overboard so as not to be a burden to the captain. Further, every African was
insured as property, so that a dead African could be more profitable than an
unhealthy living one. For slave owners, each slave was a commodity, and
husbands and wives were often separated when sold; children were taken away
from parents to be sold for the slave owner’s profit. Slave owners often raped
women slaves to produce children to be sold. The institution of slavery made it
nearly impossible for Africans to maintain family relationships, yet many tried
as best they could. Slaves resisted their torment in many ways. Slavery was so
inhuman and horrific that some mothers would go so far as to kill their infants
before they could be taken away, to protect the children from life as slaves.
Patterns of intermixing produced lighter-skinned Africans, which created new
economic and status dynamics that continue into the present. The impact of the
slave trade, slavery itself, and then hundreds of years of continued oppression
have had far-reaching, even unimaginable effects on the formation of Black
families in the United States.
Domesticity: The Emergence of the Ideology of Separate Spheres
In the early 1800s, the numbers of jobs outside the home were growing, and men
began moving out of the domestic sphere, which became defined as women’s
realm, and into the public sphere to sell their labor. White women’s lives became
sharply defined by an ideology of domesticity and the creation of a
public/private dichotomy. Ironically, however, “at the same time as the new ideal
of the domestic middle-class family became enshrined in the dominant culture,
diversity in family life actually increased” (Coontz 2010a, 39). In working-class
families, children and mothers had no choice but to work to help support their
families. In the emerging middle class, woman’s role was seen as that of
housewife and mother, responsible for the home and children, while work and
politics became defined as men’s sphere. Privileged White women led this “cult
of domesticity,” arguing in books and lectures that women’s natural place was in
the home and economically dependent on their husbands. Thus, the ideology of
domesticity rationalized White middle- and upper-class privilege as a result of
these classes’ ability to achieve and maintain the new ideal family formation.
This model was actually the result of specific changes in the economy and the
organization of work, and it was short-lived. It rose to prominence between 1860
and 1920, after which women began to enter the paid workforce in greater
numbers. Family sociologist Kingsley Davis (1984, 404) concludes, “Clearly,
the division of labor that arose historically from the separation of the workplace
and the home is not the ‘normal’ or ‘traditional’ pattern.” Why, then, has this
particular family formation remained the ideal?
The Legacy of Immigration
While we often refer to the United States as a nation of immigrants, neither
African American nor indigenous communities are immigrant populations.
Native Americans were here long before Europeans arrived, and, excluding later
populations of Blacks who chose to emigrate from Africa and the Caribbean, the
African American community is the historical product of slavery. Both
populations, and many Mexicans, were forced to largely abandon their own
cultures and family traditions. However, they were not the only racial and ethnic
groups to face government regulation and intervention in their formation of
families.

The Irish constituted the first significant influx of non–Western European

immigrants in the 1840s, followed by Eastern and Southern Europeans and Jews.
These new arrivals prompted a crisis in how Whiteness was defined. Through
the end of the 19th century, being legally defined as White was critical to gaining
the rights of citizenship and property ownership, so the racial classification of
new immigrant groups was key to their future success in the United States. The
Irish were referred to as the “Blacks of Europe” and encountered blatant
discrimination by employers (Tehranian 2009, 22). Italians were also linked to
Blacks by means of the common nickname “guinea,” which had its origins in the
European term for the western coast of Africa.

The Expanding Category of Whiteness

Different paths to assimilation were carved out for these new arrivals. For Jewish
immigrants, marriage was a step in the direction of Americanization but also a
form of resistance. In the United States, marriages could be freely chosen and
based on love, a practice that was a rejection of traditional Jewish authority
regarding the arrangement of marriages. In adopting American values of
freedom, love, and pleasure, Jews modeled modern American families. At the
same time, they resisted Americanization through marriage by overwhelmingly
marrying other Jews (Prell 1999).

Eventually, European American ethnic immigrant groups were seen as

assimilated enough to be defined as White, and the boundaries of Whiteness
expanded (we look at some of the economic reasons for this shift in Chapter 4).
Marriage and family formation were signs of Americanization (Prell 1999). At
the same time the children of immigrants were being encouraged to assimilate
through intermarriage, interracial intermarriage was illegal. The line between
Blacks and the expanding group of Whites was being more firmly drawn.

Immigration Policy and Family Formation

In contrast with European immigrants, Asian American immigrants were
excluded from the expanding category of Whiteness. The first wave of Asian
immigrants came from China in the mid-1800s, primarily men who came to
work in the California gold rush, in agriculture, or in railroad construction.
Labor recruiters sought married men willing to leave their families in China,
because they could be paid less (Yang 2011) and would eventually go back to
China. Initially many Chinese women immigrated, working as prostitutes to
support themselves, until the U.S. government enacted the 1875 Page Law, a
landmark attempt to limit the immigration of “undesirables” (Luibhéid 2002,
277). The predominant view, however, was that Chinese prostitutes spread
disease and debauchery among both Chinese and White men, threatening the
integrity of the White family.

The scarcity of Chinese women did not mean that male Chinese laborers had no
families in the United States, however. Many created family formations by
establishing clans, associations based on kinship and lineage and open to people
with the same last name. Following the anti-immigration Chinese Exclusion Act
of 1882, Chinese continued to arrive but at a slower rate. Many petitioned to
bring “paper sons,” young men from China posing as their U.S.-born sons, a
relationship that could not be denied after all birth records were destroyed in the
San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. It was not until 1943 that Chinese
people could again immigrate to the United States (although only 105 Chinese
were allowed to enter per year) and finally apply to become U.S. citizens.
The gender balance in Chinese immigration shifted after World War II, when the
War Brides Act permitted Chinese wives and children of U.S. soldiers into the
United States, followed by other laws that allowed American soldiers’ fiancées
to enter. Eventually the McCarran-Walter Act (1952) permitted Chinese wives of
Chinese men in the United States to join them here, bringing the “bachelors’
society” to an end and allowing Chinese people to play a greater role in shaping
their own families in the United States.

Leonard McCombe / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty Images

After the supply of Chinese labor was cut off in the late 1800s, the first large
groups of Japanese laborers were recruited to work in agriculture, lumber, and
mining on the West Coast and in Hawaii. As the numbers of Japanese increased
on the mainland, so did racism against them. Japanese were barred from joining
workers’ unions, and various stereotypes arose as they were scapegoated by
White labor. Eventually, in 1907–8, the so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement was
reached, whereby Japan agreed to stop allowing Japanese men to emigrate and
the United States agreed to admit the family members of those men who had
already immigrated. Approximately 100,000 Japanese joined their husbands,
fathers, and sons in the United States, as did about 20,000 “picture brides” of
arranged marriages, who often had nothing but photos or letters from the
unknown husbands they were about to meet. Julie Otsuka’s novel The Buddha in
the Attic (2011, 18) brings together the voices of these women, drawing from
collected historical documents and interviews:

On the boat we could not have known that when we first saw our husbands
we would have no idea who they were. That the crowd of men in knit caps
and shabby black coats waiting for us down below on the dock would bear
no resemblance to the handsome young men in the photographs. That the
photographs we had been sent were twenty years old. That the letters we
had been written had been written to us by people other than our husbands,
professional people with beautiful handwriting whose job it was to tell lies
and win hearts. That when we first heard our names being called out across
the water one of us would cover her eyes and turn away—I want to go
home—but the rest of us would lower our heads and smooth down the
skirts of our kimonos and walk down the gangplank and step out into the
still warm day. This is America, we would say to ourselves, there is no need
to worry. And we would be wrong.

Japanese families became moderately successful in agriculture and family

farming and worked hard to keep their cultural traditions alive, turning to
schools, religious organizations, and Japanese-language newspapers. Between
1913 and 1920, however, despite resistance, a series of “alien land laws” were
passed, banning noncitizens from purchasing land. When Japan bombed Pearl
Harbor in 1941, all Japanese Americans were immediately suspect. While not
one charge of espionage was ever reported, more than 110,000 first- and second-
generation Japanese Americans were forced to abandon their homes, property,
possessions, and businesses and were relocated to 10 internment camps in
various western states. There, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, they
faced harsh weather, low-wage labor, and lack of privacy. Family life changed
dramatically. Some scholars note that internment led to some increased liberty
for women, who were freed from much housework and cooking, and many
young women were allowed to leave the camps for college. Nevertheless,
internment was devastating for the community, and by the time they were freed
in 1945, many Japanese Americans had nothing left to return to.

Both Chinese and Japanese immigrants faced a paradox when it came to the
subject of assimilation. Mary Tsukamoto, in conveying her life story to an
anthropologist, succinctly identifies this dilemma:

You see, we were accused of not being assimilated into our American life,
but we were always kept in limbo because every time we turned around
there was some group trying to agitate to send us back to Japan or send us
away from California, so we never knew for sure whether we should sink
our roots deeply. And we never knew for sure if we should spend our
profits building a new home and living in nice homes like we wanted. So
we endured living in shacks that weren’t painted because any day we might
be driven out. (quoted in Buss 1985, 91–92)

Resistance/Stories
Art as Resistance
Literature and the arts have frequently been embraced as tools for challenging and resisting
oppression. These two works are examples.

Mr. Wong’s Theatre Company, by Roger Shimomura

Used with the permission of Roger Shimomura

This 2001 painting connects many of the most virulently racist stereotypes of racial and ethnic
minorities in the United States. The biography on the artist’s website states: “Roger
Shimomura’s paintings, prints, and theatre pieces address sociopolitical issues of ethnicity. He
was born in Seattle, Washington, and spent two early years of his childhood in Minidoka
(Idaho), one of 10 concentration camps for Japanese Americans during WWII”
(http://www.rshim.com).

Americanese: 180 Degrees, by Margaret Kasahara

Used with the permission of Margaret Kasahara

On her website, artist Margaret Kasahara says: “As an Asian American of Japanese descent,
that identity crosses two disparate cultures. I don’t view it as a negative or a positive reality; it
simply is. . . . I often appropriate cultural symbols and the traditional iconography of Japan
and America, and place them in a personal and contemporary context. . . . One person’s
‘exotic’ was my ‘everyday,’ and I was left with the feeling of not quite being allowed to
belong” (http://margaretkasahara.com).
Changing Families, Changing Attitudes
The nuclear family is defined as a mother, a father, and children (biological or
adopted), living together. The number of nuclear families in the United States
has declined consistently since 1970, and today such families account for only
20% of all families. The idea of the “ideal” and “traditional” nuclear family
usually assumes a working father and a stay-at-home mother. Today, less than
25% of two-parent families with children under 15 years old have a stay-at-home
mother. In addition to women’s increased labor market participation, the number
of adult men and women who are not married declined by almost 20% between
1950 and 2016. Families today are increasingly diverse: We see growing
numbers of single parents (divorced, widowed, and never married), blended
families (families with children from the adult partners’ previous relationships),
multigenerational families (families with three or more generations residing
together), and interracial and same-sex marriages. In addition cohabitation and
postponed parenthood are increasingly common, and people are having fewer
children (Coles 2009; Martin 2008; Moses 2012; Risman 2010; Proctor, Semega,
and Kollar 2016). Abortion rates are also declining, in part because of increased
reliance on a variety of birth control methods (Jones and Jerman 2017). Families
today are more likely than their counterparts in the past to be caring for elderly
relatives at home, and close to 50% of marriages end in divorce. Americans are
also less likely to be married: The number of adult individuals living alone has
almost doubled since 1960, and in 2016 adults living alone accounted for more
than one in four households.

Our definitions of family life and our attitudes toward it are changing along with
the lived reality, especially among younger generations. Young adults (ages 18 to
29) are the group most likely to hold positive views about new forms of family,
to see one parent as sufficient for healthy child rearing, and to believe both
partners in a marriage should help take care of the home (Pew Research Center
2010). Some of these beliefs may be slow to translate into reality, however.
Research finds that wives still do considerably more housework than husbands,
and while stay-at-home dads are increasing in number, the burden of child care
still falls disproportionately on mothers (Pew Research Center, n.d.).

The range of family forms that exists today is fluid and shifting, and statistics
often provide an incomplete picture. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau is
faced with the challenge of taking a wealth of data about household
arrangements and fitting those data into a limited number of categories that
define specific “family” formations. These categories, however, cannot tell us
much about the reality of people’s living arrangements or the relationships
among family members. For example, when the census documented an increase
in single motherhood in the 1990s, the reality was that “most of the growth . . .
was due to an increase in births to women who, while not married, were living
with the children’s father” (Coontz 2010b, 25). The lives of such mothers and
children are very different from the lives of families where mothers are raising
children on their own.
 Critical Thinking

1. Have you witnessed attitudes about families changing during your lifetime? Provide examples. How
do you think the prevailing attitudes about families in the city where you grew up may have differed
from those in other cities? Explain.
2. Can you trace your family history back to its roots in what is now the of the United States? How do
you think those earlier generations were shaped by the practices, policies, and formation of the
United States?
3. How do you think your family life was shaped by race, class, and other social identities?
4. What kind of family structure did you grow up in? Did your family or your parents’ families face any
stigma?
Family Inequality Theories
Existing sociological theories approach the family as an institution implicated in
the system of race relations. Next we look at the common stock stories as well as
counternarratives and critiques based on concealed and resistance stories.
Stock Stories and Assimilation
Recall that stock stories are the predominant, seemingly commonsense narratives
circulating in society that naturalize inequality. The functionalist perspective
sees society as an ordered system that the family helps to reproduce through the
processes of assimilation and socialization. Many functionalist scholars have
pointed to assimilation to argue that new racial and ethnic groups entering the
United States follow specific paths of integration, gradually accepting and
adapting to the cultural patterns of the dominant group. In 1964, sociologist
Milton Gordon identified seven stages of assimilation, beginning with adoption
of the dominant language and cultural patterns and advancing to increased
interaction with and relationships among minority and majority group members,
reduced levels of prejudice and discrimination, intermarriage, and eventually full
integration and acceptance. This model, called assimilation theory, is based
largely on the experiences of European American ethnic groups, who were
provided with a path to assimilation while other groups faced economic and
legal barriers.

Assimilation theory also contains a number of problematic assumptions: First, it

assumes that minority groups should and can follow the same path as European
immigrants; second, it assumes that non-Whites want to abandon their own
cultures and become fully “Americanized”; and third, it assumes that the
dominant White culture is ideal and superior to all other cultures (Myers 2005,
10).

Conflict theorists highlight these unspoken assumptions and bring issues of

power into the picture, emphasizing that the dominant group seeks to protect its
economic and political interests by controlling minority groups’ labor and
resources. Research from a conflict perspective emphasizes that minority groups
have not all been equally welcome to assimilate and asks us to consider who
benefits from the smooth functioning of an unequal society. In reviewing the
research on families and race relations, scholars often draw from both
functionalist and conflict perspectives, asking questions about the context of
initial contact and exposing the ways in which minority groups have been both
included in and excluded from the dominant group (Myers 2005).

The symbolic interactionist perspective shifts our focus to a micro level of

analysis, examining how individuals and families give meaning to cultural
phenomena and family relationships and interactions, and how families struggle
to pass on their own cultural values and traditions in the face of demands for
socialization and assimilation. Families may do this by eating traditional foods,
listening to music, carrying out religious and spiritual practices, or dressing in
ways that reflect the traditions of their culture. At times the conflict between
maintaining cultural practices and assumptions about assimilation becomes
politicized—for example, in ongoing debates in the United States over English-
only rules, and in many European countries regarding the banning of burkas.

Our current stock stories about the Ideal Traditional Family are rooted in the
concept of separate spheres, or domesticity ideology. They are informed by a
functionalist perspective that assumes this is the best family model for a well-
functioning society—an essential unit that fulfills a particular function in a
particular way. From this perspective, any families not fitting the ideal are
defined as dysfunctional.

This logic also underlies research and public discourse about Black and Latino
families that blames them for their own presumed failure to assimilate. Here, we
see how family and nation are intertwined—the ideal nuclear family is
emblematic of the national family. To belong in the United States, we must
accept the traditional nuclear family model as the ideal. To culturally assimilate
and become Americans requires giving up other cultural models and accepting
the dominant cultural pattern.

From a conflict perspective, this family model operates explicitly to benefit

some more than others. It not only reproduces inequality among racial and class
groups but also reproduces gender and sexual inequality, valuing hierarchical
gender roles, patriarchy, and heterosexuality. For example, consider the phrase
“the African American family.” What images come to mind? Do you picture a
single mother raising numerous children alone and on welfare? While African
American families in reality are quite diverse, this image of the dysfunctional
Black family has been especially predominant since the 1950s, when the “culture
of poverty” thesis was advanced, and many politicians still rely on it to explain
the high rates of African American poverty.

This stock story argues that Black families are “pathological” because they do
not replicate the traditional nuclear family model, and it blames poverty and
other social problems on Black families themselves (Hattery and Smith 2007;
Hill 2005). Single mothers are depicted as overbearing, and fathers as weak or
absent. The stock story claims that these “dysfunctional” family forms are a part
of U.S. Black culture, passed down over generations and firmly entrenched.
Black families are often compared to other racial and ethnic groups and are
faulted for not “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” as other immigrant
groups have.

Poverty is one of the most significant problems facing African American

families (see Table 3.1). Single-female-headed families have significantly higher
poverty rates than other family types, and the percentage of single-female-
headed families is much higher in the African American community than it is
among Whites and other racial groups (U.S. Census Bureau 2015, 2016).
Nevertheless, the poverty rate for children in Native American and Latino
families is only a few points lower. While marriage is frequently offered as the
solution for Black poverty, Black males face such high unemployment,
underemployment, and imprisonment rates that marriage to Black men is not
likely to raise women and their children out of poverty.

Source: Copyright  2017 The Annie E. Casey Foundation. Kids Count Data Center, “Children in
Poverty by Race and Ethnicity,” 2015, http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/44-children-in-
poverty-by-race-and-ethnicity#detailed/1/any/false/573/10,11,9,12,1,185,13/323.
Concealed Stories: The Legacy of Slavery
At least two sociological counternarratives, the legacy of slavery thesis and the
revisionist thesis, have emerged to critique the assumption that African
Americans are inherently inferior and incapable of sustaining proper families.
Each focuses on different historical facts—or different concealed stories—to
support its arguments. Concealed stories here consist of missing or ignored
history, experiences, and data, as well as alternative theoretical perspectives.
Contemporary scholars have leveled critiques at both theories, pointing out that
they generally accept the assumption that the traditional nuclear family is indeed
ideal and try only to explain why Black families have had a difficult time
replicating that ideal. One scholar argues that even social scientists attempting to
refute racist assumptions about Black families have themselves taken for granted
many of the Eurocentric and race-based assumptions embedded in U.S. culture
about what a family is (Dodson 2007). These theories have implications that
extend far beyond the level of abstract theorizing; they inform public policy and
have real impacts on people’s lives.

The Legacy of Slavery Thesis

The legacy of slavery thesis attempts to shift the focus from Black people
themselves as pathological to the argument that pathological family structures
are the result of a long history of structural inequality. The thesis begins with the
fact that slavery entailed the capture of Africans who were torn from their
families and communities and thrown into a foreign culture where they had little
control over their lives. E. Franklin Frazier, an African American sociologist,
published two groundbreaking books in the 1930s about Black families. He was
one of the strongest advocates of this approach. He embraced the “race relations
cycle” proposed by W. Lloyd Warner and Ezra Parks, which posited that all
racial and ethnic minority groups would eventually assimilate into U.S. society
and values.

Frazier argued that the legacy of slavery had previously made assimilation
impossible for Blacks, but that it would eventually become a reality (Hattery and
Smith 2007; Hill 2005). According to this perspective, Black single-female-
headed families have their roots in the history of slavery, which forced Black
women to become strong and independent, without husbands to rely on. Black
men were denied the privileges of patriarchy and the role of head of household
assumed to be men’s natural position in the family. This violation of the gender
roles at the heart of the traditional nuclear family ideal became the basis for
defining Black families as a problem.

With the end of slavery, opportunities for African Americans to form stable
families did not improve. In the South, Black men were largely forced to become
sharecroppers and faced lynching and imprisonment. Many children were taken
from their families and forced into labor or placed in orphanages if their parents
were not married or working. During the 20th century’s Great Migration, as
millions of Blacks moved to cities in the North from the rural South, many
women found jobs as live-in domestics, which prevented them from forming or
maintaining their own family relations. They remained vulnerable to sexual
assaults by White men and cultivated skills of resistance and resilience. Black
men did not find the opportunities they sought in the North either, taking low-
wage jobs instead and facing disproportionately rising rates of imprisonment for
insignificant crimes. Black women often had no economic incentive to marry,
because marriage could not provide a path out of poverty.

During the Great Migration, many Black women found work as live-in domestic
servants for white families, which made forming their own families difficult.

Bettmann / Bettmann / Getty Images

In sum, the legislation, ongoing discrimination, and high unemployment all

continued to undermine Black families (Hill 2005). With the rise of the “cult of
domesticity,” they became increasingly defined as pathological for failing to fit
the ideal.

The legacy of slavery theory was repackaged in 1965 in a controversial report on

the state of the Black family by sociologist and Assistant Secretary of Labor
(and later U.S. senator) Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Single-women-headed
families were increasingly in the public eye as a result of the high concentration
of African Americans in impoverished urban centers and the increased access of
Black women to welfare programs from which they had previously been
excluded. Moynihan argued that single-women-headed families were keeping
the Black community trapped in poverty and attributed a host of other problems
to “dysfunctional” Black families, including crime, delinquency, and dependence
on the government for financial support (Hattery and Smith 2007; Hill 2005).

The Revisionist Thesis

Scholars applying the revisionist thesis, including John Blassingame, Eugene
Genovese, Robert Hill, and Andrew Billingsley, have responded directly to the
legacy of slavery theorists by arguing for the strength and resilience of Black
families (Hattery and Smith 2007; Hill 2005). These theorists have provided
evidence to counter the dire stereotypes of a Black community racked by poverty
and with few intact nuclear families. For example, Billingsley has pointed out
that in metropolitan neighborhoods, two out of three Black families include both
a husband and a wife, half of the families are middle-class, and nine out of ten
are self-sufficient and have no need for welfare (cited in Dodson 2007, 57).

Revisionist scholars have drawn upon concealed stories to argue that slave
families were “functional adaptations” to the conditions of slavery. Families and
extended kin were viable sources of strength and support, and essential to
survival. Revisionist research also has demonstrated the extent to which Black
fathers during slavery tried to protect their wives and children and keep their
families together at any cost. Renowned historian John Hope Franklin (1947)
documented the many efforts of runaway slaves to return to their families and
argued that the institution of the family was central to slaves, who were denied
access to other social institutions for support (see also Hill 2005). Revisionist
research has drawn upon basic precepts of both functionalism and conflict
theory, redefining Black families as functional and as a refuge, given the context
of oppression and White supremacy. Other scholars, like Carol Stack, have
sought to explore the value in multiple family forms by highlighting the ways
that low-income Black single mothers often join with extended kin and other
households, creating functional family formations to better meet their needs.
Joining to share resources, these families demonstrate that isolated nuclear
families are not always the best option (Marks 2000, 610).
Revisionist scholars restore agency to African Americans, seeing their family
structures not merely as the unfortunate results of slavery and inequality but as
viable alternatives formed to improve their quality of life and enable them to
maintain kin connections that serve them. As revisionist theories demonstrate, it
is possible to construct various stories about the past depending on which facts
we highlight and which we ignore.
Applying the Pathology Narrative to Latino/a Families
The stock story of pathology was also applied to Latino/as, currently the largest
minority population in the United States. Latino/as were pathologized and
criticized for failing to assimilate, and Latino/a culture was blamed for poverty
and other social problems. In challenging these assumptions, some scholars
critiqued the functionalists’ application of assimilationist models to non-
European-American groups. According to Calderon (2005), the basic
assumptions of assimilation are problematic because they imply that Chicanos
have faced a history similar to that experienced by European immigrants and can
therefore follow the same path to success. Chicanos, however, had much of their
lands stolen and were forced into wage labor that was dangerous and low paying.
Their failure to achieve the levels of success reached by European Americans
has led some to blame the Chicano community itself (Calderon 2005, 107).
Calderon (2005, 110) argues that American schools teach children that the
United States purchased the Southwest from Mexico, and that they do not learn
“about the many that resisted lynching, murders, theft of land, and resources.”

Before 1970, the majority of Latino/as in the United States were from Cuba or
Puerto Rico. Since 1990, large numbers of Mexicans have arrived, and smaller
numbers of immigrants from El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala,
Colombia, Honduras, and elsewhere. This diversity makes it problematic to talk
about Latino/a families in generalized terms. Different family formations are
products not only of groups’ cultures of origin but also of the specific time
periods in which people immigrated, the communities in which they settled, the
immigration laws and restrictions in place at the time, and the work
opportunities available.

The experiences of Latino/a families overall can vary greatly depending on

where they reside. The support networks, kin networks, social services, and
cultural opportunities available to these families in, say, Los Angeles are worlds
apart from those available in a small midwestern town with a slim minority of
recent Latino/a immigrants. Family formations are affected by all of the factors
noted above (Zambrana 2011). Nevertheless, the typical Latino/a family has
been stereotyped as highly patriarchal, devoutly Catholic, committed to rigid
gender roles for children, and valuing family over education. Some of these
characteristics are more common among low-income Mexican Americans, the
primary population that has been studied over the past 40 years, than among
other Latino/a groups. However, findings from the research are often generalized
to all Latino/a families, portraying them as static and unchanging and reinforcing
the notion that they are all the same.

The Latino/a population in the United States is quite diverse. The largest
populations are Mexican American and Puerto Rican, groups that were both
colonized and deprived of lands they had occupied for centuries. With the 1848
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States annexed the Southwest region
and guaranteed resident Mexicans property rights and the right to maintain their
own culture through language, law, and other means. Nevertheless, the terms of
the treaty were ignored. The glossing over of this history allows us to accept the
myth that any problems the Mexican American community has stem from
culture. It is worth noting that one important custom that Mexican Americans
(and a number of other Latino/a groups) have held on to in the United States is
that of the quinceañera, a celebration of a girl’s transformation from a child to
an adult at age 15. This tradition, which is practiced across social classes, is also
about celebrating the family (Gharib 2016).

Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis News / Getty Images

Many policy makers, service providers, and educators have accepted these
stereotypes and the assimilationist ideal (Zambrana 2011). The resulting
expectations are problematic because they lead to demands that Latino/as
abandon the cultures, traditions, and language that for many are sources of pride
and identity. However, Latino/as’ most significant obstacles to advancement are
not their cultures but economic inequality, the criminalization of Latino men in
many regions, racial profiling to identify undocumented immigrants, ongoing
discrimination and racism, and barriers to opportunities in education, health care,
and other institutions. For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center (2102)
recently won a lawsuit challenging “tuition policies that treat Florida students
who are U.S. citizens and residents of Florida as nonresidents solely because
their parents are undocumented residents.” Assimilation theorists ignore the
reality of ongoing racism and inequality embedded in U.S. culture and
institutions and blame people of color for not following the same path as Eastern
and Southern European immigrants.
 Critical Thinking

1. Historically, why has assimilation been emphasized so strongly in the application of stock
sociological theories to immigrant families? What do you see as the costs and benefits of
assimilation?
2. What might the policy results have looked like if the theories applied to various racial and ethnic
groups had instead highlighted the value of maintaining diversity among families?
3. What role has racial ideology played in shaping the structures of families historically?
4. How are views about individual families depicted in the stock and concealed stories?
Family Inequality through the Matrix Lens
Our application of the matrix perspective to stock and concealed stories reveals
that ideologies about the family, as well as policies affecting real families’ daily
lives, “work to naturalize U.S. hierarchies” of race, gender, class, and sexuality,
while at the same time “constructing U.S. national identity” (Collins 1998, 65).
The family becomes a metaphor for both race and nation, with borders that
require policing to prevent the invasion of “outsiders.” In addition to allowing us
to examine the constructions of race as it intersects with other social identities,
the matrix framework asks that we consider culture, ideology, institutions, and
structures as they interact with and shape each other. Finally, we also must
examine resistance and agency, and all within specific social, historical,
economic, and geographical contexts.

Through the matrix lens, a different narrative of family formations emerges.

Families are social constructs, and there is no single, “natural” family form.

A diversity of family forms has always existed.

Families are not static. They change over time, across generations, and
across geographical spaces and local contexts, and they are constantly being
rearticulated in new ways.
What is considered the “ideal” family form varies historically and cross-
culturally.
Stock stories promoting hegemonic family ideals reproduce racial and other
forms of inequality, privileging some families over others, and some family
members over others.
Research presents a narrative about families that is often influenced by the
culture and values of the researcher and the broader dominant culture,
reproducing relationships of power, privilege, and oppression.
Family formations are shaped by many structural factors, including material
and economic, historical, and public policy and legal factors (such as
immigration law and welfare policy) and other social institutions (such as
criminal justice, education, and health).
The traditional ideal family of our stock stories will not solve structural
problems such as unemployment and poverty (and our focus on it as the
 answer prevents us from discussing real solutions).
Gender is central to an understanding of different family formations across
history and cultures, and gendered power relations influence our definitions
of acceptable and dysfunctional families.
Racism and other systems of inequality shape family formations as well as
the experiences of individual families.
The family, as an institution, is central to the construction of definitions of
both nation and race.
Families socialize the next generation into hierarchical systems of nation,
race, gender, sexuality, and age, among others. They also can, and often do,
resist such hierarchies.

The matrix approach directs us to look at recent research that challenges the
simplistic stock stories about families head-on and highlights new concealed and
resistance stories that add greatly to our understanding of families.
Women’s Concealed Stories
As more women have become sociologists and their research has been accepted
as legitimate, we have learned more about the importance of gender and other
identities in examining Black families. Sociologist Shirley Hill’s work on Black
families dismisses the functionalist assimilation approach we examined earlier in
this chapter. Hill (2005, 10–11) argues that “race and class oppression has left
most [African American families] at odds with dominant societal ideals about
the appropriate roles of men and women and the proper formation of families.”
At the same time, the results of this oppression have been blamed on African
Americans themselves, rather than on the true underlying causes.

The legacy of slavery and revisionist scholars also debated the extent to which
African culture was decimated or maintained by slaves. However, family
formations and culture are dynamic and are constantly re-created within specific
contexts. Accumulating research provides insight into the diverse contexts that
shaped the transmission of African culture over time, for instance. Josephine
Beoku-Betts studied the African American Gullah community (descended from
slaves) on the Georgia and South Carolina Sea Islands. The Gullah were isolated
on these islands, and they did not face the conditions of African Americans on
the mainland. Thus, they were able to maintain cohesive communities that
preserved important features of African culture. For example, they spoke their
own language and passed on to successive generations traditional crafts, African
birthing and naming traditions, folktales, religious beliefs, cooking techniques,
and more (Beoku-Betts 2000; Joyner 2000). Beoku-Betts (2000, 415) argues that
because most of these tasks have been seen as part of women’s natural role in the
family, they were not studied in the past. Her research uncovers a previously
concealed story about what are only now being recognized as practices
significant to the “maintenance of tradition.”

Many women scholars have continued to make women’s experiences visible,

revealing further concealed stories and examples of resistance. Donna Franklin
(2010) examines the Victorian era, when married Black women were largely
working outside the home, often in professional careers. Many White women, in
contrast, were relegated to the domestic sphere and believed they could not be
successful and advance in professional careers if they were married. As Franklin
observes, “Black women seemed to have an easier time juggling the role of
activist with the role of mother and wife. . . . Historian Linda Gordon found that
85 percent of black women activists were married, compared to only 34 percent
of white women activists” (64).

Black women who were both activists and working professionals were often
married to professional men. Work was not stigmatized for Black women as it
was for White women; rather, it was seen as contributing to the common cause
of advancing the Black community. Further, because slavery had “rendered black
men and women equally powerless,” it had “leveled the gender ‘playing field’”
(Franklin 2010, 65). Among married adults today, Black women are more likely
than White women to have higher salaries than their husbands, and Black
husbands contribute slightly more to household chores than do White husbands
(Franklin 2010).

Beginning in the second half of the 20th century, the Black community began
facing what has been called a marriage squeeze—that is, a change in marriage
patterns leading to fewer marriages and fewer suitable partners for Black women
(Franklin 2010, 71). Important structural factors creating this situation include
the high rates of Black male incarceration and unemployment, both discussed in
other chapters. For educated, professional Black women, the problem of low
numbers of suitable Black partners is compounded by the increasing rates of
marriage between professional Black men and White women. This trend also
sends the message that Black women cannot live up to White beauty standards
and definitions of femininity as White (Rockquemore and Henderson 2010). As
a result, a large pool of single African American women are left with a small
number of marriageable Black men.

Recent research on Black families aims to shift the focus away from single
motherhood as the problem to be solved and toward the economic hardship
Black families face. Socioeconomic and class differences play the most
important role in determining outcomes for children, whether they have one,
two, or more parents or guardians.

Coontz and Folbre (2010, 186) highlight a number of reasons it does not make
sense to define single motherhood as the problem. First, poverty is often an
impetus for women to choose not to marry when marriage will not improve their
economic security:

Two-parent families are not immune from the economic stresses that put
children at risk. More than one-third of all impoverished young children in
the United States today live with two parents [and] single parenthood does
not inevitably lead to poverty. In countries with a more adequate social
safety net than the United States, single-parent families are much less likely
to live in poverty. Even within the United States, single mothers with high
levels of education fare relatively well.
Invisible Fathers
There is a common myth that the absence of Black fathers is responsible for the
poverty of Black families, and we see all around us stereotypes of the
irresponsible Black father. We know that Black fathers are less likely to be
married due to high rates of incarceration and unemployment (Smith 2017).
However, while Black fathers are less likely to marry the mothers of their
children than are other fathers, this fact alone does not support the common
assumption that they are not good fathers. The stereotype of the absent Black
father that looms so large in our culture has kept us from recognizing and
studying those fathers who are actually present in their children’s lives (Coles
2009; Edin, Tach, and Mincy 2009).

The little research that exists reveals another concealed story: Single,
noncustodial Black fathers are more engaged in their children’s lives than are
their White counterparts. Multiple studies have found that among nonresidential
fathers, African Americans have higher rates of parental involvement than do
Whites or Hispanics (McLanahan and Carlson 2002; Edin et al. 2009). Other
research has found that unmarried African American fathers are more likely than
their White or Hispanic counterparts to contribute to costs during pregnancy and
to offer in-kind support and care for their children (Coles 2009).

These findings are especially meaningful given the unique challenges these
fathers face. They are more likely than White fathers to reside in poor
communities with fewer resources available to support parents, they experience
lower rates of education and employment, and they are more likely to be
employed in part-time and low-paying jobs that offer fewer benefits. Coles
(2009) conducted one of the first major studies of Black single fathers with
custody of their children and found that in addition to these challenges, many
experienced obstacles dealing with legal and social services, including suspicion
and assumptions that they could not be good fathers. Coles concludes that these
men can be successful fathers even when they are not married to their children’s
mothers. She implores us to see that “these are caring fathers: as good, loving,
and motivated as any other father. Their existence and their experiences deserve
public articulation . . . their stories provide a counterweight to the predominant
image of black fathers” (14).
Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The myth of the absent Black father is so pervasive, it can prevent us from
seeing the reality of Black families.

MBI / Alamy Stock Photo

Oppression and Privilege: Support for White Families
The state’s part in shaping family and reproduction practices is clearly a
racialized and gendered process. It is almost always women’s bodies that are
targeted for control by courts and legislatures, despite the fact that men play a
role in reproduction as well (Flavin 2009). Race, class, and age all influence how
the state treats women’s reproductive capacity, with effects on family formation.

By the 1950s, every U.S. state had passed laws preventing pregnant women from
working, while at the same time withholding unemployment benefits from them
(Solinger 2007). Prior to increased women’s activism and the sexual liberation
movement in the late 1960s, few options were available to single women who
became pregnant. There was a strong culture of punishment at the time, which
saw women’s sexual behavior as unacceptable and unfeminine, and as breaking
the hallowed bounds of the ideal nuclear family. A woman facing an unwanted
pregnancy could petition the medical community for a “therapeutic” abortion
based on psychiatric grounds; however, approval was hard to obtain, and if it
was granted, the woman was usually also sterilized at the same time. Other
alternatives varied by race. To avoid the shame of out-of-wedlock pregnancy and
preserve their daughters’ marriageability, White families that could afford it
would hide their single pregnant daughters in maternity homes and put their
babies up for adoption. Single Black women who became pregnant were barred
from Whites-only maternity homes and were more often embraced and accepted
by their families and extended kin. Nevertheless, they were stigmatized and seen
as examples of broken Black families and communities. They faced prejudices
as well as policies that were not designed to help them (Solinger 2013).

While the public in general viewed both White and Black unmarried mothers
negatively, the White women were nonetheless seen as producing a valuable
commodity for which there was high demand among White married couples
unable to have children. In the 1960s, welfare programs began linking the receipt
of benefits to compulsory sterilization for many women, especially women of
color. African American and Puerto Rican community activists fought these
abuses, which were not brought to the public’s attention until the mid-1970s
(Flavin 2009). In 1968, more than one-third of women in Puerto Rico between
the ages of 15 and 45 had been surgically sterilized, often without their
knowledge, as a means of controlling the population (Lopez 1987). Figure 3.1
shows the changes in birthrates among unmarried women over time. It is
noteworthy that since 1990, the number of births to single teens has been
declining steadily.

In the 1950s and 1960s, numerous U.S. states passed “man in the house” laws,
which gave welfare agencies the ability to cut off payments to single women
who were suspected of engaging in sexual relations. The assumption was that if
a woman was involved with a man, he should be “man of the house” and support
her and her children, even if they were not his. In essence this law allowed the
state to control women’s sexual activity in a punitive fashion. This and other
welfare and social programs were unevenly applied based on race, and racism
often shaped the forms these policies took (Kohler-Hausmann 2007; Lefkovitz
2011). Such uneven enforcement fostered the image of the promiscuous “welfare
queen” living on the public dole while indulging her own pleasures (Kohler-
Hausmann 2007). This stereotype became increasingly useful in the backlash
against welfare among many political conservatives.

From its beginnings, the welfare system has treated families differently based on
race. The Social Security Act of 1935 established the Aid to Dependent Children
(ADC) program, which became known as “welfare.” ADC was not written to
benefit all families equitably, however. Entire categories of workers (domestic
workers, agricultural workers), those with high representations of people of
color, were excluded from the benefits of the program. As a result, Whites were
the primary beneficiaries of welfare. White women were often encouraged to
stay at home and focus on raising their children, while women of color were
strongly urged to work in the fields or as domestics (Solinger 2010).

Figure 3.1 From 1959 to 2015, Birth Rates to Single Mothers Varied by Race
 Source: Child Trends Databank. (2015). Births to unmarried women.
Available at: http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=births-to-unmarried-
women.

Beginning with President George W. Bush and continuing through the Obama
administration, so-called marriage promotion programs—programs that aim to
encourage marriage by teaching relationship and communication skills—were
offered as a solution to poverty for single mothers (at the time of this writing, it
is not known whether the Trump administration will maintain such programs).
More than $800 million in federal money and additional funds at the state level
have been poured into marriage promotion advocacy, on the continuing
assumption that single parenting is a primary cause of poverty and marriage is
the solution (Heath, Randles, and Avishai 2016). Marriage promotion programs
are not based on any research evidence, however, and they reproduce the myth
of the ideal family. They ignore structural causes of inequality and social,
historical, and economic context, instead reinforcing the belief that poverty is
simply the result of individuals’ poor choices. However, research finds that “the
most important predictors of marriage and divorce are not whether an individual
has mastered good communication skills but whether he or she has a stable job
and a college education” (Avishai, Heath, and Randles 2012, 37).
The Socialization of Children
A large study of mothers and their children found that when mothers had
experienced racism (including verbal insults and discrimination), children
struggled in school and faced more social and emotional problems (MSN News
2012). Families are a key site of future generations’ socialization into the
hierarchies of oppression and privilege. As groundbreaking sociologist Patricia
Hill Collins (1998, 64) observes, “Individuals typically learn their assigned place
in hierarchies of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nation and social class in their
families of origin.” In communities of color, parents are forced to prepare their
children to enter a world that is often hostile toward them and thus dangerous, or
at best simply biased against them. James Baldwin writes eloquently about this
issue in his 1963 book The Fire Next Time:

[The child] must be “good” not only in order to please his parents and not
only to avoid being punished by them; behind their authority stands
another, nameless and impersonal, infinitely harder to please, and
bottomlessly cruel. And this filters into the child’s consciousness through
his parents’ tone of voice as he is being exhorted, punished, or loved; in the
sudden, uncontrollable note of fear heard in his mother’s or his father’s
voice when he has strayed beyond some particular boundary. (40–41)

Chicana mothers engage in “psychological protection” of their children but also

teach their daughters “how to resist their subordination” (Hurtado 2003, 78–79).
Hurtado (2003, 77, 81) reports that the Chicana women she interviewed
described the importance their mothers placed on the safety net of education,
while still assuming that their daughters would eventually get married. The
young women developed the “ability to ‘see’ freedom within restriction and the
commitment to ‘struggle’ within ‘constraint’ . . . [learning that] in a racist, sexist,
classist, heterosexist society personal virtue is not enough—the structural
scaffolding cannot be climbed by will and talent alone.”

White parents need not confront the challenging topic of race with their children,
and often do not even consider it. Three-fourths of White parents report that they
almost never talk about race with their children (Bronson and Merryman 2009).
Many embrace a color-blind perspective, assuming that if they do not talk about
race, their children will grow up to see everyone as equal and the same.
However, children as young as 6 months old recognize differences in skin color,
and by the age of 7 they have already formed conclusions about race, with White
children identifying Black children as more likely to be “mean.” Further, living
in a diverse community or attending a diverse school does not reduce these
effects. The only thing that does is White parents’ talking to their children about
race: “This period of our children’s lives, when we imagine it’s most important
to not talk about race, is the very developmental period when children’s minds
are forming their first conclusions about race” (Bronson and Merryman 2009).
White parents (especially those with White children) have the privilege to
choose whether they will talk to their children about race. There are currently
many books and other resources available to help parents in addressing race with
their children at any age.
 Critical Thinking

1. Have any of the historical factors that we have examined in this section surprised you? Which points
do you think are most important for people to know?
2. How have social institutions (e.g., the criminal justice system, economics, government policies)
created obstacles for some families while providing a hand up for others?
3. Do you believe that the mythical “ideal” family formation should remain the ideal for all families?
Explain.
4. What did you learn about race as a child? Did your family talk about race often? If so, what kinds of
issues and messages do you remember?
Transforming the Ideal Family Narrative
The myth of the ideal family obscures the reality of the diverse family
formations in which most of us actually live. Further, our family formations
change over the course of our lives. As we live longer, we are more likely to
need family assistance. Some 30% of Americans engage in providing assistance
to elderly parents, grandparents, disabled children, or other family members who
require aid to meet all of their basic needs (Barber and Vega 2011, 20). Among
Hispanic families, 36% of households care for elderly family members (Barber
and Vega 2011). While caregiving for elderly members means some families are
getting larger, others are getting smaller as women have fewer children.
When the Ideal Family Is Not Ideal
Rather than asking why certain families do not conform to the ideal nuclear
family model, many researchers are reframing the question, asking whether the
nuclear family is necessarily the best model for all families at all times (Coontz
2010a; Hill 2005; Risman 2010). Examining family violence challenges the
myth of the ideal family. Research has found that one of two women will be
battered at some point in their lives (Hattery and Smith 2016), and 30% of
women globally have experienced intimate partner violence (Devries et al.
2013). Close to one-third of women who are murdered are killed by their
partners (National Coalition Against Domestic Violence 2015). Until the 1980s,
marital rape was not a crime in many states (Hattery and Smith 2016). Domestic
violence is a leading cause of the health problems and complications faced by
pregnant women (Pan American Health Organization, n.d.).

More than five children die every day as a result of child abuse, most often at the
hands of family members (Hattery and Smith 2016). Children with disabilities
are at greater risk, and all children suffer higher risks when living in foster care.
African American, Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American children are
far more likely than White children to be removed from their homes and placed
in foster care, putting them at greater risk (Hattery and Smith 2016).

Girls and women are more likely than their male counterparts to experience child
sexual abuse and elder abuse, and African American girls and elderly women
face much higher rates of abuse than do their White counterparts (Hattery and
Smith 2016). The ideology of the family as a private sphere has kept violence
within families hidden from public view. Intimate partner violence often remains
unreported and undetected. Hattery and Smith’s (2007) research has shown that
forcing poor women to find mates to escape poverty locks many into a cycle of
abusive relationships. Abused women often feel they cannot leave their abusers,
and those who do leave still face challenges. Many end up homeless or in other
abusive relationships.
Transmigration
The ancestors of many Chicano/as lived in regions that were once part of
Mexico but today fall within the United States. National borders in these areas
have been fluid over time, and for many Chicano/as, they remain so today. Many
Latino/as are transmigrants, people who “live their lives across borders,
participating simultaneously in social relations that embed them in more than
one nation-state” (Glick-Schiller 2003, 105–6). Soehl and Waldinger (2010,
1496) found that the majority of Latino/a transmigrants maintain activities of
connectivity with their home countries, making phone calls, visiting, and
sending remittances back home. Those with children or assets in their home
countries engage in these activities more frequently (1505).

Across the United States, some 5 million children live with one or more
undocumented immigrant parents, and many live in families where some family
members are U.S. citizens while others are not (American Psychological
Association, n.d.). Children born in the United States are legally U.S. citizens.
Undocumented parents are sometimes deported, and many leave their children in
the United States to be cared for by other relatives or older siblings, in the hope
that they will have more opportunities and a better life than they would have in
their parents’ home countries. One ironic consequence of this is that children
with U.S. citizenship often cross to Mexico to visit family members and so
maintain ties to Mexican culture, while children who are not citizens cannot risk
crossing and thus grow up entirely in the United States, knowing nothing but
U.S. culture. As these children become adults seeking jobs or college educations,
they increasingly face the risk of deportation to a homeland of which they have
no memory (Thorpe 2011).

Undocumented immigrant parents must make difficult decisions based on their

desire to do what is best for their families given their circumstances. Researchers
are only now beginning to explore the impacts on the children in such families of
multiple family separations, changes in caregivers and places of residency, and
life under the threat that a parent or other family member could be deported at
any time. Some scholars are also looking at the strategies that lead to family
resilience in the face of such vulnerability and risk. As the legal landscape
changes under the Trump presidential administration, the future for all
immigrants and their families is even more uncertain than in the past.
Many Latino residents of the area around the U.S.-Mexico border are
transmigrants, living their lives in both countries. Many cross into the U.S. to
work, often in agriculture.

inga spence / Alamy Stock Photo

New Reproductive Technologies
New technologies have changed the reproductive possibilities available to
families, and innovations in this area will continue into the future. These
technologies further destabilize our stock story that the ideal traditional family is
rooted in nature.

The United States is one of only a few countries in the world that allow
gestational surrogacy, in which a woman carries an implanted embryo to term
for another couple or mother but has no genetic tie to the child herself. In
essence, a gestational surrogate rents out her womb according to the terms of a
contract. The demand for gestational surrogates has been increasing for many
reasons, including the availability of abortion and birth control, which has
limited the number of White babies available for adoption. At the same time,
women are marrying later and delaying attempts to get pregnant.

France Winddance Twine (2011) examines gestational surrogacy as a form of

labor deeply imbued with hierarchies of race, class, and gender. She finds that it
is predominantly White middle- and upper-class women and couples who are
able to afford to hire surrogates, while surrogates are most often poor White
women and women of color in the United States and poor women in developing
nations. As Twine points out, while “contemporary gestational surrogates
‘voluntarily’ enter into these commercial contracts and willingly sell their
‘reproductive’ labor, their agency occurs within a context of a stratified system
of reproduction” (15). Medical and reproductive tourism is a growing industry in
India, and surrogacy is the fastest-growing sector, with more than 1,000 clinics
in 2013. According to the World Bank, the surrogacy industry in India will be
valued at $2.5 billion by 2020. While it can cost $100,000 for gestational
surrogacy in the United States, the price in India is less than half that. At the
same time, India has world-class medical facilities and English-speaking
practitioners. Most important, India has a huge number of very poor women
willing to serve as surrogates. An Indian surrogate is paid approximately $6,000
and receives food and medical care while pregnant (James 2013). This contrasts
sharply with the situation of pregnant Indian women who are not surrogates,
who have some of the world’s highest rates of maternal morbidity and mortality.
Research finds that most surrogates are driven by financial need, using surrogacy
as “a basic survival strategy for obtaining access to food, shelter, clean water,
and healthcare” (Hamm 2013).
Gestational surrogacy is deeply entwined with race and class. Hiring a surrogate
in India can cost less than half what it does in the United States.

Mint / Hindustan Times / Getty Images

Interracial Marriage
Laws against interracial marriage were not declared unconstitutional in the
United States until 1967. Since then, rates of interracial marriage have been
climbing, most quickly in recent years. In 1970, only 1% of all U.S. marriages
were interracial. By 2013 the numbers had grown to 6.3% of all marriages and
12% of new marriages (Wang 2015; Pew Research Center 2015).

American Indians, Asian Americans, and Hispanics are most likely to marry
outside their racial groups. Figure 3.2 shows the intersections of interracial
marriage with race and gender for Whites, Blacks, Asians, and American
Indians. Hispanics are not included in this chart, but their rates, like those for
Whites, show very little difference between men and women (Pew Research
Center 2012).

These patterns reflect the racial hierarchy we live in today. Blacks continue to be
characterized as least likely to assimilate, while Latinos and Asians are seen as
lying somewhere on the continuum between Blacks and Whites. These rates also
reveal something about the way in which gender stereotypes pervade our
narratives about Black and Asian families. While Black women have been
defined in largely negative terms as unfeminine, stern, and independent, Asian
women have been depicted as exotic, erotic, and submissive. The stock story
tells us that we reside in a color-blind nation today, but intermarriage rates reveal
that this is not the case; more than eight out of ten people marrying today still
choose to marry someone of the same race, and bias against interracial marriage
persists (Skinner and Hudac 2017). Nevertheless, the numbers continue to rise.

Figure 3.2 Race and Gender Affects Patterns of Interracial Marriage

Source: Wendy Wang, “Interracial Marriage: Who Is ‘Marrying Out’?,”
Pew Research Center Fact Tank, June 12, 2015,
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/12/interracial-marriage-
who-is-marrying-out.
LGBT Families
Just as our stock stories depict the family as a couple with children, they also
tend to assume that the couple is heterosexual. Perhaps one of the most visible
ways in which the family is changing is in the growth in numbers of openly gay
and lesbian families. All the stock stories about the family that we have
examined are predicated on the assumption of heterosexuality. We actively
construct heterosexuality as normative, just as we construct patriarchy and
Whiteness as normative (Ingraham 2013). The notion of the ideal traditional
nuclear family is one of the most important sites of this construction. Same-sex
desire and sexual behavior that fall outside our definition of heterosexuality have
always existed. These concealed stories have often been ignored or written out
of history, as heterosexuality became defined as the only “natural” and legitimate
form of relationship on which to base a family. As a result, heterosexuality has
been reinforced as the invisible, privileged norm.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the
fundamental right of same-sex couples to marry has been protected in the United
States, and valid same-sex marriages sealed in other jurisdictions are recognized.
A Gallup poll in June 2016 found that about 123,000 same-sex couples had
married since the Court’s decision, bringing the national total to about 491,000.
About one in ten LGBT adults is now married to a same-sex partner, and gay
men are marrying at higher rates than lesbians (Jones 2016). Marriage comes
with many rights, including the right to make medical decisions for one’s spouse,
to inherit from one’s spouse, to qualify for spousal Social Security and veteran’s
and other benefits, and to jointly adopt or foster children. However, many states
have passed laws denying married same-sex couples some of these benefits, and
allowing religious and state officials to refuse to officiate at weddings for same-
sex couples. Battles over many of these issues are currently taking place in the
courts (Movement Advancement Project 2017). For all racial groups, the
proportion of LGBT people is roughly the same as their representation in the
U.S. population as a whole (Pew Research Center 2013b). We see variation by
race when we look at same-sex couples, however. Whites represent a
disproportionately higher percentage of gay male marriages(Moore 2011). When
it comes to same-sex marriage, White and class privilege may make the
transition to marriage and parenthood a little bit easier. While they still face
homophobia, discrimination, and structural barriers, White gays and lesbians
have had the privilege of not having their loyalty to their racial community
challenged (Moore 2011). Interestingly, marriages between LGBT persons are
more than twice as likely as heterosexual marriages to be interracial (Gates
2012).
Resistance/Story
 Nancy Mezey, 2015
I grew up in an upper-middle-class White suburb of New York City. My family had
progressive and openly gay friends, providing me with White, economically successful role
models who crossed sexual boundaries. So when I came out as a lesbian in the mid-1990s, my
family and friends were neither surprised nor disappointed. Years later, I met my partner, also
a White middle-class professional, who shared my desire to have children. Our White middle-
class status helped us find other lesbians who were birthing and adopting children, a privilege
to which Black working-class lesbians in the area did not have access.

Indeed, networking through a lesbian mothers group, we found a fertility specialist who helped
us have two children. Until that point, my partner and I had felt largely unscathed by
homophobia and heterosexism. Our first real experience with individual discrimination
occurred when we tried to find child care for our oldest child. I called day-care centers in our
midwestern town and explained that my son had two mothers (careful not to use the word
lesbian), only to have the providers explain that “other parents would be uncomfortable” and
they could not accept our child.
Later, we experienced institutional discrimination in our [pre-2015] effort to both become
legal parents to our children. That process required going through a second-parent adoption in
which we paid thousands of dollars for a home study, even though I was our children’s
biological mother and my partner and I had raised the children together in our home from
birth. This was followed by my giving up my legal rights to our children in court, only to
adopt them back with my partner.
When we moved to New Jersey, we found a much more welcoming environment. Our
privileged statuses allowed us to move into a largely White middle-class town with a strong
public school system. In two obvious instances, our children lost friends after their parents
realized our children had two mothers. But for the most part, my partner and I buffered our
children by having proactive meetings with teachers and screening parents at social events. I
often wondered if the few homophobic parents we met knew that we were protecting our
children from them as much as they thought they were protecting their children from us. In my
personal life, transformation comes through the interactions my family and I have with others
on a daily basis that create a new normal of wider acceptance.

Because of the importance of social context in family formation, the experiences

of gay and lesbian families themselves differ across race and class lines. On the
one hand, “Black cultures, ideologies, and the historical experiences of Black
women structure lesbian identities” (Moore 2011, 3). At the same time, Black
lesbians exert influence over their own family formations and family lives. For
example, Moore (2011) found that “respectability” was a strong theme for the
Black lesbian women she studied. Consistently defined by the dominant culture
as lazy, poor, hypersexual, and immoral, Black women have employed numerous
strategies to present themselves as “respectable” while at the same time asserting
their own sexual autonomy.
Recent critical intersectional research is beginning to encompass the full range
of family formations. As we broaden our understanding of what counts as a
family, we must reassess historical narratives that have excluded certain family
formations. Researchers are not exempt from the prejudices and assumptions of
the broader culture. As family researcher Stephen Marks (2000, 611) reflects:
“Most family scholars continue to be White, heterosexual, married persons such
as myself. The research published . . . reflects the interests of those who do the
studies.” However, as more and more research is conducted by scholars
previously excluded—men and women of color, White women, LGBT people,
and working-class people, for example—the kinds of subjects that are being
studied, the questions that are being asked, and the concealed stories and voices
of resistance that are being brought in are changing the field. As Marks goes on,
“These scholars have challenged their exclusion . . . and some of us from the
dominant groups who earlier saw families in a White, male, middle-class image
have been listening and learning” (611).

Thus, we see broadening recognition and research on a wide array of family

formations and experiences. At the same time, we need to cultivate more curious
citizens who will ask the unasked questions and challenge narratives that distort
the realities we see all around us.
 Critical Thinking

1. How have technological changes opened up new family formations? What changes do you foresee in
the future owing to technology, especially in regard to social identities including race, gender, and
dis/ability?
2. How have very recently enacted government policies and laws affected families, including those
formations discussed in this last section of this chapter?
3. How does the history of slavery, genocide, immigration, and inequitable access to resources help
explain contemporary interracial marriage rates? How do you think future race relations will be
affected by rising rates of intermarriage?
4. What other significant changes do you see taking place among families today or in the future?
Key Terms

assimilation, p. 89
Dawes Act, p. 82
gestational surrogacy, p. 106
Great Migration, p. 93
ideology of domesticity, p. 83
legacy of slavery thesis, p. 92
marriage promotion programs, p. 102
marriage squeeze, p. 98
nuclear family, p. 88
quinceañera, p. 95
revisionist thesis, p. 93
separate spheres, p. 90
transmigrants, p. 105

Chapter Summary
LO 3.1 Describe the historical forces that have
influenced the intersection of race and family in the
United States.
Family formations were inextricably shaped by culture and race in the American colonial era.
Native Americans had diverse family structures that were greatly affected by colonization, and
African family structures were disrupted when Africans were ripped from their families,
transported overseas, and subjected to a system of slavery that consistently broke up families,
as each individual was viewed as a commodity. Various immigrating European ethnic groups
and Asians were restricted in their family formation by shifting immigration laws that often
dictated who could enter the United States. Today family formations continue to shift and
remain diverse.
LO 3.2 Examine the current stock theories that explain
family inequalities across racial and ethnic lines.
A variety of social theories have emerged to explain inequality among families. Stock stories
include the functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist perspectives. The primary stock
story has revolved around theories of assimilation. In order to explain the less prevalent
assimilation of Africans and African Americans, other theories have revealed concealed
stories examining the impact of slavery. Some of these same theories and debates have been
applies to Chicanos/Latinos.
LO 3.3 Apply the matrix lens to an understanding of
family inequality.
More recent theorizing has taken an approach that explicitly addresses issues raised by the
matrix perspective. Assimilation theories have been reinterpreted as maintaining inequality.
Theories that have posited low rates of marriage among African Americans as the leading
cause of Black poverty have been directly challenged by examinations of women’s lives in
particular, as well as by research into the realities facing Black men and their roles as fathers.
Government funds that could contribute to decreasing family poverty have instead been
directed to programs encouraging marriage, which primarily benefit White families. Some
scholars have challenged the notion that the mythical ideal family is ideal at all. Inequality
inevitably shapes relationships within families.
LO 3.4 Identify alternatives to the current matrix of
inequality among families.
Contemporary trends are changing the face of families. Rates of interracial marriage are
increasing, and the legalization of same-sex marriage has expanded the rights of people to
marry whom they choose. The phenomenon of transmigration and the explosive rise of new
reproductive technologies are complicating the lives of families and will continue to do so.
Our very definitions of family are shifting, as they always have.
Chapter 4 Work and Wealth Inequality

With high expenses for healthcare and housing, many families have little money
saved. A job loss, even with unemployment benefits, can be economically
devastating. Eligible Californians, like those seen here, can apply for cash aid on
a short term basis.

Bob Chamberlain / Los Angeles Times / Getty Images

Chapter Outline

Recent Trends in Work and Wealth

Increasing Inequality
Economic Restructuring and Changing Occupations
A Disappearing Social Safety Net
Race, Recession, and Recovery
The Wage Gap and Occupational Segregation
Theories of Economic Inequality
Neoliberal Theory
Marxist Theories
Applying the Matrix to the History of Economic Inequality in the
United States
The Shifting Organization of Work and Wealth
The Effects of Social Policy
Transforming the Story of Race and Economic Inequality
Workplace Discrimination
Immigration Stories
Many Stories Lead to Many Solutions
Changing Wealth Inequality
 Learning Objectives

LO 4.1 Describe the current patterns of income and wealth inequality in the United States.
LO 4.2 Compare various stock stories about economic inequality.
LO 4.3 Apply the matrix perspective to the historical foundations of economic inequality.
LO 4.4 Analyze potential solutions to the problem of economic inequality.

Katherine Hackett did everything right. A hardworking, educated professional

with 17 years in the health care industry, she paid her taxes, volunteered in her
community, and, as a single mother, raised two sons who served in the military.
Then, without warning, she was suddenly laid off from work with just a month’s
severance pay. Her life was turned upside down. Unemployment benefits
allowed her to pay her mortgage and the premium for her COBRA health
benefits (that is, the benefits available to her through her former employer’s
group insurance under provisions of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget
Reconciliation Act), but that left her only $230 a month, or just over $8 a day,
for food, utilities, and everything else.

Like Hackett, about half the U.S. population lives from paycheck to paycheck in
a state of “persistent economic insecurity.” Nearly half of all families have less
than $5,887 in savings to fall back on in an emergency such as a job loss
(Corporation for Enterprise Development 2014).

Scholars who have analyzed social identities such as class, race, gender, sexual
orientation, ability/disability, and age have identified economic inequality and
the organization of work as key locations where inequality originates and is
reproduced in our society. In this chapter we will examine economic inequality
across racial groups and how other social identities, like gender and class,
intersect with race, which in turn leads to different life outcomes for people
within the same racial categories. Income and wealth inequality and the various
factors that contribute to it, including economic shifts and social policy, are also
key to understanding how and why economic inequality exists. We will also
examine the stories we tell about work, wealth, and inequality that obstruct or
support social change to reduce these gaps.
Recent Trends in Work and Wealth
The U.S. economy is usually described as being ruled by capitalism—that is, it
is an economy in which the means of production are held and controlled by
private owners, not the government, and in which prices are set by the forces of
supply and demand with minimal government interference. In practice, U.S.
capitalism is modified by government regulation, and some resources are under
public ownership (although this is on the decline). Capitalism produces class
inequality, with large numbers of working poor like Katherine Hackett. Despite
being one of the wealthiest nations in the world, the United States is also one of
the most unequal (Sherman 2015; Tasch 2015). According to a recent report
from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD),
this inequality is unhealthy for the nation. Looking over time, the researchers
found that increasing inequality produces lower economic growth. Starting
around the 1920s and 1930s, economic inequality began declining in the United
States and in many European nations, but in the 1970s and 1980s, it sharply
increased again (OECD 2015).
Increasing Inequality
Social scientists use two factors to measure economic inequality: income and
wealth. Income consists of the flow of all incoming funds: earnings from work,
profit from items sold, and returns on investments. While estimates vary
depending on the sources, it is generally reported that the top 1% of the U.S.
population makes between 18% and 33% of the nation’s income, and the top
0.1% earns 8% to 12% (Bricker, Henriques, Krimmel, and Sabelhaus 2015;
Piketty and Saez 2014). Between 1980 and 2012, the share of the national
income made by the top 1% more than tripled (Monaghan 2014). By 2013,
income inequality had grown to its highest levels since 1928 (DeSilver 2013).

Wealth (or capital), in contrast to income, consists of the market value of all
assets owned, such as a home, a car, artwork, jewelry, a business, and savings
and retirement accounts, minus any debts owed, such as credit card debt,
mortgages, and college loans (Saez and Zucman 2016). You probably already
know that the top 1% of the U.S. population owns a very large proportion of the
nation’s wealth—that was the key focus of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Estimates of the proportion of total U.S. wealth owned by the top 1% over the
past few years have ranged from 30% to 42%, depending on the data sources
used. Estimates of the proportion of wealth owned by the top 0.1% range from
15% to 22% (Bricker et al. 2015; Ingraham 2015; OECD 2015; Piketty and Saez
2014). Those Americans in the bottom 40% of the population actually have no
wealth, and are likely in debt (Ingraham 2015; OECD 2015). Since the late
1970s, the wealth gap has been growing, with the top 0.01% seeing the greatest
gains in their wealth. In other words, wealth is increasingly being consolidated
into fewer and fewer hands (Piketty and Saez 2014).

The Occupy movement began in 2011 to protest rising inequality, particularly

targeting Wall Street financial firms. The group’s slogan is “We are the 99%” to
highlight the vast disparities in wealth and income in the U.S.

Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times / Getty Images

These data paint a picture of class inequality. We employ a broad definition of

class here, referring to “enduring and systematic differences in access to and
control over resources for provisioning and survival” (Acker 2006, 444). When
we bring in race, we see another dimension of income and wealth inequality.

The racial wealth gap is much wider than the racial income gap, reflecting the
fact that wealth is transmitted over generations (see Figures 4.1 and 4.2; note
that very few data on wealth and income are available for Native Americans).
Wealth can be transmitted in many ways. It can be passed down through
inheritance of money, property, stocks, and bonds, or in the form of access to
education and paid tuition. Passing a family business on to the next generation is
another form of wealth transmittal (Conley 2009; Lareau 2011). In addition, the
racial wealth gap grows much larger over the average person’s life span. As the
saying goes, “It takes money to make money!” Those with more to begin with
have the resources (education, financial support) to accumulate more wealth
during their lifetimes. Wealth has a far greater overall impact than income on an
individual’s life, because wealth also provides the opportunities that make a
higher income possible. Wealth can pay for a better education, a home that may
appreciate in value, and better and more accessible health care; it gives families
opportunities to invest and allows them to accumulate savings that can help them
make it through rough times, job changes, and retirement. Wealth allows parents
to give their children a significant head start in life.

Figure 4.1 Median Household from 1967 to 2015 Differed By Race

 Source: Bernadette D. Proctor, Jessica L. Semega, and Melissa A. Kollar,
Income and Poverty in the United States: 2015, U.S. Census Bureau,
Current Population Reports, P60-256(RV) (Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office, 2016), fig. 1,
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-
256.pdf.

Figure 4.2 Racial Wealth Gaps Have Grown Over the Years
Notes: Blacks and Whites include only non-Hispanics. Hispanics are of any race.
Chart scale is logarithmic; each gridline is ten times greater than the gridline
below it. Great Recession began Dec.’07 and ended June ’09.

Source: Rakesh Kochhar and Richard Fry, “Wealth Inequality Has Widened
along Racial, Ethnic Lines since End of Great Recession,” Fact Tank, Pew
Research Center, December 12, 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession.

The poverty levels in the United States are another demonstration of the nation’s
inequitable distribution of income and wealth. Approximately 17% of all
children residing in the United States live in poverty (and children are more
likely to live in poverty than adults of any age). Proportionally, children of color
are overrepresented in this group, which is approximately one-third White, one-
third Latino, one-fourth Black, and 9% Native American and Asian American
(Madrick 2016). The federal poverty line is $24,230 for a family of four per
year. The official poverty line for one individual comes out to $16.50 per day.
Yet 1.5 million households with children survive (barely) on just $2.00 per
person per day, significantly below the government’s definition of “deep
poverty.” The number of households in deep poverty has more than doubled
since the mid-1990s (Edin and Shaefer 2015).
Economic Restructuring and Changing Occupations
Today’s global capitalist economy is different from the agrarian, rural economy
of the past, and as it continues to change, it is altering the ways we work and
live. As the economy has transformed, so has the workplace.

Economic Change
The United States faces strong global competition for jobs and ever-increasing
levels of international trade. For evidence, just take a look at the labels in your
clothes that indicate the countries where they were made. It’s unlikely that you’ll
find many items that were made in the United States. Both globalization and
advances in communications and other technologies have contributed to the shift
in the United States from a manufacturing economy that produced physical
goods like computers, furniture, and clothing to a service economy that provides
services such as banking, health care, retail sales, and entertainment. Cheap
labor overseas, especially in developing countries, has motivated many
American manufacturing companies to move their production activities abroad,
closing tens of thousands of U.S. factories and eliminating millions of jobs
(Alderson 2015; Dunn 2012; Forbes 2004). The result is that most U.S. job
growth in recent years has been in the service sector, where work is lower
paying, often part-time and temporary, and much less likely to provide benefits
(see Figure 4.3). Sociologists refer to this broad historical shift as economic
restructuring, and it has been accompanied by growing wealth and income
inequality (Andersen 2001; Dunn 2012).

Occupational Change
While the service sector also includes higher-paying, skilled jobs in fields such
as information technology, growth has been far greater in more labor-intensive
service-sector jobs (Collins and Mayer 2010, 7). The three largest occupational
categories today—health care and social assistance, retail trade, and
accommodation and food services—all pay significantly less than manufacturing
jobs. These sectors employ large numbers of White women and people of color
(U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2015, 2016).

With the rise in joblessness starting with the recession of 2008–9, many more
people are now forced to work part-time or temporary jobs, sometimes multiple
part-time jobs at once. Today the two largest employers in the United States are
Walmart (which hires large numbers of part-time and temporary workers) and
Kelly Services, a temp service (Grabell 2013; Making Change at Walmart 2014;
Schow 2013). Neither part-time nor temporary work provides health care
benefits, paid sick leave or vacation time, pensions, or workers’ compensation.
Today’s workers face limited wage growth in any given job and usually have to
move to new jobs to receive higher wages (Iversen and Armstrong 2006).

Figure 4.3 Since 1939, Manufacturing Jobs Have Declined While Service Jobs
Have Increased

Source: Doug Short, “Charting the Incredible Shift from Manufacturing to

Services in America,” Business Insider, September 5, 2011,
http://www.businessinsider.com/charting-the-incredible-shift-from-
manufacturing-to-services-in-america-2011-9

Types of jobs are often categorized as blue-collar, white-collar, or pink-collar.

Blue-collar jobs traditionally are those involving manual labor, such as in
manufacturing and farming. White-collar jobs are professional as well as
administrative positions, in offices or cubicles, that involve more mental than
physical labor. Pink-collar jobs, so named because of the predominance of
women in these occupations, are primarily sales, service, and entertainment
positions that involve interaction with customers. While the growth of jobs in the
high-tech industry has been assumed to be providing better, higher-paying
positions, the fact is that it has also contributed to growth in the lowest-paying
jobs. We often hear about innovative tech workplaces, where white-collar
employees get free gourmet meals and access to on-site fitness centers, but these
high-paying positions are held by a fraction of the firms’ employees. The growth
in the numbers of outsourced workers in the tech industry has been much larger.
A study of Silicon Valley firms found that growth in jobs increased by 18%
between 1990 and 2014, while growth in potential contract industries grew by
54%. The kinds of labor outsourced to contract workers include food services,
security services, and employment services. By outsourcing these jobs, high-tech
companies avoid paying benefits, including health care, parental leave, child
care, and other perks offered only to employees working directly for the
company. Even some white-collar jobs are now being outsourced in fields such
as accounting and technical consulting; these workers are paid 35% less than
tech firm employees doing comparable work. Outsourcing this labor also
exacerbates the tech industry’s “diversity problem.” The proportion of Blacks
and Latinos working directly for tech firms is only 10%, whereas Blacks and
Latinos make up 26% of contracted white-collar employees and 58% of blue-
collar contract workers, whose average annual pay is just $19,000 (Benner and
Neering 2016; Silicon Valley Rising 2016). Outsourcing as a means of cutting
labor costs is not limited to technology industries; it is a growing practice among
all kinds of employers.
A Disappearing Social Safety Net
Soon after the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, social benefit
programs and social safety net policies that had supported workers and families
through hard times saw their funding slashed under the new Republican
administration. These included food stamps, education aid, and job training
programs, as well as funding for mental health institutions, which led to
increases in the numbers of homeless people (Eitzen and Baca Zinn 2000;
Thomas 1998). At the same time, economic recessions, the shift of jobs away
from manufacturing, stagnation of wages (including the minimum wage), and
other structural factors led to a predicted increase in poverty. Under the Reagan
presidency, from 1981 to 1989, as stable, well-paying manufacturing jobs
disappeared, urban areas declined and became more poverty-ridden. Federal
funds for public housing and rent assistance were cut in half, and 60% of federal
financial support for cities was lost. Public services like hospitals, schools,
libraries, and parks faced drastic funding cuts (Cohen 2014).

The Evolution of Welfare

Welfare is a general term used to refer to policies and programs designed to
support people in great financial need. Food stamps, Social Security and
Medicare benefits, and Medicaid are all examples of welfare. Welfare is meant
to provide a safety net for those who would otherwise be unable to meet their
basic needs for survival. Today, the safety-net social policies established in the
20th century remain under attack, and many more programs are being slowly
dismantled. Changes to welfare under the 1996 Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) replaced the Aid to Families
with Dependent Children (AFDC) program with a new program: Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). For 61 years, very poor women and
children received assistance from the government under AFDC (Eitzen and Baca
Zinn 2000; Neubeck and Cazenave 2001). AFDC benefits were not generous,
and only succeeded in raising 10% of children out of poverty in the 1990s prior
to the program’s elimination. One of the greatest problems with AFDC was that
mothers lost all benefits if they started working, even if their work income could
not cover the costs of child care and basic life necessities. A result was that
welfare recipients were portrayed as people who could not take personal
responsibility for their own well-being. The stereotype of the African American
“welfare queen” having children in order to collect benefits became entrenched
in the popular consciousness (Neubeck and Cazenave 2001; Foster 2008). The
racialization of the image of the welfare recipient and the defining of welfare as
a “Black problem” reduced resistance to the program’s overhaul and the change
to TANF in 1996, but the reality is that while a higher proportion of the Black
population receives assistance, the majority of those on welfare are White
(Morin, Taylor, and Patten 2012).

TANF has helped even fewer people than did AFDC. The often-concealed story
is that welfare recipients now receive less aid and for a shorter period of time,
and they are required to work 30 to 40 hours a week outside the home. Pursuing
further education in order to get a better job is no longer an option for women
receiving TANF, making it very difficult for them to improve their future
opportunities. States now determine who is eligible for benefits, how much they
can receive, and what work requirements are imposed, and states may limit the
number of months families may receive benefits. Unlike in the past, today many
people receiving TANF benefits are already working when they apply. However,
their jobs pay such low wages that they cannot make ends meet.

Collins and Mayer’s (2010) research has found that even as the funding for
government programs for the needy has been cut, such programs have also
increasingly been expected to subsidize the income of the working poor and
provide other safety nets once provided by employers, such as maternity leave
and unemployment and disability insurance. Many costs have been transferred to
taxpayers, while attitudes about the role of public supports have also shifted,
leaving U.S. workers with none of the protections once guaranteed by both the
private (industry) and public (government) sectors.
Marjorie Kamys Cotera/Bob Daemmrich Photography / Alamy Stock Photo

Corporations like Walmart now benefit from government aid to their employees,
which supplements the workers’ meager salaries and allows companies to keep
wages low.

Gilles Mingasson / Getty Images News / Getty Images

Private corporations, rather than private citizens, therefore, are now benefiting
from welfare. Taxpayers are in effect supporting the corporate payrolls of the
nation’s growing number of low-wage service-sector employers (Badger 2015;
Picchi 2015). For example, taxpayers pay an estimated $2.6 billion to support
Walmart employees. Because Walmart pays employees so little and avoids
offering employee benefits, taxpayers are financially supporting these employees
with public assistance in the form of food stamps, subsidized housing, Medicaid,
and more (O’Connor 2014). Local governments have required other aid
recipients to work as strike breakers, taking jobs formerly held by unionized
workers (Piven 2002, 26). These people are defined as “welfare recipients”
rather than as workers, and in this way they are denied the rights other workers
have while their efforts subsidize the labor costs of private business. They cannot
choose their jobs and must find their own child care while they are at “work.”

Welfare, renamed “workfare” under President Clinton, now benefits private

industry, not just workers. In addition, despite the stock story that welfare is an
unfair assistance or “entitlement” program costing our nation too much money, it
is actually the smallest slice of the public assistance pie.

The Demographics of Welfare

When we look at the concealed story of who receives public assistance, we find
that the majority of people in the United States (55%) receive benefits from at
least one of the following government programs at some point in their lives:
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, TANF, unemployment insurance, and food
stamps (Morin et al. 2012).

Did you know that tax breaks such as the Child Tax Credit and the Earned
Income Tax Credit together cost the government $116 billion annually, while
TANF costs $26.5 billion?

Ron Buskirk / Alamy Stock Photo

Census data are collected on only a limited number of direct government

benefits, however. When other public assistance programs are taken into
consideration, it is clear that we all benefit from government assistance. Some
examples of forms of assistance in addition to those listed above are veterans’
benefits, government-subsidized college loans, tax subsidies, and business
subsidies.
Race, Recession, and Recovery
As workers find themselves increasingly on their own, the payoffs for hard work
continue to vary by race, despite attempts to curb racial and gender inequities in
the workplace.

Historically, women and workers of color have been disproportionately

disadvantaged by downward shifts in the economy while continuing to face
outright discrimination (Engemann and Wall 2009; Wilson 1991–92). Over the
past three decades, people of color have lost more economic ground than White
people, especially during the Great Recession of 2008–9 (Farber 2011; Hoynes,
Miller, and Schaller 2012; Sierminska and Takhtamanova 2011). For instance,
African Americans’ unemployment levels were disproportionately affected by
the recession, as Figure 4.4 demonstrates.

From 2005 to 2009, the household median wealth of Whites decreased 16%,
while Blacks lost 53%, and Hispanics 66%. At the same time, class inequality
grew within each racial group, as the wealth of the top 10% of each demographic
increased. The greatest increase was found among Hispanics, where the wealth
of the top 10% increased from 56% to 72%. The proportion of households with
zero or negative wealth grew from 23% to 31% among Hispanics; 12% to 19%
among Asians; 29% to 35% among Blacks; and 11% to 15% among Whites
(Kochhar, Fry, and Taylor 2011). While Asian Americans seem to be the least
affected, once unemployed they endure longer periods of unemployment than
either Whites or Hispanics, and at levels comparable to those of Blacks (U.S.
Department of Labor 2011).

Examining the data intersectionally provides us with a more nuanced

understanding of this number, and which people are affected the most.

Age is important. The highest unemployment rates are found across the
board among those ages 16 to 19. Young adults are facing greater job losses
than those in other age groups and are increasingly living at home with their
parents or other family members as they become less likely to support
themselves (Engemann and Wall 2009; Qian 2012).

Figure 4.4 African Americans’ Unemployment Levels Increased from 2003

to 2010
 Source: U.S. Department of Labor, “The Asian-American Labor Force
in Recovery,” July 22, 2011,
http://www.dol.gov/_sec/media/reports/asianlaborforce.

Gender also matters. Men are more likely to lose their jobs during
recessions, for various reasons, including the fact that women are more
likely to be employed in jobs more immune to cutbacks, such as education
and nursing, and are also paid less than men (Engemann and Wall 2009). As
the economy has recovered, however, men have been quicker to recover
their losses than women have (Kochhar 2011).
Class also plays a role. The gains generated by the recovery have further
exacerbated economic inequality: the percentage of people living below the
poverty line remains worse than it was prior to the recession, and economic
gains have overwhelmingly benefited the wealthiest 1% (Kneebone and
Holmes, 2015; Saez and Zucman 2016; Wolfers 2015). In the past few
years the United States has begun to recover from the Great Recession, but
the recovery has not been shared equally by all families. Fully 100% of the
wealth increase between 2009 and 2011 went to the richest 7%, while
everyone else continued to lose wealth. The ratio of the amount of wealth
owned by the top 7% in comparison to the other 93% of households grew
from 18:1 to 24:1 (Fry and Taylor 2013).
Payday loan and check cashing businesses charge high fees and interest rates but
are often the only option for people living paycheck to paycheck.

Bloomberg / Bloomberg / Getty Images

The effects of both the income gap and the wealth gap are worsened by the fact
that people of color face higher costs of living. Data consistently show that
people of color and poor Whites actually pay higher prices for essential goods
and services, including cars, car insurance, car loans, gasoline, and groceries.
Middle- and upper-class Whites have greater access to mainstream financial
institutions, so they do not have to rely on “payday lenders” or check-cashing
services that charge exorbitantly high interest rates. Further, recent government
policy changes leading to the privatization or defunding of many services,
including schools and institutions of higher education, have resulted in costs
increasingly being passed on to consumers, further exacerbating disparities. For
example, families must now pay for many after-school and sports programs
previously paid for by education funds (Oliver and Shapiro 2006).
The Wage Gap and Occupational Segregation
The wage gap between men and women in the United States has hovered
between 76 cents and 79 cents on the dollar since 2001—that is, on average, a
woman is paid 76–79 cents for every dollar a man is paid. Among working
women and men with professional degrees, the gap is 67% (Council of
Economic Advisers 2015). Gender and race both affect what people can expect
to earn. Figure 4.5 depicts the wage gap as it is shaped by the intersections of
gender and race.

Occupational Segregation
Industry and occupation account for about 20% of the gender wage gap (Council
of Economic Advisers 2015). One reason for the pay gap between races and
genders is occupational segregation. Figure 4.5 illustrates the occupations of
U.S. men and women by race and ethnicity. As this graph reveals, both White
and Asian American men and women are more likely than members of other
racial groups to be employed in management and professional occupations.
Women in every racial category are more likely than men of the same race to be
employed in service jobs, while African Americans and Hispanics have the
highest rates. There are also race and gender income gaps within occupational
categories. In occupations dominated by men as well as occupations dominated
by women, there are wage gaps benefiting men.

Figure 4.5 highlights the intersection of race and gender within occupational
categories, as well as the wage gap for each group, telling us more than we could
learn by focusing on race or gender alone. The inequality we find within
occupational categories tells us that occupation is only one factor affecting wage
inequality. One source of inequality within an occupation is what is commonly
referred to as the “glass ceiling.” The metaphor of the glass ceiling represents the
limit to women’s advancement within their occupations. They can see the top
levels of management above them, but rarely can they break through the glass to
join them. Considering the ways in which women’s experiences further differ by
race: Women of color are said to encounter a nearly impenetrable “concrete
ceiling,” barring them not only from the upper echelons of power but from
middle management as well. One barrier most women of color encounter is a
lack of mentoring and access to role models and influential people (Moore and
Jones 2001; West 1999). As noted in Chapter 2, some scholars have expanded
the metaphor of the glass ceiling to argue that many women face a “triple glass
ceiling” as a result of discrimination based on gender, race, and class. Another
factor that has a negative impact on women is wage discrimination related to
parenthood; women with children often earn less than childless women, whereas
income tends to increase for men who have children. Further, the lack of paid
parental leave has a negative impact on women’s long-term salaries and careers
(Council of Economic Advisers 2015).

Figure 4.5 Occupations are Segregated by Gender, Race, and Ethnicity

Source: Table 3, p. 6 in Institute for Women’s Policy Research, “The

Gender Wage Gap by Occupation 2015 and by Race and Ethnicity.” Fact
Sheet, IWPR #C440. April 2016. https://iwpr.org/wp-
content/uploads/wpallimport/files/iwpr-export/publications/C440.pdf.
Reprinted with permission from Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
 Note: Data for White workers are for Whites alone, non-Hispanic; data for
Black and Asian workers may include Hispanics. Hispanics may be of any
race.

When we compare the United States with other developed nations, it ranks last
in terms of workers’ benefits. The United States guarantees workers no paid
holidays or other days off from work, and no paid sick leave or parental leave.
While on the face of it this social policy is bad news for all American workers,
an often-concealed story is the differential impact it has on various social groups.
For example, low-income families and single parents (often women) whose
employers choose not to offer these benefits lose proportionally more income
than other workers when they must either pay extra child-care costs or take
unpaid days off on national holidays, when schools are closed, or when family
emergencies or illnesses require extended absences from work.
 Critical Thinking

1. Consider the ways wealth is transmitted over generations. How does this process contribute to the
growing racial wealth gap? What can be done to decrease persistent racial wealth inequality?
2. What factors do you think contribute to ongoing occupational segregation?
3. Why does wealth play a more important role than income in the perpetuation of racial inequality?
4. How would you support yourself on $2.00 per day? Where would you live? Where would you get
food? Health care? Would you be able to remain in school?
Theories of Economic Inequality
The myth of the American Dream is perhaps nowhere more deeply entrenched
than in the institution of work. For hundreds of years, immigrants have come to
the United States seeking economic opportunity and a chance at prosperity.
“Work hard and you will be rewarded,” we are told. As for those who do not
succeed, well, they must be doing something wrong. How true is this stock
story? Is success equally available to everyone in our society?
Neoliberal Theory
Relying on the stock stories we are told about economic success, we tend to
blame individuals, or their cultures, for their lack of achievement. This stock
story of the American Dream has become “common sense” for many of us—it
pervades the media and, often, educational curricula. However, it fails to
consider the broader social context.

This stock story is based on neoliberal theory (sometimes referred to as market

fundamentalism), which is a foundational perspective that shapes global
economic policy today. According to the World Health Organization, neoliberal
theory embraces individualism, free markets, free trade, and limited government
intervention or regulation. This approach assumes the following:

Corporations and businesses (including banking) should be free from

national and global governmental intervention and policy in order to pursue
maximum growth and profit.
Free trade benefits everyone, including all nations and their peoples.
Privatization of many government institutions can save money and increase
efficiency.
Individual behavior is the cause of economic inequality, and
redistributionist policies and taxes are unfair.

Neoliberal thinking has pervaded U.S. politics, affecting both Republicans and
Democrats to varying degrees. The pervasive narratives that result from
neoliberal theory include the following assumptions:

The United States is a meritocracy, and wealth is the product of an

individual’s hard work and savings; consequently, those who are poor are
lazy, don’t want to work, or make poor choices. For example, a neoliberal
theorist might argue that women make choices that lead to their lower pay,
such as choosing not to pursue higher education, taking lower-paying jobs,
and seeking time off to raise children.
Discrimination on the basis of race or sex is now illegal, so poverty and
inequitable employment outcomes are blamed on individual or cultural
characteristics (Tilbury and Colic-Peisker 2006).
The fact that some racial and ethnic minority groups have achieved success
 and assimilated into the dominant U.S. culture demonstrates that certain
cultures value education and hard work while others do not (Chua and
Rubenfeld 2014).
There may be lingering individual prejudices and discrimination, but these
will decrease with time.

Neoliberal theory is an oppression-blind approach in that it sees the world in

terms of individual choice and a level playing field, and it assumes that the
market is objective. It assumes that the economy and work institutions do not
operate to the benefit or detriment of any specific groups, and that upturns and
downturns affect everyone equally, independent of social identities such as race,
gender, age, and sexual or gender identity (Ferber 2014). We know from our
review of recent trends that this is not the case. Yet so long as people believe that
inequality is a result more of individual behavior than of entrenched social
structures, they are unlikely to support the implementation of policy solutions.
Marxist Theories
The other major stock story about economic inequality is rooted in Marxist
theories, which emphasize class inequality. Karl Marx (1818–83) examined the
impact of economic change, such as the shift from land-based feudalism to
manufacturing-based industrialization, on class relations and social conditions.
He famously declared, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history
of class struggles” (Marx [1848] 2001, 91). Industrialization introduced factory
and machinery work, and the rise of the working class, a social group whose
members became ever-cheaper commodities themselves. Workers became
interchangeable and devalued. The products of the worker’s labor were no
longer her or his own, but were sold by factory owners in the marketplace for
their own profit.

A plethora of Marxist approaches have been developed over the years, offering
explanations of class inequality—the growing gap between the wealthy and the
poor, and the decreasing wealth and power of the middle class. Some scholars
have used Marxist, class-based approaches to explain racial economic inequality.
However, in these explanations class relations are always seen as primary and
foundational. For example, later scholars influenced by Marx have argued that
economic institutions and competition produce racial and ethnic conflict and
inequity. Bonacich (1972) asserts that prejudice and discrimination are not
responsible for economic inequity; rather, such inequity is a result of the priority
of paying less and less for labor. This leads to a split labor market, where racial
and ethnic minority workers compete for jobs and higher-paid earners, largely
White, protect their jobs and wages (often through unions) by excluding new
groups (often minorities) entering the labor market from the higher-paying jobs.
In their analyses, Marxist approaches prioritize class relations and inequality as
most central to understanding all forms of inequality (including racial and
gender inequality). This has been critiqued as a limited way to view race and
gender relations. However, Marxist theorists importantly emphasize the role of
economic production and restructuring in producing inequality, explaining some
of the data we have examined above.

While many sociological theories of inequality exist, these two popular

analytical approaches—neoliberal and Marxist—provide examples of two stock
stories that differ in significant ways. One focuses on individual behaviors and
cultural values. The other instead emphasizes the role of the economy in class
conflict to explain economic inequality. Based on the tenets of the matrix
framework, we would argue that both stock stories are insufficient for explaining
the recent trend of growing racial inequality. We turn now to an application of
the matrix approach and examine this theory’s contributions.
 Critical Thinking

1. Based on the recent trends examined earlier in this chapter, critique both of the stock stories we have
reviewed. What limitations do you see in each theoretical approach?
2. Provide at least four examples of where and how neoliberal theory is reinforced in American society.
Be specific.
3. Which of the two stock stories, that of neoliberal theory or that of Marxist theory, do you think
provides more insight into the phenomenon of economic racial inequality? Why?
4. Do you believe the United States is a meritocracy? Defend your answer.
Applying the Matrix tothe History of Economic
Inequality in the United States
Throughout this chapter, we are implementing a matrix approach to
understanding economic inequality. This approach assumes the following:

1. Race is inherently social. The processes that are reproducing racial

inequities are at the same time reproducing racial classifications as
meaningful categories into which people are divided. Every time a policy is
applied inequitably or employers or lenders invoke stereotypes and biases
and discriminate against people of color, these acts are actively giving
meaning to racial classifications.
2. Race is institutional and structural. We have seen how changes in the
economy and occupations contribute to racial inequality, whether
intentional or not. As we move on to examine history, we will see the
foundational structures that have shaped racial inequality over time.
3. Race is a narrative. We have just reviewed the two prominent stock
theoretical stories that shape the way most people interpret economic
inequality. We have also glimpsed some of the concealed stories in our look
at recent trends. For example, while we may celebrate the economic
recovery from the Great Recession, one concealed story is that it is only the
very wealthy who have benefited. In the following sections, we will discuss
further concealed and resistance stories that have informed the creation of
emerging transformative stories.
4. Racial identity is relational and intersectional. Throughout this chapter we
examine many examples of the ways in which race is intersected and
complicated by other social identity positions, such as gender and age. We
are seeing that data on race can always be broken down further to reveal
more detail and nuance.
5. We are active agents in the matrix. As we enter the workforce we play a
role, whether we want to or not, in reproducing or challenging assumptions
about constructed racial differences that reproduce inequality. For example,
gender and racial wage gaps can be found among faculty on many college
and university campuses. Students can play a role in highlighting and
finding solutions to this problem.
From a matrix perspective, the historical context is essential to any
understanding of how we got to where we are today. Historical trends inform
recent trends. An intersectional examination of history provides a more nuanced
and complex picture of the experiences of racialized groups. Not every member
of a racialized group has experienced economic inequality in the same ways,
especially when other significant social identities are taken into account.
The Shifting Organization of Work and Wealth
In the 17th-century American colonies, wealthy landholding Whites built
plantations on which nonwealthy people began to work for others rather than for
themselves, sometimes for limited periods, and sometimes for life. Indentured
servants, brought from Europe, were legally bound to work for their masters for
a set number of years. Slaves, brought forcefully from Africa, were initially
indentured servants, but soon became legally defined as property, or chattel,
owned by their masters for life. Chattel slavery defined the children of slaves as
their owners’ property as well (Amott and Matthaei 1996, 292).

Slavery and the Colonial Economy

As the colonies were established, slavery was widespread. Smaller numbers of
Native Americans were forced into slavery, and some even owned slaves
themselves, but the vast majority of slave owners were White, and most slaves
were Africans.

Both slave owners and entire towns and cities profited from the use of slave
labor on southern sugar, tobacco, rice, and cotton plantations. Slavery was also
closely linked to economic development in the northern states, even when the
practice itself was banned. Northern banking, finance, insurance, and other
industries helped fund and insure the importation and sale of slaves and the
products of slave labor. Northern shipbuilders made ships to carry slaves and the
commodities they produced. Before it became home to the stock market, New
York City held major slave auctions, and in the early 18th century, almost 40%
of European American households in New York owned slaves. There were about
40,000 slaves in the United States in the 1770s, and by 1865, that number had
increased to 4 million. Between 1770 and 1850, slaves were as large a source of
capital as agricultural land in the United States (Piketty 2014).

Slave labor, and the wealth it generated, also fueled the Industrial Revolution in
Europe and the Americas. The textile industry, for example, depended on the
low-cost cotton grown on slave plantations (Feagin 2000). The wealth of the
nation, and of its White citizens, grew as a result of slavery and was passed from
one generation to the next. African Americans were denied the opportunity to
earn any income or wealth from their own labor for hundreds of years. This
provides one clue to the origins of the current dramatic White/Black racial
wealth gap.

From Slavery to Sharecropping

Following the Civil War, poor Whites in the South feared job competition from
newly freed Blacks, and landowners balked at paying wages to former slaves.
These concerns led to the development of Jim Crow segregation and legalized
discrimination, which allowed Blacks to be barred from many jobs and to be
paid much less than Whites for the jobs they were able to get. Former slaves
took on contract labor as sharecroppers or domestic workers (Conrad 1982). In
the South, poor Whites also had few options but to become sharecroppers.

African American artist Elizabeth Catlett’s 1970 painting captures this

anonymous sharecropper’s difficult life in the lines of her face, but also her
strength and dignity. Throughout history, many oppressed peoples have turned to
art as a means of revealing concealed stories and actively resisting the dominant
stock stories.

Art  Catlett Mora Family Trust / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Western Expansion and Economic Inequality

The western lands taken from Mexico and Native American tribes were offered
in parcels to White homesteaders, but over time these lands became concentrated
in the hands of elite Whites, and small family farmers were pushed into working
for large landowners (Conrad 1982). Mexicans dispossessed of their lands were
also reduced to sharecropping, tenant farming, and migrant farming. Native
Americans who lost their lands engaged in subsistence farming, or farming for
self-sufficiency, and ranching on the small areas to which they were removed. In
the West, Asians were imported to work on plantations, mines, and the
transcontinental railroad, but it was illegal for them to own land. They were
often contract workers sent back to their countries of origin once their contracts
were up.

The Industrial Revolution and the Shifting Economy

Throughout the 1800s, in Europe and the United States, the Industrial
Revolution gained momentum, advancing the transition to a wage-based
economy and capitalism. Jobs slowly shifted out of agriculture and into the
rapidly growing and better-paying manufacturing sector in the cities. The
majority of men and women of color, however, remained in agriculture and
domestic labor, the lowest-paying and least secure jobs (Amott and Matthaei
1996). In 1890, half of all African American women (and one-third of African
American men) worked in domestic labor and personal service (Amott and
Matthaei 1996).

People worked largely in segregated workplaces, among others whose race,

gender, and class status were similar to their own. Better-paying jobs in textile
mills, as opposed to garment work done at home, were monopolized by White
women and men, most often recent immigrants. In the 1800s and early 1900s,
the earliest urban factories employed the daughters of poor White families and
European immigrants fleeing poverty and political persecution. While these were
opportunities often denied to African Americans and other people of color
already in the United States, that does not mean the work was easy. Indeed, it
was unregulated and extremely dangerous; long hours, health and safety risks,
and very low wages were the norm.

Mining conditions were just as dismal. The families of mine workers lived in
shanties in “company towns” and were allowed to shop only at the company
store, which they became indebted to. Many miners were killed in accidents, and
the injured were often fired. Workers fought for the right to organize into labor
unions, but mine owners had huge amounts of wealth to invest in antiunion
activity and to influence policy makers, lawmakers, and law enforcement. In
1931, one of the bloodiest battles between miners and mine owners ever seen in
the United States took place in Harlan County, Kentucky; these events have
come to be memorialized as the “Harlan County War.” In addition to poor
Whites, there were large numbers of Chinese immigrant miners (who were
charged a special “foreigner tax”).

Many Blacks moved from agriculture into mining as well during the Great
Migration of 1910 to 1970 (Fishback 1984), when approximately 6 million
African Americans left the South for jobs and other opportunities in the
Northeast, the Midwest, and the West (Wilkerson 2010). Factory jobs also began
to open up to African Americans during World War I. White workers in the
North thus increasingly faced competition not only from European immigrants
but also from African Americans leaving the rural South in search of jobs. Many
feared their privileged access to work would be undercut by cheaper labor. In the
late 1910s and the 1920s, White mobs started race riots in many cities, trying to
push African Americans out of town (Amott and Matthaei 1996).

The Rise of Labor Unions

Some early labor unions welcomed both White and Black workers, including the
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), but many embraced discriminatory
practices. Whites-only unions strove to exclude all people of color to protect
their White members’ privileged access to jobs and to expand the unions’ ranks
and power (Hill 1985; Kolchin 2002). Arriving immigrants worked to
differentiate themselves from African Americans in order to gain acceptance as
Whites, and the labor movement played a central role in this process (Brodkin
1998; Ignatiev 2008). W. E. B. Du Bois (1918) fought the American Federation
of Labor’s (AFL) practice of excluding Black workers, arguing that the union
was reinforcing employer practices that pitted White and Black workers against
one another.

During the Great Migration, millions of Blacks moved out of the South in
pursuit of better jobs and opportunities, like those offered in the auto factories in
Detroit.

Bettmann / Bettmann / Getty Images

History is replete with stories of resistance among workers. Excluded from the
AFL, many Blacks built their own labor organizations. One of the best known
and most successful was the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, founded in
1925 under the leadership of A. Philip Randolph. The porters worked as
attendants on overnight trains, in servile roles attending to the personal needs of
White passengers, for as many as 100 hours a week, until the Brotherhood
eventually won shorter hours and higher pay.

While the location and organization of work have shifted from farms to cities
and from mercantilism to capitalism through the course of U.S. history, race,
class, and gender inequality has remained a constant. To combat the extent of
inequality, especially based on class, various government policies have
attempted to intervene in these dynamics. We now turn to an examination of
some of these policies and their results.
The Effects of Social Policy
From colonial days to the 20th century, most people toiled in deplorable working
conditions just to survive. Largely thanks to union organizing in the 20th
century, the United States, along with most other Western nations, instituted
child labor laws, health and safety standards, a minimum wage, welfare
programs, income protection in case of work-related injuries and disabilities,
unemployment benefits, and other safety nets (Collins and Mayer 2010). Race
and racial discrimination had become so ingrained in our nation, however, that
many of the new policy solutions did not benefit all workers equally.

The New Deal

In response to the Great Depression (1929–39), the U.S. Congress, at the urging
of President Franklin Roosevelt, passed a series of laws in the mid-1930s to
provide economic relief and institute banking reform. Among other programs,
this New Deal created a federal minimum wage, Social Security, and Aid to
Families with Dependent Children. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, President
Harry Truman’s Fair Deal sought to protect workers from unfair employment
practices, raised the minimum wage, provided housing assistance, and more.
Both the New Deal and the Fair Deal, however, were not created to serve Whites
and people of color equally, and benefits were commonly distributed in a
discriminatory manner (Katznelson 2005, 17). For example, in identifying
categories of workers to be protected by New Deal legislation, legislators
excluded farmworkers and domestic laborers, two groups that together
accounted for more than 60% of working African Americans. Further, the
administration of AFDC was put into the hands of local officers, who could
choose who was “worthy” of aid and who was capable of working. Thus White
women were more likely than women of color to receive aid (Amott and
Matthaei 1996).

The GI Bill of Rights

The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, commonly known as the GI Bill of Rights
or simply the GI Bill, passed by Congress in 1944, was perhaps the most far-
reaching social welfare program in U.S. history. This legislation included
provisions for low-cost guaranteed loans for college degrees, new homes, and
businesses; job training; and unemployment benefits. It had an enormous impact
on education and economic mobility and was to a great extent responsible for the
development of a large American middle class. On the eve of World War II, the
United States was producing approximately 160,000 college graduates per year.
By 1955, some 2.25 million veterans alone had received higher education under
the GI Bill (Katznelson 2005, 116).

While it was touted as an egalitarian plan and did help to create a new Black
middle class, the GI Bill also failed to challenge discrimination and in fact
increased the wealth gap. Battles over the racial distribution of benefits were
waged in the drafting of the legislation, and those arguing for federal
administration of the plan, which would ensure equal distribution, lost to those
who wanted to place the distribution of federal funds in the hands of state and
local governments. Benefits had to be approved by the mostly White-staffed
local Veterans Administration centers. In the context of Jim Crow segregation
and discrimination, southern Black veterans did not receive the same benefits as
White veterans (Katznelson 2005, 128).

Numerous other obstacles to equity existed as well. Within a segregated school

system, there were not enough Black colleges to serve all the Black veterans
seeking a higher education. Job training programs required that applicants have
employers willing to provide them with jobs after the training, but legal job
discrimination made this almost impossible for the majority of Blacks. And
housing loans for veterans were administered by banks, the majority of which
refused to make loans to African Americans. So while in theory the benefits of
the GI Bill were available to all veterans, in practice many were largely
accessible only by Whites. It is frequently the case that well-intentioned
programs designed to benefit everyone can end up reproducing racial or gender
inequality, especially when those who design the programs ignore widespread,
ongoing discrimination.

The Civil Rights Act

It was not until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which also
established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), that
discrimination in employment became illegal if based on race, color, national
origin, sex, or religion. As part of a compromise to get the Civil Rights Act
passed, the EEOC was given no power to enforce antidiscrimination laws. For
example, one-third of the complaints filed with the EEOC in the agency’s first
year involved sex discrimination; the EEOC’s lack of action on these complaints
inspired the formation of the National Organization for Women (NOW)
(Freeman 1991). This act also challenged the notion of the man as the family’s
sole breadwinner. Prior to this time, employers assumed that their male
employees were married, with families to support, and a middle-class White man
was generally paid enough to support a family. Labor unions pushed strongly for
this approach. However, with the Civil Rights Act’s elimination of many
barriers, there was a shift away from the notion that the father alone was
responsible for supporting the family and toward a model of the “solitary wage.”
This meant a drop in wages, the increasing necessity for both parents in two-
parent families to work, and more challenges for single parents.

This pay chart used by a New Orleans school district in 1942 documents the
widespread overt and legal pay discrimination practiced before the Civil Rights
Act of 1964.

Amistad Research Center, Tulane University. Used with permission.

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty, prompting the
creation of the Office of Economic Opportunity, the initiation of Medicare and
Medicaid, the expansion of food aid with the Food Stamp Act, and more. This
period made clear that the government does have the ability to improve the
welfare of its citizens, and to decrease the tremendous wealth gap (Cohen 2014).
Many of these policies were later eliminated, ensuring that poverty remained the
reality for millions in the United States, especially children.
The Americans with Disabilities Act
While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned some forms of discrimination, it did
not protect everyone. In 1990, the passage of the Americans with Disabilities
Act (ADA) for the first time extended that protection to those with disabilities,
making it possible for them to have access to jobs and participate more fully in
public life. The ADA “prohibits discrimination and ensures equal opportunity for
persons with disabilities in employment, State and local government services,
public accommodations, commercial facilities, and transportation” (U.S.
Department of Justice 2010). Under President Trump, the White House has
removed all information about the ADA from its website, leaving many people
with disabilities fearing that their rights could be curtailed in the future.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of every race are still fighting for
this same level of protection. In most states it is still legal to fire an employee
based on sexual or gender identity, and many companies refuse to hire gay or
lesbian employees (Bernard 2013). New challenges to protecting LGBT people
from discrimination have arisen in the past few years. Those opposing equal
rights for LGBT people are framing their opposition as a religious right. They
argue that the religious freedom guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution includes the
right to discriminate on religious grounds, not only in employment but also in
sales and services to LGBT people. Some states, like North Carolina and
Mississippi, have recently passed laws allowing businesses to refuse, on
religious grounds, to sell products or provide basic services—such as apartment
rentals, counseling, and service in restaurants and shops—to LGBT people.

This very brief overview highlights the importance of historical context for an
understanding of contemporary inequality, especially when it comes to wealth.
We have seen the tremendous race, class, and gender wealth gaps that exist
today. Many are perplexed when it comes to the causes of these gaps and resort
to blaming the victims. The more we learn about our nation’s racial history,
however, the better we can understand the origins of these gaps and how they
have been reproduced and even widened over time, and the less likely we are to
see wealth inequality as an individual problem. It is essential that we have this
full picture before we can come up with solutions.
 Critical Thinking

1. How does the brief overview of history above inform your views of neoliberal, Marxist, and matrix
theories? Be specific.
2. How do you think the racial inequality examined in this chapter has contributed to building the
wealth and development of our nation?
3. What stock stories persist today about early immigrants representing specific minority groups?
Provide examples.
4. In our application of the matrix perspective to the history of economic inequality, can you find
insights that apply to your own family history? (You may need to talk with older family members to
learn more about your family history.)
Transforming the Story of Race and Economic
Inequality
Emergent and transformative stories grow out of a deeper examination of the
versions of reality depicted in stock stories. We will begin this final section by
examining two concealed stories that add another dimension to the history and
recent trends in income and wealth inequality discussed above.

None of the stock stories discuss the role of discrimination in reproducing

economic inequality. While neoliberalism refers to individual discrimination, in
the sense that there are still a few bad apples to be dealt with, the concealed story
is much larger. Marxist theories also do not explain ongoing racial
discrimination, unless it is in the service of addressing class inequality. The
matrix approach, however, brings this piece of the picture into focus. Our
discussion of discrimination here will treat racial discrimination as an
institutional problem actively reproduced on an ongoing basis, and an issue that
should be approached intersectionally.
Workplace Discrimination
We have already examined numerous pieces of the puzzle, including shifts in the
organization of the economy, occupational segregation, policy, and history.
However, these factors do not fully account for the racial income and wealth
gaps. Researchers conclude that the concealed story of continuing discrimination
must also be examined (American Association of University Women 2014).

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made discrimination based on race, color, religion,
sex, or national origin illegal, and also banned formal, public segregation.
Nevertheless, racial discrimination in housing and employment remain
widespread social problems. Many studies have documented continuing
discrimination in the housing market (Flippen and Parrado 2015; Freiberg and
Squires 2015; Oliveri 2009; Pager and Shepherd 2008). Homeownership has
traditionally led to the accumulation of wealth and was long denied to many
groups of people of color, especially African Americans. Further, the increase in
housing costs since the 1960s has hit the lower class, and people of color,
disproportionally. When the housing bubble burst in the 2000s, millions of
families lost their homes, and it is estimated that less than a third of them will
become homeowners again (Kusisto 2015). We know that homeownership is
important to the wealth gap (Foster and Kleit 2015). Overt discrimination in
lending and housing segregation still remain widespread. Large numbers of
White neighborhoods seek to keep their communities White (Rahill 2015).
Continuing segregation not only decreases wealth accumulation by the groups
most affected but also affects job availability and income (Moore 2016). For
example, many African Americans remain stuck in urban ghettos, where jobs
have disappeared (Moore 2016; Wilson 1996).

Not all discrimination is conscious or blatant; much of it is very subtle, covert,

and institutionalized. Some scholars have identified what they call the “minority
vulnerability thesis,” suggesting “that segregation, job networks, and ostensibly
race-neutral employer decision making continue to put minority workers in
situations of vulnerability when it comes to hiring, mobility, and firing”
(Roscigno, Williams, and Byron 2012, 697; see also Pager, Western, and
Bonikowski 2009; Roscigno 2007).

What happens when someone enters the job market? Most jobs are not
advertised; in fact, approximately 80% are filled without being advertised, as
employers rely on their own social networks and those of people they know for
their candidate pools (Dickler 2009; Kaufman 2011). Thus, employers in
occupations where people of color are already underrepresented effectively
(even if inadvertently) limit the number of people of color who apply, making it
particularly difficult for them to move into these fields. Other employers practice
selective recruitment by placing job ads (when they advertise at all) not in major
metropolitan newspapers but in White neighborhood, suburban, or White ethnic
newspapers, or by choosing specific organizations, schools, or neighborhoods
from which to recruit. Many employers avoid state employment services,
welfare offices, and schools in certain neighborhoods when looking for job
candidates (Roscigno et al. 2012).

What happens when job applicants are screened? Research finds especially
strong anti-Black and anti-Hispanic attitudes among employers (Bertrand and
Mullainathan 2003; Doob 2005; Pager 2007, 2008; Pager et al. 2009; Pager and
Western 2012). Employers often focus their recruitment efforts on White
neighborhoods (Neckerman and Kirschenman 1991). Kirschenman and
Neckerman (1991) and Pager (2008) found that employers have many biased
attitudes about young inner-city Black males, assuming they will be difficult and
unstable workers. Many employers engage in statistical discrimination, relying
on stereotypes about race, ethnicity, and class in judging applicants’ likely
productivity (Wilson 1991–92; Pager and Western 2012). Research in the
Netherlands found similar results: Employers valued candidates who were
young, healthy, male, and native Dutch, independent of level of education or
experience. Further, employers at times choose to invoke soft skills (personality
traits) in hiring and promotion decisions as a means of masking prejudice and
discrimination (Ortiz and Roscigno 2009; Roscigno et al. 2012). In recent years,
access to images and other information about job candidates online has also led
to discrimination in the hiring process (McDonald 2015).

Many experimental studies, or audits, have been conducted using testers, where
people of various races are recruited to pose as applicants for jobs and are given
near-identical résumés to present to prospective employers (Pager and Western
2012). Similar studies have been conducted to document discrimination in other
practices, such as mortgage lending. These studies consistently reveal
discriminatory practices. Let’s examine a few examples.

Pager and her colleagues (2009) conducted a field experiment with White,
Black, and Latino job applicants seeking low-wage work in New York City.
Equivalent résumés were created for each set of three testers, White, Black, and
Latino, who were also matched on demographic characteristics as well as
interpersonal skills. The researchers found that White testers were twice as likely
as equally qualified Blacks to receive either a callback or a job offer. White
applicants whose résumés said they had just been released from prison were just
as likely to be hired as Black and Latino applicants with no criminal records.

In another well-known controlled experimental study, researchers sent out

fictitious résumés that were identical except for the names on top. The invented
applicants with White-sounding names (Emily and Greg) needed to send about
10 résumés for each callback they received, while those with African American–
sounding names (Lakisha and Jamal) needed to send 15. The authors concluded
that a White-sounding name yields as many additional callbacks as does an
additional 8 years of experience, and they found the same statistically significant
level of differences across all occupational categories and industries. They also
found that race shapes the returns on other qualifications. For example, a higher-
quality résumé, additional years of education, and an address in a wealthier
neighborhood led to higher percentages of callbacks for those with White names
than it did for those with stereotypically African American–sounding names
(Bertrand and Mullainathan 2003). Other research has found that, like having an
ethnic name, having a Spanish accent reduces an applicant’s chances on the job
market (Hosoda, Nguyen, and Stone-Romero 2012).

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, negative attitudes toward and
discrimination against Muslims (and others who are mistaken as Muslim) have
dramatically increased, including in the workplace (Greenhouse 2010;
Greenberg 2013). In two experiments conducted in Sweden, résumés with
stereotypically Muslim-sounding names were significantly less likely to receive
callbacks than those with White-sounding names (Rooth 2010). Researchers
have found similar patterns of prejudice and discrimination among employers in
many Western nations today, often involving applicants who are non-European,
Muslim, or Jewish (Eriksson, Johansson, and Langenskiöld 2012, King and
Ahmad 2010). Experimental studies like these have also been used to document
discrimination against gay men (Tilcsik 2011).

Imagine that someone has finally made it past all barriers and landed a job. For
people of color, mistakes at work are more likely to be attributed to individual
deficiency and taken as confirmation of stereotypes, whereas for Whites,
mistakes are more often attributed to the situational context (“He was having a
bad day”). People of color may be seen as tokens and assumed to be the
beneficiaries of affirmative action policies established to meet government
funding requirements (U.S. Department of Labor 2001; we discuss affirmative
action in more depth later in this chapter). Those seen as tokens are more likely
to experience sexual and racial harassment, a hostile or unwelcoming climate,
and increased levels of stress on the job. They have fewer opportunities to
develop the social networks that help people advance through the ranks, often
face different expectations, and have fewer opportunities to be mentored (Ortiz
and Roscigno 2009; Roscigno et al. 2012; Wingfield 2012).

Nor have demographics at the top levels of corporations changed very much.
Even among middle- and upper-class people of color, barriers persist. Today
there is a larger Black middle class than ever before, but its members are more
likely than their White counterparts to encounter job ceilings, slowed job
mobility, and discrimination (Higginbotham 2001; Mong and Roscigno 2010;
Roscigno et al. 2012; Wingfield 2012).

Finally, firing is the most frequently reported form of racial discrimination in the
workplace (Roscigno et al. 2012; Couch and Fairlie 2010). Seemingly neutral
policies such as “last hired, first fired” are more likely to affect women and
people of color because they have only recently made inroads into many
occupations.
Immigration Stories
While data are extremely important, there are other kinds of concealed stories as
well. It can be difficult to see the nuance and complexity behind the numbers. In
many of the charts and figures we have examined in this chapter, Asian
Americans seem to be doing as well as, if not better than, Whites. Why?
According to the stock story, Asian Americans are a “model minority”; they
work hard, value education, and have been able to “pull themselves up by their
bootstraps.” This stock story is often pointed to as evidence that minority group
success is based on culture and work ethic, and that the greatest problems
African Americans and Latino/as face stem from their cultures.

However, the picture is more complicated than the stock story suggests. First,
among Asian Americans, a “household” often includes more workers than the
average White household does. Further, many Asians own family businesses
where teens and other relatives work, thus contributing the labor of additional
workers to the total household income and wealth. Even more important, we
must keep in mind that the category of “Asian American” is a social construct,
encompassing a very diverse group of cultures with origins in many different
nations. The overarching category conceals tremendous diversity within,
including inequality in employment, income, and wealth. For example, 76% of
Indian Americans have a college degree, a much higher proportion than is found
in any other Asian American ethnic group. Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders have
a college graduation rate of only 26%. Similarly, employment and poverty rates
vary greatly among Asian American ethnic groups (U.S. Department of Labor
2014).

The concealed story reveals that various contextual factors can help explain
these differences, especially year of immigration and levels of education and
assets accumulated before immigration. After the Immigration Act of 1965
opened the doors to immigrants from more varied countries, the United States
put in place occupational preferences, making it easier for immigrants with high
levels of education and skills in desired fields to become U.S. citizens. These
immigrants, coming from specific countries like India, are able to move into
relatively high-paying jobs upon arrival, and they have also brought more
education and resources with them (Pew Research Center 2012; Zong and
Batalova 2015). The Immigration Act of 1990 furthered these preferences. It is
largely social and structural factors, not cultural ones, that explain economic
success (Zong and Batalova 2015). The situation for recent Asian immigrants
contrasts sharply with conditions faced by Mexican immigrants, also drawn here
by the prospects of immediate, but low-skilled, employment, yet facing many
obstacles to the achievement of legal status and permanent citizenship. There is
no single pathway by which immigrants can gain work visas or become U.S.
citizens; immigration policies and their implementation vary based on
nationality, class, refugee status, and other factors. It is important to understand
this in order to make sense of current debates over immigration policy.

Many Asian American families own businesses, like restaurants, where relatives
can find jobs.

Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times / Getty Images

Resistance/Story
 PaKou Her and 18 Million Rising
PaKou Her is the campaign director for 18 Million Rising, an organization of activists, artists,
and print and social media outlets founded to promote the civic engagement and influence of
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) using the power of technology and social
media. In response to our request for her story, she writes:

I entered the world of racial justice organizing in the hopes of being useful, and to
challenge the ways in which Asian Americans are socialized into being the Model
Minority. I desired to have utility and service to other People of Color in leadership
given the relative power and privilege of being Asian American in the white
supremacist racial strata. Of being both profiled as “other” while simultaneously not
having to wear the same dehumanized dark face at the end of a police officer’s gun. Of
not having to carry the multigenerational legacy and body memory of enslavement and
genocide. Of . . . so much.

The questions I carry about how to show up, be useful, and build solidarity exist beyond
single protests or fleeting moments of political action. In the story of race in this nation,
there is an Asian American narrative to disrupt: the one that frames Asians as the
“model minority,” the actors in a play that leverages us as a wedge against other People
of Color that invisiblizes our racial reality while negating those of others. Participating
in anti-racism organizing is an opportunity to engage in what ChangeLab’s Soya Jung
and Scot Nakagawa call a “Model Minority Mutiny.”

But among progressive Asian Americans I often see an earnestness that borders on the
sharp edge of trying too hard. I begin to see what appears to be an exaggerated AAPI
performance of allyship that is as much about the unspoken shame surrounding the
power and privilege granted on us as the Model Minority as it is about a true, deep
desire for solidarity with other folks of color.

I see this performative solidarity and have to ask myself, “Am I doing this, too?” I’m
not always sure of the answer. But I stay in the fight despite my fears of misstepping
because—irrespective of the preassigned racial script—Asians are here for the struggle,
too, and it’s our obligation to be Model Minority Mutineers.

While immigrants themselves often face discrimination and criticism, we are

much less likely to hear criticism of the corporations that hire undocumented
labor to avoid paying minimum wage and benefits and to avoid complying with
labor laws that limit the numbers of hours employees can work. Undocumented
immigrants come to the United States because there are plentiful jobs awaiting
them.

Immigration to the United States has always been limited by various factors,
including skill level and country of origin. Currently, having an immediate
family member who is a U.S. citizen is one category under which a prospective
immigrant may apply for a visa; another category is that of refugee. Temporary
work visas may also be granted to some immigrants; these are generally set aside
for highly skilled workers. Some immigrants may be granted the status of
permanent employment-based residence (these individuals are given the right to
live here permanently without becoming U.S. citizens).

Permanent Immigration
For the first 100 years of U.S. history, the nation set no limits on immigration;
anyone could enter the United States. Today, the number of visas granted for
permanent employment-based residency is set at 140,000 per year, and these are
divided into five preferences based on skill, profession, and money to invest in
the United States (American Immigration Council 2016). Further, there are caps
on the numbers of immigrants accepted from individual countries. These
requirements make it extremely difficult for uneducated poor people to
immigrate to the United States, as our coauthor Abby’s own great-grandparents
did, and likely many of yours as well.

In addition to being stereotyped as lawbreakers who simply ignored legal

opportunities to immigrate, Latino immigrants are often mistakenly blamed for
stealing jobs from U.S. citizens, especially minority Americans. One often-cited
explanation for minority joblessness is employers’ willingness to hire
undocumented immigrants at lower wages. While this might sounds like a
simple, commonsense assumption, this stock story is unsupported by the
research. Rather, minority joblessness is the result of the economic restructuring
and ongoing discrimination we have already examined. Generally speaking,
undocumented workers are not competing for the same jobs as other low-wage
workers. There is no correlation between the presence of undocumented workers
and unemployment rates. In an analysis of the impact of immigration on urban
centers, Strauss (2013) reveals an interesting concealed story: In cities with high
levels of Latino/a immigration, African Americans experience lower levels of
unemployment and poverty and higher wages than elsewhere. A longitudinal
study in Denmark has documented the same phenomenon, finding that the
presence of immigrant workers “pushes” low-wage native workers into jobs
requiring less manual labor and higher wages (Foged and Peri 2016). A recent
study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2016)
found that the presence of immigrant workers had only small impacts on job loss
among existing workers, and these were largely at the expense of other
immigrant workers who had arrived earlier. The researchers also found
numerous benefits; however, they were not immediate. For example, after about
10 years, there was an overall positive economic impact on communities as a
result of an influx of immigrants. And while communities bear the immediate
costs of educating immigrant children, those children grow up to be “among the
strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the U.S. population, contributing
more in taxes than either their parents or the rest of the native-born population.”
The researchers conclude that immigrants have an overall positive impact on the
long-term economic growth of the nation and that there is little evidence that
immigrant workers have a negative impact on the employment of American-born
workers.

In other words, it is not a zero-sum game in which one group can win only at the
expense of another. The presence of immigrants, both legal and undocumented,
can reenergize an aging community by providing an influx of young workers and
consumers, which in turn can lead to new jobs and economic growth. Facts are
too often ignored in political debates. President Trump is committed to deporting
immigrants and migrant workers from Mexico and other parts of Latin and South
America who do not have permanent residency status, and to building a wall on
the border between the United States and Mexico. The potential economic
impacts of these efforts are unknown. At the same time, many sociologists argue
that, instead of deporting undocumented workers, we would be much better off
providing mechanisms for those working and living in the United States to
become permanent residents.

Many undocumented and migrant workers are clustered in agricultural labor,

where conditions and wages have changed little since the days of slavery and
sharecropping. In Florida, the U.S. attorney’s office has prosecuted numerous
cases of human trafficking, freeing more than 1,200 workers from captivity and
forced labor. Farmworkers in Florida commonly work 10 to 12 hours a day for
below-poverty wages. Today a farmworker must pick twice as many tomatoes as
30 years ago in order to receive the minimum wage (Coalition of Immokalee
Workers 2012).

We don’t need to look far to find stories of resistance. Many workers continue to
organize to protect themselves and fight to be treated fairly. The Coalition of
Immokalee Workers is a good example. This is a community-based organization
of low-wage-earning Latino, Mayan Indian, and Haitian immigrants in Florida
organizing for,
among other things: a fair wage for the work we do, more respect on the
part of our bosses and the industries where we work, better and cheaper
housing, stronger laws and stronger enforcement against those who would
violate workers’ rights, the right to organize on our jobs without fear of
retaliation, and an end to forced labor in the fields. (Coalition of Immokalee
Workers 2012)
Many Stories Lead to Many Solutions
Looking through the lens of the matrix at concealed and resistance stories, we
can conclude that the United States has been built upon and nourished by a
foundation of wealth inequity. Despite modest attempts to eliminate specific
symptoms, such as poverty and discrimination, both continue to exist. Countless
suggestions have been offered to address the problem, and many can have
modest impacts in specific areas. These include adopting family-friendly
policies; building the pipeline of people of color to increase their numbers in
higher-paying positions, and increasing EEOC enforcement of the laws
concerning employer discrimination (Council of Economic Advisers 2015;
Kantor, Fuller, and Scheiber 2016). In the following sections we discuss some
large-scale attempts and proposals to significantly decrease racial and economic
inequality.

Affirmative Action
One of the more contentious policies ever implemented to eliminate job
discrimination in the United States is affirmative action. Put in place more than
50 years ago, it was intended to curb discrimination and create a more level
playing field. Affirmative action originated in the creation of the Committee on
Equal Employment Opportunity (CEEO) by President John F. Kennedy in 1961,
through Executive Order 10925. That order created the CEEO in part to
“recommend additional affirmative steps which should be taken by executive
departments and agencies to realize more fully the national policy of
nondiscrimination.” It also ordered government contractors to “take affirmative
action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated
during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin”
(Kennedy 1961). Under President Richard Nixon, what we today call
“affirmative action” was developed further. Current affirmative action programs
often establish goals, plans, and timetables in workplaces and schools where
discrimination has been historically documented, and where White women and
people of color continue to be excluded in numbers disproportional to their
representation in the population (Barnes, Chemerinsky, and Onwuachi-Willig
2015). The CEEO was the predecessor of the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, which is charged with enforcing antidiscrimination laws. Today,
EEOC enforcement of antidiscrimination statutes is weak. In 2016, the EEOC
had a backlog of 76,000 unresolved cases (Gurrieri 2016).
There are many myths about affirmative action. Many people assume that the
policy translates into racial quotas, but quotas are illegal and have been since the
1972 U.S. Supreme Court case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.
Another myth is that every workplace is required to implement affirmative
action policies. In reality, most private workplaces are not affected by
affirmative action guidelines; only those that receive government contracts of
$50,000 or more and that employ more than 50 workers must comply (as
specified in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order 11246). Since
1972, however, affirmative action has continued to face legal and political
attacks that have slowly whittled away its effectiveness.

Arguments against affirmative action are generally justified from a neoliberal

perspective, with the stock story that discrimination is a thing of the past and that
poor individual choices and negative cultural characteristics are the reasons
people of color and women have not had more success in the workplace.
However, as we have seen throughout this chapter, discrimination continues
unabated. More than 300 years of legal, government-sanctioned race and gender
discrimination cannot be remedied so easily. The battles over affirmative action
reveal just how difficult it is to challenge our deeply entrenched system of
discrimination and inequality, as well as deeply entrenched beliefs that
discrimination has ended.

Reparations
A clear understanding of the extent to which African American lives, labor, and
wealth have been plundered over the course of hundreds of years of slavery and
discrimination should lead to a serious national dialogue about reparations
(Coates 2014). While the sufficiency of the amounts can be debated, there is
much precedent supporting a case for reparations. In 1971, the U.S. government
agreed to give $1 billion and 44 million acres of land to Native American tribes
in Alaska. Other Native American tribes have received reparations for their
stolen lands more recently (CNN 2012). In 1988, Congress allocated $20,000 for
each Japanese American survivor of the internment camps established during
World War II. History is full of examples of Black individuals and groups
demanding reparations for African Americans, and efforts toward reparations
have been supported by a United Nations working group 2001 (R. Coates 2004;
T. Coates 2014; McCarthy 2004; Zack 2003). More recently, the Movement for
Black Lives has made reparations its central concern, supporting its demands
with a long list of reasons linking historical inequality to ongoing inequity and
wealth disparity today (see Movement for Black Lives, n.d.).

Asset-Based Policies
Oliver and Shapiro (2006) suggest the implementation of the following specific
asset-based social policies—that is, policies that focus on wealth rather than jobs
and income—many of which have been tested and implemented on a small
scale:

Match savings. By matching deposits to savings accounts by low-income

adults and children, government could encourage and reward asset building.
Historically, society has helped members of the White middle class and the
upper class to build wealth, so why not help those living in poverty?
Integrate the poor into the formal banking system. About 22% of low-
income families are not connected to formal financial institutions, and they
pay more for the financial services they use (such as check cashing). There
are many ways government can help bring these families into the banking
system—for example, by offering incentives to major banks to open offices
in poor and minority neighborhoods.
Encourage regional equity and asset building. Reducing regional
inequalities in affordable housing, wage differences, and transportation, and
broadening the tax base, would produce fair distribution of resources to
schools and other public services.
Provide per-child cash allowances. Social scientists have argued that
providing each child under age 6 with a cash allowance of $2,500 a year
would cut in half the number of children in poverty, at a price tag of one-
fourth the cost of Social Security (not a needs-based benefit). Programs of
this type have been widely tested and shown to be successful in other
Western developed nations (Garfinkel, Harris, Waldfogel, and Wimer 2016;
Madrick 2016). According to Madrick (2016), “If America makes cutting
childhood poverty a priority, it can afford to do so.”

Revision of the Tax Code

Many economists and sociologists recommend revisions to the tax code,
including increasing the estate tax, to help level the playing field for those just
starting out in the world. Currently, heirs may inherit up to $5.45 million without
paying any estate tax. The estate tax for those inheriting more than this amount
is 40%. While this may seem like a significant tax burden, bear in mind that
inheritances provide descendants with funds they did not earn themselves. Most
Americans never inherit enough to have to pay estate taxes. Inheritance is one
significant way that wealth and privilege are passed on over generations. For
example, the wealthiest 0.1% of Americans (160,000 families) have an average
of $72.8 million. Should this wealth be inherited, more than $67 million would
not be taxed (some states also levy inheritance taxes). If the inheritance tax were
to be increased, the result would be a decrease in the inequity that begins at
birth, and the revenues collected could be used to initiate and fund programs
such as a per-child cash allowance (as discussed above). This is unlikely to
happen in the near future, however, given that President Trump has proposed
eliminating the estate tax altogether, giving billions of dollars per year back to
millionaires and billionaires.

Researchers have also argued strongly for a more progressive tax code
(Garfinkel et al. 2016; Piketty 2014; Piketty and Saez 2014). Along with the
historically proven methods for decreasing the income and wealth gaps
discussed above, researchers have suggested the use of incentives to encourage
the nonwealthy to save and decrease their debt through more regulation.
Garfinkel et al. (2016) advise increasing the Child Tax Credit (the amount of
money a family can deduct from the taxes they owe for each child they have),
although they note that this option would have less impact than a per-child cash
allowance at roughly the same cost.
Transforming a History of Wealth Inequality
It is important that policy makers consider potential solutions that are tested and
supported by research evidence, rather than relying on ideological opinions. The
solutions described above have all grown out of the work of scholars who have
studied the concealed stories about income and wealth in our nation. They are
responses to direct resistance to inequality by those most affected by it.
Resistance stories provide us with a fuller understanding of the severe
consequences of deep poverty. Can you imagine living on $2.00 a day? It is only
after consideration of a wide range of stories that we can begin to develop stories
that will have the power to transform the 400-year American history of wealth
inequality.

The workplace and the economy, like other institutions, are structured by, and
actively reproduce, racial inequality. Historical inequality, occupational
segregation, discrimination, inequitable application of social policy, immigration
policy, and economic restructuring are some of the significant factors
contributing to racial inequality in the workplace and the economy. While the
impact of income inequality on families today should not be underestimated, it is
essential that we also understand the concept of wealth inequality. Wealth
inequality reveals the lasting impact of our history of state-sponsored racism.
These factors are concealed by stock stories that blame individuals or cultures
for their own lack of economic success. Finding solutions that will work is not
the primary problem we face, however; rather, the problem is changing attitudes.
Our stock stories about American meritocracy and color blindness must be
challenged. Scholar Margaret Andersen (2001, 190) identifies the difficulty we
face when she asks:

How do we explain the fact that the intersections of race, class, and gender
are so fundamental to the shaping of inequality, power, and privilege—yet
members of the dominant group so firmly assert that race no longer matters
and that the gender revolution is over? There is increased recognition of
“diversity in American society,” and yet there is also a persistent belief
among privileged groups that race does not matter. This belief keeps people
blind to the continuing differences in power and privilege that characterize
U.S. society, making it difficult to generate public support for programs
designed to reduce inequality.
Until we acknowledge the full extent to which people of color have experienced
unearned disadvantage and Whites have benefited from unearned advantage, we
will not have the courage to implement solutions. A transformational story can
arise only out of an understanding of the dangers of our stock stories and a more
complex knowledge of the many concealed stories and histories of resistance. A
transformational story recognizes historical and ongoing patterns that reproduce
inequality and is committed to taking the necessary structural steps to redress the
damage done by that history of privilege and oppression. As Piketty and Saez
(2014, 4) sum it up: “In democracies, policies reflect society’s view. Therefore,
the ultimate driver of inequality and policy might well be social norms regarding
fairness of the distribution of income and wealth.”
 Critical Thinking

1. Compare and contrast current immigration policies and debates with those of the past (delineated in
Chapter 3). Do you see any ways we can avoid repeating history?
2. Why do you think the ideas of both affirmative action and reparations to African Americans have
faced so much resistance over the years?
3. What role does White privilege play in perpetuating economic inequality?
4. Of all the proposed solutions to wealth inequality, which do you feel have the greatest chances of
being implemented? Why?
Key Terms

affirmative action, p. 149

capitalism, p. 116
chattel slavery, p. 134
class, p. 117
economic restructuring, p. 120
Fair Deal, p. 138
GI Bill of Rights, p. 138
income, p. 116
indentured servants, p. 134
Marxist theories, p. 132
neoliberal theory, p. 130
New Deal, p. 138
split labor market, p. 132
wealth, p. 117
welfare, p. 123

Chapter Summary
LO 4.1 Describe the current patterns of income and
wealth inequality in the United States.
Since the 1960s the income gaps between Whites and Blacks and between Whites and
Hispanics have increased. Even more significant, however, is that the wealth gap separating
Whites from Blacks and Hispanics has also increased. Data on economic restructuring and
changes in occupations provide more insight into the extent of this gap and the forms it takes.
Wealth inequality is also affected by the disappearance of social safety-net programs and by
economic cycles such as upturns and downturns. Further, significant wage gaps exist between
men and women and between and within racial and ethnic groups.
LO 4.2 Compare various stock stories about economic
inequality.
Neoliberalism and Marxism are two of the most impactful social theories, or stock stories, that
attempt to explain economic inequality. The neoliberal narrative sees the United States as a
meritocracy and blames individuals, or their cultures, for their lack of success. Marxist
theories, in contrast, focus on groups based on social class. Rather than addressing individuals,
they examine the dynamics of the owning class’s goal of constantly increasing profit at the
expense of labor.
LO 4.3 Apply the matrix perspective to the historical
foundations of economic inequality.
Today’s racial wealth gap has been significantly shaped by historical patterns of racial
inequality. The expansion of the category of Whiteness was shaped by competition for jobs.
The ability of minority groups to accumulate wealth has been limited by the theft of land and
resources from these groups, slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, immigration policies,
occupational segregation, and the inequitable application of social policies. Policy has the
potential to move us in the direction of equity, but too often it has upheld and reinforced
economic racial inequality.
LO 4.4 Analyze potential solutions to the problem of
economic inequality.
The United States has the ability to end the great income and wealth inequalities that have
been increasing with time. Various solutions have been proffered, and many have been proven
effective in other nations. However, key to real change is that we embrace a transformational
story that arises out of an understanding of the dangers of our stock stories and a more
complex knowledge of the many concealed stories and histories of resistance. Without this
knowledge, it is unlikely that our nation will embrace change to increase equity.
Chapter 5 Health, edicine, and Health Care

The Affordable Care Act helped many Americans get health insurance, including
8.9 million White, 4 million Hispanic, and 3 million Black adults.

Jim West / Alamy Stock Photo

Chapter Outline

Patterns of Inequality in Health and Health Care

Traditional Healing
Modern Medicine and Discrimination
The Social Construction of “Fit” and “Unfit” Bodies
Theorizing Inequality in Health and Health Care
Historical Advances in Health and Life Expectancy
The Role of Objectivity in Medicine
Applying the Matrix to Health Inequity and Inequality
An Intersectional Approach to Health and Health Care
A Legacy of Mistrust
The Role of Place and Environmental Racism
The Human Genome Project
Resisting and Transforming Inequality in Health and Health Care
Urban American Indian Health Care
Race, Reproduction, and the Women’s Health Movement
A Path to the Future
 Learning Objectives

LO 5.1 Describe contemporary inequality in health and health care.

LO 5.2 Examine various stock narratives of inequality in health and medicine.
LO 5.3 Apply the matrix lens to the link between race and health care.
LO 5.4 Explore alternatives to the current matrix of inequality in health and medicine.

We are surrounded by health and wellness information. Our social media feeds
are saturated with advice about the latest “superfoods” we should eat for optimal
health, how to start and maintain an exercise regimen, and other tips to help us
live longer and healthier lives. And we all know the risks involved in the various
activities we engage in on a daily basis, like riding in a car, texting while driving,
or crossing the street. Close to 40,000 people died in car accidents in the United
States in 2016 (Korosec 2017). But how often do we consider our risk of dying
because of our race or ethnicity? For those who are White, the answer is likely
never. The risk of African Americans dying as the result of race-based factors is
about twice as high as the risk of Americans as a whole dying from car,
motorcycle, plane, train, and bicycle accidents combined. In fact, the number of
race-related deaths is the “equivalent of a Boeing 767 shot out of the sky and
killing everyone on board every day, 365 days a year” (Smedley, Jeffries,
Adelman, and Cheng 2008, 2). And yet this issue rarely makes the headlines.

In this chapter, we will rely on the matrix framework to explore the role that
health and health care narratives play in the construction of “normal” bodies and
examine how the definition of normal has been used as an instrument of power
and social control. We will briefly examine some key moments in the history of
medicine in the United States as it pertains to race, analyze the stock stories
about health and medicine and their consequences, and then shift our attention to
a matrix-informed sociological approach that highlights concealed and resistance
stories.
Patterns of Inequality in Health and Health Care
Sociologists argue that examining disparities in health and mortality reveals
clear evidence of the long-term effects of structural racism (Feagin and
McKinney 2003). For example, researchers who investigated the impacts of both
race and years of education (one indicator of class) on life expectancies found
that “white U.S. men and women with 16 years or more of schooling had life
expectancies far greater than black Americans with fewer than 12 years of
education—14.2 years more for white men than black men, and 10.3 years more
for white women than black women” (Olshansky et al. 2012, 1803). The
National Healthcare Disparities Report, an annual report mandated by Congress,
compares populations on a wide range of health and health care measures. The
most recent report, on data from 2015, shows that African Americans, Hispanics,
Asian Americans, and American Indians and Alaska Natives all received
significantly worse health care than Whites. Similar results are found when poor
populations are compared with high-income populations. Researchers have
documented disparities across racial and ethnic groups in access to health care,
quality of health care received, health care safety, sickness and death rates, and
communication and care coordination. Nevertheless, small improvements were
seen in 2015 compared to previous years. This may be linked to the
implementation of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. From 2013, when ACA
health insurance marketplaces began operating, to early 2016, 8.9 million White,
4 million Hispanic, and 3 million Black adults gained health insurance (Agency
for Healthcare Research and Quality 2016).

African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians and Alaska Natives all
have higher rates than Whites of many of the deadliest diseases, such as stroke
and type 2 diabetes (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2017; Spanakis
and Golden 2013). Understanding health inequities and inequalities requires a
nuanced examination of the range of factors involved. For example, while
disease rates may be the same across racial groups, mortality rates—that is,
death rates—may differ. Recent research has found that Black women are much
more likely to die from breast cancer than are White women, and this gap has
actually increased over the past four decades. While rates of screening have
increased and treatments have improved, not all women have benefited from
these advancements (Parker-Pope 2013).
Health inequities in the United States are one consequence of a long history of
structural racism. As noted above, researchers have found that White men with
16 years or more of education live slightly more than 14 years longer than Black
men with less than 12 years of education. At these levels of education, White
women live slightly more than 13 years longer than Black women (Olshansky et
al. 2012, 1803). Such racial health inequalities are significant, and while some
gaps are narrowing, others are actually growing. A wide range of factors are
involved, including access to care and early screenings, access to high-quality
care, the nature of patient–provider relationships, class inequality, and
environmental racism. To some extent, in addition to being outcomes of the long
history of systemic racism in the United States, current disparities in health and
health care are the results of historical events and the development of the
professionalized field of medicine.
Traditional Healing
Traditional medicine consists of indigenous knowledge, skills, and practices
that have been passed down over generations. Practitioners of traditional
medicine use these tools to prevent and diagnose illness and disease and to
improve physical, mental, and spiritual health. Many forms of traditional
medicine were practiced throughout the Americas prior to colonization. One
example is curanderismo, popular among indigenous cultures throughout Latin
America and parts of the United States, and still practiced today. Curandero/as
—traditional healers—tend to specialize in specific forms of medicine, such as
midwifery, bone and muscle treatment, and herbalism. Many practitioners of
traditional medicine recognize a relationship between people and nature, and
may focus on healing the person rather than just the illness.

Traditional healing methods were not valued by modern medicine in the past, as
medical practice became defined as the province of physicians who had
graduated from medical schools (which limited admission to White men).
Nevertheless, many people continued to rely on these methods, and they have
played an important role in U.S. Latino culture, among other cultures.

Much of our current knowledge about the medicinal qualities of specific plants
and herbs comes from traditional medicine. Researchers are finding that
traditional practices continue to offer insights for modern medicine and
pharmacology, yet much of this knowledge is being lost as modern practices
displace traditional healing and traditional cultures around the world disappear.
In the past few decades, a wide range of health professionals have shifted their
focus to capturing the insights of traditional medicine. Even the World Health
Organization recognizes that traditional healers are an important part of the
provision of health care services in many countries, given the high respect they
are usually accorded in their communities, local cultural beliefs that value them,
and the very limited access many populations have to physicians and other
health professionals. Traditional medicinal practices remain a widespread option
around the world today, especially in rural areas and developing nations.
Latina author and poet Pat Mora explores the work of Curanderas and the
importance of social and cultural context: “listen to voices from the past and
present, who evolve from their culture . . . definitions of illness are culture
bound. We might consider it essential to stay in our comfortable homes or
apartments if the soles of our feet were covered with blisters. The migrant
worker, however, might sigh, apply a salve, and trudge from field to field. Illness
is both a biological and social reality, and our reactions are learned” (Mora 1984,
126).

Nina Raingold / Getty Images News / Getty Images

Modern Medicine and Discrimination
Prior to the middle of the 19th century, medicine did not exist in the United
States as an organized and institutionalized discipline. Around that time, a small
group of established physicians began to organize conventions designed to
“defend their profession against the ‘unprofessional[s]’” (Charatz-Litt 1992,
718). Facing competition from traditional healers, midwives, and self-
proclaimed healers, they created the American Medical Association (AMA), a
formal organization through which they would define themselves as the only
authentic and legitimate practitioners of medicine.

The rise of modern medical practice in the United States was both shaped and
reinforced by the broader culture of racism. Modern medicine was developed
during the era of slavery, and slaves were frequently used for medical
experimentation (Charatz-Litt 1992; Savitt 1982; Washington 2008). After the
end of the Civil War, White doctors refused to treat Black patients, and
segregation became the law. In fact, the institution of medicine played a
prominent role in justifying Jim Crow laws. According to southern physicians,
“Blacks were pathologically different from whites, unfit for freedom, and
uneducable in the ways of better hygiene” (Charatz-Litt 1992, 719).

Denied access to White medical institutions, members of the African American

community mobilized to establish their own, with assistance from White
philanthropists and limited government funds. By 1900, 11 medical schools had
been founded to train Black doctors. Since Black physicians were excluded from
the AMA, in 1895 they created their own professional organization, the National
Medical Association (NMA) (see National Medical Association, n.d.). A number
of the medical schools for Black doctors did not survive, and many were shut
down (Olakanmi, n.d.; Sullivan and Mittman 2010). “Consequently, until World
War II, fewer than 20 Black physicians graduated from [medical] programs each
year” (Charatz-Litt 1992, 719).
Excluded from the American Medical Association, Black doctors formed the
National Medical Association and held annual conventions, like this one in
Boston in 1909. The group, which still exists, is dedicated to promoting the
interests of patients and doctors of African descent.

Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine

Few hospitals allowed Black doctors to practice and admit patients. African
Americans in the South were dramatically more likely to die due to lack of
medical care than were Whites; hospitals in the South were segregated, and
disproportionately fewer beds were reserved for Black patients. Black physicians
and patients in the North encountered similar problems. Black patients could be
admitted to only 19 of 29 hospitals in New York City, and only 3 of those
allowed Black doctors to treat their patients on the premises (National Medical
Association, n.d.). In 1910, life expectancy for White women was 54 years, and
for White men it was 50. In stark contrast, African American women, on
average, lived to age 38, and African American men to only 34 (Pollitt 1996,
401–2). The NMA was literally fighting for the lives of African Americans
across the country.

The story of the NMA is an often-concealed story of resistance. From the NMA
came the National Hospital Association, a lobbying arm that pushed for the right
of African American doctors to treat their patients in southern hospitals. The
NMA founded the Journal of the National Medical Association, which published
not only medical research but political updates as well. The NMA continued its
battles for decades, but hospitals were not desegregated until the passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. This very recent history still affects families today. The
NMA remains an active organization, committed to addressing inequality in the
medical professions and the provision of health care. We have not seen a great
increase in the numbers of people of color applying to medical schools or
becoming doctors. In 2014, of the total population of physicians in the United
States, only about 4% were Black, and Blacks, American Indians and Alaska
Natives, and Hispanics/Latinos totaled only 8.9% of all physicians (Association
of American Medical Colleges 2014).
The Social Construction of “Fit” and “Unfit” Bodies
Medical institutions not only contributed to the system of White supremacy and
supported legal and educational boundaries separating Blacks from Whites, but
they also played a central role in racializing other groups and defining where
they fell within the racial hierarchy. The stock story of race as a biological reality
is one of the most significant narratives justifying health disparities by locating
physical differences within the body.

Debates on how the races originated characterized the early stages of the science
of race, and they were not resolved until the publication of naturalist Charles
Darwin’s text on the theory of evolution in 1859. Darwin asserted that all races
evolved from the same organisms and thus were part of the same species (Ferber
1998). He also described a process of natural selection, in which those
individuals best suited to their environments were more likely to survive and
reproduce, furthering their species.

Social Darwinism and the Rise of Eugenics

Darwin’s theories, and the discoveries about genetics and inheritance published
by scientist and Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel in 1866, sparked a new way of
thinking about race, class, and the value of life. This new perspective focused on
the inheritance of so-called genetic traits, which were believed to include
everything from physical characteristics to moral behavior.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540
USA

The theories of Charles Darwin (left) and discoveries of Gregor Mendel focused
new attention on the inheritance of traits, both physical and behavioral, and
provided the basis for both social Darwinism and eugenics.
Hulton Archive / Hulton Archive / Getty Images

The school of thought known as Social Darwinism took the basic insights of the
theory of evolution and applied them to social life, making the assumption that a
society could determine between the “fit” and “unfit.” Sociologist Herbert
Spencer, who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” in 1864, argued that the
imagined laws of natural selection were justification for not intervening to help
the poor.

These popular versions of evolutionary theory distorted the actual science of

evolution in two important ways:

1. Evolution actually works extremely slowly, over millions of years, not over
the course of a few generations as assumed by proponents of social
Darwinism.
2. There is no way of knowing who is or is not “fit.” According to the theory
of evolution, “fitness” is determined by specific historical, environmental,
and climatic contexts.

That is why diversity within a species is so important to its survival in a range of

contexts that cannot be predicted in advance. The fittest species is the most
diverse. A diverse species is capable of surviving and adapting to a changing
environment.

The eugenics movement, which arose in the late 19th century, took the social
Darwinist philosophy further, arguing that natural selection should be hastened
through the implementation of policies that would encourage the “fit” Northern
Europeans and upper classes to reproduce; in addition, the numbers of those
defined as “unfit” should be reduced through sterilization. Francis Galton, a
cousin of Charles Darwin, coined the term eugenics. The idea was relatively
simple: If evolution works by preserving the fittest, why not aid that process by
eliminating some of the unfit? At the very least, social Darwinists argued,
society should not be helping the unfit to survive by providing them with forms
of charity and welfare. Eugenicists’ arguments appealed to those of all political
stripes who sought answers to the economic crisis caused by the need to care for
those in society who either could not care for themselves or were considered
unfit to participate in society (Ekland-Olson and Beicken 2012; Lombardo
2008). In addition to eliminating the unfit, measures were suggested to
encourage the “fittest” to marry each other and reproduce in order to increase the
“fit” population. This all occurred within the broader context of a system of
White supremacy, so that the White race was assumed to be the “fittest” race that
could continue to be perfected.

Social Darwinism and eugenics gained a broad base of support among a number
of groups, including progressive organizations fighting for women’s suffrage,
women’s right to birth control, child welfare, temperance, and prison reform. If
the poor and uneducated were not competent to make educated decisions if given
the vote, then it followed that those groups were most in need of limiting the
numbers of births in their families and most susceptible to alcoholism, violence,
and crime.

Eugenics was legitimated and given the stamp of scientific truth when the AMA
included among its published goals the application of a “scientific process of
selection” to control the growth of the “unfortunate classes.” Ways to do this
included restrictions on immigration and who could marry, and compulsory
sterilization for certain people (Lombardo 2008, 11).

Eliminating the “Unfit”

Many people believed that by removing from society those incapable of living
up to high moral and physical standards, they could protect the purity and fitness
of the White race. These efforts went so far as to attempt to protect the
sensibilities of the fit by keeping “defectives” literally out of sight. The 1911
Chicago Ugly Law declared: “Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or
in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, or an
improper person to be allowed in or on the streets, highways, thoroughfares or
public places in this city shall not therein or thereon expose himself or herself to
public view” (quoted in Coco 2010, 23).

Eugenic ideology permeated immigration policy as well. Beginning with the

Immigration Law of 1891, the federal government classified as “public charge”
certain immigrants thought likely to depend on government assistance (Park
2011, 4) Any immigrant believed to suffer from a “loathsome or dangerous
contagious disease” (which included pregnancy, poverty, and a lack of morals)
was deported. Women were automatically assumed to be public charge if they
were unmarried or widowed.
A plethora of new methods were devised to determine who was and was not
“fit,” ranging from the use of tools to measure the widths and angles of the face
to the first IQ tests. Some of these intelligence measures were put to use at the
immigration hub at New York’s Ellis Island, where scores of women trained in
methods of spotting the “feebleminded” were employed to identify misfits and
administer IQ tests. Those immigrants defined as “morons” were swiftly
deported. In 1913, Henry Goddard, psychologist, author, and leading eugenicist,
claimed that this testing showed that about 80% of Jewish, Hungarian, Italian,
and Russian immigrants were feebleminded. Deportations for the reason of
feeblemindedness increased 350% that year and 570% the next, a situation that
played a role in the setting of immigration quotas to limit the “inferior stock” of
the “not quite White.”

Charles Davenport, another prominent eugenicist, focused on the elimination of

what he saw as undesirable inherited traits. He meticulously sought to identify
every genetic trait, publishing his documentation in 1912 in his Trait Book.
Public education about eugenics thus increased, and public health advocates
sought methods for “race improvement through better marriage” (Lombardo
2008, 45). Fears of miscegenation were also fueled by eugenic sentiment.

During this period, 33 U.S. states adopted laws allowing eugenic sterilizations in
order to decrease the reproduction of undesirable genetic traits (Ekland-Olson
and Beicken 2012). The traits considered undesirable were found in people of
many different heritages, and the grouping of such diverse people seems
arbitrary to us now; however, people with the undesirable traits were united in
the public mind as deviants, as a population of defectives who deviated from the
norm of the healthy racial body required for a healthy nation.

Stephen Jay Gould (1981, 166) sharply criticizes the early 20th-century
American practice of subjecting newly arrived immigrants to intelligence
screenings: “Consider a group of frightened men and women who speak no
English and who have just endured an oceanic voyage in steerage. Most are poor
and have never gone to school; many have never held a pen or pencil in their
hand. They march off the boat; one of Goddard’s intuitive women takes them
aside. . . . Could their failure be a result of testing conditions, of weakness, fear,
or confusion, rather than of innate stupidity?”

Bettmann / Bettmann / Getty Images

The U.S. eugenics movement achieved its greatest success in the 1927 U.S.
Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell. In this case, the Court upheld Virginia’s law
requiring sterilization of those deemed “socially inadequate” and living on
government support. Eugenicists argued that Carrie Buck, a resident at the
Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded who had given birth after
being raped at age 16, could only produce socially inadequate offspring and was
therefore a threat to both the White race and the nation (Lombardo 2008).
Writing for the majority, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. declared: “It is better
for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime,
or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are
manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. . . . Three generations of imbeciles
are enough” (quoted in Lombardo 2008, 287).

By the mid-1930s, most states had adopted laws similar to Virginia’s, and more
than 60,000 U.S. citizens were forcibly sterilized (Lombardo 2008). The United
States was not alone in its efforts to “improve” its population; numerous other
nations followed the example set by the United States and Britain, most notably
Germany. Eugenic research, much of it conducted by U.S. scientists, was the
foundation of Adolf Hitler’s “final solution”—the elimination of the following
identified categories of people: Jews, homosexuals, Romani (Gypsies), the
disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political prisoners, habitual criminals, the asocial,
and emigrants (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.). All of these
efforts revolved around the desire to “perfect” the Aryan race.

Despite widespread condemnation of Nazi practices of eugenics, in which many

German doctors were complicit, the United States continued to carry out forced
sterilizations in the period after World War II, with the goal of limiting the birth
of “mental defectives.” California led the way, sterilizing 20,000 people by 1963
(Cohen and Bonifield 2012). California’s law required that anyone deemed a
“ward of the state” could not be released from state custody without undergoing
sterilization. Some of the victimized included teenagers who had been removed
from their families because they had been neglected or abused. Between 1929
and 1974, North Carolina sterilized of more than 7,600 people, including young
rape and incest victims (like Buck) who were blamed for being “promiscuous”
(Snyderman 2012).

Eugenics was inherently about the construction of Whiteness, and it provides us

with a clear example of the need to understand race intersectionally. Those
White people who were seen as unhealthy and impure—the poor, the disabled,
the homosexual, the not-quite-White Jew—were targeted for segregation or
elimination. It was women’s bodies, not men’s, that were most often targeted for
sterilization. The hierarchies of class, sexuality, ability, religion, and so on
privileged the White race as the superior race.

Inventing the Homosexual

The eugenic search for hereditary “defects” or abnormalities led to efforts to
locate homosexuality as something inherent in certain bodies. The invention of
the homosexual—the idea that there is a homosexual body and a homosexual
person (as opposed to simply sexual acts and desires)—arose in late 19th-
century medical discourse. Havelock Ellis’s Studies in the Psychology of Sex was
published in 1897 and became one of the founding texts of sexology. Sexologists
employed many of the same methods that race scientists used to measure or
locate the bodily sources of such “defects” (Blumenfeld 2012; Somerville 2000).
This resulted in members of the medical professions committing lesbians, gay
males, bisexuals, and those who transgressed so-called normative gender
identities and expressions (often against their will or under tremendous pressure)
to hospitals, mental institutions, jails, and penitentiaries. Many were subjected to
prefrontal lobotomies, electroshock, castration, and sterilization (Blumenfeld
2012).

The pathologizing of LGBT people of every race has continued since that time,
with dire public health consequences. When the HIV/AIDS epidemic began in
the early 1980s, gay men were among the first cases, and AIDS became known
as a “gay men’s disease.” The false assumption that the disease was a result of
individual lifestyle choices led heterosexuals to believe they were safe, and
doctors to limit their study of the disease to men’s symptoms only. It was more
than a decade before symptoms unique to women, like cervical cancer, were
recognized. By then, untold numbers of women had been misdiagnosed and
denied appropriate treatment (Weber 2006, 28).

So-called conversion therapy, treatment programs meant to change the sexual

orientations of gays and lesbians, remains largely legal. Although such programs
are not medically oriented and are not run by doctors, in addition to being widely
discredited and often harmful, they have proliferated in some states. The basis
for conversion therapy is the idea that homosexuality is a mental disorder that
can be cured. Some states now ban conversion therapy for minors (see Figure
5.1).

Figure 5.1 Seven States Currently Ban the Practice of Conversion Therapy for
Minors

Source: Movement Advancement Project, “Conversion Therapy Laws,”

http://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-
maps/conversion_therapy#sthash.CPvnZdAr.dpuf.

Note: These laws prohibit licensed mental health practitioners from

subjecting minors to harmful “conversion therapy” practices that attempt to
change their sexual orientations or gender identities. This map reflects the
states that prohibit conversion therapy. In 2015, Cincinnati, Ohio, passed
the first city-level conversion therapy ban.
 Critical Thinking

1. Historically, how have the dynamics of gender, ability, and sexuality come into play in the service of
White supremacy?
2. Can you think of specific innovations in contemporary medical technology that have the potential to
bring the ideas of eugenics into public debate again? What safeguards might protect people from the
misguided policies of the past?
3. Can you identify any characteristics you or any of your close friends or family members possess that
were targeted for elimination by eugenicists?
4. Have you or anyone you know utilized traditional medicine or “alternative” medical practices? Why
do you think some of these practices are more in vogue and acceptable today, after many years of
being delegitimated in the United States?
Theorizing Inequality in Health and Health Care
We have witnessed tremendous change in the American health care system in
our lifetimes, especially within the past few years. Patients, practitioners, and
government officials are still hotly debating what the system should look like,
but in the meantime, the field of medical sociology, the sociological analysis of
the field and practice of medicine and their social effects, has also changed. It is
only in the past half century that medical sociology has come into its own as a
significant field within the discipline of sociology, and sociology courses on
health and illness have become more common.

Health and illness are not simply biological phenomena—they are also social
phenomena. The sociology of health and health care challenges many of our
basic assumptions about illness. In this section we will examine concealed and
resistance stories that challenge the predominant stock stories about health and
illness, such as these:

1. Race is a biological reality that can help explain disparities in health.

2. Health is a matter of individual and genetic factors.
3. Thanks to medical advances and the elimination or minimization of many
infectious diseases, people today live longer than their predecessors in
previous generations.
4. The field of medicine and health care employs objective science and
operates independent of the social organization of society.

In our brief historical overview, we have seen the ubiquity of the first two stock
stories, and the inequalities and White privilege they have justified. We now turn
to the third and fourth stories above. These assumptions may seem like common
sense on the surface, but many scientists and sociologists have been building a
case against these arguments for quite some time.
Historical Advances in Health and Life Expectancy
People living in industrialized Western nations live much longer today than
people in previous centuries. Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries,
average life expectancy has about doubled. Until about 100 years ago, most
people died from infectious diseases, such as the flu and tuberculosis. Today the
leading causes of death are chronic illnesses, such as cancer, heart disease, and
diabetes. What accounts for this dramatic change? While advances in medicine
played a significant role, social changes made the difference for many
(Braveman and Gottlieb 2014; Conrad and Leiter 2012, McKeown 2014;
Rasanathan and Sharkey 2016). Throughout the 1800s, advances in knowledge
regarding hygiene and nutrition were much more important in the curtailing of
infectious diseases than medical interventions such as immunizations (Aiello,
Larson, and Sedlak 2008a, 2008b). Research on public health has documented
the pivotal role of cleaner air and water, improved sewer and sanitation systems,
and increased standards of living, including better nutrition and housing.

Fewer African Americans experience healthy aging and longevity than members
of other groups.

Education Images / Universal Images Group / Getty Images

While overall life expectancy was increasing in the Western world, gains were
not consistent across race and class groups, and disparities among groups have
remained fairly steady. Education levels are one factor in these gaps. White men
and women with a college education or higher have been found to have life
expectancies at birth that are more than a decade longer than those for Black
men and women with less than a high school degree. Between White and Black
men with a college education or higher, the gap is approximately 5 years; when
the Black men have fewer than 12 years of education, the gap is 16 years.
Researchers are not hopeful about this gap narrowing in the coming years
(Pollard and Scommegna 2013). German sociologist Friedrich Engels compared
the life spans of the wealthy with the significantly shorter life spans of the
working class, blaming social factors such as dangerous work environments and
poor living conditions. In The Philadelphia Negro, first published in 1899, W. E.
B. Du Bois examined African Americans’ higher rates of disease and mortality
compared with Whites. He also argued that social factors played a significant
role in these disparities, blaming nonhygienic and poor living conditions and
lack of protection from the elements (see Williams 2012, 283). Du Bois also
identified racism itself as a variable:

The most difficult social problem in the matter of Negro health . . . is the
peculiar attitude of the nation toward the well-being of the race. There have
. . . been few other cases in the history of civilized peoples where human
suffering has been viewed with such peculiar indifference. (Du Bois 1899,
163, cited in Williams 2012, 287)
The Role of Objectivity in Medicine
Both conflict and functionalist schools of thought have contributed to the
sociology of health and medicine. Conflict theorists argue that economic
interests play the most significant role in determining health outcomes. Profit
motives drive the definitions of disease, with pharmaceutical companies
investing their research and development dollars in finding medications that will
sell to large numbers of people, such as drugs for erectile dysfunction, rather
than prioritizing their efforts based on public health needs. Economic interests
also affect who is most likely to become ill, and the kind of health care they are
likely to receive. Many researchers have argued that it is no coincidence that
toxic waste dumps and other environmental hazards are most frequently located
in or near poor communities, as we will examine later in this chapter. And
because the U.S. health care system is driven by profits, the wealthy have better
access to high-quality health care. Seen from this perspective, our medical
system reinforces class inequality and serves as a form of social control.

Stock stories about health and health care ignore the role of institutional class
and race inequity and unequal outcomes, and instead focus on the individual
level and the biologized racial body. Sociologists have raised many critical
questions about these assumptions and have highlighted the roles of a wide range
of social factors.
 Critical Thinking

1. Other than those discussed above, what additional social and economic factors influence the U.S.
health care system today? Compare and contrast our system with an alternative system in another
developed nation.
2. What do you see as the most important institutional factors reproducing inequities and inequalities in
medicine and health care today?
3. Select a social identity not examined in this chapter, such as disability, age, or gender identity, and
research the health care inequalities that exist in relation to that identity. Identify at least three
inequalities.
4. Sociologists shift our focus from the individual level to the social level. Which level do you see as
more dominant among physicians today? Provide an example from your own experience.
Applying the Matrix to Health Inequity and
Inequality
Health care as an institution is deeply enmeshed in other social institutions. For
example, when a member of a family experiences health problems, other family
members are affected, and specific social patterns can be observed. When you
were a child and had to stay home from school because you were ill, who stayed
home with you? For most children in the United States, the answer to that
question would be the child’s mother or another female family member (Lam
2014). Health and medicine are also intertwined with the world of work. If you
have an aging relative who needs more care than the family can provide, that
care is most likely provided by women of color. The low-paying jobs of nursing
assistant, home health care worker, and hospice aide are some of those in which
women of color are overrepresented (Glenn 2010). Just like all other social
institutions, medicine and health care are imbued with hierarchies of race,
gender, class, and other axes of inequality.

The matrix perspective, which draws upon the insights of earlier approaches,
raises new questions and subjects for investigation:

1. Race is inherently social. We have explored some of the ways health and
health care are actively involved in the social construction of race, as well
as the social nature of health care and medicine as social institutions that
reinforce inequities based on race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and
ability.
2. Race is a narrative. Discourses of health and disease serve as important
stories about bodies: what kinds of bodies exist, which bodies are defined
as normal and which as defective, which bodies are valued and which are
not. We examine the ways in which popular ideologies about bodies and
health work to naturalize hierarchies of race, gender, class and sexuality,
while at the same time constructing U.S. national identity.
3. Racial identity is relational and intersectional. We examine some of the
many ways in which the construction of race is intertwined with the
construction of gendered, classed, and sexualized bodies, and the provision
of health care is shaped by the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality,
 and ability.
4. Race is institutional and structural. This chapter emphasizes the importance
of the institutions of health care and medicine as sources of racial constructs
and the justification of racial inequality. Further, health and health care are
key sites where racism is reproduced and experienced.
5. We are active agents in the matrix. We highlight racialized actors as active
agents, not merely acted upon by social forces but also actively involved in
resisting, challenging, and shaping those social forces themselves, within
specific social, historical, economic, and geographical contexts.
An Intersectional Approach to Health and Health Care
Seeing our own health as a social issue may be difficult today, given our reality-
show culture, which is filled with individual stories of success and failure.
Television programs like The Biggest Loser and The Dr. Oz Show encourage us
to think about a health problem such as obesity as an individual problem. The
current discourse around obesity and fat frames the issue as simply one of
individuals making poor choices. However, both class and race are correlated
with weight. Sociologists argue that overall, social factors play a greater role in
health outcomes than individual factors—something that is especially important
to recognize when it comes to the issue of racial disparities in health. Seeing the
causes of poor health as residing within the individual reinforces the notion that
racial distinctions are real and have some genetic or biological reality, leading to
disparate health outcomes (Daniels and Schulz 2006). In this manner, the
institution of health care reproduces the stock narrative of race as biological and
inequality as a product of poor choices.

Gender and Health Care

The provision of health care is an area in which we find many cases of both
oppression and resistance that require an intersectional perspective. We have
already seen evidence of this in our earlier examination of the rise of modern
medicine. As a result of today’s longer life spans, we now face the problem of
providing care for an increasingly aging population, many members of which
live with severe disabilities or chronic illness. In 2016, 44 million people in the
United States were providing unpaid elder care, and just as child care has
historically been defined as women’s responsibility, the work of home health
care has also fallen on the shoulders of women. This extended workload comes
at a time when most women are employed outside the home. Women who can
afford to do so often leave their jobs, cut back on their work hours, or move into
less demanding jobs when they take on the task of providing care to elderly
relatives, losing on average approximately $324,000 they would have made in
the workplace (O’Donnell 2016). And it is more common for women of color,
especially African American women, to manage jobs outside the home while
simultaneously caring for disabled or aging family members. For many Asian
American women, the strong ideology that commitment to family trumps
individual choices, such as career, can lead to a sense of obligation to care for
their elders, even if it means leaving their jobs and relocating to be near their
families. Women in later generations of Asian immigrant families are much
more likely to feel ambivalence about this, and to feel stuck between Eastern and
Western ideologies (Glenn 2010; Weng and Robinson 2014).

Home health care workers, 87% of whom are women (Health Resources and
Services Administration 2015), have been excluded from the protections and
benefits guaranteed to other kinds of employees through legislation, such as a
minimum wage and overtime pay. In 2015, the median wage among home health
care workers was $11.00 per hour (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2017). Many
have historically had no health insurance themselves, although that may have
changed with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which made
access to health care available to many previously without it (access that has
now become uncertain under the Trump administration). The problems these
women face will only grow, because they work in a field predicted to experience
some of the fastest job growth in the coming decades.

Social inequities affect the provision of health care, and consequently have
impacts on income as well. Shifting our attention to health itself, in the
remaining subsections we examine a sampling of the many interconnected social
factors and social identities, including ethnicity, age, gender, and immigration
status, that influence group health patterns in the context of historical and
structural inequities.

Class and Health

The most significant element in the relationship between groups and health
outcomes is the linking factor of class. Those who live in poverty experience
higher rates of illness, disease, and disability, but as individual wealth increases,
health improves. People in the middle class may be thrust into poverty as a result
of a chronic disease or disability because of tremendous health care expenses,
inadequate health insurance, and/or inability to work. Further, growing up poor
has lasting consequences. Despite an adult’s current class status, growing up in
poverty and facing the consequences of economic adversity early in life has
negative impacts on health over the life span. For example, poor nutrition in
childhood affects aspects of physical development, such as height, as well as
cognitive development; childhood exposure to certain environmental dangers,
such as high levels of lead, also affects cognitive development; and poverty in
childhood has been associated with mental health disorders such as depression
and anxiety, as well as decreased ability to control anger and general response
inhibition (Capistrano, Bianco, and Kim 2016; Repka 2013; Strauss and Thomas
2007).

Specific health problems are highly correlated with class and income (Syme and
Berkman 2009). Class-related variables such as education, occupation, income,
and wealth have all been found to influence health. A lower class status not only
leads to higher mortality rates but also produces higher morbidity rates, or
incidence of illness. And these trends apply not just to identifiable illnesses; they
are witnessed across the spectrum of health and wellness, including in rates of
mental illness. Scholars have concluded that “those in the lower classes
invariably have lower life expectancy and higher death rates from all causes of
death, and that this higher rate has been observed since the 12th century when
data on this question were first organized” (Syme and Berkman 2009, 24).

In nearly all the rest of the world’s developed countries, socialized medicine and
universal health care, often free, are the norm. Yet the United States spends far
more on health care than any other nation, per person and as a share of gross
domestic product (even since implementation of the Affordable Care Act), as
illustrated in Figure 5.2.

The ACA (the future of which is in peril) was intended to improve health care
access and cut costs while providing every U.S. citizen with health care
coverage. Under the law, those whose incomes are below a certain level can
receive subsidies to help pay their insurance premiums, and federal funding for
Medicaid has been expanded to include the very poorest in the nation. The U.S.
Supreme Court has ruled, however, that states can determine for themselves
whether or not to expand Medicaid, and 26 states, many of them in the South,
have declined to do so. These states are home to about half the country’s
population, “but about 68 percent of poor, uninsured blacks and single mothers.
About 60 percent of the country’s uninsured working poor are in those states”
(Tavernise and Gebeloff 2013). While enabling access to high-quality care
remains a priority, improving access does not fully eliminate health disparities
(Syme and Berkman 2009).

Almost immediately after he took office, President Trump began prompting

Congress to act on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the ACA. The
proposed replacement, named the American Health Care Act when it was passed
by the House of Representatives in May 2017, would allow states get waivers to
set aside several provisions of the ACA, as long as the waivers would enable the
states to (a) lower rates, (b) increase the number of insured, or (c) advance “the
public interest of the state” (Amadeo 2017).

Figure 5.2 The United States Outspent Other Nations on Healthcare in 2015

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,

“OECD Data: Health Spending,” https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-
spending.htm.

Race and Health

Because of the intersectional nature of social identities and relationships, where
class dynamics are strong, we find that race is also part of the picture. The racial
health gap actually increased in the 1980s as a consequence of the increasing
racial income gap and widening racial inequality. While there is an
overwhelming body of research documenting the impact of class on health and
the interaction of class with race, the evidence also reveals that race itself is a
significant factor, and sometimes a more significant factor, independent of class.
For instance, depending on your race, you are more or less likely to have type 2
diabetes. Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans have a 50–100% higher risk
than Whites of health problems and death caused by diabetes (Chow, Foster,
Gonzalez, and McIver 2012). Whites experience the lowest levels of diabetes,
while Native Americans face more than triple that rate. One out of three Native
Americans is diabetic. Figures 5.3 and 5.4 provide a few examples of racial
health disparities.
Figure 5.3 A 2006 Study Showed that Whites are Less Likely to Suffer from
Alzheimer’s Disease at Every Age

Source: Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Alzheimer’s Disease: A Literature

Review. February 2014. Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and
Evaluation (ASPE), U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services.

Infants born prematurely are more likely to experience various health problems,
ranging from mild to serious and chronic. Again, Whites are privileged to
experience fewer preterm births, along with Asians and Pacific Islanders.

Overall, we find the greatest health inequities between Whites and African
Americans and Native Americans. An “epidemiological paradox” explains the
seemingly better health of Latino/as and Asian Americans. These two racialized
groups are in fact heterogeneous, encompassing numerous diverse immigrant
groups from different nations, with different resources, who immigrated at
different points in history. When we collapse all Asians or all Latino/as into one
large category, we lose sight of the differences within the group that influence
health outcomes. For example, looking at infant mortality rates, Cuban
Americans experience 4.7 deaths per 1,000 births, while the number for Puerto
Ricans is 8.3. Combining these groups together under the label of Hispanics or
Latino/as erases the inequities faced by specific ethnic subgroups (Zambrana and
Dill 2006). Thus we see another of the problems inherent in relying on racial
classifications.

Figure 5.4 The Percentage of Preterm Births in 2013 was Lowest for Whites

Source: Child Trends Databank. (2015). Preterm births. Available at:

https://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=preterm-births

Interestingly, the impact of immigration on health is different from what you

might expect. All minority group immigrants experience significantly better
health than their racial compatriots who are U.S.-born, including healthier birth
weights, longer life expectancies, and lower rates of deadly diseases, including
cancer and stroke (Ruiz, Hamann, Mehl, and O’Connor 2016; Waldstein 2010).
Research has found, for example, that Mexican immigrants have much better
health than U.S.-born Mexican Americans. One reason is that they experience
stronger health in Mexico prior to coming to the United States. The longer they
are in the United States, however, the more their health declines. Research
comparing Caribbean Blacks with African Americans, and Asian immigrants
with Asian Americans, has had similar findings, which also help us to
understand why the health gap between Whites and others is smaller for racial
groups with significant immigrant populations. These surprising findings force
us to consider the role that simply living in the United States plays in
undermining the health of people of color (De la Rosa 2002; Read and Emerson
2005; Stone and Balderrama 2008; Waldstein 2010).
People of color are notably absent from clinical trials, in part because of this
population’s general mistrust of medical institutions. Other barriers to their
participation in medical research include the language used in informational
materials, which can be patronizing and incomplete, and the relative lack of
researchers who are themselves people of color.

AP Photo / Tammy Ljungblad

Less access to and lower quality of health care can explain health inequities.
Barriers to health care access are a factor in the relatively poor health of Native
Americans, a group that has rarely been the focus of research on health
disparities. A study examining rates of cancer among Native Americans found
that, compared with Whites, Native Americans receive fewer health screenings,
are diagnosed at later stages of a disease’s progression, and have significantly
higher cancer mortality rates. Despite the existence of early detection screening
tests, Native Americans are 79% more likely than Whites to die from cervical
cancer, 58% more likely to die from colorectal cancer, and 49% more likely to
die from prostate cancer. Native Americans also report higher rates of
dissatisfaction with the health care system (Guadagnolo et al. 2009).

African Americans face multiple barriers as well. Compared with Whites, they
are less likely to have a regular location to seek health care, less likely to receive
necessary medications, and more likely to experience delays in treatment.
Factors like these, for example, mean that Blacks are 12% less likely than
Whites to have their blood pressure under control, despite a 40% increased
likelihood of having high blood pressure (National Institutes of Health 2015).
Among the reasons for these kinds of outcomes are lack of access to health care,
lower socioeconomic status, mistrust of providers and medical institutions, and
limited health care literacy, as well as a lack of cultural competency and the
continued prevalence of stereotypes among providers. Cumulatively, these
factors lead to a shorter life span for African Americans compared to Whites.
Intersectional Complexity
Public health scholars Jackson and Williams (2006) have introduced the notion
of an “intersectionality paradox” to describe seemingly contradictory research
findings about the interactions of race, gender, and class. While very little
research on health has utilized an intersectional approach, Warner and Brown
(2011) have examined data showing that both African Americans and Hispanics
generally suffer from higher levels of chronic disease and disability than do
White people, and these researchers argue that gender also plays a role. They
found that Black and Hispanic women have higher rates of chronic illness and
disability than White women, and that there are greater disparities between men
and women of color than between men and women who are White. In other
words, the gender health gap is worse among people of color, and especially
among African Americans.

Many studies also reveal that age is an interacting variable and that Black
women experience the poorest health outcomes, which begin accelerating once
they reach reproductive age. Warner and Brown (2011) have examined the ways
in which race and gender intersect with age, looking at differences in
ability/disability levels over the life course. They compared Whites, Blacks, and
Mexican Americans and found that White men had the lowest disability levels,
followed by White women and men of color, while Black and Hispanic women
experienced the highest disability levels. They also found that these differing
levels of disability increased at the same rate for each group, so the disparities
remained constant over people’s lifetimes. The only group for which this pattern
did not hold was Black women, who experience a higher rate of disablement
beginning in their reproductive years and continuing into their 60s.

Jackson and Williams (2006) also argue that to fully understand well-
documented racial disparities, we must consider both class and gender. They
examine the specific health inequities experienced by the Black middle class,
including race-related stressors in the workplace, and find that Black middle-
class men and Black middle-class women are both more vulnerable to specific
sets of health problems. Recent research suggests that stress, which we examine
next, is an important factor influencing health disparities.

Stress and Microaggressions

Émile Durkheim was the first sociologist to recognize the impact of stress on
health (White 2009). Scholars now know that experiencing overt forms of
discrimination has negative effects on both the mental and physical health of
most minority group members (Sue 2010). Many studies have linked
institutional racism and individual experiences of racism to poor health
outcomes (Williams 2012; Sue 2010). Various studies of children and
adolescents have found that youths of color report experiencing significant levels
of racism, whether at school, engaged in online games and chat rooms, or
elsewhere, that can be directly tied to negative mental health outcomes.

Racism and stress are key factors in explaining why some health inequities
increase with age, producing a “cumulative disadvantage.” Continued exposure
to racism has negative impacts on the health of people of color, especially
Blacks. Discrimination can lead to reduced access to desirable goods and
services; internalized racism, or acceptance of society’s negative
characterization, can adversely affect health; racism can trigger increased
exposure to traditional stressors (such as unemployment); and experiences of
discrimination may constitute a neglected psychosocial stressor (Williams 2012,
284).

Similar research is being advanced in the field of psychology. First identified by

Chester Pierce, founding president of the Black Psychiatrists of America,
microaggressions “are brief verbal, non-verbal, and behavioral insults to a
person or group, whether intentional or unintentional” (Hosokawa 2012, 21).
They are a form of psychological stressor tied specifically to an individual’s
identity as a member of an oppressed group. The impact of microaggressions
comes from their cumulative nature, and the way in which they evoke and serve
as a reminder of a history of oppression. Imagine getting a paper cut. It stings for
a moment and then you forget about it and move on. Now imagine getting a
second paper cut, and then a third, and then a fourth—day after day, the paper
cuts keep occurring. It is not long before you feel as if your whole body is cut
and bleeding. That is how psychologists have described the experience of being
exposed to repeated microaggressions. Those who experience a paper cut only
occasionally may wonder why people of color make such a big deal of such little
things, instead of brushing off a comedian’s racist joke as “just kidding around,”
or dismissing someone’s inadvertent racist comment by saying, “Hey, he made a
mistake, what’s the big deal?” As Sue (2010, 95) describes it: “Microaggressions
are linked to a wider sociopolitical context of oppression and injustice (historical
trauma) . . . [for] those who understand their own histories of discrimination and
prejudice. Each small race-related slight, hurt, invalidation, insult, and indignity
rubs salt into the wounds of marginalized groups in our society.”

Constant exposure to microaggressions, for insance while working as a health

aide in a nursing home, causes harm and creates health risks in every non-White
group.

Phanie / Alamy Stock Photo

Research finds that every non-White racial group experiences harm and health
risks as a result of microaggressions. As with the body’s reaction to more overt
stressors, the ongoing experience of microaggressions can lead to physiological
responses that weaken the immune system, leaving people more vulnerable to
illness and disease, including diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and
chronic respiratory problems (Sue 2010). The body’s reaction to stress also
facilitates the progression of such diseases. In a 2013 study, David H. Chae
found that racial discrimination and anti-Black bias may accelerate the aging
process in African American males (see Blake 2014). In addition to these
physical consequences, exposure to microaggressions can threaten mental health
functioning.

Those who are most affected by the stress of racism, sexism, and poverty are
also least likely to have access to useful coping skills. Education, well-paying
jobs, and access to health care and social services that help shore up our sense of
worth and resilience are not evenly distributed in U.S. society (White 2009, 72).
Women often bear the burden of supporting those who deal with stress (White
2009, 72) while at the same time taking over a greater share in caring for our
aging population (Glenn 2010).

Researchers using complex statistical analyses have estimated the numbers of

deaths each year due to specific social factors. They conclude that “245,000
deaths in the United States were attributable to low education, 176,000 to racial
segregation, 162,000 to low social support, 133,000 to individual-level poverty,
119,000 to income inequality, and 39,000 to area-level poverty” (Galea, Tracy,
Hoggatt, DiMaggio, and Karpati 2011, 1462). Yet no single factor explains all
health inequities. Thinking about the visual image of how each individual is
situated within the matrix, we have seen that within the institution of health care,
a wide range of social identities and social factors, all of which are context
specific (shaped by history and place), play important roles. But despite
widespread understanding that social factors are some of the most significant
influences on health, some scholars continue to seek answers in our biology.
A Legacy of Mistrust
One of the important concealed narratives that sociologists have identified is that
medical theories determine the questions for study, framing them as scientific
“problems” to be solved and guiding the possible answers, thus limiting what is
even imaginable. This process has consequences. People defined as suffering
from specific maladies can become subject to various medical, political, and
legal forms of social control. Consider the case of drapetomania, a “mental
illness” invented to explain why slaves tried to escape slavery.

Described by Samuel Cartwright in his book Diseases and Peculiarities of the

Negro Race (1851), this disease could exist only in the context of a White
supremacist society that sees slavery as the natural role for human beings
defined as inferior. Slavery’s stock story posited that slaves were happy to be
slaves and were in their natural place according to God’s plan. However, if they
were happy and content as slaves, and slavery was God’s will, what could
explain the many cases of runaways? Drapetomania was the answer, and it also
provided a cure—the amputation of the big toes. This remedy was successful
because it physically prevented the slave from running away again. The case of
drapetomania “was both a product of that society and helped to reinforce the
power relations of that society” (White 2009, 43).

Mistrust of medicine is frequently a barrier for people of color. As one man put
it, “I think that most of the people who are in control of research don’t look like
me, and I don’t have confidence in how they perceive my value and my worth. I
would be very reluctant to give anybody a blank check with respect to
experimenting with my body and my life, my health” (quoted in Freimuth et al.
2001, 806). Given the history of medical experimentation, such mistrust is
certainly understandable.

Perhaps the best-known medical experiment on a U.S. minority group is the

Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. This study, conducted
from 1932 to 1972, is still the longest-running nontherapeutic medical study in
U.S. history. Nearly 400 African American men with syphilis were recruited as
subjects in Macon County, Alabama, by the U.S. Public Health Service, in
collaboration with Tuskegee University, a historically Black institution. The men
in the experimental group were never informed that they had syphilis, even as
the study followed the natural progression of the disease and the study’s doctors
withheld treatment options such as penicillin, which became the standard of care
for syphilis during the study period. It is estimated that between 28 and 100 of
the 400 infected men died as a result of their untreated syphilis.

The narrative of this study (which was finally ended after a whistle-blower went
to the press) helps explain why many Black people harbor fears and mistrust
when it comes to the medical research establishment (Alsan and Wanamaker
2016; Boulware, Cooper, Ratner, LaVeist, and Powe 2003; Brenick, Romano,
Kegler, and Eaton 2017; Thomas and Quinn 1991), Researchers argue that this
history, combined with the cultural meanings of disease, has created a climate in
which fears undermine public health efforts, such as those targeting AIDS in the
African American community and many others (Thomas and Quinn 1991).
Alsan and Wanamaker (2016) found that public news of the Tuskegee study in
1972 was directly correlated with a decline in Black men’s trust of the medical
establishment and visits to physicians, and with an increase in morbidity rates.
Most significant, the researchers found a 1.4-year decrease in life expectancy
among Black men over 45 years old.
The Role of Place and Environmental Racism
Where we live also affects our health, and segregated housing is a significant
factor in health inequality. In 1899, W. E. B. Du Bois observed that poor people
of color and poor Whites faced different living conditions that had impacts on
their health. High levels of residential racial segregation persist in the United
States, and people of color are more likely than Whites to be segregated in
neighborhoods that are isolated from key social services and have poor living
conditions, including environmental threats to health (Schulz et al. 2016). Poor
Whites are more likely than poor people of color to live in economically diverse
neighborhoods, with greater access to resources. As Williams (2012, 284) has
reported, “In 100 of America’s largest metropolitan areas, 75 percent of all
African American children and 69 percent of all Latino children are growing up
in more negative residential environments than are the worst-off white children.”
Neighborhood racial segregation also raises the risk of low birth weight beyond
what would be expected from only economic differences (Debbink and Bader
2011; Gray, Edwards, Schultz, and Miranda 2014).

Environmental Risks
Race and class are both linked to exposure to environmental health risks.
Hazardous waste dumps, landfills, incinerators, and other toxic sites are much
more likely to be located in poor and minority neighborhoods than in wealthier,
Whiter ones. People residing in neighborhoods that are primarily minority and
lower-class are also exposed to higher levels of pollution, asbestos, and lead, and
any playgrounds in these neighborhoods are usually older and unsafe (Massey
2004). A large body of research documents these realities and their impacts. For
example, people of color and low-income Whites are significantly more likely to
suffer from asthma, a difference that begins early in childhood. Research in
California found that Whites are half as likely as people of color to live in areas
where they face high cancer risks due to toxins in the air. Children of color face
greater levels of pollution and lead poisoning at their schools, during a key
period of development. Exposure to high levels of pollution contributes to lower
academic performance, and lead poisoning produces permanent behavioral and
neurological changes, including decreased IQ, as well as organ damage and even
death (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry 2000).

Epidemiology
Social epidemiologists and sociologists are helping us to understand how race,
class, and health are linked. Employing an “ecological perspective in health
research” also adds to our understanding of these complex phenomena (McLaren
and Hawe 2005). Public health specialists are currently showing a growing
interest in this approach. Ecological is defined broadly here to include the entire
context: all of the levels depicted in the matrix visual—history, place (both local
and global), identity, the individual, and so on (McLaren and Hawe 2005). These
various theoretical perspectives acknowledge the importance of social structures
and organizations, and culture and narratives of inequality, which all contribute
to health disparities.

Minority and poor neighborhoods are more likely to be near sources of exposure
to toxins and environmental pollutants. Minority children are more likely to
suffer from asthma and lead exposure as a result.

Chip Chipman/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Epidemiology is the study of “the distribution of health issues (diseases or

injuries) and health determinants in a population” (Conrad and Leiter 2012, 24).
Epidemiologists focus on populations, rather than on individuals, to explain why
some groups may be more likely to develop specific diseases; they look at
factors such as the characteristics of the social groups themselves, the areas in
which they live, and the environmental elements to which they are exposed.
The Human Genome Project
Today, research on race and genetics is progressing at a faster rate than ever
before. In 1990, the internationally funded Human Genome Project (HGP) set
out to map and sequence the entire spectrum of human genes. Recalling
Davenport’s attempt to create a comprehensive catalog of every human trait,
sociologist Troy Duster (2003) refers to these contemporary efforts as a
“backdoor to eugenics.”

The HGP, which was completed in 2003, sparked renewed debate over the use of
race in medicine and science. While geneticists acknowledge that race has no
genetic basis, there is disagreement about the usefulness of race as a system of
categories for sorting human differences. Some geneticists and biomedical
researchers argue that our taken-for-granted racial classifications can be used as
a means of dividing people into groups based on shared ancestry (Ossorio and
Duster 2005, 117). However, scientists have discovered that approximately 85%
of human genetic variation occurs within so-called races—far more than can be
found between any racialized groups. People categorized as belonging to the
same race may have very little in common genetically or biologically (Ossorio
and Duster 2005, 117).

This view of genetic variation would seem to make racial categorizations

useless. However, there are other interests at stake. One purpose of the HGP was
to identify genetic markers for susceptibility to specific genetic disorders, so that
gene therapies could be developed to prevent, treat, or cure them. According to
the U.S. government’s Human Genome Project website, “An important feature
of the HGP project was the federal government’s long-standing dedication to the
transfer of technology to the private sector. By licensing technologies to private
companies and awarding grants for innovative research, the project catalyzed the
multibillion-dollar U.S. biotechnology industry and fostered the development of
new medical applications.” The website boasts that as a result of the HGP, many
wide-ranging industries are booming, and “new entrepreneurs” are popping up to
“offer an abundance of genomic services and applications” (Human Genome
Project Information Archive 2013).

We have seen the growth of companies offering to provide us with information

about our ancestors; the birth of the first racially targeted medicine, BiDil, a
heart disease drug marketed to African Americans; and new methods of
screening for birth “defects” and genetic diseases. While some of these advances
may be welcome, they also carry unexamined assumptions from our eugenic
past. For example, disability activists warn that screening for birth “defects”
once again defines disabled bodies as “unfit” and as potential targets for
elimination (Saxton 2010).

These developments also target individual consumers. The individualization of

health and medicine directs our attention away from the larger issue of racial
inequities in health and the factors that produce those inequities, supporting the
stock story that locates inferiority in the bodies of people of color (Daniels and
Schulz 2006; Hubbard and Wald 1999). Scholar Emily Martin (2006, 86)
addresses the ethical dilemma raised by this approach in her critique of drugs
tailored to specific racial groups. She asks, “Will making more and better
medicines available to African Americans who suffer more stress due to poverty
and racism provide something we want to call a solution, let alone a cure?”

Sociologists Ossorio and Duster (2005, 116) offer a way out of the trap of seeing
race as either useful or not. They suggest an alternative perspective, informed by
a sociological lens:

Race and racial categories can best be understood as a set of social

processes that can create biological consequences; race is a set of social
processes with biological feedbacks that require empirical investigation.
Researchers ought to be discussing when and how best to use race as a
variable rather than arguing about the categorical exclusion or inclusion of
race in science. Researchers ought to interrogate the meaning of observed
racial differences. In doing so, they must recognize that race may be a
consequence of differential treatment and experiences rather than an
independent cause of differential outcomes.

One of the foundational arguments of a sociological perspective on health and

medicine is that scientific knowledge is an inherently social enterprise (White
2009, 14). The scientific-medical eugenics discourse was the product of a
specific social and historical context, and reflected the values of the dominant
members of society. While some scholars refer to eugenics as pseudoscience, we
have chosen not to do so, but to instead emphasize the fact that all scientific and
medical knowledge is social. Eugenics is not a unique example of how medicine
can be penetrated by social prejudices. Instead, medicine is always a social
practice. It is carried out by social beings in specific social and cultural contexts.
 Critical Thinking

1. How has the tendency to focus on genetics changed over time? What do you see as possible positive
and negative outcomes of the Human Genome Project and today’s renewed interest in genetics as
they shape both health and identity?
2. How do social factors pervade the institution of health care and medicine, resulting in differential
health outcomes?
3. What motivations may underlie drug companies’ efforts to develop race-specific medications?
4. How might your own intersecting identities shape your physical and mental health?
Resisting and Transforming Inequality in Health and
Health Care
The title of Sandra Morgen’s 2002 book about the women’s health movement,
Into Our Own Hands, is an apt description of the steps taken by every
community of color in the United States. In response to a long history of
systemic racist violence, abuse, and neglect, we find remarkable numbers of
individuals and communities facing these challenges head-on and working to
meet their own health needs while simultaneously battling racist institutions and
organizations. We have already seen one example in the history of the National
Medical Association. Below we examine a few more.
Urban American Indian Health Care
Overall, people of color are more likely than their White counterparts to receive
low-quality health care. Native Americans, however, face some unique
circumstances. More than 560 tribes are currently recognized by the U.S.
government and entitled to specific health care benefits. However, to receive
those benefits, an individual must also be legally recognized, through a
bureaucratic process, as a member of one of those tribes. Health care services
provided by the Indian Health Service (IHS), a division of the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services established in 1955, are reserved for members of
recognized tribes, generally provided on reservations, and concentrated in areas
with the largest Indian populations. This means that some tribes benefit more
than others (Fixico 2000). Where available, however, IHS-provided health care
is free and likely to be culturally responsive and respectful of indigenous
traditions. Despite some successes, however, the health disparities between
Native Americans and Whites remain wide (Indian Health Service 2017).

About 70% of American Indians and Alaska Natives have moved away from
reservations to urban areas, where obtaining health care is more difficult and
expensive, and the care available is less culturally sensitive. According to the
Urban Indian Health Commission (2007, 1), “Today’s urban Indians are mostly
the product of failed federal government policies that facilitated the urbanization
of Indians, and the lack of sufficient aid to assure success with this transition has
placed them at greater health risk.” One example of this increased risk is the
suicide rate among urban American Indian youth, which is 62% higher than the
national average. In addition to the factors noted above, urban American Indians
have few informal and formal community support networks to turn to for
support, and they are unlikely to find traditional or even American Indian health
care providers (Burrage, Gone, and Momper 2016; Filippi et al. 2016).

Comparatively little information is available on the specific health risks and

needs facing American Indians and Alaska Natives, and even less is known
about the health risks and needs of urban Native Americans. What research does
exist provides evidence that Native Americans face disproportionate levels of
depression and other mental health issues, type 2 diabetes, and poor
cardiovascular health. Many also experience symptoms of, and are more likely
to die from, these diseases at earlier ages. For example, compared to the U.S.
population as a whole, Native Americans are more than three times as likely to
die from diabetes-related strokes. The infant mortality rate for Native Americans
is 33% higher than that for Whites, and their rate of deaths related to alcohol is
178% higher. Further, the majority of the nonelderly Native American
population has been classified as either poor or near-poor, and while 25% qualify
for Medicaid, only 17% report they are receiving benefits (Urban Indian Health
Commission 2007).

In response to these circumstances, Native Americans have founded many urban

health organizations to provide prevention and treatment services in culturally
appropriate and respectful ways. These organizations have also been making
efforts to improve data collection and research on this community, although
limited funding has curtailed this work, which has yet to achieve its full
potential. While these organizations can produce some measure of improvement
at the individual and local levels, they argue that the Native American
community faces issues that cannot be remedied without broader structural
changes that address federal policy, including but not limited to the provision of
health services, as well as socioeconomic factors. The history of extermination,
segregation, broken promises, and recent patterns of government neglect will not
be remedied by individual-level responses.
Race, Reproduction, and the Women’s Health Movement
The first wave of the women’s movement, besides fighting for suffrage in the
early 20th century, also focused on access to birth control. At the time, any
public discussion of contraception was against the law, which limited
information access to well-off women who could consult with private doctors.
Margaret Sanger, one of the leaders of the birth control movement, was arrested
for promoting contraception through the U.S. mail. Again arrested and jailed for
opening the first birth control clinic in 1916, she founded the American Birth
Control League, which later became Planned Parenthood. Keenly aware of the
barriers faced by immigrant women, Sanger used the racism and eugenics
ideology of the time to argue that birth control would benefit White society by
limiting the numbers of children born to immigrant families from Southern and
Eastern Europe (DuBois and Dumenil 2012). Immigrant women would beg
Sanger, who worked as a nurse, for information on how to prevent pregnancy,
and she witnessed firsthand the poor health and needless deaths of many married
women due to too many pregnancies.

Because of the racist inflection of the debate over birth control, and its
connections with the eugenics movement, Black women sought to educate
themselves about birth control and reproductive health, beginning with the
women’s clubs affiliated with the National Association of Colored Women. For
Black women, as for many other marginalized women, the issue of reproductive
rights included not only the right to use contraception but also the rights to
choose to have children and to be free of nonconsensual sterilization.

Women’s educational and occupational opportunities are limited if they have no

control over their reproduction. Further, their economic dependence on men is
reinforced and solidified when they have large numbers of children to care for.
Growing directly out of the second wave of the women’s rights movement, the
women’s health movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s particularly focused
on increasing women’s control over their reproductive and sexual health. Early
on, women of color like Byllye Avery became “acutely aware of how little
information existed about Black women’s health and of how the movement [they
were] part of defined issues, strategies, and services with little attention or
awareness of the specific needs and perspectives of women of color” (Morgen
2002, 41). The mainstream women’s movement’s narrow focus on abortion and
choice needed to be expanded to encompass the fuller range of women’s
reproductive needs and rights.

Avery, a board member of the National Women’s Health Network, worked with
others to form self-help groups for Black women, and initiated the NWHN’s
National Black Women’s Health Project (NBWHP), which became its own
organization in 1984. The NBWHP situated Black women’s health within the
larger context of not only sexism but also racism and class inequality, and
broadened its focus from the “pro-choice” platform to one of reproductive
justice, defined as “the right to have children, not have children, and to parent
the children we have in safe and healthy environments. Reproductive justice
addresses the social reality of inequality, specifically, the inequality of
opportunities that we have to control our reproductive destiny” (SisterSong
2013). For example, when the NBWHP started the Center for Black Women’s
Wellness in Atlanta, alongside the many medical services the center provided,
“vocational and educational training” were also offered (Morgen 2002, 49).
Resistance/Story
 Loretta Ross—Not Just Choice but Reproductive Justice
I was born in 1953 in Temple, Texas, the sixth of eight children in a churchgoing family. I was
raped by a soldier at the age of 11 and then again by my mother’s adult cousin. At age 16, I
had an abortion. My mother would not consent to my obtaining birth control, although I was
already a teen mother and attending my first year of college thousands of miles away from
home. I was lucky—abortion had been legalized in Washington, D.C., in 1970, the year I
desperately needed one, so I avoided the back alley. I had a safe and legal abortion, although
my older sister had to forge my mother’s signature on the consent form. I do not, in any way,
regret my decision. What happened to me—rape, incest, parental blocking—should not
happen to any other girl, and I’m proud to be a feminist fighting for all women’s human rights.
African American women have made consistent and critical activist contributions to the
evolution of the reproductive rights movement in the United States, expanding the movement
to highlight other aspects of our struggle to achieve reproductive freedom based on our
experiences of pregnancy, infant mortality, sterilization abuse, welfare abuse, and sexuality in
general.

I began my work as a reproductive justice activist in the early 1970s, focusing on sterilization
abuse. I have witnessed the development of a strong reproductive freedom movement among
Black women during this period. In doing research to support my activism, I discovered a long
tradition of reproductive rights advocacy by Black women that was either undocumented or
not widely understood. I became determined to reconnect the work of Black activists at the
beginning of the 20th century to the work and ideology of those at the century’s end.

I have spent 38 years launching and managing nonprofit feminist organizations, including
SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. The Collective was formed in
1997 to fulfill a need for a national movement by women of color to organize our voices to
represent ourselves and our communities. SisterSong comprises 80 local, regional, and
national grassroots organizations. SisterSong educates women of color on reproductive and
sexual health and rights, and works toward improving access to health services, information,
and resources that are culturally and linguistically appropriate through the integration of the
disciplines of community organizing, self-help, and human rights education. The mission of
SisterSong is to amplify and strengthen the collective voices of indigenous women and women
of color to ensure reproductive justice through securing human rights.

Joining the women’s movement not only transformed my life but also saved it. On my journey,
I’ve learned about women’s human rights, reproductive justice, White supremacy, and women
of color organizing.

The conferences, workshops, and other activities of the NBWHP nurtured other
new grassroots organizations in the 1980s, including the National Latina Health
Organization, the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center,
and the National Asian Women’s Health Organization. Each of these
organizations maintains an emphasis on the diversity of women’s needs within
these communities, while at the same time addressing some of the specific
challenges each constituent group faces.
Today, a vibrant movement is fighting for reproductive justice. Women with
disabilities have embraced and advanced the reproductive justice framework
based on their own history of sterilization, the treatment of people with
disabilities as nonsexual beings, the risks posed by genetic testing that attempts
to eliminate the disabled, and more. A reproductive justice approach moves
disability rights activism from a focus on individual rights to a framework that
examines access to services and support that can allow society to acknowledge
the inherent value and worth of human beings with disabilities (Jesudason and
Epstein 2011). While Roe v. Wade (1972) declared women’s right to control their
reproductive systems, restrictions limiting this right have proliferated. As of
April 2016, 43 states had laws restricting access to abortion
(https://www.guttmacher.org/). In 87% of U.S. counties, women have no access
to an abortion provider.

The efforts of international nongovernmental organizations supporting women’s

health have also increased over the past few decades, while U.S. aid has
declined. While reproductive health inequities reflect existing social and
economic inequities, they also reinforce them. International family planning
programs are one key component of improving women’s lives around the world
(Sedgh, Hussain, Bankole, and Singh 2007, 5). In developing nations,
researchers have found that more than one in seven married women needs or
wants contraception, but is not using any. The same is true for one in thirteen
women ages 15 to 29 who have never married. The most common reason these
women are not using contraception is a lack of access to “supplies and services,”
including counseling and education about contraceptive options (Sedgh et al.
2007, 5). Around the world, women are working together locally to improve
women’s health. In order to improve health and health care access among
oppressed populations, those directly affected must be a part of the process of
finding solutions.
A Path to the Future
One of the most important lessons we can learn from the many health care
movements run by and for marginalized women is that strategies that narrowly
target access and individual behavior are not enough. Health inequities are a
social problem that requires much broader social change.

Figure 5.5 Women’s Access to Abortion is Affected by Both Race and Class

Sources: “U.S. Abortion Patients” May 9, 2016, Guttmacher Institute,

 https://www.guttmacher.org/infographic/2016/us-abortion-patients.

“Abortion patients are disproportionately poor and low income,” May 9,

2016, Guttmacher Institute,
https://www.guttmacher.org/infographic/2016/abortion-patients-are-
disproportionately-poor-and-low-income.

Evidence suggests that policies targeting inequality at a broader level can reduce
the health gap. For example, in the United States, states with higher levels of
social spending have higher overall levels of health (Gallet and Doucouliagos
2017; Verma, Clark, Leider, and Bishai 2016). Perhaps not surprisingly, research
on the views that U.S. citizens hold about health has found that few people see
“employment, education, housing quality, and community safety as important
determinants of health” (Williams 2012, 287). As this chapter has shown, health
disparities reflect social inequalities in our society and are interconnected with
other institutional structures, such as economy, education, the law, and a culture
that reproduces racial inequality (Weber 2006). Simplistic individual-level
responses, like telling someone to lose weight, will not solve the deep-rooted
problems of health inequities. The good news is that institutions of medicine are
taking a crucial first step in acknowledging the importance of social factors. In
2015, the Association of American Medical Colleges began requiring students
taking the MCAT entrance exam to have background knowledge in the social
sciences. As the association announced in 2012:

A new section, “Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of

Behavior,” will test the ways in which these areas influence a variety of
factors, including people’s perceptions and reactions to the world; behavior
and behavior change; what people think about themselves and others;
cultural and social differences that influence well-being; and the
relationships among socio-economic factors, access to resources, and well-
being.

A truly interdisciplinary approach is essential to a real commitment to decreasing

health inequities.
Key Terms

American Medical Association, p. 160

conversion therapy, p. 167
curandero/as, p. 159
drapetomania, p. 181
epidemiology, p. 184
eugenics, p. 163
Human Genome Project, p. 184
internalized racism, p. 179
medical sociology, p. 168
microaggressions, p. 180
morbidity rates, p. 174
mortality rates, p. 158
reproductive justice, p. 188
Social Darwinism, p. 163
traditional medicine, p. 159
Chapter Summary
LO 5.1 Describe contemporary inequality in health and
health care.
Today’s disparities among racial and ethnic groups in health and mortality are evidence of the
historical and ongoing effects of structural racism. Racial disparities exist in health care
access, disease prevention, identification of disease, treatment, care coordination, outcomes,
patient satisfaction, and more. Today’s health disparities have been significantly shaped by
historical patterns of White privilege and White supremacy. Modern medicine displaced
traditional methods of healing in many cultures, and played a central role in the construction
of racial classifications and corresponding notions of difference. History is replete with
examples of resistance to health inequities. African Americans developed their own health
care systems in response to their exclusion from segregated institutions.
LO 5.2 Examine various stock narratives of inequality
in health and medicine.
Our stock stories lead us to assume that medical advances are responsible for today’s longer
life spans; that the field of medicine and health care employs objective science; that race is a
biological reality that can help explain disparities in health; and that health is strictly a matter
of individual and genetic factors. Research, however, reveals the important roles of social
factors such as hygiene and nutrition, as well as race and class.
LO 5.3 Apply the matrix lens to the link between race
and health care.
The matrix perspective highlights various social factors contributing to racial health inequity
and inequality, including stress, social relationships, socioeconomic factors, residential
segregation, environmental factors, and mistrust, as well as the interactions of race, class,
gender, age, and more. The field of social epidemiology highlights the relationships among
race, class, and health, and explains the “epidemiological paradox” of better overall health
among Asians and Latinos, racial groups with significant numbers of immigrants.
LO 5.4 Explore alternatives to the current matrix of
inequality in health and medicine.
Disenfranchised groups have created many organizations to address and act as advocates for
their health needs. Urban Indian health organizations and a wide array of health organizations
founded by women of color place these groups’ health needs within the broader context of
social and institutional factors shaped by a history of racism. These organizations argue that
health disparities cannot be remedied without broader structural changes. Organizations started
and run by women of color and disabled women have fought for a more inclusive
understanding of women’s reproductive health needs.
Chapter 6 Education

Despite the myth of education as the great equalizer, educational opportunities

are not the same for all children across the United States.

The Washington Post / The Washington Post / Getty Images

Chapter Outline

The Shaping of the Matrix of U.S. Education

Education Today
A Short History
Theories of Education
Social-Functional Theory: Education as a Socialization Process
Human Capital Theory: Education as Skills Acquisition
Examining the Concealed Story of Race and Education through the
Matrix
Education as a Conversion Tool
Education as a Site of Class Construction
Education as a Means of Creating Workers
Education as a Citizen Machine
Education, Race, and Intersectional Realities
Alternative Educational Movements and the Future of Education
Imagining Future Educations
Education as a Human Right
 Learning Objectives

LO 6.1 Describe the current state of education in the United States and the key historical factors
that have shaped it.
LO 6.2 Compare the major sociological theories of education.
LO 6.3 Analyze several matrix perspectives on education.
LO 6.4 Identify alternatives to the educational system that recognize intersectional realities.

The nation’s only Catholic Black college, New Orleans’s Xavier University,
charges less than $20,000 a year for tuition and sends more Black students on to
medical schools than any other educational institution in the United States.
When Pierre Johnson arrived at Xavier several years ago to work toward
fulfilling his lifelong ambition of becoming a doctor, he realized how
inadequately he had been prepared at the all-Black Chicago high school he
attended. Although he had been an outstanding student, his school had not even
offered basic science courses like physics. As Johnson later told a New York
Times reporter, “I wanted to be a doctor, but I did not even know what the
periodic table was.” With the intensive help and support of the faculty and his
fellow Xavier students, Johnson earned admission to medical school at the
University of Illinois, where he was the only Black student in his class. He is
now a successful gynecologist in Illinois. Without Xavier, he says, “I wouldn’t
have made it” (quoted in Hannah-Jones 2015).

Johnson’s shock at finding himself unprepared for college contradicts the

primary stock story of the institution of education in the United States—that
education serves as the great equalizer, that schooling can level the playing field
for life opportunities and life chances, regardless of race, gender, or social and
economic status. As Xavier’s former president, Norman Francis, has stated,
“Research shows if you are black and born poor, you are going to live in a poor
neighborhood, going to go to a poor school, and by and large, you are going to
stay that way. To come out of that system, you would have to rise much higher
than other youngsters who had every resource” (quoted in Hannah-Jones 2015).

This story is part of a larger story—that educational opportunities are not the
same for all. In this chapter, we examine how educational segregation is woven
into the fabric of the United States, how different educations are creating
different identities, and the important role of the matrix of race in this reality.
The bottom line is this: Johnson was not “supposed” to be a doctor. Consider
that in 1933, historian Carter G. Woodson argued that Black Americans were
being indoctrinated and “taught their place” through the curricula in U.S. schools
(Woodson [1933] 2016). In 1955, novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale
Hurston criticized the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision to
desegregate schools, saying there were already adequate and important Black
schools that more effectively served Black communities than any White school
ever could (Hurston 1955).

Both claims are still debated, as the matrix of race still matters in the institution
of education and vice versa. The institution of education in the United States has
been shaped by decisions, definitions, and declarations about differences. In this
chapter we will explore the history of U.S. public education and its expressed
and concealed functions, and we will reflect on who gets an education and why.
We begin with a look at who is getting an education today, and what “being
educated” means.
The Shaping of the Matrix of U.S. Education
What does it mean to be educated? If you accept the arguments of C. Wright
Mills (1956), you might conclude that education functions to maintain the social
hierarchy by creating workers, who then sustain the wealth of the elite. A
successful professional might tell you that education is a socialization process
fundamentally about skills acquisition. The framers of U.S. democracy, such as
Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin, believed that the purpose of education is
to foster the critical thinking necessary for citizens in a free society. And middle-
class parents paying a child’s way through college might say that education is a
way to move up the socioeconomic ladder. Nathan Hare, who started the first
Black studies program at San Francisco State University in 1969, sees the
purpose of education as bringing about change, noting, “[If] education is not
revolutionary in the current day [then it] is both irrelevant and useless” (quoted
in Karenga 2002, 16–17). What does this mean? Who decides what is useful and
relevant to learn? And for whom?

The institution of education is both vital and complex. While some see education
as a solution for inequalities of all sorts, others see the education system as rife
with inequalities—especially for those who are not White or affluent. The most
recently available data (from the 2013–14 school year) show that nationally,
82% of all 9th-grade public school students graduated high school after 4 years,
with Asian American (89%) and White (87%) students graduating at higher
rates, and Latino (76%), Black (73%), and Native American (70%) students
graduating at much lower rates (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES]
2016b). Graduation rates also vary widely from state to state. Clearly, education
does not work equally for all.
Education Today
A study by researchers at Georgetown University found that while a college
degree still provides a material boost to lifetime earnings, 10 years after
graduation the alumni of elite institutions are outearning their peers from other
colleges and universities, often by a significant amount, and male college
graduates still earn much more per year than female graduates almost across the
board (Carnevale, Rose, and Cheah 2011). Rising tuition costs and a weak job
market have contributed to these inequalities, but as we will discuss in more
detail below, they did not create them. The government plans to continue
monitoring 10-year earnings data on its new College Scorecard website (Carey
2015).

Who Goes to School?

Many children in the United States begin their structured experience of
education soon after birth, in institutionalized and organized child care. In 2010,
there were about 20 million children under the age of 5 in the United States.

Of these 20 million, 43.2% attended organized day-care or preschool

facilities, and the remainder were under the care of parents, grandparents,
siblings, or other relatives.
Black and Latino children were a little less than half as likely as White and
Asian children to attend preschool.
Mothers with only high school educations were five times less likely to
enroll their children in preschool than were mothers with college degrees
(U.S. Census Bureau 2011).

In 2013–14 there were more than 104,000 elementary schools in the United
States (some of which were combined elementary and secondary schools).
Almost three-fourths (70.3%) of these were public schools, while the rest were
private (including religious schools) (20.7%). Public elementary schools enroll
slightly more than 35 million students, taught by some 2.2 million teachers. That
makes the average student–teacher ratio 16.1 to 1 (NCES 2016b). Secondary
schools (hosting different combinations of grades 7 through 12) number more
than 41,000 in the United States. The vast majority of these are also public
schools (73.1%). In public secondary schooling, 15 million students are taught
by more than 1.2 million teachers—an average student–teacher ratio of 16.2 to 1
(NCES 2016b). From 2008 to 2013, public school enrollment increased by about
2%, while enrollment in private and religious schools declined over the same
period. However, the public school enrollment of certain groups increased much
more (Latinos, 18%; Asian Americans, 6%), while that of others decreased over
this period (7% decrease for both Whites and Blacks; 11% decrease for Native
Americans). By 2024, projections indicate a continued increase mirroring what
was seen in the 2008–13 period, largely due to immigration from Asia (first) and
Central and Latin America (second) (NCES 2016a) (see Figure 6.1).

Figure 6.1 Racial and Ethnic Distributions of Public School Students Will
Continue to Shift

Source: National Center for Education Statistics (2016).

In the same school year (2013–14), 19.5 million students, ages 18 to 24, were
enrolled in 7,253 Title IV institutions of postsecondary education (i.e., colleges
and universities) (NCES 2016b). The majority of these students (59.3%) were
White, while Blacks (14.7%), Latinos (15.8%), Asian Americans (6.4%), and
Native Americans (0.8%) made up the rest. Compare this to a decade earlier,
when Whites made up 69.1%, Blacks 12.7%, Latinos 10.5%, Asian Americans
6.6%, and Native Americans 1.1%. Hussar and Bailey (2016) have projected
college enrollments a decade forward, to 2024, and they estimate that the
proportion of Whites will decrease to 56%, that of Blacks will increase to 16.7%,
and that of Latinos will increase to 17.5%, while the proportions of Asian
Americans and Native Americans will remain largely the same. Indeed, a recent
Pew study found that in 2012, Latinos’ higher education enrollment rates
surpassed those of Whites for the first time (49% of all 18- to 24-year-olds,
compared to 47%) (Roach 2013).

We see that who enrolls and attends school has changed over time, and Figure
6.2 shows an even more interesting and disturbing pattern that requires
explanation: The gains that Blacks and Latinos have made in graduating from
high school as well as their immense gains in enrolling in and attending college
have not resulted in proportionate attainment of the bachelor’s degree. For
instance, in the 2011–12 school year, Latinos made up 18% of all high school
graduates, and they also made up 19% of the college enrollments, but by the
time they were 25–29 years old they made up only 9% of those receiving
bachelor’s degrees. The challenges faced by graduate students of color as they
attempt to gain doctoral and professional degrees are even more pronounced
(Brunsma, Embrick, and Shin 2017). Students of color face a pattern of poor
access to the higher education pipeline, or the pathway to higher education, and
the explanations for this pattern reside in the ways that the institution of
education is woven by and within the matrix of race.

Figure 6.2 There Are Racial Disparities in the Higher Education Pipeline

Source: Chart: “The Higher Education Pipeline, By Race/Ethnicity.” From

“More Hispanics, blacks enrolling in college, but lag in bachelor’s
degrees,” by Jans Manuel Krogstad and Richard Fry, Pew Research Center
Fact Tank, April 24, 2014.
A Short History
Regardless of type or level of schooling, the institution of education in the
United States has almost always been the site of conflict, debate, and
confrontation over access, meanings of education, and what is taught, why, and
to whom (as well as whose knowledge counts as knowledge worth having). This
conflict is often between dominant (White, male, upper-class, heterosexual)
groups and Blacks, Latinos, women, poor and working-class families, sexual
minorities, and those with physical and mental disabilities. To understand current
educational realities, we must first understand the formative moments in the
shaping of the matrix of education.

The first public schools in the United States were established shortly after the
American Revolution, and public education expanded rapidly in the 19th
century, thanks to the efforts of such advocates as reformer Horace Mann and
Tuskegee University founder Booker T. Washington. By 1910, nearly 72% of all
children in the United States attended at least elementary school, and by 1930
most children received some form of compulsory education.

One of the key functions of Native American boarding schools run by Christian
organizations and the federal government was to eradicate students’ culture. The
effects of this “soul wound” are still felt today, more than half a century after the
program ended.

Historical / Corbis Historical / Getty Images

Native American Boarding Schools

Harvard University, founded by the Massachusetts legislature as Harvard
College in 1636, was the first university built and chartered in the United States.
The Harvard Indian College was established in 1655 to educate “the English &
Indian Youth of this Country in knowledge: and godliness” (the school was
closed in 1698) (McGrory 2011). Beginning in the early 1870s, the federal
government set up boarding schools to educate Native American students in
English, “civilization,” Christianity, and the agricultural vocational trades. As
one historian has observed, many Native Americans were, in this way, “stripped
of their hair, their clothes, their beliefs, their language, and their culture,
including, when possible, their prayers” (Owings 2011, xiv).

Until 1903, more than 460 boarding and day schools were built close to
reservations; they were run by religious organizations using federal funds.
Ultimately, more than 100,000 indigenous children were “educated” out of their
cultures, languages, and ways of life. The effects linger, as recounted by Lakota
woman Karen Artichoker:

You see the impact of removing children from their homes, forcibly, putting
them in a concentration camp type of setting, a POW type of setting, the
boarding schools, and telling them anything Indian is not good, then
sending them out into their community to do their work and to raise
children they don’t have a clue how to raise. We see our bonding with the
oppressor still when we don’t see each [other] competent as Indians. We
don’t see each other as being honest. We don’t see ourselves as having a
work ethic. If we didn’t have that mainstream type of thinking about what’s
honorable and ethical, we’re still sort of “savages.” (quoted in Owings
2011, 155)

Consider the profound impacts that such cultural, spiritual, and psychological
damage and erasure can have on a people—loss of language, community norms,
parenting skills, tribal relationships, knowledge of one’s own history,
understanding of indigenous worldviews and identities, ability to develop skills
useful to the life of the tribe, and more. The effects of such a collective
experience linger, despite the fact that the last generation that went through the
system was born in the 1950s; the long-term effects of the boarding school
system have been described as a “soul wound” by some scholars (King 2008;
Smith 2007). In a collective effort to move toward healing that wound, Native
American activism arose in the 1960s and, along with several pieces of
legislation concerning the Bureau of Indian Affairs, led to the closure of the vast
majority of these schools and to the establishment of community schools and
colleges run by the tribes themselves.

Early African American Education: “Separate but Equal”

After the emancipation of enslaved Africans in 1863 and the end of the Civil
War in 1865, the period known as Reconstruction began. The nation faced four
challenges in “reconstructing” the South after slavery and the Civil War:

1. To rebuild the crucial southern economy on free labor instead of slave labor
2. To change the South so that it could more effectively rejoin the United
States
3. To integrate the freed Africans into U.S. society
4. To protect the freed Africans from harm

In the face of industrialization and capitalist development occurring in the

northern United States, however, only the first challenge was achieved. The
“education of the Negro” began in earnest as well, in schools that were separate
from but supposedly equal to schools for Whites. The goal was to keep Blacks
domesticated and subservient, with very limited skills exchangeable in the urban
labor markets of the North and South. Not surprisingly, by 1870 the
institutionalization of comprehensive and separate public school systems for
Whites and Blacks was well under way.

Soon, however, educator and orator Booker T. Washington grew concerned

about the increasing violence targeting the Black community and Black schools.
In a now-famous speech he gave at the Atlanta Cotton States and International
Exposition on September 18, 1895, Washington articulated the so-called Atlanta
Compromise. Under this compromise, southern Blacks would agree to work,
forgo their own political ambitions, and submit to White political rule. In
exchange, southern Whites would guarantee basic education for Blacks, reduce
intimidation toward them, and allow for due process in all legal matters
involving Blacks. One year later, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the landmark
Plessy v. Ferguson case, declared that racial segregation in public facilities was
constitutional and fell under the doctrine of separate but equal. This decision
heralded the Jim Crow era of legal segregation, which lasted nearly 100 years.
W. E. B. Du Bois and the Niagara Movement he founded inspired Blacks to
reject the negative associations with their Blackness and laid the foundation for
the modern civil rights movement.

Universal Images Group / Universal Images Group / Getty Images

School Desegregation
In 1900, W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black civil rights group he founded, the
Niagara Movement, called for free education for all, real education, they cried,
for “either the United States will destroy ignorance, or ignorance will destroy the
United States” (Du Bois 1900). From Du Bois’s criticism, the Harlem
Renaissance was born, a period when Black scholars, scientists, and artists
aimed to reject the negative characterizations of Blackness and assert the
existence of the “New Negro.” Thirty years later, Carter G. Woodson, as
mentioned earlier, would lambast the educational system and decry the poverty it
produced among Blacks. These critiques and the social unrest they produced laid
the foundation for what has been termed the modern civil rights movement.
Several seminal court cases paved the way for this movement and significantly
transformed the United States and its discourses regarding race, class, and
gender. The launching event was the 1954 Supreme Court case of Brown v.
Board of Education of Topeka.
Before the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education,
segregated schools for Blacks, like this one in rural Georgia, were considered
equal to those available to whites.

Bettmann / Bettmann / Getty Images

Oliver Brown sued the Topeka Board of Education on behalf of his daughter,
Linda, when she was denied admission to a white elementary school.

Carl Iwasaki / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images

Brown v. Board of Education effectively set aside the Plessy v. Ferguson

decision and held that “separate” was by definition “unequal.” Thurgood
Marshall, who argued the case for the plaintiffs (and would later become the first
Black American to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court), asserted that “separate but
equal” was unfair and unconstitutional. He argued that the southern educational
establishment should be forced to make all schools—both Black and White—
equal. The South was trapped. For decades, Black schools had been significantly
underfunded compared to White schools. According to testimony offered to the
Court, the costs of equalizing the Black and White schools would essentially
bankrupt the South. Evidence offered by child psychologist Kenneth Clark
further demonstrated the damaging stigmas that were borne by Black children as
a result of segregation. The psychological traumas inflicted by segregation
further aggravated the already hostile situation faced by Blacks living in the
South. Observing the paradox that produced “wholly unequal” educational
systems for Black students, the Court was forced to recognize that equality could
not be provided under the current system, and that the only remedy was to set
aside Plessy. Brown v. Board of Education followed a lesser-known but
precedent-setting 1946 case, Mendez et al. v. Westminster School District of
Orange County, in which the Court declared unconstitutional the segregation of
Mexican and Mexican American students into separate schools.

The history of education has affected our present and foreshadows our future.
The institution of education in the United States has fundamentally involved
decisions, definitions, and declarations about differences, including who is
considered fully human, who is valued, whose histories are valued, who deserves
what kind of education, and what kinds of futures can be envisioned for different
classifications of peoples. All of these issues and more are related to interactions,
opportunities, and outcomes within the institution of education.

When Sylvia Mendez was a child, whites and Mexicans attended separate
schools, until her parents and several others in their California community, sued
the schools and won. Mendez regularly speaks at schools about the importance
of integration and in 2011 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by
Barack Obama.

Alex Wong / Getty Images News / Getty Images

 Critical Thinking

1. What does it mean to be educated? What does it mean to “get” an education? What does it mean to
“give” an education? These are core questions that any society must wrestle with. Be sure to start
from the matrix of experience to begin discussing and answering these questions.
2. The institution of education was forged within the American crucible of race, class, and gender. How
did these differential experiences in early American society aid in the formation of the institution of
education? What do you see as some of the consequences and aftereffects of this early shaping of the
matrix of education?
3. Is it important who controls the decisions that affect the institution of education? Give some
historical and contemporary examples of the importance of such control. What happens when those
who have been oppressed by the system control their own schools, curricula, and educations?
4. Can you describe any evidence of educational inequality in your schooling experiences up to this
point?
Theories of Education
How do we grapple with and begin to understand how education has functioned
within the matrix of race in the United States? Sociology offers many potential
theoretical perspectives, and these theories can help us understand the origins of
our stock stories about education as an institution. In this section we discuss two
of the primary theories of education—social-functional theory and human capital
theory—and show how stock stories reflect each of these theories in the real
world.
Social-Functional Theory: Education as a Socialization Process
One of the primary theoretical stock stories of education is the narrative of
education as socialization. This rests on the idea that schools socialize students.
Socialization is the process whereby members of a society are taught that
society’s dominant roles, norms, and values. Families once served the
socialization function, but in postindustrial societies, other organizations have
grown in socializing influence. The socialization function of education and
school is to teach students to be competent members of society.

For French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1956, 1962, 1977), education’s purpose
was to instill a sense of “morality” and “cohesion” within individuals. By
“morality,” Durkheim meant that through education, children are subconsciously
infused with the norms, rules, and values of their society (such as patriotism and
the value of individual effort). This infusion of morality takes place through the
structure of the classroom, the relationship between teacher and student, the
structure of rules enforced throughout the school day, and other social and
cultural structures in the school. The resulting conformity helps maintain the
bonds between us that make us follow norms, thus producing social cohesion.

However, a theory that predicts social cohesion also implies that there are
processes that might lead to breakdowns of that cohesion, inequalities within the
system, and so on. The question, of course, is whose norms and values are being
instilled? Whose cohesion is valued, and who has been excluded, marginalized,
or devalued? If education socializes individuals into competent members of
society, then who benefits from this process? These and other questions have
motivated social scientists interested in critical studies of education for a very
long time. The history laid out earlier in this chapter gives some indication.
Human Capital Theory: Education as Skills Acquisition
Many high schools, colleges, and universities aim to give their students the
“skills they need to compete in the global economy” or for membership in the
workforce in general. This theory invokes what we might call an apprenticeship
model of education. In precapitalist societies, a master craftsman (usually a
man) would take on one or more apprentices to train—whether in blacksmithing,
baking, cobbling, or some other craft—passing on the skills the apprentices
would need to eventually fill the master’s role. In “dame schools” of the 17th,
18th, and 19th centuries, female teachers taught girls sewing, knitting, and
embroidery (Forman-Brunell 2011), while during this same period boys from
affluent families went to grammar schools to learn arithmetic, writing, Latin, and
Greek (Zhboray 1993).

The skills acquisition function of education is echoed throughout many

communities today in the common belief that education provides the skills we
need to engage productively in society. In New York City, for instance, Mayor
Bill de Blasio wants the city’s public schools to offer computer science classes to
all students by 2025, in a plan projected to cost $81 million and requiring the
training of 5,000 teachers. With tech jobs increasing in the city, the director of
the Office of Strategic Partnerships has stated, “I think there is acknowledgment
that we need our students better prepared for these jobs and to address equity and
diversity within the sector as well” (quoted in Taylor and Miller 2015, A22).

This provision of skills that are exchangeable within a social structure, or

market, for other forms of capital has been described by economists,
sociologists, and educational researchers alike as the development of human
capital (Schultz 1961; Becker 1964; see also Coleman 1988). As Coleman
(1988, S100) describes the concept: “Just as physical capital is created by
changes in materials to form tools that facilitate production, human capital is
created by changes in persons that bring about skills and capabilities that make
them act in new ways.”

Yet the knowledge we gain from the educational system often has little relevance
to the specific skills we need in the workforce or on the job (Chang 2010;
Rosenbaum 2001). In contemporary society, as in the apprentice model, most of
the skills that people need to perform their jobs are learned on the job, through
doing (practice), and not through knowing (theory). Despite this fact, the notion
that education allows us to acquire job skills and/or makes us more desirable to
potential employers remains one of the key legitimating narratives of education.
The assumption that education leads to skills and skills lead to jobs has serious
consequences for non-White and lower-class members of society, because it
posits that (a) the playing field is level, (b) education delivers needed skills, and
(c) race, class, and gender play no moderating role in the effects of these
processes. Yet we know these things are not true.
 Critical Thinking

1. How do the stock theories of education—social-functional and human capital theories—help us

understand the formative experiences that shaped the matrix of education, especially those of Native
Americans and African Americans? Are these theories helpful for understanding these experiences?
2. Education, its socialization functions, and its human capital functions do not exist in a vacuum within
our society. Education is linked to other institutions—work, family, and the mass media, for instance
—in fundamental ways. How are any two of these institutions linked? How are the linkages the same
or different for individuals from different locations within the matrix of race?
3. The institution of education is, according to the theories, central to both socialization and skills
acquisition. It is also clearly important in the formation of identities. What lessons do these theories
and/or the histories discussed above hold for our understanding of the relationship between education
and identity for racial and ethnic minorities?
4. How were you socialized in high school? What norms and values were forged within your secondary
education? Does attending the same high school as others mean that you experienced the same high
school they did?
Examining the Concealed Story of Race and
Education through the Matrix
The story of U.S. education is actually several parallel stories, as we can see if
we use the matrix to view education as a social institution. What these parallel
stories have in common is the recognition that we have created many different
educational structures that serve different groups and purposes. Given all these
different structures, some of which are based on race, gender, or ethnicity, it is
not surprising that concealed stories are critical of the dominant educational
narratives of the United States—that schools serve primarily as socializers and
skill developers. These concealed stories speak to the stock stories we have
examined in this chapter; sociologists themselves have told many of them. We
will examine four concealed stories: education as a conversion tool, education as
a site of class construction, education as a means of creating workers, and
education as a citizen machine.
Education as a Conversion Tool
As societies spread across geographic and cultural space over time, whether
through migration, conquest, colonialism, or imperialism, their members
encounter others who are different from them in many ways. Often the
institution of education becomes a tool that migrating settlers, conquering
armies, or globalizing corporations use in the attempt to change the cognitions,
the social arrangements, and even the meaning systems of their host societies.
Like missionary work, education can be seen as an effort at a “conversion” of
sorts. The story of education as a conversion tool is a critical take on the stock
theory of education as socialization, and it goes something like this: “Your
socialization is wrong; use ours. We will educate yours out of you, in order that
you might become like us.”

We can clearly see the role of education as conversion by looking at those who
wrestled with their role as colonial subjects (or internal colonial subjects within
the United States—some scholars consider Native Americans, African
Americans, and Latinos, for instance, to constitute domestic, or internal, colonies
within the United States, providing an exploitable workforce from which labor
power can be extracted), and who continue to try to reclaim aspects of their
social and cultural structures and identities. Frantz Fanon, in his classic books
Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), writes
caustically of the symbolic, cognitive, and cultural violence done to Algerians
throughout French colonialism and the dominance of White supremacy.
Introducing the concept of colonization of the mind, Fanon discusses the
indelible mark of inferiority left on the psyches of colonized individuals and
communities long after the colonizers have left. A deep and profound
resocialization experience takes place in those who have been stripped of their
dignity and self-determination.
San Francisco State University was the first college to offer a four-year Black
Studies program, but it didn’t come without a five-months-long student-led
strike and many protests, including this occasion, when several members of the
Black Student Union and the professor who would ultimately chair the new
program, interrupted a speech by the university president.

Bettmann / Bettmann / Getty Images

In the United States, many education-as-conversion stories have been uncovered

in the disciplines of Black studies, Chicano studies, women’s studies, gender and
sexuality studies, and indigenous studies. Many of these disciplines began as
student movements aimed at changing dominant U.S. institutions—education,
law, health, government—and they grew in earnest as a result of the civil rights
movement. In the late 1960s, for example, the civil rights, freedom of speech,
antiwar, and Black Power movements converged on U.S. campuses, and Black
students began demanding programs relevant to their lives and aspirations.

The first 4-year Black studies program was organized by Nathan Hare and
Jimmy Garrett at San Francisco State in 1968. Between 1969 and 1973,
approximately 300 to 600 programs sprang up across the United States at
predominantly White colleges and universities, and today more than 200 schools
maintain African American studies units, with 10 offering master’s degrees
(Patillo, cited in West 2012). While the discipline of Black studies provides a
story of resistance, the fact that it is needed in the first place is evidence of the
strength of the education-as-conversion reframing of the socialization stock
story.
Education as a Site of Class Construction
Education has consistently perpetuated class inequality, going back as far as the
earliest social structures of literacy. The notion that education provides a society
and its members with the academic and cultural knowledge necessary to function
is encouraged by the dominant classes in most contemporary societies. One
interpretation of this belief is that if you do not receive an education, you are not
a full-fledged member of society.

Scholars have been interested in this narrative primarily because of its obvious
ties with class, control, and domination in virtually every known society (Apple
2013). Education has played a role not only in creating social classes but also in
reproducing them generation after generation. One of the ways schools do this is
by implicitly, structurally, and culturally embedding processes of distinction and
the social construction of difference within their walls. Consider dress codes and
even school uniforms. Dress codes are lists that schools create to specify what
items of clothing may not be worn at school (e.g., bandanas, baggy pants), while
uniform policies mandate what must be worn (e.g., specific khaki pants, specific
colors)—many dress code and uniform policies have race, class, and gender
overtones.

Cultural capital consists of the cultural resources—the meanings, codes,

understandings, and practices—that individuals can accumulate and utilize to
exchange for other goods in a social or economic market (Bourdieu and Passeron
1977; Bourdieu 1984; Lareau 1989, 2011). Cultural capital exists in three forms,
according to Pierre Bourdieu (1986), an important 20th-century French
sociologist:

Embodied personal characteristics (such as the ability to see, feel, and think
about the world in ways acceptable to the dominant class)
Physical objects (like books, music, movies, and clothing recognized by the
dominant class as worthy of attention)
Institutionalized recognition (a college degree, for instance, which is an
accepted credential that determines the graduate’s worth in the job market)

Cultural capital is like a road map that helps us navigate social life because we
have learned the “rules of the game.”
At this point you might be saying, “Well, that sounds good, actually, because we
want to be sure that schools imprint the rules of the game on their students so
they can be competent members of society.” However, the question is, whose
rules and whose game? Lee, Park, and Wong (2016) studied second-generation
Asian American students in the public education system and found that their
identities were being shaped and also policed by the Whiteness of the structure
of education. What’s more, whose institution is education itself? For if Bourdieu
is correct (and there is substantial evidence that he is), the dominant institutions
of any given society serve the interests of the dominant classes. From this
perspective, we can see a concealed story: that education reproduces the class
structure by creating schools in society’s image that expect students to know the
rules of the game but do not actually teach them the rules. This has led to
charges that schools are organized along male, White, middle-class, and
heteronormative principles. Institutionalized cultural capital keeps this structure
invisible to those who do not already have cultural capital—especially girls, non-
Whites, and students from lower-class and disadvantaged families and
communities. Thus, those without cultural capital have an increased probability
of being unsuccessful from the institution’s perspective.
Education as a Means of Creating Workers
While we generally assume, based on our stock stories about education, that we
need an education in order to get a job, an alternative narrative focuses on the
idea that schools exist to create (not educate) workers for the labor force. To
consider this possibility further, think about the general rules we learn at school
from a very early age, as listed in Table 6.1.

If we replace the school with the factory, the desk with the assembly line, the
teacher with the boss, students with coworkers, and schoolwork with making
products, we can see that the discipline of school literally mirrors the pulse of
the factory, the rhythm of the workplace, the striving for output and profit for the
corporate machine. Scholars have also argued that schools serve to create
workers for the capitalist structure—not the skills needed, but the identities
needed.

Karl Marx, in his analysis of capitalist development, argued that all institutions
in capitalist societies are “epiphenomenal to social class.” What he meant by this
is that the dominant institutions in society—government, religious institutions,
families, educational system, and so on—all exist in the forms they do, and
operate in the ways they do, with the relationship structures they encourage,
because they benefit the bourgeoisie (the owning class) and their interests.

In their classic 1976 book Schooling in Capitalist America, Bowles and Gintis
echo this argument by comparing the structures of schools to the forms,
relationships, and rules that operate within the world of work. Furthermore, they
argue that schools (whether secondary or postsecondary) do not actually provide
employers with workers who have the skills needed for particular jobs but
instead provide employers with “suitably socialized workers,” who come into
the workforce trained not to question the system and to accept their
socioeconomic fate. Scholars who follow this Marxist line of inquiry raise
serious questions about the role education systems actually play in capitalist and
other societies. In fact, as more people have attained higher levels of education,
we would expect income inequality to be reduced, but it has actually worsened
over time (Mayer 2010).

Scholars like Bowles and Gintis argue that school prepares children to be docile
members of the workforce by teaching obedience, cooperation, and deference to
authority.

Design Pics Inc / Alamy Stock Photo

Scholars who embrace the matrix perspective have also asked how the
educational system fashions and constructs individuals’ identities as women, as
heterosexuals, as Blacks or Latinos, as (dis)abled, and as the myriad
intersections across all these that fully inform their positions in the system. In his
landmark work “The Afrocentric Idea in Education,” Molefi Asante (1991, 171),
speaks of his underlying premise about how education operates in society:

These ideas represent . . . what education is capable of doing to and for an

already politically and economically marginalized people—African
Americans: (1) Education is fundamentally a social phenomenon whose
ultimate purpose is to socialize the learner; to send a child to school is to
prepare that child to become part of a social group. (2) Schools are
reflective of the societies that develop them (i.e., a White supremacist–
 dominated society will develop a White supremacist educational system).

This narrative points to one of the most important lessons of sociology—the

distinction between individual and group realities. On the one hand, it is clear
that an individual who has more education will earn more income, on average,
than someone with a lower level of education. On an individual level, the
relationship between educational attainment and income is a strong one,
supporting the stock stories about education as a skill provider and a path to
social mobility.

However, on the group level, this has not been the case. Educational equity has
not led to more income equality. In fact, the opposite has occurred—while more
and more people have attained higher educational credentials over time, the
income disparities between the rich and the poor have continued to widen. Thus,
as a society, we have increased our human capital (e.g., skills, education) without
increasing our socioeconomic equality. In fact, scholars recognize that the most
efficient way to increase a nation’s productivity is by increasing its
mechanization and technological advancement (Chang 2010). Countries that do
so, that actually “de-skill” their populaces through education institutions, make
workers more replaceable and easier to control. The narrative that schools create
workers for the bourgeoisie helps to partially account for this.
Education as a Citizen Machine
While we may like to imagine that education allows individuals to learn to
question their reality, there is abundant evidence that it carefully constructs that
reality for a specific purpose and with certain goals in mind. Through the
curricula, social structures, and cultural meaning systems embedded in both,
schools and the social institution of education socially construct age hierarchies,
gendered identities, student roles, consumers, and ways to think, create, and
question—including the creation of nationalistic sentiments, patriotic affiliations,
and, ultimately, citizens. From the morning’s recitation of the Pledge of
Allegiance through a politically constructed curriculum, students in the United
States (like students elsewhere) learn prescribed knowledge, from history and
English to math and science. Education is continuously creating national citizens
as well as citizens of a globally dominant, imperialist power.

Social scientists have been interested in this concealed narrative for education
for some time. The primary research approach, often called critical pedagogy,
stems from the work of Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire ([1970]
2000) and British sociologist of education Basil Bernstein (1971) and their
students and colleagues. In his foreword to Freire’s most important work,
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Richard Shaull ([1970] 2000, 34) explains Freire’s
view of education:

Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the

integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system
and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes “the practice of freedom,”
the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with
reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

Students of the institution of education must therefore pay very close attention to
the old sociological adage that things are not what they seem. Education is a tool
for both social control and liberation. The creation of citizens, the decision about
who is and is not one, and the determination of what citizens should think, act,
and do are mechanisms of social control for specific state purposes.

Throughout its history, education in the United States has been the subject of
continuous efforts at reform by the federal government. In 1983, the National
Commission on Excellence in Education published the report A Nation at Risk:
The Imperative for Educational Reform, which prompted action from Ronald
Reagan’s administration. Since then, we have seen programs such as George H.
W. Bush’s Goals 2000, George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, and Barack
Obama’s Race to the Top. With these national platforms, the federal government
typically mandates reform but rarely funds it, and critics claim that such efforts
also fundamentally fail to understand the structure and functioning of the
institution of education. Nevertheless, all these reform efforts share one element:
the goal of the development of the citizenry (especially imperial citizens, or
citizens of the U.S. empire) and the furthering of the interests of multinational
corporations.

At the time of this writing it is unclear what Donald Trump’s educational

platform will be; however, if his choice for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos,
is any indication, one of the central components of the platform will be “school
choice.” The basic idea of school “choice” is this: While taxpayer dollars fund
our public schools (and we will discuss below how this particularly American
structure rigs the educational game), those who advocate school choice want
taxpayer moneys to go to all schools (charter schools, private schools, religious
schools, and so on), with parents then allowed to “choose” the schools they want
their children to attend. This idea has its foundations in the White flight that
occurred after the 1954 order to desegregate public schools. Indeed, as Singer
(2017) observes, “before the federal government forced schools to desegregate,
no one was all that interested in having an alternative to traditional public
schools. But once whites got wind that the Supreme Court might make their kids
go to school with black kids, lots of white parents started clamoring for
‘choice.’” Time will tell what the Trump administration’s plans for our schools
will be and how these will create new citizens.
Education, Race, and Intersectional Realities
Each year since 1970 the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for
Education Statistics has published a report titled The Condition of Education, a
recent edition of which we have referenced and will continue to reference in this
chapter (NCES 2016a), along with other sources that together represent the
institution’s official presentation on the developments and trends in education.
Data do not speak for themselves, however; all of us use lenses to interpret data,
as we will see next. Education is compulsory in the United States until the age of
16, but the ages at which children begin and end their education vary by state
(NCES 2016a). And depending on their positions within the matrix of
experience—their race, class, gender, sexuality, and abilities—the ways in which
individuals experience the institution of education vary dramatically. Now that
we have established a set of stories and lenses with which to understand the way
education works (or does not work) for its constituents, we can map out its
official structure, while recognizing that there are alternative structures, and that
some children experience neither the official one nor any alternatives.

Social Class
We are born into the matrix and gendered, raced, and located in our positions in
the socioeconomic structure. From Durkheim (1956) to Lareau (2011),
sociologists of education have long identified social class as one of the most
fundamental axes of inequality in all societies, determining who gets what and
why in the educational system (for an overview of the field, see also Sadovnik
2011). Put another way, all educational processes and outcomes are grounded
firmly in the student’s class position and affected by the student’s race, gender,
and other locations.

The United States is the only nation that funds its public schools primarily on the
basis of local and state, not federal, tax revenues (see Kozol 1991). What this
means is that a given neighborhood or community can support the quality of its
school system only to the extent that its local tax revenues, based on the income
and wealth of its residents, can afford. This is the reason there are disadvantaged
schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods and advantaged schools in advantaged
neighborhoods. In addition, given the historical and contemporary linkages of
class, race, immigration, poverty, and segregation, in the end, the school system
is in a certain sense rigged. One disastrous consequence of such economic
rigging is what some scholars have called the school-to-prison pipeline, in which
race plays a fundamental part. The monetary and social disinvestment in and
abandonment of many predominantly Black, Latino, and Native American
schools and school districts disproportionately affects students of color, who
achieve at lower rates, are not expected to achieve as much, are more likely to
repeat a grade, are subject to increased surveillance and punishment, and, as we
have seen, drop out at higher rates when compared to students from more
affluent areas and more privileged positions within the matrix. So, we underfund
certain schools, these students’ opportunities are dismal, they drop out and
commit crimes, and then they are put into prison (Redfield and Nance 2016).
The United States currently spends much more on keeping an individual in
prison than it would have cost to shepherd that same person through the
education system as a child.

Given our narratives about the role of education in skills acquisition and social
mobility, we should first ask whether the payoff is worth it. As Table 6.2 shows,
the answer is yes, no, and, well, it depends. On average, those with more
education earn more income. The median income for college graduates in 2015
was about $50,651 (National Association of Colleges and Employers 2015).
However, there are significant gender and race differences. White men reap
greater rewards at every educational level. And within every racial group there is
a gender gap. White men with a high school diploma still earn significantly more
money than White women with an associate of arts (AA) degree. This simple
fact helps explain why more women today are seeking college degrees; men
have greater income options without attending college.

Many students see a college degree as a requirement for landing a decent-paying

job. However, college has grown increasingly expensive, and the past decade has
shown that many graduates accumulate enormous debt in their pursuit of a
degree. Overall, it is estimated that about 40 million U.S. adults have
outstanding student debt and that the total owed is more than $1.2 trillion
(Dynarski 2015). According to a recent study, more Black and Latino
undergraduate students take out student loans than do Whites or Asians (Scott-
Clayton and Li 2016) (see Figure 6.3). Additionally, Blacks and Latinos are
more likely to shoulder a heavier debt burden than Whites or Asians while also
having less income after graduation and coming from families with less wealth
—the matrix of race allows us to see how entangled all these elements are.
 Source: American Council on Education, “Fact Sheet on Higher Education,”
http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Documents/FactSheet-Average-Annual-Earnings-of-Workers-18-
Years-Old-or-Older-by-Educational-Attainment-Race-and-Gender-2010.pdf.

Gender
Worldwide, according to UNESCO’s most recent World Atlas of Gender
Equality in Education (2012), only a handful of nations have achieved gender
parity in education. They are most of the countries of the European Union,
Indonesia, the Russian Federation, a few South American countries, Canada, and
the United States. For the vast majority of these nations, this situation represents
a significant gain since 1970. Despite advancements in school enrollment for
girls around the world, however, women still make up the majority of illiterate
adults—especially in South and West Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Arab
states.

In their Pulitzer Prize–winning book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into
Opportunity for Women Worldwide, Kristof and WuDunn (2009, 169–70)
observe that “education is one of the most effective ways to fight poverty. . . .
[It] is also a precondition for girls and women to stand up against injustice, and
for women to be integrated into the economy.” In 2011, Malala Yousafzai of
Pakistan, 14 years old at the time, was shot in the head and neck by a Taliban
attacker because of her political blogging, organizing, and activism with girls
and women in her community (and beyond) centered on the importance of
education for all. Her experience reminds us that worldwide the education of
girls and women fundamentally matters—but also that, while gains have been
made, we still have far to go.

Figure 6.3 There are Racial Disparities in Student Loan Debt Four Years After
Graduation

Source: Judith Scott-Clayton and Jing Li, “Black–White Disparity in

Student Loan Debt More than Triples after Graduation,” Evidence Speaks
Reports 2, no. 3 (October 20, 2016), Brookings Institution,
https://www.brookings.edu/research/black-white-disparity-in-student-loan-
debt-more-than-triples-after-graduation.

Resistance/Story
Malala Yousafzai
Some children receive stronger educations because the color of their skin is forever linked to
opportunity; other children are not able to succeed in school because the curriculum is
centered in experiences quite different from their own; still others are denied an education
because they are female. This was the case with Malala Yousafzai. When she resisted, she
almost paid for it with her life, but now she speaks for all of those children marginalized
because of their racial, ethnic, gender, or other identities, emphasizing the importance of
education. In 2013, she spoke at the United Nations:

Malala Yousafzai
Simon Davis / DFID

I raise up my voice . . . so that those without a voice can be heard. Those who have
fought for their rights: Their right to live in peace. Their right to be treated with dignity.
Their right to equality of opportunity. Their right to be educated. . . . On the 9th of
October, 2012, the Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead. They shot my
friends too. They thought that the bullets would silence us. But they failed. And then,
out of that silence, came thousands of voices. . . . In many parts of the world, especially
Pakistan and Afghanistan, terrorism, wars, and conflicts stop children to go to their
schools. . . . Dear sisters and brothers, now it’s time to speak up. . . . We call upon the
world leaders that all the peace deals must protect women and children’s rights. A deal
that goes against the dignity of women and their rights is unacceptable. We call upon all
governments to ensure free compulsory education for every child all over the world. . . .
We call upon all communities to be tolerant—to reject prejudice based on caste, creed,
sect, religion, or gender. To ensure freedom and equality for women so that they can
flourish. We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back. . . . Let us empower
ourselves with the weapon of knowledge and let us shield ourselves with unity and
togetherness. . . . Education is the only solution. Education first.
 Critical Thinking

To what extent do cultural norms affect society’s perception of the role and value of girls’ education?
To what extent should we honor those norms?

Source: Malala Yousafzai, speech to the United Nations Youth Takeover, July 12, 2013,
https://secure.aworldatschool.org/page/content/the-text-of-malala-yousafzais-speech-at-the-
united-nations.

Boys and girls experience schooling very differently. There are (at least) two
useful general ways to examine this difference—by looking at what happens in
schools and by looking at the cultural norms in society. Buchmann, DiPrete, and
McDaniel (2008) reviewed the sociological literature on gender inequalities in
education and found the following:

Girls do less well on standardized tests than boys but get better grades
(Duckworth and Seligman 2006).
Girls’ behavior in school, compared with that of boys, is more in line with
institutional expectations of students (Downey and Vogt Yuan 2005).
Girls show more interest in schooling than boys do (Rosenbaum 2001).
In contrast to findings in earlier decades, high school boys and girls are now
taking more similar classes (Hallinan and Sørensen 1987).

In general, girls engage much more fully than boys in many aspects of school.
One of the reasons for this is society’s very limited definition of masculinity.
Teenage boys do not see engaging in schoolwork and getting good grades as a
path to proving their masculinity. Instead, if they do these things, they may be
bullied as geeks. When gender and race intersect, school success is even more
problematic for boys. Among Black youth, getting good grades is often seen as
“acting White.”
In part because getting good grades is not seen as incompatible with femininity,
as is often the case with masculinity, girls tend to be more engaged with many
aspects of school.

The Washington Post / The Washington Post / Getty Images

In the wake of the founding of the Black Lives Matter movement, sparked by the
2014 shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the African
American Policy Institute released a report titled Black Girls Matter: Pushed
Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected (Crenshaw 2015). The report reviews
research on Black girls’ lives, particularly their lives and experiences in schools,
details key findings, and offers suggestions. The following are some of the
research findings described in the report:

In New York and Boston, while both Black boys and Black girls are subject
to larger achievement gaps and harsher forms of discipline than their White
counterparts, for girls these consequences are often more stark.
At-risk girls describe zero-tolerance schools as chaotic environments where
discipline is prioritized over educational attainment; this leads them to
disengage.
Increased levels of law enforcement and other security measures within
schools sometimes make girls feel less safe and less likely to attend school.
Girls’ attachment to and sense of belonging in school can be undermined if
their achievements are overlooked or undervalued.
Punitive rather than restorative responses to conflict contribute to girls’
feelings of separation from school.
The failure of schools to intervene in sexual harassment and bullying of
girls contributes to girls’ insecurity at school.
Girls sometimes resort to “acting out” when their counseling needs are
 overlooked or disregarded.
School-age Black girls experience a high incidence of interpersonal
violence.
Black and Latina girls are often burdened with familial obligations that
undermine their capacity to achieve their schooling goals.
Pregnancy and parenting make it difficult for girls to engage fully in school.

Clearly, the data show that race and gender together create the experience of
schooling for Black girls. This report recommends the expansion of
opportunities in schools to include Black girls, increase their feelings of safety,
and ensure environments that are free of sexual harassment. So, while Malala
rightly encourages us to work to ensure an education for all, especially girls, it is
important to recognize that we must also keep a close eye on how education does
and does not work for all girls, depending on their position within the matrix.
Currently, with increasing Islamophobia in the United States and in American
schools, girls like Malala are now daily undergoing a process of racialization the
likes of which Muslim Americans have never seen—and it is deeply affecting
their ability to succeed in American society (Selod 2015).

Sexual Minorities
In 1999, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (now known simply
as GLSEN) began conducting the National School Climate Survey. This
important survey, conducted every 2 years, seeks to measure students’
experiences within their schools. In the most recent data collection, from the
2014–15 school year, a sample of 10,521 students across all 50 states and more
than 3,000 school districts was canvassed (Kosciw, Greytak, Giga, Villenas, and
Danischewski 2016). The results of the survey, since 1999, have consistently
revealed a previously concealed story: LGBTQ students experience hostile
school climates, absenteeism, lower educational aspirations and achievements,
and poor psychological well-being. Respondents have reported verbal assaults
on their sexuality, gender, and gender expression (while transgender is not about
sexual orientation or sexuality, the data reported include these students along
with LGB youth)(see Figures 6.4a and 6.4b). Physical assaults have been
reported as well, and reports of intervention by fellow students have been rare.
Such incidents are reported to school authorities only about 42% of the time, and
to family members only about 43% of the time.

The report on the National School Climate Survey for the 2014–15 school year
shows that while all LGBT students experience verbal and physical harassment
in their schools, LGBT students of color experience such harassment in addition
to the daily microaggressions that they receive when others make assumptions
about their other statuses (such as race and class; Kosciw et al. 2016). The
report, and LGBTQ students themselves, offer several solutions to these
problems:

Increased opportunities for gay–straight alliances been shown to have

significant positive impacts on school cultures and climates.
Curricula must be inclusive of the experiences of LGBTQ individuals,
histories, and voices.
Supportive teachers and administrators are essential.
Comprehensive antibullying and antiharassment policies and laws should
be in place.

Figure 6.4a and 6.4b LGBTQ Students Experience Verbal and Physical
Harassment
Source: Kosciw, J. G., Greytak, E. A., Giga, N. M., Villenas, C. &
Danischewski, D. J. (2016). The 2015 National School Climate Survey: The
experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth in our
nation’s schools. New York: GLSEN.
 Critical Thinking

1. If the concealed story that education serves to create workers is correct, what other kinds of
behavioral rules and normative expectations would employers in today’s labor market find desirable?
Do you think these differ for Blacks, Whites, and Latinos? For Black men and White women? How
are such expectations manifested in schooling practices?
2. Now that you have been in college for a bit of time, can you explain the “rules of the game” (cultural
capital) for college? Do these rules privilege certain locations in the matrix?
3. How has your education thus far encouraged you to question reality? What kinds of structures and
relations have facilitated this? How has your education discouraged you from questioning reality?
4. Have you ever taken a Black studies/African American studies course? A women’s studies or gender
studies course? A sexualities course? If so, how did these classes function to decolonize (as Frantz
Fanon would say) your mind? If not, how do you think such courses would help students to
decolonize their minds? How would different students—Whites? Men? African Americans?
Lesbians?—benefit differently from such courses?
Alternative Educational Movements and the Future of
Education
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Paulo Freire, an educator from Brazil, whom
we met earlier, sought to reveal the oppressive foundations of capitalist
educational systems, particularly in colonized countries, while simultaneously
calling for the construction of a pedagogy of liberation whereby education can
free people, not confine them. Freire was born into a middle-class family in
Brazil but suffered from hunger in childhood as a result of the collapse of the
Brazilian economy. He was inspired by this and by his later experiences in
political exile to fight a colonial system that was built on and essentially
maintained by the dehumanization and exploitation of the colonized such as
himself. Believing that the capitalist system of education was instrumental in
silencing the oppressed, he argued for a form of education through which the
oppressed, in dialogue with one another and by drawing from personal
experience, would come to critically question the oppressive system.

The Brazilian educator Paolo Freire believed that traditional education, as in this
classroom near Rio de Janeiro, reinforces systems of oppression and inequality.

Three Lions / Hulton Archive / Getty Images

As Freire ([1970] 2000, 68) explains, “The struggle begins with men’s
recognition that they have been destroyed.” The oppressed are then able to
actively participate in their own liberation, and therefore in the transformation of
society as a whole. Freire’s transformational story about education motivated a
broad movement around the world to create a liberatory model of education.
Instead of walking through Freire’s theoretical apparatus, in this section we will
envision a new model using his insights. These insights are drawn heavily from
the work of César Augusto Rossatto (2004).
Imagining New Educations
First, imagine a school where, in Freire’s words, the “teacher-student” (because
teachers are always students) begins with the notion that “student-teachers”
(students are seen as having experience and insight to offer their teachers) bring
with them specific experiences based on their places within the matrix. A
dialogue begins that includes respect for each other’s knowledge and uncovers
myths that hold us in oppression by identifying dominant and subordinate frames
of reference. In this way the classroom constructs new languages of liberation. A
key point of the model we are drawing here is that knowledge is constructed
from daily life experiences as well as from reflections about the past and how it
relates to and/or dominates the present and future. The goal is for student-
teachers to explore their own connectedness to historical processes that may
seem distant to them and act to bridge this distance. Building the curriculum
becomes an ever-changing process that requires the participation of many
stakeholders in the school community, including parents, students, teachers, and
administrators. The dialogue grows outward from the school.

Gender, racial, and class differences affect the labeling of students with
disabilities as well as the level of services they receive. Students of color,
especially black boys, are much more likely than white students to be labeled
with intellectual disabilities and assigned to special education programs
(USDOE 2016). Researchers Albanesi and Sauer (2013) have examined their
own experience raising disabled children and engaging with the school structure,
where they found their race and class privilege helped them be better advocates
for school services that had to be fought for. They argue that “parents with
privilege are encouraged and expected to pursue the individualized strategy (e.g.,
‘save my son’) over collective strategies (e.g., ‘how do we equitably address the
needs of all children with disabilities?’),” which reinforces the individualist
approach.
E.D. Torial / Alamy Stock Photo

Second, the schools are transformed into local spaces for the reception,
discussion, and distribution of the culture and knowledge of marginalized
communities, in order to break down dominant ways of knowing and reconstruct
a language of hope. The schools also become centers for participation and
organization of the school communities in conjunction with other social
movements. This reveals the political nature of schools and schooling that
typically remains hidden, highlighting that the world is socially constructed and
shaped by human action—or inaction. The world can be reconstructed, and
student-teachers can be active participants in transforming the world, as opposed
to passive recipients of secondhand knowledge of a world unchanged.

Third, based on this radical reimagining of education, schooling, curriculum, and

the school, teacher-students and student-teachers learn to change their views of
themselves and their relationship to the world. “Teacher education” becomes an
opportunity for teacher-students to unlearn and rid themselves of old practices
and beliefs that have served the system of oppression. In pursuit of new visions
of the future, teacher-students and student-teachers participate in making a new
history revitalized by democratic and critical pedagogy. A curriculum centered
on present social, economic, and historical conditions, instead of being a
continuation of the past, can begin a reconceptualization of society.

Fourth, education is socially contextualized and aware of power, as well as

grounded in a commitment to an emancipatory world, a world where freedom,
dignity, and self- and communal determination are central, as well as history-
making, processes whereby we see ourselves as being the change we want to see
in the world. Student-teachers understand that their perceptions and beliefs are
based on worlds that they, as well as the larger society, have made. They engage
in critical reflections on the sociopolitical nature of their school experience,
asking whose interests it serves.

Fifth, student-teachers understand that they possess the right to speak, to

disagree, to point out alterations, and to call for a renegotiation of the
curriculum. In this way, they gain ownership of their education. Race, class,
gender, and other differences are embraced as sites of creativity and critique in a
multicultural society, allowing student-teachers the ability to see multiple
perspectives and power relationships as well as to build a sense of communal
identity. Education is committed to action. It challenges passivity by
constructing meaning and initiating action. Drawing on feminist perspectives, it
accepts that knowledge is based on emotion and affective capacity, not on reason
alone. Personal and social transformations are based on new perceptions and
conceptualizations, reached through dialogue.
Education as a Human Right
This brings us full circle. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)
enshrines education as a human right. We need human rights principles not only
to be taught in our classrooms but also to be structured into the social
relationships that exist in our schools—and indeed wherever learning to be
human takes place, which is everywhere. We need to move toward a liberation
curriculum, one that recognizes that the world is socially constructed and shaped
by human action and inaction, and that each person has a voice, experience, and
knowledge, and therefore ideas and practices that we can use to alter the
structure of the world for the betterment of all.

We need alternative models to civics, to political science, to social science, to

history as taught in our schools and universities. Currently the structure trains
and prepares citizens, not humans. The United Nations has been emphasizing the
need for educating for human rights over the past several years. Unfortunately, in
the United States, at all levels, progress in this area has been excruciatingly slow.
People could demand courses about the UDHR in high schools and colleges;
they could start discussions in their communities, at their workplaces, with their
families, creating a grounded revolution of knowledge—but a new knowledge.

As part of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the UDHR, the United
Nations General Assembly declared 2009 the International Year of Human
Rights Learning. Throughout the year, the General Assembly heavily promoted
activities to strengthen and deepen human rights learning on the basis of the
principles of universality, constructive international dialogue, and cooperation,
with a view toward enhancing the promotion and protection of all human rights.
 Critical Thinking

1. Have you every studied abroad? Have you ever experienced education in another country? Have you
had discussions with anyone else who has had these experiences? How would living in, studying in,
or even studying/hearing about alternative educational experiences help us envision new educational
realities that are more effective for all in the matrix?
2. Taking into account the ideas discussed above about imagining new educations and education as a
human right, engage your peers in dialogue about ways in which we might forge new educational
systems.
3. How might the institution of education and the process of schooling in the United States be different
if African Americans had been centrally involved in the creation of the education system? If Latinos
had been? If Asian American women had been? If the poor had been?
4. After reading this chapter, what actions can you take to improve the educational experience and
outcomes for all students?
Key Terms

apprenticeship model of education, p. 206

Atlanta Compromise, p. 202
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, p. 203
colonization of the mind, p. 208
critical pedagogy, p. 213
cultural capital, p. 209
human capital, p. 206
Mendez et al. v. Westminster School District of Orange County, p. 204
pedagogy of liberation, p. 223
Plessy v. Ferguson, p. 202
resocialization, p. 208
social cohesion, p. 205
socialization, p. 205
Chapter Summary
LO 6.1 Describe the current state of education in the
United States and the key historical factors that have
shaped it.
Key factors that helped shape the contemporary educational system in the United States
include the treatment of Native Americans, the development of the university system, the
establishment of separate schools for Blacks and Whites, and the creation of training
opportunities that differ by race, gender, ethnicity, and class. Experiences of schooling are
fundamentally woven together with the threads of gender, class, and sexuality. These
experiences are themselves critically about race. In order to understand the current realities
and distributions of opportunities and outcomes for students, one needs to examine their
locations in the matrix of race.
LO 6.2 Compare the major sociological theories of
education.
Social-functional theory and human capital theory are two dominant explanations of education
within the discipline of sociology. The former focuses on socialization, while the latter focuses
on skills acquisition. These are similar stock theories, but they have different implications for
our understanding of how education works in the matrix of race.
LO 6.3 Analyze several matrix perspectives on
education.
From a critical matrix perspective, education can be seen as a site of conversion (to White
American culture), a site of class construction (as a space for the dominant culture’s ideas and
interests), a site of creating workers (for the capitalist labor market), and a site where citizens
are crafted (as Americans).
LO 6.4 Identify alternatives to the educational system
that recognize intersectional realities.
Imagining new educations requires seeing our reality for what it is and allowing our vision to
extend beyond that reality at the same time. Paulo Freire provides us with some inspiration in
this regard, as does conceptualizing education as a human right.
Chapter 7 Crime, Law, and Deviance

Blacks are more than twice as likely than Whites to be victims of police
violence, a fact that has prompted numerous protests and confrontations between
citizens and police.

Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty Images

Chapter Outline

A History of Race, Crime, and Deviance

Building a Foundation of Whiteness
A Legacy of Racial Profiling
Sociological Stock Theories of Crime and Deviance
Biosocial Theories of Deviance
Ecological Perspectives on Crime
Applying the Matrix Perspective to Crime and Deviance
The Spaces and Places of Crime and Deviance
The Structure and Context of Crime and Deviance
Identifying Types of Crime
Transforming the Narrative of Race, Crime, and Deviance
Scientific Advances
Alternatives to Incarceration
Emphasizing Choice
Adjusting the Narrative
 Learning Objectives

LO 7.1 Examine the history of race, crime, and deviance.

LO 7.2 Analyze stock theories of race, crime, and deviance.
LO 7.3 Apply the matrix lens to the relationships among race, crime, and deviance.
LO 7.4 Formulate transformative narratives of crime and deviance.

In September 2016, concerned bystanders called police when Terence Crutcher,

a 40-year-old Black man, abandoned his vehicle in the middle of the road in
Tulsa, Oklahoma. When officers arrived, they found Crutcher, who was
unarmed, approaching his vehicle with his hands in the air. He was shot dead by
one of the responding police officers. Video taken from a police helicopter and
by a police cruiser dashboard camera showed Crutcher standing next to the
driver’s side door of his car when he dropped to the ground, blood saturating his
white shirt. The Tulsa police officer who fired the fatal shots, 5-year veteran
Betty Shelby, claimed that Crutcher was acting erratically and that she suspected
he was high on PCP. The officer stated that she feared for her life when she fired
the shot that killed Crutcher. She was arrested and charged with first-degree
manslaughter.

Blacks are more than twice as likely as Whites to be victims of police violence,
and Hispanics are one-third more likely than Whites to be involved in violent
incidents with police. Each day across the United States, an average of slightly
more than two people are shot by police, and the victims are more likely to be
persons of color than to be White (Guardian 2016).

If you turn on the television, go to the movies, or check out your social media
feed, you might quickly conclude that the most significant stories of our time
involve crime, law, and deviance. Are these issues deservedly prominent in our
media, or are they socially constructed to reproduce the matrix of race? The way
we frame deviance and label behavior and how these responses are shaped by
the matrix of race are central questions in sociology.

Our stock stories teach us that laws protect us; they are created to preserve
peace, promote tranquility, and allow us to pursue our collective best interests.
The deviants who violate laws are committing crimes and must be punished
accordingly. In the pursuit of justice, democracy is preserved and enhanced and
freedoms are procured and embraced. Our stock stories assume that the law is
color-blind—enforced the same way everywhere, for everyone, and without
concern for race, class, or other differences. Using the matrix approach, we can
reveal the concealed stories of crime and deviance in the United States, stories
that have always been complicated by race, ethnicity, gender, and class.
Historically, crime and punishment have been associated with attempts to
preserve the racial order. In this chapter we will examine this and other
narratives and observe how the matrix has influenced both our perceptions and
the realities of crime, deviance, and the law.
A History of Race, Crime, and Punishment
What happens when being different defines criminal behavior and deviance? The
historical record demonstrates that in the early days of the United States, high-
status White males (e.g., ministers, merchants, landowners) were rarely the
subjects of criminal proceedings. Punishments were most frequently meted out
to Native Americans, African slaves, single women (particularly servants), poor
White males, and unruly children (Patrick 2010). Deviance encompasses all
actions or behaviors that defy social norms, from crimes to social expectations.
Deviance can be as mild as wearing the wrong colors to a high school football
game or as extreme as not wearing anything at all. When deviance takes forms
that violate moral and ethical standards, like murder or theft, it may be covered
under law and become a crime. Deviance in many ways defines a significant
portion of our national identity. We will discover that as the social construction
of “Whiteness” came into being, it also became the normative, or standard,
structure by which our laws are constructed and deviance is defined.
Building a Foundation of Whiteness
Long before they ventured across the oceans to settle the Americas, Europeans
were formulating the foundations of Whiteness. English colonists arrived in
America with decidedly racist stereotypes about Africans, Native Americans,
and others, assuming that members of these groups were savage, indolent, and
sexually promiscuous (Jordan 1968). In fact, the Europeans who settled the
Americas believed it was their destiny to extend Christian civilization and White
supremacy around the globe.

Elite European males institutionalized, or established, Whiteness in an effort to

control Blacks, Native Americans, women, and others. Women, across all
socioeconomic statuses and racial groups, typically received harsher
punishments than their male counterparts for violating sexual or marriage
taboos. Gender-specific laws affecting all racial, ethnic, and class groups helped
to sustain White privilege and White normative structures. White privilege, as
we discussed briefly in Chapter 1, results from laws, practices, and behaviors
that preserve and (re)create societal benefits for those people identified as White.
White normative structures are those norms and institutions that obscure the
racial intent of such laws, practices, and behaviors, creating the illusion that
White privilege is natural and normal.

One of the first recorded instances within the English colonies in which judicial
processes decreed differential judgments along both racial and gender lines
occurred in 1630 in Jamestown, when colonist Hugh Davis was ordered to be
“soundly whipt” for dishonoring God and shaming Christianity by sleeping with
a Black woman (Bernasconi 2012, 215). Ten years later, also in Jamestown,
another White man was ordered to do penance for impregnating an African
female, while the African female was sentenced to whipping. So, even though
the interracial relationship was condemned, the more extreme punishment was
shifted to the Black female (Bernasconi 2012, 216).

Over the next few decades of the 17th century, the pattern of race, gender, and
status inequities was replicated repeatedly. While all women experienced unique
discrimination and bias, racial hierarchies were also gendered. White women,
given authority over all other women through their connection to White males,
were given authority over Blacks. White women could lose their status if they
married or had intercourse with African, Native American, or Asian men.
Colonial laws did not protect either Black or Native American women from
rape. Laws also precluded them from defending themselves, either directly
against their attackers or through the courts. Females of color were often cast as
seducers (Browne-Marshall 2002).

Legislating White Privilege

Racial consciousness and fear have shaped our views of law and deviance since
colonial times. Racial consciousness is the awareness of race shared by
members of a racial group and the wider society. This consciousness perpetuates,
legitimates, and normalizes racial hierarchies by making the notions of
Whiteness, White privilege, and White supremacy real at the expense of people
of color. The linking of White racial consciousness with notions of normalcy
was first engraved into our national laws as early as 1790, with the passage of
the U.S. Naturalization Law. This law limited citizenship to those immigrants
who were “free white persons of good character.” And when we look further into
this law, we note that of children born abroad, only those whose fathers were
U.S. residents were granted citizenship. The exclusion of children whose
mothers might have been residents points to the gender bias of these early laws
as well. We can only conclude that this process not only justified but also served
to perpetuate White male privilege.

White privilege in the United States has its foundations in sets of rules created
and preserved through a series of laws, mores, and beliefs that guaranteed White
personal privilege over Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and others.
Privilege encouraged all Whites, including those of lower status, to identify with
the ruling White elite, often at the expense of Black slaves. Whiteness and its
privilege provided the illusion of elite status and control of the economic,
political, and judicial systems, the ultimate arbiters of White privilege. More
punishment could be meted out to Blacks than to Whites; Whites, not Blacks,
could own and bear arms; Whites, not Blacks, had the right to self-defense. The
lowliest of White servants could chastise, correct, and testify against Blacks
(either free or enslaved). And the ultimate forms of degradations were reserved
for Blacks, often at the hands of Whites. Only Blacks could be whipped naked;
Black slave women could be raped, and any offspring that resulted would be
slaves. Further, any White woman or free woman of color who, forgetful of her
status, elected to have sex with or marry a Black male slave could be forced into
slavery herself.
These laws were codified into what came to be called slave codes throughout the
southern colonies. Under these laws White males were further empowered when
they joined slave patrols (Durr 2015)—organized groups of White men with
police powers who systematically enforced the slave codes. The first slave
patrols began in 1757 in Georgia, where White landowners and residents were
required to serve. A patrol, usually consisting of no more than seven men, would
ride throughout the night, challenging any slaves they encountered and
demanding proof that they were not engaging in unlawful activities (Cooper
2015). Slave patrols were active throughout the South until slavery’s
abolishment at the end of the Civil War.

With the end of the Civil War came a great many new laws aimed at controlling
the now freed Blacks. These laws, known as Jim Crow laws, held sway across
the United States from the 1880s onward, with some surviving into the 1960s.
Reservations and treaties served the same function for Native Americans. For
many other racial and ethnic minority Americans, Whiteness and the laws were
also effectively used for social control and the construction of deviance.

Slave rebellions demonstrate that deviance can be both deliberate and political.
In the pre–Civil War United States, several rebellions and insurrections fanned
the flames of White anxiety and fears, while legitimating the humanity of those
considered slaves. During the 1831 rebellion led by Nat Turner, slaves went
from plantation to plantation, freeing other slaves and killing Whites. A total of
55 to 65 Whites died. In retaliation, White militias and mobs killed more than
200 Blacks.

Stock Montage / Archive Photos / Getty Images

Defining Whiteness in the West

During the latter half of the 19th century, Whiteness was also being defined on
the western frontier, this time at the expense of Native Americans. Formal U.S.
policies and laws were explicitly formulated to aid White settlers and railroad
corporations in the forcible expulsion of Native Americans from their tribal
lands. The U.S. Army supplied the force whereby thousands of acres of land
were acquired. No new treaties were ratified, as “raid” replaced “trade” in
White–Indian treaties (DiLorenzo 2010).

As the result of battles with the army, hundreds of Native Americans were held
as prisoners and subjected to military “trials.” Most of the adult male prisoners
were quickly found guilty and sentenced to death. This presumption of guilt had
nothing to do with whether or not they were actually warriors; rather, their mere
presence at the scene of the fighting was enough. In the largest mass execution in
U.S. history, 38 members of the Dakota tribe were hanged in 1862 in Mankato,
Minnesota, on orders of the president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.
They were accused of killing 490 White settlers, including women and children,
during the Santee Sioux uprising earlier in the year. The story that rarely gets
told is that these Sioux were angered by repeated broken treaties and the failure
of the United States to live up to its promises of food, supplies, and reparations.
Enraged and starving, the Native Americans attempted to take back their lands
by force. After the execution, the remaining Native Americans were resettled on
“reservations” under a presidential executive order. From this period through the
next few decades, Native Americans were consistently vilified as criminals,
deviants, and savages, and their lands were systematically taken as Whites and
Whiteness marched westward. Even a bloody civil war did not stop the U.S.
attack on Native Americans. In 1867, General William Sherman, who was tasked
with securing western lands and dealing with the Native Americans, wrote to
Ulysses S. Grant, then commanding general of the U.S. Army, “We are not going
to let a few thieving, ragged Indians check and stop our progress” (quoted in
Goldfield 2011, 450). The consolidation of Native American lands, along with
the end of the Civil War, marshaled a new period of Whiteness and social
control.

The Effects of Immigration

During the California gold rush of 1848–52, Chinese immigrants began arriving
in the United States to work as laborers on large construction projects. They
helped construct the first transcontinental railroad, and they were quite
successful at mining. As gold became scarce and the competition for good jobs
increased, anti-Chinese bigotry intensified. Judicial decrees and legislative
actions increasingly targeted not only Chinese but also other immigrants for
increased police scrutiny and criminalization. As early as 1862 the state of
California passed the Act to Protect Free White Labor against Competition with
Chinese Coolie Labor, and to Discourage the Immigration of the Chinese into
the State of California, or the Anti-Coolie Act. This law was a clear reaction to
the fears of White laborers about competition for jobs. It imposed special taxes
on Chinese miners and restrictions on immigration that ultimately led to the
forced segregation of Chinese immigrants, resulting in the creation of what came
to be known as Chinatowns. Chinese were stereotyped as criminals and
prostitutes and thus were excluded from entry into the country. Other ethnic
groups also deemed “undesirable” included Middle Easterners, Hindus, East
Indians, and Japanese. Anti-Chinese laws, in various forms, held sway until
1943, when Chinese immigrants were finally made eligible for U.S. citizenship.

Chinese immigration to the U.S. began in earnest around 1850, when “coolies”
came to the country to work on major construction projects. Legislation aimed at
preventing Chinese immigration, driven by fears of innate criminality, could not
entirely stem the flow, and by the 1920s Chinese laborers had branched out into
other industries, like salmon canning in Oregon.

Keystone-France / Gamma-Keystone / Getty Images

At the beginning of the 20th century the United States experienced massive
immigration of Southern Europeans, and a new set of White fears were
launched. Southern Europeans, including the Irish, Italians, and Jews, now
joined Blacks, Native Americans, and Asians as collectively perceived as the
principal sources of criminality in the United States, particularly within urban
communities. Associated with these concerns, the new science of sociology
provided a scientific facade, assuaging White fears while explaining recently
transplanted Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, and Blacks and their
supposed criminality and deviance. Recently, we have developed a new
terminology to use in the exploration of how laws, law enforcement, and courts
racially profile various groups.
A Legacy of Racial Profiling
Crime, laws, and perceptions of deviance create, (re)produce, and reinforce
status hierarchies based on race and ethnicity. At the intersections of these racial
hierarchies are both gender and class. Consequently, as we look at how deviance
is both constructed and enforced, we find that people of color, and males of color
in particular, are most likely to be racially profiled by police, receive the stiffest
sentences from the courts, are incarcerated at higher levels than Whites, and
increasingly face the death penalty.

Imagine that one day a flyer appears in your mailbox. It declares that nowhere in
North America is safe from “criminal Gypsies.” According to the flyer, training
is going to be provided that will help participants understand the “world of
criminal Gypsies and Travelers,” including their “fortune-telling frauds.” The
flyer mentions Polish Gypsies, Yugoslavian Gypsies, and other Romani groups.
In fact, the Romani people have for decades been racially profiled across the
United States. But they are not alone.

Racial profiling is the targeting of particular racial and ethnic groups by law
enforcement and private security agencies, resulting in their subjection to
ridicule, detention, interrogation, and search and seizure, often with no evidence
of criminal activity. Racial profiling is based on the perception that certain racial,
ethnic, religious, and national-origin groups are guilty until proven innocent.
And while racial profiling violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of equal
protection of the laws and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, it
continues to be utilized.

Racial profiling has been a law enforcement tool in the United States since the
establishment of slave patrols. From the beginning to the middle of the 19th
century, it focused on the Irish, Italians, and other Southern European groups.
Today, the most significant forms of racial profiling are aimed at Blacks,
Hispanics, the Romani, Muslims, and Native Americans.

Slightly more than half of all adults in the United States believe that racial
profiling is widespread. Some 53% believe that racial profiling plays a role in
which motorists police pull over, and many believe that security personnel use
racial profiling at airport security checkpoints (42%) and when deciding which
shoppers to watch at stores and malls (49%). The majority of Blacks (67%) and
Hispanics (63%), compared to only 50% of non-Hispanic Whites, feel that racial
profiling is widespread (Bergner 2014).

The New York Police Department’s so-called stop-and-frisk policy, once hailed
as a marvel of modern policing, demonstrates the dangers of racial profiling.
Since it was instituted in 2004, as many as 4 million citizens have been stopped
and frisked by police. At least 83% of these have been Black and Latino, and 9
out of 10 have been completely innocent of any wrongdoing (Bergner 2014).

Law-abiding citizens have not been apathetic about being racially profiled.
Governments, law enforcement officials, and corporations have been effectively
sued for maintaining the practice. These suits have filled the media and highlight
modern resistance stories. For example, a U.S. district court found that Joe
Arpaio, then sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona, had overseen a department
that had systematically targeted Latinos during traffic operations. The suit
alleged that the sheriff’s office had violated constitutional guarantees of free
speech, unlawful searches, and due process. Largely Hispanic neighborhoods
were aggressively and regularly patrolled by Maricopa sheriff’s deputies. A
federal monitor was established to prevent continued misconduct and to
safeguard the constitutional rights of the community (Osman 2015). Ironically,
Joe Arpaio received the first Presidential pardon granted by President Trump in
2017.

Racial profiling is both caused and affected by the criminal justice system. So in
addition to being targeted with more aggressive policing, people of color often
find that the scales of justice are not always evenly balanced. When it comes to
race, class, and gender, justice, as we will see in the next section, is anything but
blind. Differential policing and law enforcement not only stigmatize
marginalized people of color but also socially construct them as deviants. For
example, the chief of police of Homer, Louisiana, once commented:

If I see three or four young Black men walking down the street, I have to
stop them and check their names. . . . I want them to be afraid every time
they see the police that they might get arrested.” (quoted in American Civil
Liberties Union 2009, 52)

The urban poor have been systematically targeted by national and local law
enforcement agencies since the founding of the United States. The urban unrest
now rocking many U.S. cities reflects the increased stress fostered by a political
climate that targets the poor and racial minorities.
 Critical Thinking

1. How did Whiteness and deviance become the basis of criminalization, and what impact does this
have on our perceptions of crime and deviance?
2. Racial profiling by police has consistently been demonstrated to lead to the increased surveillance
and criminalization of both Blacks and Hispanics. How might similar types of racial profiling affect
not only these groups but others within major institutions such as education, the military, and the
economy? While we have concentrated on the negative aspects of racial profiling, could such
profiling have positive aspects for Whites or females? Speculate on how these may manifest, not
only in crime but also in other institutions.
3. Are there some individuals that we assume to be more violent, criminal, or deviant simply because of
the groups to which they belong? What does this say about the social construction of deviance?
4. Consider your hometown or university. Does it include certain groups that are more likely to be
associated with crime and deviance? Does this behavior surface in specific ways, at particular times,
or in specific situations? Has this behavior been evidenced across several different periods?
Sociological Stock Theories of Crime and Deviance
The disciplines of sociology and criminology have, from their inception, been
concerned with crime and deviance. These concerns have mirrored society’s
attempts to justify racial, gendered, and class hierarchies. Accordingly, the
standard theories within sociology and criminology may be considered as stock
stories. The theoretical orientations of these stock stories may be separated into
two broad categories: biosocial theories of deviance and ecological perspectives
on crime.

These standard stories have a common thread—they place the source of

deviance at the micro, or personal, level. Therefore, either the individual or his
or her community, culture, or environment is at odds with societal norms. And,
by implication, if the individual or his or her community, culture, or environment
could just be reformed, fixed, adjusted, or rehabilitated, then the deviance would
be reduced or would cease to exist. Finally, as we shall see, these stock stories all
fail to account adequately for the macro, or structural, factors that at best
intervene in and at worst are the primary contributors to the social construction
of deviance. As we will see later in the chapter, after a troubled start, sociologists
armed with an intersectional or matrix perspective have been more adept at
unraveling the discourse regarding race, class, gender, and crime and deviance.
Let us now turn to these theories.
Biosocial Theories of Deviance
Classical sociological theories of crime and deviance represent a portion of our
stock stories. The earliest and most systematic attempts to understand deviance
linked it to biology. In the 19th century, Cesare Lombroso, viewed as the founder
of modern criminology, ascribed crime and deviance to both ethnicity and race.
He held that Africans, Asians, and American Indians were especially prone to
crime and deviance (Greene and Gabbidon 2012, 96). Lombroso argued that so-
called biological indicators such as a particular body type, a certain shape of
face, high cheekbones, large ears, and small brain were all associated with a
more primitive form of human being. These genetically determined
characteristics were all external signs that marked individuals as potential
criminals. According to Lombroso, all non-Europeans were more likely to be
criminals because they were lower on the evolutionary scale. He argued that
crime and deviance were biologically determined. This theory, based in
biological determinism, holds that an individual’s behavior is innately related to
components of his or her physiology, such as body type and brain size.
Lombroso’s theory was later criticized for being too simplistic and highly
ethnocentric. The samples he relied upon for his studies were unrepresentative of
the population as a whole, because he focused primarily on Italian criminals who
were convicted of crimes, comparing them with Italian soldiers. A whole range
of structural, economic, and cultural factors were ignored or subsumed under
these differences.

By the time Lombroso’s research became known in the United States at the
beginning of the 20th century, biological determinism was the dominant
explanation for crime and deviance. Within the United States, the
overrepresentation of African Americans and some immigrants in crime
statistics caused many to link race and ethnicity to crime and deviance (Gould
1981). With time, the leading arguments regarding deviance and crime were
linked to IQ and race.

While some recent scholars have revived the discourse linking crime and
biology, they have stressed that a person’s behavior is influenced by both
biology and environment. Critiques of this approach have quickly pointed out
the implicit race, gender, and class biases inherent in it, and that it fails to take
into consideration social environment, a failure that can lead to the biological
and social determinism of previous periods (Gould 1981).
If crime is related to environment, what does that say about the environment in
which you live? If we were, for example, to do a measure of crime on many
college campuses, we might conclude that offenders are likely to be White, male,
and educated. This is primarily because most college campuses are
predominantly White and presumably more educated than the general
population. And it recognizes that males are most likely to be risk takers, hence
more likely than females to be associated with deviance. Alternatively, within
the United States, while Whites are more likely to use illegal drugs, including
cocaine, marijuana, and LSD, Blacks are more likely to go to prison for drug
offenses (Fellner 2009). Clearly, something more is happening.
Ecological Perspectives on Crime
From its inception, sociology in the United States was concerned with solving
the myriad problems associated with industrialization, urbanization, slums,
poverty, and crime that were rapidly transforming the nation at the beginning of
the 20th century (Orcutt 1983). Sociologists attempted to explain the apparent
links between crime and social location (including ethnicity, race, class, and
gender). Some believed that members of minority communities received much
more scrutiny from criminal justice professionals and thus were more likely to
be prosecuted by the legal system (Tonry 1995). Others argued that Blacks and
other minorities were simply more likely than Whites to commit serious crimes
(Hindelang 1978).

For almost half of the 20th century, the ecological approach dominated the
discourse on deviance within American sociology. This approach situates human
behavior (norms, social control, deviance, and nondeviance) within the social
structures external to the individual. The causes of crime, these theorists posited,
are found in the community structures in which people live and interact.
Community members interact to socially (re)create the conditions that account
for criminal and noncriminal behavior. Several theoretical strands have been
derived from the ecological approach to crime and deviance. The four most
important of these are social disorganization, the culture of poverty, cultural
conflict, and broken windows theory.

Social Disorganization
Social disorganization, one of the first derivatives of the ecological approach,
links crime to neighborhood ecological patterns. Place matters, and the apparent
ecological differences in levels of crime are explained by the structural and
cultural factors that shape, distort, or encourage social order within communities.
For example, high levels of immigration and migration often produce rapid
community changes. These rapid changes may then lead to either the disruption
or the breakdown of the structure of social relations and values, resulting in the
loss of social controls over individual and group behavior. During the period of
stress, social disorganization prevails, and crime, which is thus situational and
not group specific, develops and persists.

Culture of Poverty
Rather than the community, some theorists began to conceive of culture as the
nexus for deviance. It was argued that different levels of crime among various
groups arose from differences in morality (Wirth 1931). Theorist Louis Wirth
(1931, 485) wrote, “Where culture is homogeneous and class differences are
negligible, societies without crime are possible.” Differential association
theory elaborates on this perspective, proposing that differences in criminal
involvement among groups result from their different definitions of criminality.
Those groups that normalize crime essentially develop a “culture of poverty,”
accounting not only for their lack of success but also for their continued leaning
toward criminal lifestyles (Moynihan 1965; Lewis 1961, 1966a, 1966b). The
culture of poverty approach views poverty as a set of choices made by unwed
mothers that perpetuate crime, deviance, and other pathologies across
generations. The process produces children who are both morally deficient and
more apt to commit crime; in addition, they produce more unwed mothers with
unwanted children. This self-perpetuating cycle of dependencies, it has been
argued, is associated with poor families, and specifically with poor families of
color. This perspective has been criticized as essentially blaming the victim—
that is, holding the injured party entirely or partially responsible for the harm
suffered. Such a perspective ignores the structural inequities that underlie
poverty.

Figure 7.1 Children are More Likely to Be Born Into Poverty When Parents
Lack Education
 Source: Figure 3, p. 7 from “Child Poverty and Its Lasting Consequence”
by Caroline Ratcliffe and Signe-Mary McKernan. Low-Income Working
Families Paper 21, Urban Institute, September 2012. Retrieved from
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412659-Child-Poverty-and-Its-
Lasting-Consequence-Paper.pdf.

Recent research has documented that the most significant factor associated with
growing up poor is low educational attainment (Figure 7.1). Other factors that
are also important are single motherhood, family unemployment, young age of
parents, and living in inner-city neighborhoods (Ratcliffe and McKernan 2012).
So rather than a culture of poverty, there are definite structural conditions that
lead to a cycle of poverty. We shall return to these structural conditions below.

Broken Windows Theory

Beginning in the early 1980s, criminologists began to speculate on the
relationship between urban disorder and vandalism. Could cities fix their crime
problems by simply fixing up the neighborhoods, picking up the litter, and, yes,
fixing broken windows? Broken windows theory (Wilson and Kelling 1982)
argues that stopping vandalism can lead to a significant decrease in serious
crime. Police surveillance may be a means of controlling crime, but it does not
eliminate or even curtail it. The presence of abandoned properties, vandalism,
litter, and filth not only demoralizes community residents but also produces a
form of nihilism (i.e., an extreme form of fatalism) that leaves people feeling
overwhelmed, hopeless, and apt to give up. But while fixing broken windows
and sprucing up neighborhoods may lead to increasing pride in a community,
these actions do not sufficiently explain lower levels of crime and deviance.
Combatting fear, making citizens feel empowered, and establishing partnership
relations between community members and police are among the factors that
lead to decreased crime levels (Xu, Fiedler, and Flaming 2015). Similar
arguments have linked crime with the prevalence of lead in the environment.

The broken windows theory holds that addressing minor crimes like vandalism
and jaywalking reinforces social norms around lawfulness and thus reduces
crime.

pjhpix / Alamy Stock Photo

 Critical Thinking

1. What does the acceptance of stock stories suggest regarding the natural, cultural, biological, or
community basis of crime?
2. How might stock stories influence the way that crime is both perceived and prosecuted? How might
such beliefs affect jury members in cases involving suspects who are members of racial minorities?
3. How do stock stories mirror our assumptions about racial and ethnic differences?
4. Have you experienced being categorized according to others’ conceptualizations of how you should
or should not act based on the group(s) with which you identify? If so, in what ways did this
experience affect your choices? How did you ultimately deal with the characterizations of others?
What does this suggest about your individual agency and stereotypical assumptions about you?
Applying the Matrix to Crime and Deviance
The matrix approach posits that powerful elites construct and enforce laws that
protect their interests. Du Bois (1904) was the first to theorize and document the
intersectional or matrix approach to crime and deviance. He began by dismissing
the biological basis of crime and pointing out how social structures influence
crime and deviance. Du Bois argued that crime and racial status are definitely
linked, with the linkage most obvious among African Americans. He pointed out
that in the United States, race, class, and gender are manipulated to maximize
profits.

The matrix perspective helps us interrogate our assumptions about what is

deviant and what is normal, or what is considered criminal and what is
noncriminal. Even casual observation reveals that a given behavior might be
rewarded in one context and penalized in another. Space often determines the
appropriateness of specific acts. Consider war and contact sports: In both
settings the use of certain forms of violence is considered legitimate, but that
same behavior at a party or in a college classroom would not be appropriate. The
matrix approach also reveals that certain persons occupying certain social spaces
or identities, such as racial, class, and gender identities, may similarly find their
actions differentially circumscribed and labeled deviant. When various physical
spaces interact with social identities, different types and definitions of deviance
can be identified.
The Spaces and Places of Crime and Deviance
Have you ever wondered when and where crime is most prevalent? The matrix
approach focuses our attention on how individual behavior interacts with larger
social structures. Issues of race and racism produce stress. One important theory
helps us understand how this stress influences deviance.

General Strain Theory

One of the seminal Sociological approaches demonstrates the causal likes
between levels of stress and deviance. General strain theory (Agnew 1992)
proposes that racism produces stressful events and environments, which in turn
lead to “negative emotions such as anger, fear, depression, and rage, and these
emotional reactions lead to crime either directly or indirectly depending upon
other contingencies such as coping mechanisms, peer and familial support, and
self-esteem” (Piquero and Sealock 2010, 171). Thus it is suggested that people
of color may view the United States from a particularly racialized perspective,
where “race matters” because it significantly alters their chances for survival and
success (Unnever and Gabbidon 2011). Systemic racism—that is, a system of
inequality based on race, often within institutional settings, such as law
enforcement and the criminal justice system—is often associated with
differential outcomes in crime and deviance. Because of systemic racism, people
of color are more likely than Whites to be victims of police abuse, racial
profiling, and differential criminal sanctioning under get-tough policies
associated with the war on crime and drugs. Systemic racism is at the root of the
current mass incarceration of Blacks, who then experience a lifetime of legal and
employment discrimination, housing segregation, and diminished opportunities
(Alexander 2010).

Some criminologists argue that until we understand how race and racism create a
hegemonic structure that has historically criminalized people of color, we will
not be able to account for the apparent permanence of racial disparities in
deviance and incarceration rates. Regardless of levels of crime or historical
period, racial disparities in incarceration rates have been relatively constant
(Hawkins 2011).

A Climate of Violence
Ethnographers such as Elijah Anderson flip the script by asking how
racialization, gender, and disempowerment interact to produce increased
surveillance, criminalization, and incarceration. Inner-city Black males find their
lives more difficult as police assume they are the neighborhood problems that
should be fixed, and detain, search, and often arrest them (Anderson 1990). The
increased prevalence of men of color in the criminal justice system is more about
this high level of surveillance than it is about these men’s likelihood of
criminality. Inner-city communities are surrounded by forces beyond their
residents’ control, and challenges to identity and manhood only intensify
perceived problems and uncertainties. The only thing of value many young men
can control is their reputation, or “rep.” Losing it means losing credibility. The
“code of the street”—the unwritten rules that enforce respect, justice, and rights
—insulates community members from a profound sense of alienation from
mainstream society, where many institutions seem punitive. Yet while the code
helps to check wholesale violence, it actually perpetuates a climate of violence
(Anderson 1994, 1999).

Incarceration rates are influenced by the disappearance of work as well as by

differential labeling and negative stereotyping of young men of color by those
who make and enforce the laws. Rios (2006) shows that these factors lead to
increased surveillance by school officials in schools, by police within
communities, and by families. At the intersection of race, class, gender, and age,
poor young men of color face a “double bind.” Thwarted in their efforts to be
identified as “hardworking men,” they choose “hypermasculinity” and deviance
as a means of demonstrating their manhood (Rios 2006, 54). This
hypermasculinity, with its aggravated aggressiveness and physicality, has been
labeled “cool poise” (Anderson 1999). It has been both romanticized and
glorified in hip-hop and “gangsta” rap music and linked to increasing levels of
interpersonal conflicts, group violence and gang violence, and sexual
exploitation of young women of color (Nettleton 2011, 140).
Unable to fulfill the role of “hardworking man,” some turn to hypermasculinity
and deviance to express their maleness.

Ira Berger / Alamy Stock Photo

Consequently, associating with violent peers, having a history of violent

involvement, experiencing discrimination, and living in a neighborhood
characterized by violence and disadvantage are all factors that have been found
likely to reproduce violence among young men of color (Stewart and Simons
2009). Anderson (1999, 8) found that those who “internalized the code of the
street and actually lived by it were more likely to be involved in later reported
acts of violence.”

The continual attention to acts of violence perpetrated by the urban poor is

typically masked by the code words “getting tough on crime,” a policy stance
that accounts for the skyrocketing incarceration of persons of color (Alexander
2010). Similarly, the so-called war on drugs has been described as an undeclared
war on women in general and Black women in particular (Bush-Baskette 1998).
As we will see below, this undeclared war has resulted in an almost fourfold
increase in the number of women imprisoned in recent years.
In summary, the matrix approach posits that race is a marker reflecting our social
context (Burt, Simons, and Gibbons 2012, 3). Crime and deviance do not operate
in a vacuum; they are part of the process by which the racial matrix is
maintained and perpetuated. Of particular interest in this formulation is the
prison–industrial complex.
The Structure and Context of Crime and Deviance
Over the past couple of decades, sociologists have pointed to structural
inequities (i.e., society-wide conditions that result in unequal outcomes for
particular groups in comparison with others), such as racism and social isolation,
as the causal links to differential outcomes in crime and deviance (Massey and
Sampson 2009). These new interpretations argue that racism, differential
educational funding, and lack of opportunities may lead to a culture of poverty—
not the other way around. All of these factors are structural; they affect the
institutions of education, the job market, family formation, and community
viability. These structural inequities produce poverty; poverty is not created by
individuals, their cultures, or their communities (Cohen 2010). This aspect of the
matrix highlights the interactions between micro-level behaviors and the
structural systems and processes operating at the macro level.

The matrix informs us that crime and deviance are situational and contextually
specific. This means that rather than culture or race, space and place provide the
clues to understanding both. The implications that follow are that if we were to
look at different situations and contexts, we would find different types of crime.
Therefore, spaces and places like urban centers produce different types of
deviance possibilities than do spaces and places such as corporations. We would
also expect different types of deviance to be associated with different types of
institutions. Similarly, the context of deviance is important.

Two Competing Perceptions of Reality

One media report argues that young Black men are 21 times more likely than
their White counterparts to die at the hands of police. Another argues that more
Whites are killed by police. They can’t both be right, right? Wrong! They can.
Consider the two reports. According to Gabrielson, Jones, and Sagara (2014),
young Black males ages 15 to 19 were killed by police at a rate of 31.27 per
million from 2010 through 2012, compared to a rate of just 1.47 per million for
White males in the same age group. Alternatively, Bill O’Reilly (2014), then the
popular host of his own program on Fox News, announced that his research
concluded that in 2012 just 123 African Americans were shot by police, while
326 Whites were killed by police. When one considers that there are 43 million
Blacks in the United States and 200.7 million Whites, the conclusion appears
that Whites and Blacks have an almost equal chance of being shot by police. So,
how can both reports be right? The first set of numbers takes into consideration
only those young men ages 15 to 19 and covers the period from 2010 to 2012.
The second set of numbers does not specify an age range and deals with just one
year. The other factor is where the numbers come from, and herein lies the real
problem. No consistent data are recorded on police killings of civilians across
the country. Gabrielson et al. cite data on fatal police shootings collected by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, but as extensive as their analysis is, it has flaws,
in that the FBI relies on self-reported data from a small percentage of the
nation’s more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies. So, what we are left with
are two competing perceptions of reality. These two perceptions have become
increasingly evident as we have watched the unfolding of various grand jury
deliberations regarding the deaths of Black males at the hands of police and the
protests that have followed. In many ways, these constitute two different forms
of concealed stories.

The U.S. inmate population has grown under the prison-industrial complex,
necessitating the construction of enormous new facilities, like this one in Illinois.

Aerial Archives / Alamy Stock Photo

The Prison–Industrial Complex

In recent years, policies of aggressive policing targeting specific groups have
greatly expanded the U.S. inmate population, helping to create what some have
labeled the prison–industrial complex (Sudbury 2002). In this system,
government and industry uses of surveillance, policing, and imprisonment have
been merged in an effort to solve economic, social and political problems.
Political support for mass-incarceration policies is influenced by private prison
companies and by the businesses that supply goods and services to government
prisons. The more recent politicization and racialization of crime and
punishment has its roots in the 1968 presidential campaign of Richard Nixon. As
jobs disappeared, unemployment skyrocketed, and urban unrest was observed,
many began to call for more “law and order.” This call was loudest from Nixon,
who made being tough on crime the hallmark of his presidency.

The most significant increase in the adverse treatment of men of color occurred
after the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. The Reagan administration greatly
publicized the drug war, highlighting the epidemic rise of crack cocaine in the
inner cities. News stories, originating from White House staffers, began
appearing, “publicizing inner-city crack babies, crack mothers, crack whores,
and drug-related violence” (Alexander 2012). Racial inequities in
criminalization intensified as voters and politicians decided to “get tough on
crime.” Clearly, the so-called war on crime has essentially been a war on race, as
laws were passed to stiffen crime control, punishment, and sentencing. In the
aftermath, racial disparities were not only worsened but also excused (Tonry
1994, 475–76).

Richard Nixon, in his 1968 bid for the presidency, made “law and order” the
linchpin of his southern strategy. In his first State of the Union address, he
asserted that “we must declare and win the war against the criminal elements
which increasingly threaten our cities, our homes and our lives.” In this call for
action, the “war on drugs” became the most visible outcome (Soss, Fording, and
Schram 2011, 32–35).

Arthur Schatz / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images

The key force driving mass incarceration in the United States has been the war
on drugs, which has led to policies that have resulted in a disproportionate
increase in the criminalization of poor, non-White offenders (Alexander 2010;
Mauer 2006; Provine 2007). Black and Latino males are disproportionately
targeted by police in many major municipalities, including New York (New York
Civil Liberties Union 2012), Los Angeles (Ayres 2008), and Chicago (Caputo
2014). In many states, laws concerning undocumented immigrants are in essence
thinly disguised means of allowing law enforcement to engage in racial
profiling; these states include Arizona, Alabama, Utah, South Carolina, Indiana,
Georgia, Missouri, and Oklahoma (Rickerd and Lin 2012). Under the guise of
race-neutral crime policies, racial hierarchies are preserved while the presumed
criminality of racial minorities is made real. Consequently, while on the surface
such laws seem to be nonracial, their effect is to perpetuate racial inequities
(Alexander 2010; Tonry 1995).

After 1980, the federal prison population increased eightfold, at a cost to U.S.
taxpayers of more than $6 billion a year. Since the mid-2000s, however, the
numbers have dipped to 1999 levels; with 2013 admissions, the United States
held an estimated 1,574,700 persons in both state and federal prisons (see Figure
7.2). Non-Hispanic Blacks (37%) made up the largest portion of male inmates,
followed by non-Hispanic Whites (32%) and Hispanics (22%) (Carson 2014, 1–
2).

Figure 7.2 The State and Federal Prison Population Has Increased Since 1980

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Key Statistics,”

http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=kfdetail&iid=487.
In the same period, White women made up close to half (49%) of the female
prison population, compared to Black women, who accounted for 22%. If,
however, we look at rate of imprisonment, we see that Black women (at 113 per
100,000) are more than twice as likely as White females (51 per 100,000) to be
incarcerated. Variations are also observed if we consider gender and age. Close
to 3% of Black male U.S. residents, regardless of age, were imprisoned as of
December 31, 2014 (2,805 inmates per 100,000), compared to 1% of Hispanic
males (1,134 per 100,000) and slightly less than 0.5% of White males (466 per
100,000). Black males in the 18–19 age group had the highest imprisonment
rates. These young men were more than nine times more likely than their White
counterparts to be imprisoned (Carson 2014, 8).

The Poverty Link

Poverty lies at the heart of these trends. Poverty, aggravated by racial isolation
and coupled with inadequate funding of schools, lack of employment, and
aggressive policing, has both immediate and lasting effects. Gaps in income
between different racial groups are reflected in some less-than-obvious ways.
When we compare incarcerated with nonincarcerated people ages 27–42, stark
differences are apparent (Figure 7.3). While the racial gaps remain, males see the
greatest declines in average income. This reflects the fact that males, and White
males in particular, start off with the highest earnings and so have more to lose.
What is not so apparent, and provides further evidence of the effects of the
matrix, is that Black women, who have significantly less to lose, are the second-
biggest losers in terms of incarceration. Further, the smallest income losses are
observed among Hispanic women, who have the lowest wages to start with
(Figure 7.3).

Figure 7.3 Incarcerated People Earn Less Prior to Incarceration Than Non-
incarcerated People
Among Black males without college educations, about 12% of those born after
World War II are incarcerated, compared to 36% of those who reached their 30s
in 2005. Even higher incarceration rates are observed among Black males born
in the mid-1960s who dropped out of school. Of this group, between 60% and
70% are incarcerated. During this period, while the rate of incarceration for
those without college more than tripled, it less than doubled among those with
college. Consequently, a Black male dropping out of high school has an
incarceration rate almost 50 times greater than the national average (Western
2006, 18). Ultimately, it is the community that bears the cost of so much
imprisonment. As reported by Gonnerman (2004), this has produced “million-
dollar blocks”—urban areas where $1 million or more has been spent to
incarcerate the residents.

Different Sentencing Outcomes

Race, ethnicity, gender, and class disparities in sentencing outcomes have also
been identified. Men are 15 times more likely than women to be convicted of
crimes, and on average they receive sentences that are about 63% longer than
those received by women. Women are also about twice as likely as men to avoid
incarceration, even when convicted. Prosecutorial decisions regarding women
might be influenced by such statistics, as well as by other elements. One of these
might be that women simply commit less severe crimes and thus warrant less
severe punishment. Another factor, labeled the “girlfriend theory,” suggests that
women are minor players caught up in the criminal actions of their boyfriends.
Third, prosecutors might be lenient toward female defendants because of their
family status—for instance, they may have young children, and incarceration
would lead to family hardships. Fourth, women may be more likely to cooperate
with prosecutors, and thus be granted plea deals (Starr 2012). Black women have
been found to be three times more likely, and Hispanic women 69% more likely,
than their White counterparts to be incarcerated (Sentencing Project 2005).

While inner-city drug use is highlighted on the front pages of tabloids across the
country, drug use among middle-class youth is often ignored. Such drug abuse
typically is more hidden and more likely to involve prescription medications,
and thus is less likely to be criminalized. Middle- and upper-class young people
are more likely to have access to both health insurance and prescription
medications. Drugs such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, and codeine are now
outpacing heroin and cocaine combined among substance abusers. Death rates
from prescription drug overdoses nearly tripled between 1998 and 2006. White
males ages 35–54 accounted for the highest proportion of deaths (Warner, Chen,
and Makuc 2009).

Depending on the type of offense, most research finds that greater leniency is
shown in sentencing when the victim is either Black or Hispanic. This is
particularly true in sexual assault cases. When charged with crimes, Whites are
more likely to receive lower bail, thus suggesting a higher likelihood of prison
time for Blacks and Hispanics. Hispanics, followed by Blacks, are also more
likely to be denied release options. Regionally, Blacks charged with felonies in
the South are least likely to have their cases dismissed. White males are also
significantly more likely than either Hispanics or Blacks to have their charges
reduced (Warner et al. 2009). Most research has found that Hispanic and Black
males are more likely than their White counterparts to be singled out for severe
punishment (Kutateladze, Lynn, and Liang 2012). And those with the least
income and education are the most disadvantaged (Mustard 2001).
ian stuart / Alamy Stock Photo

Abuse of prescription drugs, like oxycodone, is now outpacing that of street

drugs like crack cocaine.

Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo

Capital Punishment
The United States is the only industrialized Western democracy that still allows
capital punishment. Since 2009, Hispanics have constituted almost 20% of the
new admissions to death rows across the United States (Snell 2010). Phillips
(2008) has documented that Black defendants are 1.75 times more likely than
White defendants to face the death penalty, and 1.5 times more likely than White
defendants to actually be sentenced to death. Currently, 54% of prisoners on
death rows in the United States are either Black or Latino, yet Blacks and
Latinos make up only 27.9% of the total U.S. population (IndexMundi 2016).

The disparities in the application of the death penalty constitute an obvious

indicator of more deeply ingrained inequalities across many institutional
structures that maintain and perpetuate higher levels of violence in Black and
Latino communities. When work disappears, there is an increase in ghetto-
related behaviors, including the criminal activities associated with what some
call an underground economy (Wilson 1996). Finally, what is the impact of
structural inequality? For example, homicide rates over the past few decades
point to obvious racial gaps. Black males are eight times more likely than their
White counterparts to be homicide victims or offenders. They are also about five
times more likely to be incarcerated for violent offenses. Comparatively,
Hispanics also are more likely to be involved in violent crimes. Homicide
continues to be the leading cause of death for Black males and the second
leading cause of death for Latino males between the ages of 15 and 24 (Phillips
2002). These racial gaps can be explained only by structural inequalities. More
specifically, almost the entire Hispanic–White gap and at least half of the Black–
White gap could be eliminated by a reduction in residential mobility,
improvements in education, and an increase in employment opportunities
(Phillips 2002).
Identifying Types of Crime
Some types of crimes, victims, and criminals have become closely associated
with particular races, classes, and genders. Dominant racial and ethnic groups,
because they are better positioned than others, are more able to avoid criminal
sanctions and being labeled deviant. The systemic linking of deviance with
difference has much to do with both who is doing the linking and where the
observations are being conducted. In most cases the assignment of deviance
serves to legitimate both the status and the privileges of those in power.
Deviance typically has been associated with young males who are members of
racial and/or ethnic minorities. The fact that these youth also tend to be
concentrated within urban areas, on reservations, or in rural enclaves has given
rise to a long history of linking deviance to specific kinds of communities and
groups. Crimes targeting women in all of these situations have tended to be
either ignored or marginalized.

Differential Labeling
Differential labeling occurs when some individuals and groups are
systematically singled out and declared deviant by virtue of their being in those
particular groups. This labeling derives from the social construction of crime,
law, and deviance by those who have power. Differential labeling underlies a
persistently held belief within the United States that Blacks, Hispanics, and other
disadvantaged groups are more prone to crime, violence, and disorder; more
likely to receive support from welfare programs; and more likely to live in
undesirable communities. Such stereotypes may also lead members of the
stigmatized groups to respond in ways that confirm the beliefs. Women of all
groups have also experienced differential labeling. Women of color in particular
bear the historic scars of being labeled whores and gold diggers (Farrell and
Swigert 1988, 3).

Differential labeling makes us more likely to associate racial minorities with

crime. Deviance is in the eye of the observer. If we expect to see crime, then we
will see it (Thomas and Thomas 1928, 571–72).

Differential labeling highlights the significance of the perceptions and social

construction of deviance and crime. All too often, it can have devastating
consequences. Over the past 7 years, the U.S. Department of Justice has been
increasingly asked to evaluate incidents of the use of lethal force by local police.
While it has identified 14 municipal law enforcement agencies suspected of
engaging in a “pattern or practice” of violating civil rights through the use of
excessive force, these findings have resulted in few lasting reforms
(Weichselbaum 2015). Some have gone so far as to suggest that law enforcement
has developed a warrior mindset rather than a guardian mindset (Stoughton
2015).

Hate Crimes
Crimes targeting individuals because of their group membership fall under the
classification of hate crimes. The perpetrators of such crimes use violence and
intimidation to further stigmatize and marginalize disenfranchised individuals
and groups (Figure 7.4). These offenses are intended to protect and preserve
hegemonic hierarchies associated with race, gender, sexuality, and class (Perry
and Alvi 2011). The first federal legislation in the United States concerning hate
crimes was the 1990 Hate Crime Statistics Act (Perry 2001, 2–3).

In early 2017, a string of hate crimes were recorded in which Jewish cemeteries
were targeted. Roughly one-third of hate crimes target property.

Mark Makela / Getty Images News / Getty Images

In 2014, the FBI reported that law enforcement agencies across the country
reported a total of 5,850 hate crimes. Just over half were racially motivated
crimes. Others targeted sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, gender identity,
disability, and gender. Almost two-thirds (65.1%) were crimes against persons;
the rest were property crimes (FBI 2015). While Blacks remain the most targeted
group, the number of incidents aimed at Blacks has steadily decreased, from
about 6,000 per year in 1995 to 2,201 in 2015. Similarly, violence against
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons has been decreasing, but the
number of crimes targeting LGBT people of color remains constant. LGBT
people of color are more likely than their White counterparts to be the victims of
hate crimes (Ahmed and Jindasurat 2014).

Most hate crime offenders are motivated either by a desire for excitement (66%)
or by the belief that they are protecting their neighborhoods from perceived
outsiders (25%). Few hate crime perpetrators commit these crimes in retaliation
for being victimized (8%) or are motivated exclusively by bigotry (1%)
(McDevitt, Levin, and Bennett 2002).

Figure 7.4 Over Half of All Hate Crimes Reported in 2015 Were Racially
Motivated

Source: “Hate Crime in America, by the Numbers,” Mike Brunker, Monica

Alba, and Bill Dedman. NBC News, June 18, 2015.

Violence against Women

Throughout history, race, class, and gender have been elements in the selection
of particular groups for victimization. Among women of color, sexual abuse has
been used as a means of social control and to buttress a system that upholds both
racial and masculine superiority. One in six women reports being the victim of
attempted or completed rape. Of the 17.7 million women who fall into these
categories, Native American and mixed-race women are by far the largest groups
(34.1% and 24.4%, respectively). Since many rapes go unreported, these figures
could be much higher. The leading causal factors associated with rape victims
are high levels of poverty, unemployment, and hopelessness. Among all groups,
persons in the poorest households experience violent victimizations at more than
double the rate of persons in higher-income households (Harrell, Langton,
Berzofsky, Couzens, and Smiley-McDonald 2014).

Across the United States, 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men will be raped at some
point in their lives. Bisexual women report the highest rates of rape (74.9%),
followed by lesbians (46.4%) and then heterosexual women (43%). The most
common violent crime on U.S. college campuses is rape (Sampson 2002). By the
time they graduate, at least a quarter of female college students have experienced
sexual assault. Only 4% of these incidents are reported to law enforcement and
7% to any school official. A significant proportion of sexual assaults on college
campuses involve LGBT students (9%) (National Sexual Violence Research
Center 2015).

Many domestic workers and farmworkers, particularly those who are

undocumented immigrants, may be hidden victims of sexual abuse. These
victims, isolated physically, legally, or both, are least likely to report or to be
able to prove charges of rape or abuse. An exhaustive 2006 study in New York
found that 33% of domestic workers had experienced either verbal or physical
abuse or were made to feel uncomfortable by their employers. Of these, one-
third felt that their race/ethnicity or immigration status contributed to their
employers’ behavior (Domestic Workers United and DataCenter 2006). In fact,
the rape of domestic workers is a worldwide problem. In 2012, the United
Nations announced the ratification of a new treaty to protect domestic workers’
rights. In many ways, crimes against immigrants and other so-called
undocumented workers are forms of hate crimes.

Organized Crime
Gangs range in type from more or less informal groups whose members
frequently commit crimes to more formal groups with clear hierarchies,
histories, and cultures. These latter types of gangs participate in what can only
be classified as organized crime.
Urban gangs associated with organized crime over the past decade have
expanded their operations to include alien smuggling, human trafficking, and
prostitution. These groups have also been highly integrated within specific
communities. Urban gangs associated with the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Poles
emerged in four major U.S. gang regions associated with European ethnic
migration during the period 1880–1920. These almost exclusively consisted of
street gangs operating in New York City and Chicago. During the 1960s and
1970s, the demographics of urban gangs shifted, reflecting changes in the U.S.
population. Latino and Black gangs began to dominate in both of these cities.
Significant differences in history can be identified between gangs in the western
United States and those in the Northeast and the Midwest. Western gangs, for
example, were never associated with White ethnics. Rather, for nearly half a
century, Mexicans have dominated these gangs (Howell and Moore 2010).

The earliest gangs originating in New York and Chicago were dominated by
adults engaged in criminal activity. Organized crime figures and political
operatives created complex webs of criminal activity that controlled the streets
in both cities. Gangs with younger members emerged and copied the styles of
the earlier gangs, flourishing over time. These gangs tended to be associated
with urban decay, unemployment, and overwhelmed social agencies (Howell and
Moore 2010).

Today, four major gang regions can be identified in the United States. U.S.-based
gangs operate behind prison walls (where they also recruit), in the military
(where there are at least 53 separate gangs), and internationally, in Central
America, Mexico, Africa, Europe, China, and the Middle East.

Contrary to popular stereotypes, three out of five gang members are adults
(Howell and Moore 2010). Larger cities and suburban counties, with their longer
histories of gang presence, are more likely to have older gang members. Most
gang members are male, although nearly half of all gangs outside large cities
report having some female members. Latinos and African Americans dominate
gang membership (Figure 7.5). White gang members tend to be more prevalent
in smaller, more rural areas (National Gang Center 2012). Gangs are associated
primarily with poorer, urban communities. Their existence is seen as a response
to both unemployment and the lack of other services (Egley, Howell, and Harris
2014). Gang membership may serve as a defensive response to perceived or real
threats posed by social disorganization, economic disadvantage, and high levels
of ethnic and racial conflict (Pyrooz, Fox, and Decker 2010). Racial and ethnic
gangs serve a multitude of purposes for their members. They provide a sense of
belonging, order, purpose, community, defense, and resources (status, drugs, and
money) (Howell and Moore 2010).

White-Collar Crime
When most people think about crime, they might picture a male, typically a
person of color, wearing a hoodie and sporting gold teeth, lurking on some dark
street corner, just waiting to jump out and molest an innocent passerby. We all
know those areas where it is “unsafe” to walk at night. Ironically, our
perceptions of crime ignore some of the most significant criminal acts
committed, those perpetrated by White professionals working in offices. This
kind of crime—known as white-collar crime—is typically financially motivated
and nonviolent, often committed by business or government professionals. It is
estimated to cost U.S. citizens and corporations anywhere from $250 billion to
$1 trillion each year (Friedrichs 2007)—and these criminals, in contrast with
other types of offenders, are more likely to be male, White, highly educated, and
employed (Wheeler, Weisburd, Waring, and Bode 1988).

Figure 7.5 Latinos and African Americans Have Historically Dominated Gang
Membership

Source: National Gang Center, “National Youth Gang Survey Analysis,”

2012, http://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/survey-analysis/demographics.
White-collar crime has been defined as “crime committed by a person of
respectability and high social status in the course of his [or her] occupation”
(Sutherland 1949, 9). African Americans and other disadvantaged racial and
ethnic groups are extremely unlikely to engage in corporate-level white-collar
crimes like antitrust activities, although they are equally as likely as Whites to be
charged with low-level white-collar crime such as embezzlement and fraud
(Weisburd, Wheeler, Waring, and Bode 1991; Shover and Hochstetler 2006).
Women, in general, are less likely to participate in white-collar crime (Weisburd
et al. 1991). These differences manifest the clear structural opportunities that
coincide with race, class, and gender. As Hagan (1994, 103) argues, since the
opportunity to commit white-collar crime is linked to both class position and
power, it makes sense that White males are most likely to engage in these sorts
of crimes. In contrast, a particular form of white-collar crime, welfare fraud
(i.e., the illegal use of state welfare systems to knowingly withhold or make false
statements for the purposes of obtaining more funds than allowed) has been
historically linked to poor women, especially women of color.

The ideology of the Reagan administration in 1981 linked welfare fraud to the
“typical welfare recipient”—a woman of color, often African American, with
five or more children by different fathers, who spent most of her days watching
soap operas and thinking of more ways to scam the system (Rose 2000, 144).
Although this image has repeatedly been shown to have little basis in reality,
many people hold firmly to the myth, which is still promoted by right-wing
media outlets (Rose 2000).

White-collar crimes are often cast as crimes of opportunity rather than crimes of
deviousness. We tend to romanticize these criminals while demonizing other
types of offenders. It is interesting to note that we rarely think of white-collar
crime as being evidence of a culture of poverty or deviance. Therefore, we are
less likely to link white-collar criminals to specific racial, ethnic, class, or
gendered groups. Sutherland (1940), who originally coined the term white-collar
crime, concluded that “the general public was, sadly, simply not aroused by
white-collar crime.” Even though as many as one in four U.S. households may
be the victims of white-collar crimes, close to 90% of these crimes are not
reported to law enforcement (Huff, Desilets, and Kane 2010). In 1968, the
President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice
found that U.S. adults tended to be “indifferent” to white-collar crime and in
some cases actually sympathized with the perpetrators. More recently, federal
judges have been found to be more likely to ignore federal sentencing guidelines
and reduce the sentences for certain white-collar crimes, and more likely to
follow sentencing guidelines in drug cases. Sentencing judges also tend to be
more persuaded toward leniency by highly respectable and privately
compensated counsel. In addition, sentencing judges are more likely to be
swayed by high-profile defendants’ histories of philanthropy and community
service, the potential of long sentences for such defendants to disrupt economic
or employment systems, and the defendants’ loss of reputation (Shover and
Hochstetler 2006, 98).

White-collar crime has been demonstrated to be as serious as street crime in the

harm it produces (Piquero, Carmichael, and Piquero 2007). Among prominent
white-collar offenders in recent years have been large corporations such as
Halliburton, Lucent, Rite Aid, Cendant, Sunbeam, Waste Management, Enron,
Global Crossing, Kmart, WorldCom, Adelphia, Xerox, and Tyco (Simon 2006).

Imagine the consequences when elected political leaders and major corporations
conspire to illegally dump tons of garbage, construction waste, or other
pollutants in your community. Such a scenario played out during the 1990s in
Chicago, where local leaders and politicians were bribed to look the other way.
The FBI, in a secret investigation dubbed Operation Silver Shovel, documented
that construction and remodeling waste from mostly White neighborhoods on the
city’s North Side and from suburban communities was being dumped primarily
into working-class and low-income African American and Latino communities
on the West Side. In order to ensure the success of this operation, the
perpetrators paid bribes of as much as $5,000 per month to Black and Latino
aldermen beginning in the late 1980s. Black and Latino communities in Chicago
account for close to 80% of the illicit trade in waste disposal (Pellow 2004).

Investment adviser Bernie Madoff, utilizing a Ponzi scheme, bilked investors out
of $64.8 billion. Madoff might well be the most famous, if not most successful,
white-collar criminal in U.S. history, but he is not alone. Besides costing billions
of dollars, corporate crime that exposes the public to environmental risks may
endanger untold numbers of lives.

Orjin F. Ellingvag / Corbis Historical / Getty Images

 Critical Thinking

1. Examine a school or local newspaper. What types of stories are associated with deviance? Does the
matrix help you better understand the types and forms of deviance? What types of deviance seem to
be missing? What does this suggest about space and place?
2. Which of the following acts is most deviant: (a) cheating on a test, (b) cheating on your partner, (c)
cheating on your taxes, or (d) cheating at cards? What accounts for your selection? Can you identify
any situations in which that act would be considered appropriate or excusable?
3. What do you think would be the consequences of excessive policing and stiff punishment for those
who engage in the acts listed in question 2? What does this suggest with reference to the interaction
of race, class, and gender with different types of crime and deviance?
4. We all have at one time or another been involved with both crime and deviance. Thinking about one
specific occurrence in your life, in what ways did this event demonstrate the interaction of race, class,
and gender? How might such events affect your perceptions of those within particular groups and the
causes of deviance?
Transforming the Narrative of Race, Crime, and
Deviance
The ways in which people, and youth in particular, perceive themselves are often
framed by images in the news and entertainment media. These projections have
significant impacts on how individuals see themselves as well as how the public,
police, and courts respond to them. We do not often see positive news media
portrayals of young people of color or their communities (Waymer 2009), and
the effects of a steady stream of negative reporting on crime, poverty, and
violence associated with inner-city areas are rarely considered. Without
counterstories, the pictures these youths have of themselves, and the pictures
others form, are negative, filled with deviance and violence. Thus we may be
seeing self-fulfilling prophecies as life begins to imitate its representations. In
this section we present some alternative stories, demonstrating that indeed there
is hope for the future.

Concealed Story: Keri

Hello, my name is Keri Blakinger. I was a senior at Cornell University when I was arrested for
heroin possession. As an addict—a condition that began during a deep depression—I was
muddling my way through classes and doing many things I would come to regret, including
selling drugs to pay for my own habit. I even began dating a man with big-time drug
connections that put me around large amounts of heroin. When police arrested me in 2010, I
was carrying six ounces, an amount they valued at $50,000—enough to put me in prison for
up to 10 years. Cornell suspended me indefinitely and banned me from campus. I had
descended from a Dean’s List student to a felon.

But instead of a decade behind bars and a life grasping for the puny opportunities America
affords some ex-convicts, I got a second chance. In a plea deal, I received a sentence of 2½
years. After leaving prison, I soon got a job as a reporter at a local newspaper. Then Cornell
allowed me to start taking classes again, and I graduated in 2014. What made my quick
rebound possible?

I am white, female, and middle-class.

Source: Keri’s story is used by permission of the author and the Washington Post,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/21/heroin-addiction-sent-me-to-
prison-white-privilege-got-me-out-and-to-the-ivy-league.

Keri’s story (see “Concealed Story” box) highlights the concealed reality of our
justice system. Justice is not blind. Justice presumes that members of the
community or society are equally represented in its decisions, judiciously
represented by its laws, and treated equitably by its courts. Race riots, civil
disobedience, protests, boycotts, and litigation are all forms of resistance that
have been used effectively and continually to highlight racial injustice.

When Michael Brown, a young Black man, was shot and killed by police officer
Darren Wilson in a St. Louis suburb in 2014, and the grand jury subsequently
decided not to indict Wilson, several thousands of people protested. Police
responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, armored vehicles, and helicopters. And
even though more than 300 protesters were arrested, demonstrations continued
to take place for months after the event. Similar stories have been repeated in
dozens of cities across the nation, in such places as Cleveland, Ohio; Charlotte,
North Carolina; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and San Diego, California. Other protests
resulting from the police use of deadly force against Latinos have also occurred,
in Bell and Los Angeles, California; Yuma, Arizona; and Reno, Nevada. Native
Americans have also protested what they perceive as racial profiling by police.
These events highlight how deviance as resistance can help not only to highlight
the abuses of an inequitable system but also to push for the transformation of
them. In 2016 alone, more than 24,000 inmates across 12 states and 29 prisons
held hunger strikes, labor strikes, and other actions to protest what they
perceived as unjust systems (Washington 2016). More than 2,000 military
veterans joined Native Americans at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North
Dakota in their protest against the construction of an oil pipeline, as
demonstrators called attention to “assault and intimidation at the hands of the
militarized police force” (Mele 2016).

Transformative Story: Redefining Deviance

The matrix lens alerts us to the reality that groups and individuals throughout the American
narrative have been quite effective at both resisting and surviving oppressive systems.
Resistance consists of the conscious and unconscious attempts by individuals and groups to
challenge the dominant values of society. Resistance serves to counter oppression by providing
sites and spaces where stereotypes can be challenged and social and cultural hegemonies can
be transformed, so while the normative structures define deviance as moral irregularities,
resistance redefines it as resilience and moral alternatives (Scott 1985, 1992). Black, Latino,
Native American, and other cultures developed in resistance to and negation of the dominant
culture that not only racializes them but also serves to define them as deviant. These
oppositional cultures reject the often demonized and ostracized racial identities inherent in
racialized structures (Gardner 2004). When laws and structures are perceived as arbitrary and
unjust, people feel anger, lack of self-control, and less committed to the community and each
other. In such a situation deviance is likely (Colvin, Cullen, and Vander Ven 2002)—but
deviance can also lead to forms of resistance.
Transformative stories are happening all around us. They are hidden within
criminal proceedings and on the back pages of our newspapers, while the stock
story is reported in the headlines. During a trial the victim is asked, “Do you see
the person who attacked you?” And typically the confident victim points a finger
at the handcuffed and nervous defendant. Nothing is more gripping; nothing is
more definitive for jurors than that moment. But what happens when there is a
case of mistaken identity, when the wrong person is accused, then convicted,
then sentenced for a crime he or she did not commit?
Scientific Advances
This story begins in 1984 in Burlington, North Carolina. Jennifer Thompson, a
22-year-old college student, had gone to bed early in her off-campus apartment.
As she slept, a man broke the light outside the apartment, cut the phone lines,
and broke in. He then raped Thompson at knifepoint. She eventually tricked the
rapist into letting her get up to fix him a drink, and she escaped out the back
door. The rapist ran out as well, and 30 minutes later, he raped a second woman.

As Thompson recounted the events to the police later at the hospital, she
provided all of the clues that she had observed regarding her rapist. Based on her
recollections, the police were able to make a composite sketch. The sketch was
aired on all the local news media and tips started coming in. One of those tips
was about a man named Ronald Cotton, who worked at a restaurant near the
scenes of both rapes. He also had a record, having pleaded guilty to breaking and
entering, and, as a teenager, to sexual assault. Three days after the rape, police
called Thompson to come in and view a photo lineup, out of which she identified
Cotton as her attacker. Cotton was able to account for where he was, who he was
with, and what he was doing during the time of the rape. The problem was that
he confused his weekends, and the alibi that he provided was false. Based on
this, he was arrested and arraigned, and ultimately he was convicted of rape. Ten
years later, when technology had improved enough to make use of DNA
evidence, Cotton asked his attorney to look into having the DNA in his case
analyzed as a means of exonerating him. When a sample of sperm taken from
one of the victims was tested, Cotton was excluded as a potential donor. Another
man, ironically serving time in the same prison, was later proved by this same
DNA evidence to be the perpetrator (Thompson 2013).

Since it was founded in 1992, the Innocence Project has been tracking possible
cases of wrongful conviction. By 2016, through its efforts, a total of 344
convictions had been overturned by new DNA evidence. Among these cases, 20
of those convicted had been on death row. Of the 347 prisoners released, 215
were African Americans, 105 were Whites, 25 were Latinos, and 2 were Asian
Americans. On average, they had served 14 years. If we were to compute the
total years that would have been served by these wrongly convicted men if their
innocence had not been established, we would arrive at a staggering 4,730 years.
The average age of those exonerated at the time of their wrongful convictions
was 26.5 (Innocence Project 2016).
Alternatives to Incarceration
Some state legislators, citing several decades of increasingly harsh laws, have
begun proposing alternatives to incarceration, particularly for young offenders.
In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sentencing juveniles to life without
parole for homicide convictions violates the constitutional ban on cruel and
unusual punishment. Judges are looking for creative ways to hold youth
responsible for their crimes while at the same diverting them from prison.
Community service has replaced incarceration for many youth. In these
situations the focus is on repairing the harm the offenders have done, either to
their victims or to their communities. This allows the youth to evaluate their
behavior and gain a better understanding of how their actions affect others. It
also offers a meaningful way to hold the juveniles accountable (Brown 2012).

Over the past few years, Congress and state governments have made significant
progress in reducing the burgeoning U.S. prison population by passing
legislation to shorten sentences for drug offenses and by offering clemency for
certain nonviolent drug crimes. Unfortunately, these efforts may be derailed
under the Trump administration, as federal prosecutors nationwide are now
being encouraged to seek the strongest possible sanctions for those charged with
serious offenses (Ford 2016).

Additional solutions require an investment in alternatives to detention and

incarceration. Most criminal acts are related to drug abuse, and such crimes tend
to be nonviolent and “victimless.” Many states, such as Maryland, have begun to
explore cost-effective approaches to sentencing for offenders in these kinds of
cases that divert them from prison. Programs that provide offenders with
community-based drug treatment, life skills training, literacy training, education,
and job skills training have been highly successful. Many believe that investing
in human capital in this way will produce a higher return to society than
incarceration (McVay, Schiraldi, and Ziedenberg 2004).
Emphasizing Choice
Any remedy must take into consideration individual agency. People make
choices, including the choice to commit crimes, although, as we have learned
throughout this chapter, some choices are more constrained than others. Some
people’s criminal actions seem to be reactions to their being left out of the
American Dream. When agency is denied or circumscribed by race, class, and
gender, there is an increased likelihood that deviance will result. This deviance
does not reflect a culture of crime or a culture of poverty; rather, it reflects a
poverty of opportunities.

When we see that some upper-middle-class White males participate in fraudulent

stock, banking, and mortgage schemes, or some poor Whites produce, distribute,
and sell methamphetamine, or some Black and Hispanic individuals join gangs
and precipitate violence, we must understand these acts as expressions of agency.
Neither crime nor deviance is caused by race, ethnicity, gender, or class. People
make choices, some good and some bad. These choices are circumscribed by
environments, histories, and structural inequities. The prevalence of one specific
type of crime or deviance is determined by the kinds of resources available
within a particular community, institution, or situation and the kinds of choices
people make.

The overwhelming majority of people in all racial and ethnic groups do not
commit crimes—they make other choices. While society cannot force
individuals to make different choices, it can both hold them accountable and
provide effective alternatives to deviance. Even for those currently caught up in
deviance, alternatives to detention have been demonstrated to deter further
criminality. These alternatives include suspended sentences, probation, fines,
restitution, community service, and deferred adjudication/pretrial diversion.
Adjusting the Narrative of Race and Deviance
Finally, we must shift away from an individualistic approach that defines
specific individuals and communities as in need of “fixing.” Using the matrix
lens instead of the dominant cultural lens of White middle-class male privilege,
we must understand that some differences in life outcomes are rooted in
structural inequities. One size does not fit all, and racism, sexism, poverty, and
homophobia influence identity, group formation, and community.

The matrix lens does not present people, communities, and groups as victims,
though they might have been victimized. Rather, it projects them as agents, who
see not only what is available but also what obstacles they must overcome to
obtain it. By changing the lens we therefore ask a different set of questions: How
do we empower, how do we incorporate, and how do we embrace the power of
difference?
 Critical Thinking

1. How might prison riots, street protests, and legal actions transform our attitudes toward and the
realities of crime and deviance?
2. Why is it difficult to transform our criminal justice system? What types of strategies have been
devised? What other kinds of transformations seem likely?
3. What role does intersectionality play in crime and deviance? Identify and explain at least three ways
in which this occurs. What does this suggest regarding our construction of crime and deviance?
4. In what ways does your status affect the likelihood that you will be charged with either a crime or
being deviant? Are there types of crime or deviance that are strictly related to your being a student?
Are there some behaviors that are considered deviant on a college campus that would be considered
normal elsewhere?
Key Terms

biological determinism, p. 238

broken windows theory, p. 241
crime, p. 257
culture of poverty, p. 240
deviance, p. 230
differential association theory, p. 240
differential labeling, p. 252
general strain theory, p. 243
Jim Crow laws, p. 232
organized crime, p. 255
prison–industrial complex, p. 246
racial consciousness, p. 231
racial profiling, p. 235
slave patrols, p. 232
social disorganization, p. 239
structural inequities, p. 245
welfare fraud, p. 258
White normative structures, p. 231
White privilege, p. 231
white-collar crime, p. 256

Chapter Summary
LO 7.1 Examine the history of race, crime, and
deviance.
Race, gender, and class disparities are represented in who gets defined as either criminal or
deviant. Historically these differentials can be traced to the slave codes, immigration policy,
and the development of reservations for Native Americans. Taken together, these practices,
policies, and laws account for the racially differentiated criminal justice system. Whiteness
was created as a means of assuring that the racial state would be preserved. Laws were created
to fortify this structure at the expense of people of color. Contemporary trends in scholarship
on crime and deviance highlight the racial, gendered, and class differentials in how justice is
administered across the United States. These disparities are observed throughout the justice
system, in differential policing, racial profiling, and differential sentencing and incarceration
rates.
LO 7.2 Analyze stock theories of race, crime, and
deviance.
Classical sociological theories of crime and deviance represent a portion of our stock stories.
As such, they reflect the dominant view that not only is our system just, but also those who
violate the laws are appropriately sanctioned. Most of the theoretical orientations of these
stock stories fall into four broad categories: biosocial theories of deviance, ecological
perspectives, culture of poverty explanations, and broken windows theory. All of these have a
common theme—they place the source of deviance at the micro level. Therefore, the
individual or his or her community, culture, or environment is at odds with societal norms.
And by implication, if the individual or his or her community, culture, or environment could
just be reformed, fixed, adjusted, or rehabilitated, then the deviance would be reduced or
nonexistent.
LO 7.3 Apply the matrix lens to the relationships among
race, crime, and deviance.
The matrix of crime and deviance starts by recognizing that the assumptions about crime and
deviance are intended to ensure that race, gender, and class differentials are preserved. The
matrix informs us that certain socially defined people and groups (reflecting the interactions of
race, class, and gender) situated in particular spaces and places are more apt to be labeled
deviant than others. It also informs us that the nexus of various spaces interacts with social
identities to produce different types and definitions of deviance. As we consider the various
dimensions of the matrix lens, space and place help us to understand that crime and deviance
are situationally and contextually specific. Therefore, urban areas produce different types of
deviance possibilities than do corporate spaces. Hate crimes, which constitute a particular type
of deviance, are utilized as means of social control. Among the outcomes of the linking of
national and corporate policies around crime and deviance have been the militarization of the
police and the creation of the prison–industrial complex. These policies have called for
increased surveillance, criminalization, and incarceration of the members of designated racial
and ethnic groups. Ultimately, this process also accounts for the fact that Blacks, Hispanics,
and the poor are more likely to receive the death penalty.
LO 7.4 Formulate transformative narratives of crime
and deviance.
Historically individuals and groups have not been complacent when faced with injustice.
Rebellions and insurrections, riots, and protests have frequently been instrumental in
movements calling for change. Over the past few years, many people have begun to question
the racial, gender, and class disparities that dominate every phase of the American criminal
justice system. Alternatives to detention and incarceration, particularly for nonviolent criminal
acts, are showing promise in several states. And while we must continue to hold individuals
responsible for their actions, we also need to recognize that some crimes and forms of
deviance are the results of racism, sexism, poverty, and homophobia. The most effective way
to reduce crime and deviance would be to decrease all forms of discrimination, increase
opportunities, and enhance training and education.
Chapter 8 Power, Politics, and Identities

Most of Donald Trump’s supporters were White, non-Hispanic voters, as

evidenced by the crowds that turned out to support him on the campaign trail.

Kyodo News / Kyodo News / Getty Images

Chapter Outline

Contemporary Political Identities

Understanding the Electorate
Regional Differences
The Role of Race, Class, and Gender
Analyzing the 2016 Presidential Election
Critiquing Sociological Stock Theories of Power, Politics, and Identity
The Pluralist Approach
Power Elite Models
The Class Approach
Applying the Matrix of Race to U.S. Political History
Building a Nation’s Identity
Civil War and Its Aftermath
The Rise of Coalitional Politics and Social Movements
Building Alternatives to the Matrix of Race and Politics
The Power of Political Activism
Creating Change
 Learning Objectives

LO 8.1 Explain contemporary political identities.

LO 8.2 Evaluate stock sociological theories regarding power, politics, and identity.
LO 8.3 Apply the matrix approach to U.S. political history.
LO 8.4 Formulate alternatives to the matrix of race and politics.

As the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump looks a lot like the
overwhelming majority of past presidents—male, rich, and White. Hailed by
many as the ultimate outsider, he had never run for political office before his
campaign for president. With Trump’s upset victory, which saw him lose the
popular vote but win the majority in the Electoral College, the 2016 election
threw into sharp relief the already existing divides at the intersections of race,
gender, and education. As we shall see, this election provided stark evidence that
the U.S. electorate is extremely fragmented and polarized. Geographically
speaking, Trump dominated rural and suburban areas, while his opponent,
Hillary Clinton, was strongest in urban areas (Morin 2016). Voters were also
divided by race, with most of Trump’s support coming from non-Hispanic
Whites, while most Blacks and Hispanics voted for Clinton (Tyson and Maniam
2016).

Every 4 years, the people of the United States elect a president, and candidates
from each of the major political parties attempt to obtain the largest share of the
votes. Success often is dependent on how well a candidate navigates the various
political identities that define U.S. politics. What exactly are these political
identities, and how do they define U.S. politics? In this chapter we will explore
those questions, examine how various forms of political behavior have
traditionally been accounted for, analyze political history and its lessons through
the matrix, and discuss how new forms of political and social movements have
affected political processes in the United States.
Contemporary Political Identities
Politics encompasses all of the processes, activities, and institutions having to do
with governance. Like all other institutions, politics provides unique spaces and
places in which various identities come into play. Political identities are the
political positions, based on the interests and perspectives of social groups, with
which people associate themselves. Across the United States, these political
identities, representing race, gender, sexuality, language, region, and class,
frequently intersect, interact, and intervene in multiple forms of political
expression. Political identities have historically been a means by which
nondominant groups can resist and transform political systems.
Understanding the Electorate
Traditionally, political analysis within the United States have stressed single
group comparisons. The problem with comparing groups on a single indicator is
that this method fails to capture the complex reality of voting behavior. As we
saw above, it was not just White voters who supported Trump—it was White
men and women living in both rural and suburban areas. As we examine the
recent demographic shifts highlighted in Table 8.1, keep in mind that these shifts
represent only a single dimension with regard to potential voters.

As the table shows, the 2016 electorate increased by about 5%. And although
Whites still constituted slightly more than 70% of the projected eligible voters,
the population of Whites grew more slowly than the populations of any other
racial groups. More rapid growth was seen among both Hispanic (17%) and
Asian (16%) eligible voters. Markedly smaller increases were associated with
Blacks (6%) (Tyson and Maniam 2016).
Regional Differences
As we learned in our examination of colonial history in Chapter 2, the Spanish,
French, and English frontier developments resulted in distinct regional
differences that remained as the United States evolved as a nation. With time,
population shifts also occurred, influenced by economic trends and industrial
and agricultural developments. The various U.S. geographical regions therefore
reflect unique histories, cultures, wealth distributions, and political processes.

table 8.1 Growth of Eligible White Voters

Source: Jens Manuel Krogstad, “2016 Electorate Will Be the Most Diverse
in U.S. History,” Pew Research Center Fact Tank, February 3, 2016,
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/03/2016-electorate-will-be-
the-most-diverse-in-u-s-history.

Political Identities by Place

Intersectionality informs us that political identities are more than just social
groups—they intersect across multiple dimensions. Space is one dimension in
which political identities vary significantly in the United States (see Figure 8.1).
This is especially true for Blacks and Hispanics, who are more likely to identify
according to racial identities. Among all groups, those living in the South and
the Northeast are most likely to view reality through the lens of race. Whites, for
the most part, are less likely to view themselves racially, and more likely to view
class as the dominant feature of their identities. Across all groups, those living in
the West are most likely to view class as central to their identities (McElwee
2016). Immediately, the questions of identity and intersectionality come into
play. How, for example would living in a particular region affect people’s
different racial and class identities? More important for our purposes here, how
might these differences play out politically?

Some recent research provides potential answers. Among predominantly White

political districts, the relationship between income and political partisanship
varies very little. Regional differences linking political partisanship and race are
most likely to be associated with racially heterogeneous districts within states.
So, in the Northeast, where large numbers of African Americans reside, there is
an increased likelihood that the voters are Democrats. On the other hand, voters
who live in affluent areas are only slightly more Republican than those in less
affluent areas. In contrast, in specific rural areas with high concentrations of
minority poverty (particularly the Black Belt, the Rio Grande Valley, and
California’s Central Valley), the links among White identity, income, and
partisanship become more apparent. Alternatively, for racially diverse areas
outside of the rural south, the link between party identification and income are
very week (Hersh and Nall 2015).

Figure 8.1 Race and Place Help Shape Our Personal Identities
 Source: Adapted from Sean McElwee, “Race versus Class in the
Democratic Coalition,” The Nation, March 7, 2016,
https://www.thenation.com/article/race-versus-class-in-the-democratic-
coalition.

Voter Disenfranchisement
Laws regulating voter disenfranchisement, or revocation of the right to vote,
also differ regionally. Current laws in many states revoke the voting eligibility of
anyone with a criminal conviction. The rate of disenfranchisement in the United
States has kept pace with the growth in incarceration. Forty years ago, almost 1.2
million people were denied the right to vote due to criminal convictions. Twenty
years later, that number had risen to 3.3 million. In 2010, a total of 5.9 million
persons were disenfranchised (Uggen, Larson, and Shannon 2016). Of these
disenfranchised voters, less than 23% are currently incarnated. This means that
77% of those who are disenfranchised have officially paid their debts to society
and are free to do everything but vote. In the 2016 election, a record 6.1 million
citizens were unable to vote because of laws restricting the voting rights for
those convicted of felony-level crimes (Uggen et al. 2016).

States vary significantly in how they apply disenfranchisement laws. Seven

states have revoked the right to vote for less than half of 1 percent of their
populations, while in six southern states more than 7% of persons who would
otherwise be eligible to vote have been disenfranchised. Among these, Hispanics
and African Americans are more likely to be disenfranchised. In some states,
such as Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, the disenfranchisement among
African Americans is more than 20% of the voting population. Many of these
potential voters were caught in our nation’s “get tough” policies on crime and
the differential sentencing for those convicted of crimes involving crack cocaine
(Uggen et al. 2016).

Some states have worked hard to reduce the growing numbers of disenfranchised
among former inmates. In Virginia, Governor Terry McAuliffe restored voting
rights to nearly 13,000 ex-felons in 2016. McAuliffe, calling it a voting rights
issue, argued that most of those whose rights were restored had committed
nonviolent crimes (Wines 2016).
The Role of Race, Class, and Gender
Other intersectional aspects of political identities are associated with how race
and income interact. For example, slightly more than three-fourths of likely
voters identify as White, compared to 9% identifying as Black and 6% Hispanic
or Latino. Hispanics are almost four times as likely (23%) as Whites to be
nonvoters, while those identifying as Black are 6% more likely to be nonvoters.
An inverse relationship exists between nonvoting and both income and education
(Pew Research Center 2015). The highest levels of nonvoting are associated with
the lowest levels of education and income. And while higher income seems to be
associated with a greater likelihood of voting, the same does not hold true for
higher levels of education. The likelihood of voting is mixed across various
levels of education (Pew Research Center 2015).

Being eligible or likely to vote and actually voting are two different things.
Women across all racial groups are more likely to vote than men, and in the last
two presidential election cycles, Black women have been the most likely to vote.
Before that, White women had maintained this record. Women, including
women of color, are increasingly being elected to political offices at all levels.
As of 2017, of the 105 women serving in the U.S. Congress, 36.2% were women
of color. Of the 21 women serving in the U.S. Senate, 4 were women of color. Of
the 75 women serving in elective executive offices at the state level, 7 (9.3%)
were women of color. This included one of the first two women of color to
become a state governor, Susana Martinez, a Republican who took office as
governor of New Mexico in 2011. Women of color made up just 2.2% of the
total 312 statewide elective executives (Center for American Women and
Politics 2017). Later in this chapter we will explore some of the historical
reasons that women in general, and Black women in particular, might be more
likely to vote than men.
Analyzing the 2016 Presidential Election
Democrats have traditionally relied on an alliance of identity groups (specifically
Black voters and northern White voters). In 2008, this alliance accounted for the
victory of Barack Obama, the first Black man to win the presidency of the
United States. It resurfaced in 2012 to give President Obama a resounding
victory in the so-called midwestern firewall states—Ohio, Michigan, and
Wisconsin, all of which have large working-class populations (Gonyea 2012). In
the 2012 election, voters under 25 years of age (millennials) accounted for about
9% of the electorate, and they favored Obama over his opponent, Republican
Mitt Romney, by nearly 29 percentage points (Enten 2016). With the tremendous
support of Black voters, Obama easily won a second term. But the same core
identity groups failed to turn out for Democrats in 2016. Why?

Trump made significant gains among White working-class voters, not only in
waning Democratic strongholds like western Pennsylvania, but also in
historically Democratic Scranton, Pennsylvania, and eastern Iowa. White voters
without a college education, a traditional Democratic voting bloc, also voted for
Trump (see Figure 8.2). And for the first time in U.S. history, the Republican
candidate garnered more votes among low-income Whites than among affluent
Whites. Trump also had the support of older White working-class voters.

Figure 8.2 Fewer Northern White Voters Without a College Degree Voted
Democrat in 2016
 Source: Adapted from Nate Cohn, “How the Obama Coalition Crumbled,
Leaving an Opening for Trump,” New York Times, December 23, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/upshot/how-the-obama-coalition-
crumbled-leaving-an-opening-for-trump.html.

When we examine the 2016 presidential election, we find that distinct

intersectional realities associated with race, gender, and education are apparent.
Historically, party affiliation—whether an individual is a registered Republican,
Democrat, or independent—has been linked to stark differences by race, gender,
age, and education. Research suggests that Democratic candidates currently hold
significant advantages among voting Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, well-educated
adults, and millennials (those in the generation born roughly from 1980 to 2000,
currently ages 18 to 38). Republican candidates tend to be supported by Whites,
particularly White men, those with lower education levels, evangelical
Protestants, and the so-called silent generation (i.e., those born from 1925 to
1945, now ages 73 to 93) (Pew Research Center 2015).

In general, the presidential election of 2016 revealed that people with college
degrees voted very differently than people without degrees. Clinton garnered
52% of the vote among voters with college degrees, while Trump scored similar
support among those without a degree (52%). Trump’s electoral support among
Whites without college degrees was in accord with projections; he obtained 67%
of the vote among noncollege Whites. But he also did surprisingly well among
White college graduates (49%). Trump captured 58% of the White non-Hispanic
vote, while Clinton garnered major support from Blacks (80%). In the largest
gender voting gap since 1972, women were slightly more likely, at 54%, to
support Clinton, while more than 53% of men supported Trump. Young voters
ages 18 to 29 preferred Clinton over Trump by a wide margin: 53% to 45%
(Tyson and Maniam 2016).
 Critical Thinking

1. Intersections of race, gender, and education affected the 2016 presidential election, but these were not
the only factors. How might differences between geographical regions have influenced the election
outcome?
2. An individual’s education level may have an impact on how he or she votes. How might other
factors, such as marital status, employment status, religion, and military service, affect a person’s
voting behavior?
3. Different levels of support for the candidates in the 2016 presidential race have been shown to be
associated with particular areas of the country. How might these differences reflect the unique
historical contexts of these areas? What do these suggest about how group identity and political
identity are influenced by geography and/or historical sequences of events or processes?
4. In what ways do your own political beliefs reflect your identities (race, class, and/or gender), and in
what ways do your identities shape your political beliefs?
Critiquing Sociological Theories of Power, Politics,
and Identity
Political sociology is the study of government, political behaviors, institutions,
and processes that occur between the state and its society and citizens. More
simply, political sociology is the study of power, politics, and identity. Our
discussion of the stock sociological theories below is not intended to be an
exhaustive look at the rich theoretical landscape; rather, our goal is to illustrate
the major ways in which power, politics, and identity have been explained.
These theories—pluralist approaches, the power elite model, and class
approaches to power, politics, and identity—are central to the discipline and
have long served to inform and guide political theorizing, research, and policy.
The Pluralist Approach
Pluralism posits that power within society is decentralized, widely shared,
diffuse, and fragmented. Groups throughout society, reflecting business, labor,
professions, religion, and culture, compete and often hold conflicting interests.
Because no single group is dominant, democratic equilibrium (a dynamic
working balance between and among various groups) is established. This means
that democratic governance is conceived of as a system that regulates conflict
between and among various interest groups. These interest groups include, but
are not limited to, groups concerned with the economy (markets, industries, and
finance), education, religion, and the military. Individuals join groups because
groups have more power than individuals when it comes to achieving goals. The
larger the group, the more influence it has. Political policies develop as a result
of the continuous bargaining and compromises among various groups (Dahl
1961).

The essential democratic function of political institutions is to regulate the

conflict among various groups. Multiple forms of conflict can surface along
distinct interest group lines, so various political elites tend to be more or less
engaged in the political process depending on which interests are prominent. For
example, while Black political and civil rights elites were out front and actively
involved with the recent water crisis in Flint, Michigan, few mainline political
elites were so heavily involved. Alternatively, consider the Asian American
electorate—a group that is virtually invisible in American politics. This reflects
the fact that the “Asian” label gives the impression of a monolithic group, when
in fact there is a significant degree of variation among Asian cultural groups
(Wagner 2016). The democratic process is therefore dynamic, changing
continually as different lines of conflict produce multiple and shifting power
bases. Two types of groups are associated with the pluralist approach: insider
groups, which hold the bulk of the power, and outsider groups, which are
marginalized and have limited power (Dahl 1961).

Insider groups tend to be well recognized and established, holding positions of

power and prestige within their communities. Their positions mean that they
have considerable influence over elected officials at various levels of
government. Members of these groups tend to have similar perspectives on a
number of issues. The list of insider groups is virtually endless. It includes
unions and professional organizations like the Teamsters Union and the
American Medical Association; identity groups such as Protestants, Whites, and
Blacks; gender groups; and corporations and marketing groups. Insider groups
may use direct means such as voting, lobbying, and boycotts to influence
political outcomes, political processes, and politicians.

Many of today’s insider groups were outsider groups in the past. Blacks, Jews,
and Catholics have become insider groups through effective political organizing,
protests, and other forms of political activism. Outsider groups, which have
significantly less power and prestige within their communities, tend to be
marginalized in the political process and have less access to elected officials.
Members of these groups may be recent immigrants (documented and
undocumented, political refugees, and so on), people who belong to socially
marginalized groups (including LGBT people), and people with special interests
(such as animal rights or environmental justice).

The AARP is an insider group founded to promote the interests of retired people.
The organization claims membership of more than 37 million people and has an
annual budget of $1.6 billion (2016 AARP Annual Report), giving it
considerable clout.

Jim West / Alamy Stock Photo

The pluralist approach presumes that, at least among the various insider groups,
power is dispersed equally. It also suggests that the system is fair, and that
outsider groups get a chance at influencing the structures and one day achieving
the status of insiders. The reality is that power tends to coalesce among a very
few, well-placed insiders. For example, even as women and Blacks have become
relative insiders over the past four decades, they do not share power equally with
men and Whites. Also, their presence as insiders produces binary constructs
(White/Black, male/female) that normalize and legitimate racial and gender
hierarchies at the expense of other outsiders, such as other racial minorities and
gender groups.

The pluralist approach has limited ability to actually deal with changing political
climates and conditions. During these times of unrest, major upheavals are
presented as interest group dynamics and conflicts that disrupt political
processes. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, many political
candidates and elected officials have focused on Americans’ fears of Islamic
extremism. Muslims, regardless of political involvement or national origins,
have become more likely to be targeted by political outcomes such as racial
profiling laws and new immigration quotas and standards. The democratic
equilibrium that pluralism assumes might actually be too simplistic and
unrealistic (Domhoff 2005).
The Power Elite Model
The power elite model suggests that power is concentrated among a discrete
group of elites who control the resources of significant social institutions. The
power elite consists of members from three specific realms:

1. Holders of the highest political offices, such as the president of the United
States, key cabinet members, and close advisers
2. Heads of major corporations and directors of corporate boards
3. High-ranking military personnel

While inherited wealth and position can help an individual attain the status of a
power elite, individuals can also gain admittance to the highest circles by
working hard and adopting elite values (Mills 1956). The power and authority
derived from elite positions allow these members to influence governmental,
financial, educational, social, civic, and cultural institutions. A relatively small
group of elites, consequently, can have a significant impact on the majority of
people across a nation. Over the past few decades, the power of the elites has
been enhanced through the development of a military–industrial complex with
strong governmental ties. Simultaneously, links between corporations and
government elites have strengthened as the role of government has expanded
into many aspects of our daily lives. In the United States, the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) must approve all foods and medicines intended for human
consumption. But the FDA and Congress are frequently targeted by lobbying
activity. In 2014, drug companies and their lobbying groups spent a total of $229
million to influence lawmakers, legislation, and politicians (Ludwig 2015).

The first major criticism of the power elite model is that it erroneously assumes
equality among economic, political, and military elites. The link between
political and military elites might be tenuous at best. For example, in 2014, just
20% of the members of the U.S. Congress were military veterans (Wellford
2014). Alternatively, veteran status might be a road to the White House. Slightly
more than half (26 of 45) of U.S. presidents have served in the armed forces.

Another criticism of the power elite model is that it presents political and
corporate elites as unified, while regional and economic interests interact to
produce specific types of power structures. Consider the northern industrial and
financial elites, who currently align with the Republican Party, and their
common interests with southern Democrats and agricultural elites. Coming out
of the Civil War, the Democratic Party surfaced in the South to thwart
Reconstruction and the rising ambitions of the freed slaves (Ager 2013). The
coalition of southern and northern elites remained constant for much of the 20th
century, with only two deviations: one in 1935, when industrial union organizing
dominated politics and elections in the North (forcing a split between northern
and southern elites), and one in 1964, with the advent of the civil rights
movement in the South (when again the northern and southern elites split). In the
sections that follow, we will return to this example, as it demonstrates how
White southern elites pursued a policy of segregation that not only harmed their
long-term interests but also served to pit low-status Whites against low-status
Blacks and Hispanics. The repercussions of these actions have lasted even to this
day.
The Class Approach
The class approach to power, politics, and identity assumes that the type of
economic system a society has determines the kind of political structures that
evolve. Within the United States, those who control the economic production
control the political processes. As implied by the saying “What is good for
corporate America is good for America” (Nussbaum 2010), major corporations
dominate our economy, and that translates to power across all major social
institutions (Miliband 1977). We live in a society where major corporations and
industries greatly influence political processes and outcomes. The social elites
who control the markets control the government, and they in turn dominate other
classes to perpetuate their power (Marx [1852] 1964). Two different intellectual
traditions derive from this perspective:

1. Instrumentalism views the state as being dominated by an economic class

that controls both political and economic spheres (Goldstein and Pevehouse
2009).
2. Structuralism posits that the state and all political institutions exist
relatively independent of each other and are essentially by-products of
conflict between and within class groups (Poulantzas 2008).

Critics of the class approach and its derivatives claim that that they tend to
reduce all aspects of power to what happens in the market. These approaches do
not account for those instances when members of the dominant class do not act
in their own self-interest as they pursue either racial or gendered objectives. For
example, from the 1920s to the 1940s, elite corporation owners were silent
partners with the White labor force as labor unions denied membership to racial
minorities and women. Elite employers first instigated racial strife by recruiting
Black workers to take the place of White strikers, resulting in many riots across
the country. Once settlements were reached, the newly hired Blacks were
replaced by White immigrants, who were more acceptable to the unions (Restifo,
Roscigno, and Qian 2013).

Further, class approaches tend to minimize racial, ethnic, and immigrant bases of
power, such as the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic
Caucus, that serve as resistance and countervailing forces in our political
structure. The biggest challenge for social change has to do with the gaps that
exist among the various identity groups. Critical scholars point out that if
coalitions could be forged across these various social locations (of race, class,
gender, and age), a massive social movement could be fostered. Such a
movement would be most effective in challenging the U.S. power structure. The
civil rights movement of the 1960s could serve as a model for this kind of
movement (Domhoff 2005).
Concealed Story: Critical Race Theory
Critical race theory represents an attempt by scholars and activists to transform the
relationships among race, racism, and power. Because critical race theorists tend to operate at
the margins of the social sciences, their work is often dismissed by mainstream academia. In
fact, the work of these theorists can be considered a type of concealed story that explains how
the intersections of race, class, and gender inform a uniquely nuanced approach to power,
politics, and identity.

One of the central themes of critical race scholars is their rejection of, significant challenges
to, reinterpretations of, and/or new insights into the stock sociopolitical theories. Central
among these critiques is the understanding that many of the stock theories have failed to
adequately deal with race, gender, or ethnicity. Some critical race theorists have even gone so
far as to argue that rather than revealing White male hegemony, stock theories have
legitimated it (Fogg-Davis 2003).
A second theme of critical race scholars is that mainstream ideas, reflected disproportionately
by White scholars, stress the importance of linking structural conditions, such as laws or the
economy, to the self-interest of leaders, activists, or even regions to understand ethnic identity
and the conflict that often occurs (Hochschild 2005). Alternatively, it is primarily scholars of
color who have identified the racial underpinnings of politics as the principal source of ethnic
identity and conflict (Hochschild 2005, 99). Historical examples of this include race riots,
which always pit dominant racial groups against nondominant racial groups, who are often
competing over perceived or actually scarce goods, such as labor, housing, and access to
education. The fiercest ethnic conflicts appear to be at the lowest levels of White male–
dominated industrial labor markets. These conflicts establish the importance of looking at
power, politics, and identity through the intersections of race, class, and gender.

A third theme of critical race theorists is that the political realities that reaffirm racial
hierarchies are normal. This means that the dominant political processes racialize different
minority groups at different times, in response to shifting needs of the labor market (Delgado
2006). Black labor during the 1960s became more disposable and more easily displaceable by
cheaper Mexican or Filipino agricultural workers. Politicians responded by passing lenient
guest worker laws. Historically, White-dominated labor unions have been the first to challenge
guest worker programs, but increasingly it appears that Black unskilled labor has been most
harmed and displaced by such programs (Bronner 2013). As we will see, these realities, which
pit one racial group against another, are frequent outcomes of racialized political processes.

Critical race theorist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (1991), who coined the term
intersectionality, has argued that political processes are best understood through an
intersectional lens. According to Crenshaw, the experiences that people face represent
intersecting and interacting spheres that shape structural, political, and representational aspects
of their being. The inequalities that result are therefore not the products of any single
dimension, but the results of the intersection of two or more of them. On the other hand,
intersectionality can also be a source of agency and advocacy. This agency is a form of
identity politics, a political process or structure that relies on people of specific religions,
racial and ethnic groups, or social backgrounds to form exclusive political alliances.
 Critical Thinking

1. What might account for the geographical voting patterns observed in the 2016 presidential election?
How effective would the stock stories be in explaining the outcome?
2. We have seen how some institutions (such as the military and the economy) might influence political
outcomes, and similarly how political institutions can affect the wider society. What other major
institutions might have similar effects?
3. During different periods, different types of identities might be more prevalent or more visible than
others. What does the 2016 presidential election suggest about how these identities interact with the
political system? What does this suggest about the relevance of stock stories?
4. What are your political beliefs? To what extent do they reflect your family, education, gender, race,
or geographical region? What intersections can you identify based on this?
Applying the Matrix of Race to U.S. Political History
According to our nation’s stock story, the original intent of our system of
government was to diminish the conflict between “the haves” and “the have-
nots.” That is, since various interests divide people into different classes with
radically different objectives and rationales, the principal purpose of government
is to regulate these conflicts and ensure that fairness, or justice, is achieved. Our
form of government, which is based on representation, is an attempt to ensure
that we will not be governed by either the tyranny of the majority or the tyranny
of the minority. The stock story of U.S. politics teaches us that our nation is a
democracy in which every citizen, regardless of identifying characteristics, has a
voice in the political process. The stock narrative also suggests that inequalities
associated with race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other forms of
identity are aberrant and not part of the core values of our culture. This idea is
part of the American Dream that draws thousands of immigrants and refugees to
the United States each year. Accordingly, democracy fosters pluralism and
welcomes diversity, as both are essential to the interests of freedom.

The Congressional Black Caucus is composed of most of the African-American

members of the U.S. Congress and is an example of identity politics. The group
is “committed to using the full Constitutional power, statutory authority, and
financial resources of the federal government to ensure that African Americans
and other marginalized communities in the United States have the opportunity to
achieve the American Dream.”

Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call Group / Getty Images

Using our stock story to guide us, we understand that conflicts arise in situations
where resources are scarce (whether the scarcity is real or only perceived).
Power, therefore, might be defined as the ability to acquire scarce resources.
And if indeed the central role of political institutions is to diminish conflict, then
they also serve the function of regulating power. It stands to reason that resource
scarcity and the power associated with the acquisition of resources are both
keyed to specific historical situations, institutional settings, and geographical
locations. Further, individuals seeking to maximize their access to resources are
likely to organize into groups to increase the efficiency of their resource
acquisition. These assumptions align perfectly with the expectations of the
matrix.

Certain resources associated with work and the economy, housing, and access to
education are always scarcer than others. A person or group must first have
access to these things, so citizenship or immigration status is of equal
importance. We can also expect that both geographical and historical situations
can have impacts on each of these potential sources of conflict. Our task in the
next sections will be to explore how these conflicts have been resolved, and to
what extent they reveal the importance of the intersections of race, class, and
gender.
Building a Nation’s Identity

Slavery
One of the most prized resources available in a democracy is freedom. In 1776,
when the First Continental Congress met to create a government for our new
nation, slaves made up approximately 20% of the entire population of the 13
colonies (Engerman, Sutch, and Wright 2004). While slavery existed in all of the
colonies, political, social, and geographical conditions resulted in distinctly
different attitudes toward slavery.

The southern colonies, consisting of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and

Georgia, were staunch supporters of slavery. Their political economies rested on
an agricultural base and almost year-round growing seasons. Elite landowners
found that by using slave labor, their plantations could more profitably produce
such crops as rice, cotton, and tobacco.

Slaves in the northern colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,

and Connecticut) likely had more diversified skills than those in the heavily
agricultural South (Melish 1998). The complex economies of the northern
colonies allowed slaves to develop a wide variety of skills, from domestic to
skilled trades. The tradition of northern slavery therefore allowed expansion
from small-time farms to large agricultural production, the growth of local and
regional markets, increased entrepreneurial activity, and the rise of
industrialization. Some slave owners encouraged their slaves to work harder and
more efficiently by offering them a share in the profits, which the slaves often
used to buy their freedom. Ultimately, the northern elites determined that free
labor was more productive than slave labor (Melish 1998). As the united
colonies entered into the Revolutionary War, these different regional political
economies and attitudes regarding slavery served to produce the nation’s first set
of political compromises.

The establishment of the U.S. Congress as a bicameral legislature, with Senate

and House of Representatives, was a direct result of debates about whether and
how to count slaves as part of the country’s population. The southern states, with
their relatively smaller populations, wanted the slaves to be counted equally to
Whites to bolster their populations and thus their power in the government. The
northern states, with their considerably larger populations and virtually no
slaves, were in opposition. The Great Compromise of 1787 was the result of
this disagreement. According to the compromise, the Congress would be
composed of two governing bodies, one in which population would determine
the number of seats each state would hold (the House of Representatives), and
one in which each state would have two members (the Senate). It was further
decided that each slave would be counted as three-fifths of a person in
population counts determining numbers of representatives as well as presidential
electors, and for purposes of taxation.

The Framers of the Constitution settled on the Great Compromise of 1787 to

resolve a dispute between northern and southern states about how to fairly allot
representation in Congress. The Compromise created the House of
Representatives, where seats are distributed based on population, and the Senate,
where each state is represented equally.

Ian Dagnall / Alamy Stock Photo

Citizenship
The next step in nation building that cemented the intersectional basis of our
political institutions involved citizenship and immigration. One of the most
significant aspects of power within any political system is to whom citizenship is
granted. The status of citizenship reflects the legal processes that a country uses
to regulate national identity, membership, and rights. Citizenship also establishes
the political boundaries that define who is and is not included in the democratic
franchise. The Naturalization Act of 1790 granted citizenship to “free white
aliens” with 2 years’ residence in the United States, but withheld it from slaves
and women. The law further excluded all non-Whites, including Asians,
enslaved Africans, and Native Americans, from citizenship. While citizenship
was extended to all Whites after they had established residency, only property-
owning men could exercise the right to vote or to hold political office (Tehranian
2000).

Sovereign Peoples
From the onset of the establishment of our nation, Native Americans were
considered to be sovereign nationals. That is, the tribes were considered to be
independent and held authority over their own citizens and lands. Since each
tribe was an independent nation, the United States signed and ratified almost 390
treaties with various Native American tribes (Miller 2006). In all cases, the
treaties were formal negotiations regarding the sale of land and property rights
owned by the indigenous peoples but desired by the United States. Indigenous
persons, as individuals, were expressly not considered citizens, and they paid no
taxes. Even after the Civil War and the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment,
which granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United
States,” indigenous persons were excluded. Native Americans would not become
U.S. citizens until 1924 (Miller 2006).

Immigration
From the outset, U.S. immigration policies were created expressly to preserve
the racial character of the nation. Persons from Northern Europe and Western
Europe, followed by Southern Europe, were favored over all other potential
immigrants. The northern free states, with their concentration of both
commercial businesses and manufacturing, were the clear choice of immigrants.
In the 1840s, nearly half of immigrants to the United States were from Ireland
alone. Of the approximately 4.5 million Irish immigrants who arrived between
1820 and 1930, most settled close to their points of arrival in cities along the
East Coast (Omi and Winant 2015).

From the nation’s founding, Native Americans have been considered sovereign
people. Their leadership, like the Lakota chiefs seen here in 1891, entered into
many treaties with the U.S. government, many regarding land rights and
ownership.

Buyenlarge / Archive Photos / Getty Images

The mid-1800s gold rush attracted a significant number of Asian immigrants to

the West Coast. By the early 1850s, lured by reports of available gold in
California, some 25,000 Chinese had immigrated (Omi and Winant 2015).
Almost 5 million German immigrants, also coming in large numbers during the
19th century, arrived in the Midwest, where they bought farms or settled near
cities such as Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Cincinnati (Omi and Winant 2015).

Anglo-Saxon Protestants, nervous about the influx of so many newcomers,

began voicing anti-immigrant sentiments. The anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic
American Party (also known as the Know Nothings) lobbied for significant
restrictions on immigration. The first group targeted was the Chinese in 1882,
and immigrants from other Asian Pacific countries were targeted in 1917
(Jacobson 2006). In 1921 the Emergency Quota Act was adopted, limiting the
numbers of immigrants to the United States by imposing quotas based on
countries of birth, as determined by a national origins formula. The formula set
quotas at 3% of the total number of foreign-born persons from a particular
country, as recorded in the 1910 U.S. census. This meant that persons from
Northern Europe had a higher likelihood of being admitted to the United States
than persons from Eastern or Southern Europe and those from non-European
countries. Latin American immigrants were excluded from these quotas until
1965, the same year that the discriminatory quotas based on race and national
origins were limited. Actual numerical quotas limiting immigration from
individual Latin American countries were imposed in 1976 (Ewing 2012). Use
of the national origins formula continued until 1965, when it was replaced by
rules laid out in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
Under the National Origins formula, immigration quotas were established that
made it much more likely that a person from northern or western Europe would
be admitted to the U.S. than those from elsewhere in the world.

Bettmann / Bettmann / Getty Images

The Black civil rights movement of the 1960s, which linked human rights and
social justice, sheds light on American immigration policy. The 1965
Immigration and Nationality Act formally committed the United States, for the
first time in its history, to accepting immigrants of all nationalities on roughly
equal terms. The law eliminated quotas based on countries of origin, a system
under which immigrants coming from Northern and Western Europe were given
preferential treatment. The impact of this law was immediate and dramatic. For
example, in 1960, seven out of every eight immigrants to the United States came
from Europe; by 2010, nine out of ten came from other parts of the world. No
other law passed in the 20th century has had such a significant demographic
impact on our nation (Jelten 2015).
The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act ended the preferential treatment
enjoyed by immigrants from northern and western Europe, radically changing
the demographic makeup of new arrivals to the country.

Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images News / Getty Images

Civil War and Its Aftermath
Geography and history interact in particular ways. Over these unique spaces and
places, two distinct patterns of racial political processes can be identified: de
jure political practices, or processes that were enacted as formal laws, and de
facto political practices, processes that, although not enshrined in law, were
carried out by various entities. Collectively these political practices served to
restrict or marginalize the political power, as well as the economic and social
power, of specific racial and ethnic groups.

De Jure Political Practices

The Civil War, although centered on the issue of slavery, was equally about what
political system should govern the country. In August 1862, in response to
concerns about his resolve to free the slaves, President Abraham Lincoln wrote
an open letter that appeared in the New York Times. Lincoln stated that the issue
for him was not slavery but the preservation of the political union. He went
further, declaring that he was prepared to abolish, uphold, or partially abolish
slavery to uphold the union (Lincoln 1862). In the Emancipation Proclamation,
issued one month later, Lincoln took the third choice, freeing some slaves while
leaving others in slavery. Most historians agree that Lincoln’s proclamation
“freed” only those slaves under Confederate control, over which he had no
power. The strategy worked in that it relied on either open rebellion or the fear of
open rebellion among slaves. And this is what tipped the Civil War in the
direction of the Union (Morris 2015).

In the aftermath of the Civil War, a half million Black men became voters in the
South during the 1870s. Black women would have to wait until 1920, when all
American women were granted the right to vote. Former slaves, now making up
more than half of the voting population in many southern states, easily gave the
Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, the political power. And for the first time,
Blacks were elected to national, state, and local positions. But even with these
majorities, Whites were still the majority of those elected at both the state and
local levels. When federal troops left the old Confederacy, voting significantly
declined among Blacks as White employers and groups like the Ku Klux Klan
sought to preserve White political supremacy at all costs (Chancellor 2011).

Over the next few decades, many new laws were created that affected all aspects
of life in the South. Most public spaces were segregated by race, and significant
restrictions on voting were introduced, including poll taxes, taxes that
individuals had to pay for 2 years in advance in order to register to vote; literacy
tests, which required persons seeking to vote to read and interpret a section of
the state constitution to the (always White) county court; and grandfather
clauses, which gave the right to vote to anyone whose grandfather was qualified
to vote prior to the Civil War. All of these laws benefited only White citizens.
Prior to the enactment of these laws and during Reconstruction, 90% of Black
males of voting age were eligible to vote. In 1892, after these laws were passed,
less than 6% were eligible (Omi and Winant 2015). Blacks were not the only
ones harmed by these devices. So-called old immigrants, mostly British, Irish,
Germans, and Scandinavians, were strongly in favor of these restrictions. Those
newly arrived from Italy, Russia, and other parts of Southern and Eastern Europe
were not so fortunate, as they also found it difficult to pass the new voting tests
(Omi and Winant 2015).

Poll tax receipts were issued to those who had paid the fees and were required as
proof of payment before a person was permitted to register to vote.

H.S. Photos / Alamy Stock Photo

With Blacks effectively removed from the electorate, Whites were in control of
all federal and state legislative and executive offices, and so were able to pass a
whole range of Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation throughout the
South. These laws led not only to political disfranchisement but also to
economic discrimination and social ostracism. In many ways, the laws
specifically targeting African Americans were intended to deal with Native
Americans and Chinese Americans as well (Upchurch 2004).

De Facto Political Practices

States in both the South and the North passed residential segregation laws. But in
1917, the U.S. Supreme Court held that such ordinances were unconstitutional.
As a result, real estate agents and private developers began to write their own
provisions into real estate contracts. These restrictive covenants barred the
resale of houses to purchasers of a race different from that of the original
homeowner. In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled that restrictive covenants were
also unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done, as
residential segregation had become entrenched. National housing policies from
1930 to 1950, under the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), also reinforced
residential segregation. FHA rules required developers to include restrictive
covenants and supported local housing policies that segregated public buildings
owned by municipalities. In a practice known as redlining, areas worthy of
mortgage lending were ranked and color coded, and those with the lowest
rankings (typically outlined in red), so designated because they held
“inharmonious” racial groups, were systematically denied good mortgage rates
(Badger 2015).

Redlining was in use by the federal government until 1968, and it was also used
by private banks as the country went through one of its most massive
homeownership expansions in history. Income restrictions and income
differences between Blacks and Whites helped create White suburbs and Black
urban ghettos and Hispanic barrios (Tushnet 2003). In a 2015 suit against the
largest bank in Wisconsin, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) argued that in the period 2008–9, Black and Hispanic
borrowers in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota were wrongly excluded from
getting loans. While the bank settled the dispute and denied any wrongdoing,
HUD declared that it had gained a victory in “one of the largest redlining
complaints” ever brought by the federal government against a lender (Badger
2015).

Redlining causes a domino effect, as lower-valued houses fall into disrepair,

businesses and employment vacate the neighborhood, and only the poorest and
most vulnerable are left behind. Schools decline, because their revenues are tied
to local property and income taxes, and the level of education and the motivation
to succeed dwindle, resulting in generations of youth that struggle to escape the
cycle. The people who became involved in the 1960s civil rights movement
found these circumstances ample reason to wage their war on racism.
Concealed Resistance Story: Claudette Colvin—Before Rosa, There Was Claudette
In 1955, Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old Black woman, refused to give up her seat on a
Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a White person. Someone knocked the books from her hands,
beat her, and dragged her forcibly from the bus. When the police arrived, Colvin was arrested,
charged with disorderly conduct for violating the segregation ordinance and with assault and
battery. Her case immediately got the attention of local civil rights leaders, who debated
whether it was worth contesting the charges. The civil rights leaders observed that Colvin’s
mother was a maid and her father mowed lawns. Although they were churchgoing people, they
lived in the poorest section of Montgomery. As the local leaders continued to debate whether
the Colvin case could be used to challenge segregation on Montgomery buses, it became
known that Colvin was pregnant by a married man. While the leaders helped raise money for
her defense, Colvin was deemed unacceptable to become the face of the Montgomery bus
protest. Nine months later, another woman, Rosa Parks, would ride on the same bus and
follow the same script originated by Colvin. The rest is history, as Rosa Parks became the face
of the Montgomery bus boycott and the mother of the modern civil rights movement (Colvin
2016).

When she was 15, Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a
Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955.

Dudley M. Brooks / The Washington Post / Getty Images

The Rise of Coalitional Politics and Social Movements
In many ways, identity politics paved the way for the massive political protests,
resistance, and transformations associated with the civil rights movement of the
1950s and 1960s. This period is also distinguished by the rise to prominence of
coalitional politics, in which political alliances are formed among various
identity groups with the shared purpose of establishing specific political
agendas.

Perhaps no single movement captured this new form of politics better than the
Black civil rights movement, which began roughly in 1955 and continued
through 1968. In this movement, southern Blacks—in partnership with their
northern Black and White allies—challenged and effectively nullified the
intimidation and segregation of the Old South. The movement was politically
organized to effect change, resist oppression, and redefine the racial order
through the courts, on the streets, through boycotts, and through the ballot box.

The Black civil rights movement utilized a series of well-orchestrated nonviolent

protests and civil disobedience actions to force dialogues between activists and
political institutions. Federal, state, and local governments, as well as businesses
and communities, that discriminated against African Americans were targeted
and highlighted. The protests included boycotts such as the Montgomery bus
boycott of 1955–56; sit-ins targeting restaurants that refused to serve Blacks,
such as in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960; and large-scale marches from
Selma to Montgomery in 1965, protesting the inability of Blacks to vote.

Several major pieces of federal legislation resulted from these activities. One of
the major victories of the movement came with passage of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964. This act officially banned discrimination in employment practices based
on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It also prohibited racial
segregation in schools, workplaces, and public accommodations. This was
followed the next year by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended voting
discrimination and extended federal protections to minorities. In that same year,
the Immigration and Nationality Act removed racial and national barriers to
immigration, which meant that Blacks from other nations could immigrate to the
United States. In 1968, the Fair Housing Act banned discrimination in the sale
and rental of housing.
During this same period, significant movements were also taking place among
other identity groups. On September 8, 1965, a group of mostly male Filipino
American grape workers, members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing
Committee, walked out of the fields and began a strike against the Delano-Area
Table and Wine Grape Growers Association. The workers were protesting
decades of poor pay, substandard living conditions, and lack of benefits. They
asked Cesar Chavez, leader of the mostly Latino National Farm Workers
Association, to join their strike, along with his union’s members. Chavez was a
veteran union activist and understood how growers had historically pitted
different low-skilled workers in disadvantaged racial groups (such as Blacks and
Hispanics) against each other. Growers were able to keep wages low by
continuously hiring the lowest bidders for services. When Chavez’s union voted
to join the Filipino workers by walking out on Mexican Independence Day, on
September 16, 1965, a coalition was formed that bridged two different and often
adversarial racialized labor groups. Soon the strike became a national boycott.
As Latino and Filipino strikers banded together, their plight captured the
attention of middle-class families in the big cities, who ultimately sided with the
poor farmworkers and their families. Millions of families just stopped buying
and eating grapes. By 1970, the table grape growers admitted defeat and agreed
to sign the first union contracts granting workers increased benefits and wages
(United Farm Workers of America 2016).
By crossing racial lines and allying his National Farm Workers Association with
Filipino groups, Cesar Chavez built a coalition that won major concessions from
their employers.

Arthur Schatz / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images

In 2016, Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota became a household

name when Native Americans defied large corporations and the government of
the United States to protest the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the
reservation. This was in the tradition of several other Native American protest
movements aimed at preserving sacred sites, ensuring the protection of natural
resources, and resisting corporate takeovers. The Standing Rock Sioux were not
alone, as thousands of people from across the United States, from
environmentalists to Black Lives Matter activists, traveled to the reservation to
join hands and say no. Another Native American resistance movement took
place in 2015, when the Rosebud Sioux tribe in South Dakota fought to keep the
Keystone XL pipeline off its lands; also involved in those protests were
environmentalists and other Native American tribes (Donnella 2016). These
modern forms of resistance illustrate the viability and the reality of coalitional
politics as an effective form of political activism.
 Critical Thinking

1. Identities and political systems have changed over both times and places. Given the types of changes
that we have seen, what may be the sources of change in the future? Alternatively, are there any
political patterns linking identity to specific political parties or outcomes that may either endure into
the future or be subject to change? What might account for these outcomes?
2. The labor and civil rights movements had significant impacts not only on identity but also on
political coalitions. What other movements might have significantly influenced political institutions,
identities, and outcomes? What does this suggest regarding the stability of political institutions?
3. Political identity is uniquely part of our political processes. What kinds of events might increase or
decrease the likelihood that a particular political identity or collection of identities will remain viable
or have the ability to transform political processes?
4. Identity politics is a very effective organizational tool, but identity movements can become mired in
single issues. How might concentration on single issues and single identities serve not only to
marginalize but also to limit the effectiveness of a social movement?
Building Alternatives to the Matrix of Race and
Politics
The United States originated as a consequence of political activism, and the
tradition of political activism has been central to every important phase of the
nation’s history, continuing to guide us in our quest to become “a more perfect
union.” On Monday, February 13, 2017, “A Day without Immigrants” was
staged in major cities across the country as a response to President Trump’s
executive orders tightening immigration restrictions. Small businesses across the
country were forced to close as immigrants stayed home to show just how
important they are to the U.S. economy. In support of their efforts, employers
and some other employees gave up wages and profits, also hoping to show the
American consumer what an economy without immigrant labor would mean for
goods and services (Lam 2017). These protests and others demonstrate that
political activism makes a difference that can build alternatives to the matrix of
race and politics.
The Power of Political Activism
While much of our attention is drawn to political participation, other components
of this terrain are just as important, including various forms of action where the
primary goal is to promote, impede, or raise awareness of a particular issue or set
of issues. Political activism normally involves various types of actions that go
beyond voting. It may be as simple as posting opinions online or getting
involved in a letter-writing campaign, or it may involve active participation in
boycotts, protests, or demonstrations.

One of the major insights revealed by the intersectional approach is that while
race, class, gender, sexuality, and other sites of identity interact to produce
unique forms of inequality and discrimination, they can also become the basis of
agency—that is, the ability to effect change, to act independently, and to
exercise free choices. This agency, a vital component of identity politics, reflects
the multiple ways and mechanisms by which individuals and groups challenge,
resist, and cope with inequality and discrimination. The various forms of
political activism, such as boycotts and harnessing social media, have been quite
effective at producing social change. Identity politics also highlights the
coalitions that form both within racial groups (as multiple ethnic groups coalesce
into a panethnic or panracial identity) and across them. The various examples
below highlight how identity politics significantly alters the political landscape.

Boycotts
Boycotting is one of the most significant forms of political activism. Boycotts
are voluntary acts of protest in which individuals or groups seek to punish or
coerce corporations, nations, or persons by refusing to purchase their products,
invest in them, or otherwise interact with them. Boycotts are often used to raise
awareness of issues while simultaneously pressuring the entities involved to
change policies, practices, or structures. The earliest boycotts in the United
States occurred during the American Revolution, when colonialists refused to
purchase British goods. Other boycotts have served as means by which
marginalized groups have challenged the political process:

In 1905, the Chinese boycotted U.S. products in reaction to the extension of

the Chinese Exclusion Act.
 From 1965 to 1970, the United Farm Workers of America led nationwide
boycotts of grapes and lettuce in retail grocery stores to pressure growers to
improve wages and working conditions.
From 1954 to 1968, participants in the Black civil rights movement
conducted a number of boycotts (including the Montgomery bus boycott) to
protest unequal treatment of African Americans.
From 1973 to 1995, LGBT groups led a boycott of Coors Brewing
Company to protest its antigay hiring practices.

Harnessing Social Media

The day after Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States,
women across the United States and around the globe marched in protest.
According to some estimates, as many as 2.5 million people—women as well as
men who support women’s rights—took to the streets. The demonstrations
dominated the news and social media and elicited several tweets from the
president. The movement to stage a Women’s March began on Facebook the day
after Hillary Clinton lost the November election, and the idea for the protest
quickly went viral as many feared the consequences of a Trump presidency for
reproductive, civil, and human rights (Przybyla and Schouten 2017). Although
touted as an all-inclusive protest, drawing participants across all racial, ethnic,
gender, and class groups, many criticized it as being a movement of primarily
White, middle-class women (Bates 2017).

Other groups have also discovered the importance of social media as a tool for
facilitating social activism. The story of the Black Lives Matter (BLM)
movement demonstrates how political activism can be a form of resistance and
transformation. BLM originated on social media in 2013 with the Twitter
hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. It was a response to the acquittal of George
Zimmerman for the shooting death of 17-year-old African American Trayvon
Martin. The movement gained momentum and went national in 2014 after the
police shooting deaths of two more African American males: Michael Brown in
Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City. This modern social
movement is devoted to challenging police brutality and racial profiling. Since
its inception, BLM has documented and protested the deaths of a number of
African Americans who have been killed by police or died while in police
custody. During the 2016 presidential campaign, representatives from BLM on
several occasions entered into political discourse by attending candidate forums
and pointing out how systemic racism is pervasive in the United States (Griffith
2016). While BLM has become an effective voice calling for both resistance and
transformation, it has also produced some unanticipated consequences, including
the revelation of underlying racial tensions affecting other minority groups.

The National Women’s March on January 21, 2017, drew millions of people
workdwide.

Steve Exum / FilmMagic / Getty Images

In 2016, Chinese Americans, chanting “No scapegoat! No scapegoat!” carried

signs and protested in support of Peter Liang, a former New York City police
officer who was convicted in the fatal shooting of an unarmed Black man. Many
of the protesters believed that Officer Liang was being used as a scapegoat due
to his race. One of the protesters summed up their efforts by saying, “This
movement, this community reaction, it won’t be a Million Man March—it’s not
that. . . . It is representative of Asian Americans willing to take time away from
their daily lives, to step up and say we don’t like what’s going on” (quoted in
Rojas 2016).

ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo

Other interest groups have also found social media to be an effective tool for
political activism. Black actors used the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite on several
social media platforms as part of their call for a boycott of the 2016 Academy
Awards. Soon, more traditional news outlets, print and broadcast, began to cover
the protest, which charged that the Oscars were too “pale, male and stale”
(Pearson 2016). These kinds of comments made direct reference to the
membership of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: At the time,
roughly 87% of members were White, more than half (58%) were male, and
close to two-thirds were 60 years old or older. Just 6% of Academy members
were Black, 4% were Hispanic, and 2% were Asian. Women made up 42% of
Academy members (Cieply and Barnes 2016). How effective was the boycott?
Since that time, the Academy has expanded its membership somewhat and has
appeared to make an effort to invite more women and people of color to join.
Also, in 2017, 7 of the 20 actors nominated for Academy Awards were not
White, compared to none the previous year (Robinson 2017).
Creating Change
If you are reading this text, then there is a good chance that you are a millennial,
or that you regularly come into contact with millennials. Young people have
historically voted in much lower numbers than other age groups across the
United States, and the 2016 election was no different. In spite of the billions of
dollars spent on the 2016 presidential campaigns, millennials were increasingly
disengaged from the two-party-dominated election. Many of them gravitated to
third-party or independent candidates. In some cases, third-party candidates held
five-to-one margins among voters under 35 across all racial groups (Kilgore
2016).

The future looks to be even more variable, as millennials are soon to become the
dominant force in the U.S. electorate. According to a recent portrait of
millennials by the Pew Research Center (2014):

Millennials are the most ethnically and racially diverse cohort in the
nation’s history. About 43% are non-White, the highest proportion of non-
Whites in any generation. (About half of all newborns today in the United
States are non-White, and the Census Bureau projects that by 2043 the U.S.
population will be majority non-White; see Figure 8.3.)
Millennials are possibly the most politically progressive age group in
modern history.
Millennials are the first generation for whom the Internet has been a
constant. They grew up on social media and are a truly the digital
generation.

The members of this generation are also more likely than those of other
generations to be politically independent (50%), and close to a third are not
affiliated with any religious group. It is noteworthy that these are the highest
levels of political and religious disaffiliation recorded for any generation in the
nearly quarter century that Pew has been conducting such research (Pew
Research Center 2014). Less than a third (31%) of millennials believe that there
is any real difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties. This
generation, with the advent of the Internet, social media, and advancing
globalization, is uniquely linked with the global universe. For millennials,
political activity and organization are not limited by geography or by what is
reported in or left out of the local press, radio, or television news coverage. With
the world literally as close as a phone, tablet, or desktop, they can immediately
and simultaneously communicate, agitate, transform, or just stay informed. They
can show support for human rights or help build virtual communities across
racial, gendered, political, class, national, educational, and geographic
boundaries, or across any other boundaries imaginable (Pew Research Center
2014). And they can have a significant impact.

Figure 8.3 Millennials are the Most Ethnically and Racially Diverse Cohort in
Our Nation’s History

Source: Chart: “Race/Ethnicity in 2014.” From Comparing Millennials to

Other Generations, Pew Research Center Social and Demographic Trends,
March 19, 2015.

As we have seen, throughout U.S. history immigrants have frequently been

targeted by both federal and state policies. Immigrants currently are undergoing
similar sources of stress amid political rhetoric about building a wall along the
U.S.–Mexico border, banning Muslim immigration, and deporting
“undocumented” immigrants. Immigrants, their communities, and organizations
concerned with immigrants’ rights are not being idle. There is a long history of
political mobilization throughout the country as various immigration laws and
ordinances have been passed at both the state and local levels. These laws range
from bans on Islamic dress to the Arizona law (SB 1070) requiring all
immigrants to carry registration papers. A series of actions have occurred in
response. For example, an estimated 60 cities around the country, including New
York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston, have declared themselves to be
“sanctuary cities.” In a sanctuary city, if a person is arrested for a minor crime,
such as driving without a license, and then identified as an undocumented
immigrant, that person must serve the time or pay stipulated fines if found guilty
of the charges, but then he or she is released, not deported. Students at 80
colleges and universities across the country have signed petitions urging their
institutions to declare their campuses as sanctuaries. This movement reflects
growing concerns that the policies of the Trump administration will force
undocumented immigrants who came here as children to leave the country (CBS
News 2016). For your generation, the question is not if you will bring about
political change, but what forms that change will take. Will you be the change
that you want to see in the world?
 Critical Thinking

1. In what ways might millennials effect transformative change? How might geography affect the
likelihood of change?
2. How might political institutions better interact with other institutions (those dealing with the
economy, family, education, or the military) to improve outcomes? What types of barriers or
opportunities can you identify?
3. Our identities are shaped by and help shape the various institutions of which we are a part. In what
ways might your identity become transformed given political actions that are now taking place? How
might you, given your identity, be part of these changes?
4. The future belongs to all of us. Each generation, from oldest to youngest, has a stake in how well the
political process operates. How might you, even at this point, become more involved in politics?
What can you do within your institution or in the wider community?
Key Terms

agency, p. 293
binary constructs, p. 278
Black civil rights movement, p. 290
boycotts, p. 294
citizenship, p. 284
class approach, p. 280
coalitional politics, p. 290
critical race theory, p. 281
de facto political practices, p. 287
de jure political practices, p. 287
democratic equilibrium, p. 277
disenfranchisement, p. 273
grandfather clauses, p. 288
Great Compromise of 1787, p. 284
identity politics, p. 281
insider groups, p. 277
Instrumentalism, p. 280
literacy tests, p. 288
millennials, p. 275
national origins formula, p. 286
outsider groups, p. 277
pluralism, p. 277
political activism, p. 293
political identities, p. 270
political sociology, p. 276
politics, p. 270
poll taxes, p. 288
power, p. 283
power elite model, p. 278
redlining, p. 289
restrictive covenants, p. 289
silent generation, p. 275
structuralism, p. 280
Chapter Summary
LO 8.1 Explain contemporary political identities.
The 2016 election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency highlights the relevance of political
identities in our country. Trump, the 45th president, looks like the majority of those who have
held the office—White, male, and rich. Alternatively, his election also demonstrates the
importance of geographic space (he dominated in rural and suburban areas) and historical
context (the Republican Party and conservative politics). The U.S. electorate is made up of
various identity groups that reflect the matrix of race, class, gender, and region. These
identities do not share equally in political outcomes, as witnessed by the significant number of
Black and Hispanic felons who have been disenfranchised in recent years. Gender cannot be
ignored, as we see how it interacts with race, education, and class, which helps to explain
some recent political outcomes. One of these is that Black women, and women in general, are
more likely to vote than their male counterparts but less likely to hold political office.
LO 8.2 Evaluate stock sociological theories regarding
power, politics, and identity.
Political sociology has traditionally provided three central theories for understanding power,
politics, and identity. These stock theories include pluralism, the power elite model, and the
class approach. Pluralism argues that power is decentralized and widely shared among
approximately equal groups. This perspective fails to provide sufficient insight into those
systems in which power is not shared equally. The power elite model posits that power is
concentrated among discrete groups of elites who control the resources of significant social
institutions. Controlling these resources allows the elites also to control power and authority
over governmental and political processes. Again, the model assumes both equality and
consensus across the various elites. It fails to address what happens when power is in conflict
across elites or how nonelite individuals and groups produce political change. The class
approach argues essentially that those who control the economic system control the political
processes. The class approach therefore tends to be reductionist, evaluating all politics from
the vantage point of a person’s position in the economic system. It fails to take into account
how social movements radically outside the mainstream economic institutions have served to
resist and transform the political process.
LO 8.3 Apply the matrix approach to U.S. political
history.
Resource scarcity often underlies political struggles, and political systems come into being to
regulate conflicts over these resources. In the process, differences associated with race, class,
gender, and geography often become politicized. Our application of the matrix allows us to see
how these political processes have played out over time, producing both de jure and de facto
outcomes that have unique impacts. In the South, certain de jure forms of political structures
came into being. These legal, more obvious forms of racialized politics had negative and
differential impacts on Blacks, Chinese, and Native Americans and influenced how
citizenship, freedom, and immigration were defined. In the North, less obvious de facto
procedures were used in discriminatory federal housing policies that created White, middle-
class suburbs and urban ghettos through redlining. Coalitional politics are associated with the
convergence of identity politics in the form of massive political protests, resistance, and
transformations during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This movement,
driven by a coalition of southern Blacks and northern Whites and Blacks, effectively nullified
the intimidation and segregation of the Old South. Such movements have not been exclusive to
Blacks; among others, Filipino and Latino farmworkers and contemporary Native Americans
have utilized similar social activism to influence political discourse.
LO 8.4 Formulate alternatives to the matrix of race and
politics.
The members of the millennial generation are less likely than their counterparts in earlier
generations to vote based on political party loyalty, but they might be more motivated by
specific issues. Recent elections demonstrate that compared to other age cohorts, millennials
are most likely to be politically independent. Millennials may change the very course of this
country as they become the largest generation and as they become more economically viable
and politically active. More diverse than any preceding generation, and with a strong
understanding of the effective use of social media, millennials have a huge potential for
bringing about political change. The question is not if they will create change, but when and
what forms these changes will take.
Chapter 9 Sports and the American Dream

Rezball is a favorite sport on Native American reservations. Requiring little

more than a net and a ball, it has become an important communal experience for
many.

Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty Images

Chapter Outline

The State of Sport Today

The Sports Industry
Sports Media
Players and Coaches
Examining Stock Sociological Theories of Sport
The Nature Perspective
The Nurture Perspective
The Functions of Sport
Identity through Competition
Applying the Matrix to Sports in the United States
Analyzing Space and Place: Early American Sports Narratives
Institutionalizing Sport: Industrialization, Immigration, and Team
Sports
Identities and Resistance
Creating a New Playing Field
The Role of Agency and Resistance
Closing the Graduation Gap
Creating Change
 Learning Objectives

LO 9.1 Explain the state of sport in the United States.

LO 9.2 Compare stock theories about U.S. sport.
LO 9.3 Apply the matrix approach to sport.
LO 9.4 Describe strategies for transforming the institution of sport.

Rezball, or reservation basketball, dominates the basketball courts on Native

American reservations. The sport gained official certification from the National
Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 2007. It differs from regular
basketball in that it has fewer time-outs and no organized plays, and it serves to
enhance identities at multiple levels by including both communal experience,
or shared knowledge across group members occupying the same spaces, and
cultural values, or are shared sets of beliefs and interpretations (Pember 2007).
It is a game found both on reservations and in urban communities, played on dirt
courts and in tribal gyms. Tournaments are played among families and friends,
and during the games, Indian identity is shared and victory (regardless of who
wins) is a community event (Manning 2016).

This fast-moving game has created its own stars and dreams. In these spaces we
can find thousands of young players who make their mark in organized games,
often playing for overflow crowds. Former rezball star Shoni Schimmel went on
to play for two teams in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA),
the Atlanta Dream and the New York Liberty, and in 2014 she was named Most
Valuable Player in the WNBA All-Star Game. Off the court, Schimmel actively
encourages Native American youth to pursue their dreams (Meyers 2016). The
intricacies of rezball provide an example of how place and space, race, gender,
class, and sports intersect. Sports are highly stratified, segregated, and reflective
of these same intersections. This means that while some sports may appear to be
more diverse than others, closer analysis of ownership, coaching, and fan bases
reveals that an examination of sport, as an institution, can benefit from an
intersectional approach. Let’s first look at contemporary trends in sports and how
they relate to the American Dream.
The State of Sport Today
Sport encompasses a range of activities that involve physical exertion and skill.
These activities are organized around sets of rules and can be played at either the
individual or the team level. Today’s athletes are remarkable, and some of the
best set some dazzling new records at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de
Janeiro. Team USA won a total of 121 medals, with the women capturing the
most, garnering 61 individual medals, compared to 55 for the men, and another 5
in mixed events. They also won the majority of the gold medals (27 of 46).
Among these stars were gymnast Simone Biles, who earned four golds and a
bronze, a first for a U.S. gymnast in a single event, and swimmer Katie Ledecky,
who set new world records in the 400- and 800-meter freestyle events (Myre
2016).

Across the country and in many of our colleges, high schools, and local
communities, modern “gladiators” like these are writing new chapters in a long
tradition of competition and victory, sometimes earning fame, high salaries, and
lucrative endorsement deals. But all sports are not equal, as we will see in our
exploration of the business of sports.
The Sports Industry
While the Olympics are spectacular, the most watched sport in the United States
has traditionally been football, and the Super Bowl leads all other single sporting
events. Games run by the National Football League (NFL) account for 34 of the
35 most-watched programs on TV (Thompson 2014).

Among the viewership numbers, some interesting demographics can be

identified. The National Basketball Association (NBA) has the youngest
audience (45% of its viewers are under 35) and the highest share of Black
viewers (45%). Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Basketball
Association tie for the highest numbers of male viewers. The National Hockey
League (NHL) has the richest audience (one-third of its viewers have annual
incomes of more than $100,000), and Hispanics are more likely to view the
games of Major League Soccer (MLS) teams. NASCAR’s audience has the
highest number of female viewers plus the most White viewers of either gender.
The Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) has the oldest audience, with about
35% over the age of 55 (Thompson 2014). It should not come as any surprise
that the sports we choose to watch reveal something about our values and
interests, and that certain fan bases made up of distinct social groupings can have
large impacts on the business of sport. The makeup of a sport’s fan base not only
affects television viewership but also links directly to both the salaries athletes
can earn and the endorsement contracts they are offered.

Sport constitutes a significant portion of the U.S. economy, and the popularity of
sports means that billions of dollars are generated each year. The business of
sports today encompasses everything from food to memorabilia to stadium
naming rights. In 2015, sports programming accounted for 35% of all broadcast
TV advertiser spending. The largest television networks generated $8.47 billion
in sports programming in 2014–15 (Crupi 2015). In one year, U.S. consumers
spent a total of $498 billion on sports-related purchases (Plunkett Research
2012). Of this, $63.64 billion came from sales of sporting equipment and $21.4
billion was paid out in health club memberships (Peltz and Masunaga 2016). In
2016 the NFL, with income of $13 billion, led all other professional sports
leagues in revenue (Kutz 2016). Also in 2016, among colleges and universities,
24 schools had revenues of at least $100 million annually for their athletic
departments (Gaines 2016).
Sports Media
If we watch almost any sports media channel, we might conclude that sports in
the United States are an equal opportunity employer. This is not correct. While
women’s participation in sports has increased at all levels since the 1970s, from
high school through the professional level, serious media coverage of women’s
sports has been lacking (Cooky, Messner, and Hextrum 2013). In 2016, the
Princeton women’s NCAA basketball team won 30 games and lost none, setting
an Ivy League season record that was previously held by a male team. This
monumental accomplishment did not get nearly the amount of attention from the
media as that paid to male teams. The Princeton women did not garner the same
numbers of fans, TV rights, or marketing endorsements. This imbalance may be
explained, at least in part, by the fact that sports reporters, writers, and editors
are overwhelmingly White and male (Cooky et al. 2013).

The same rules apply for scholarships, positions, and endorsements. While
female athletes make up more than half of the college student athlete population,
they get only 43% of NCAA athletic opportunities. In 2014, women received
63,241 fewer NCAA athletic positions than their male counterparts (NCAA
2014). Men received about 55% of NCAA support for college athletes, while
women received 45% (NCAA 2014).
Jason Miller / Getty Images Sport / Getty Images

Christian Peterson / Getty Images Sport / Getty Images

Scott Barbour / Getty Images Sport / Getty Images

Hannah Foslien / Getty Images Sport / Getty Images

LeBron James, Phil Mickelson, Serena Williams, Robinson Cano, and Kei
Nishikori are some of the highest paid athletes in the world.

AP Photo / Andrew Patron

In 2016, the top 10 female professional athletes made just 13.1% of the salaries
of the top males. In that year, professional tennis player Serena Williams, who is
the highest-paid female athlete in the world, made $28.9 million. But if she were
a man, she would have been only the 40th highest-paid athlete (see Table 9.1).
Maria Sharapova, a Russian-born U.S. tennis player who is ranked at 88th in
income, is the only other woman in the top 100 highest-paid athletes (Forbes
2016). Four U.S. Black males—LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant (all
basketball players), and Cam Newton (football)—were among the 10 highest-
paid athletes in 2016. The top-grossing world athletes in 2016 were both male
international soccer players.
Source: “The World’s Highest-Paid Athletes,” Forbes, 2016,
https://www.forbes.com/athletes/list/#tab:overall.
Note: Among U.S. players, only two White males make it into the top 10, both golfers (Phil
Mickelson and Jordan Spieth). U.S. White males, distributed broadly across most sports, are by far
the most represented (accounting for 29). U.S. Black males, primarily within basketball and football,
are the second most represented (accounting for 28). U.S. Hispanic males, almost exclusively found
within baseball, are the third leading group of players (10). Only 3 Asians appear among the top 100
of the world’s highest-paid athletes.
Players and Coaches
Both class and race are reflected in the biographies of successful athletes and
coaches. An examination of the intersection of race, class, and family
background structures demonstrates the unequal pathways into professional
sports (Keating 2011). As we will see, these intersectional realities help us
understand many of the variabilities associated with sports in this country.

Across the United States, we spend a lot of time thinking about and often
constructing myths about our sports heroes. Athletes define and shape much of
how we perceive ourselves as a people, and these perceptions, unfortunately,
also become embedded within our various racial myths. These racial myths,
often reflecting notions of innate superiority, can confuse and confound
determination and motivation with community and culture. It is a widespread
belief that many athletes rise to fame and fortune out of dismal poverty and
family circumstances, but poor Blacks and Whites from broken families are not
overrepresented in professional sports.

Middle-class and more affluent Whites are 75% more likely than poor
Whites to become NBA players.
Blacks from two-parent families are 18% more likely than those from
broken homes to become NBA athletes.
White NBA players are 33% more likely to come from two-parent families
than from single-parent families (Keating 2011).

Often when we speak of diversity, we are actually making reference to binary

constructions of diversity—that is, we are accounting for only two major racial
or ethnic groups. A more realistic measure of diversity would be one that
accounts for the largest number of racial, ethnic, and gendered groups.

Most professional sports are at least somewhat segregated by race, ethnicity, and
gender. With this caveat, if we were to consider the diversity of professional
sports, only one sport can truly be called diverse (see Figure 9.1). Major League
Soccer is the only professional sports league within the United States in which at
least 50% of players are not of a single race or ethnicity. In contrast, three-
quarters of NBA players, 70% of WNBA players, and 65% of NFL players are
Black, and 60% of the players in Major League Baseball are White (Hoenig
2014). In 2016, although Latinos made up 17% of the U.S. population, they were
underrepresented in all professional sports except Major League Baseball, where
they made up 28.5% of the players. And diversity in sports pays off. The most
diverse international soccer teams are also the most likely to win games
(Maleskey and Saiegh 2014).

Figure 9.1 Major League Soccer Was the Most Diverse Professional Sports
League in the United States in 2016

Source: Data from Lapchick (2017).

In the 2015–16 season, coaches across all leagues who identified as people of
color represented just 33.3% of the head coaching positions (Lapchick 2016)
The NBA, NFL, and MLS have made significant improvements in the
development of coaches of color through more transparent hiring processes,
increasingly diverse search committees, and the establishment of affirmative
action policies. The National Football League, with the establishment of the
Rooney Rule in 2003, mandated that the league develop a diverse pool of
manager and general manager candidates. The rule specifically requires teams to
interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operation
jobs. A total of 22 head coaches were hired in the NFL from 2012 through 2016,
and only one, Todd Bowles, hired as head coach for the New York Jets, was a
person of color.
Part of the issue is that while the Rooney Rule requires teams to interview at
least one minority candidate for each open position, this approach does not
address the underlying problems. The most logical pool of future head coach
candidates consists of the current population of offensive coordinators (where
only 5 out of 80 are minority), quarterback coaches and offensive quality control
coaches (all of whom are White), and defensive coordinators (where 23 of 32 are
White). This is therefore a pipeline issue. There are simply more Whites already
on the career ladders that lead to coaching positions, and until more minorities
are included in the lower coaching ranks, we will not see any real changes
among head coaches in the NFL (Sando 2016).

Todd Bowles, head coach with the New York Jets, was the only minority head
coach hired in the NFL between 2012 and 2016, despite rules requiring teams to
interview minority candidates for the positions.

George Gojkovich / Getty Images Sport / Getty Images

In 1997, Bud Selig, then acting commissioner of baseball (he became

commissioner in 1998), mandated that MLB create a diverse pool of managerial
candidates in a manner similar to that later established in the NFL. In 2012,
among managerial slots in the league, 32% of central staff were people of color,
while women made up 39%. Two executive vice presidents and eight vice
presidents were people of color, and women were also well represented among
executives, with six senior vice presidents and five vice presidents (Lapchick
2012).
Examining Stock Sociological Theories of Sport
The link between race and sport predates the actual sociology of sport, which has
emerged as an academic field only in the past half century. Scholarly interest in
the field may be linked to the increasingly significant amount of time devoted to
sports on television, the development of professional sporting leagues, and the
expansion of youth sports in local communities and educational institutions.
There are four popular sociological theories about sport. Two pit biology and
socialization against each other, with the biological viewpoint holding that
certain groups are born with athletic abilities. The nurture perspective, in
contrast, assumes that individuals are socialized into becoming, or not becoming,
athletes. Other scholars, assuming either nature or nurture, have been more
interested in the functions served by sport in society and how sport serves to
perpetuate certain myths about the United States. Finally, scholars who take a
critical perspective argue that sport is a by-product of the U.S. economic system,
where group differences in athleticism associated with race, gender, and class are
manipulated to preserve power differentials. These dominant theories, reinforced
and promoted by media and popular culture, are our sport stock stories.
 Critical Thinking

1. Why might different U.S. regions, such as the South, the North, the Southwest, and the Midwest,
produce different interactions among race, gender, and sport? How might both history and economic
conditions affect these differences?
2. Sport is significantly influenced by other institutions, such as educational and community
organizations. How might changes in these institutions (values, structure, or resources) lead to the
increased or decreased participation of various groups in sport?
3. How have the interactions among race, gender, and sport changed across the United States? What
might be some future trends in sport, based on current demographic and other potential shifts? For
example, how might fan bases influence trends?
4. Are you into sport? If so, is your interest as an athlete, as a fan, or a little of both? What sports are
you active in (either as a fan or as a participant)? What intersectional factors, such as your race,
gender, class, and family background, might account for your support of particular sports?
The Nature Perspective
We live in a time when many of our behaviors have been linked to specific sets
of genes. It’s not surprising, then, that in our competitive culture companies have
capitalized on this by claiming they can help parents identify, through genetic
testing, which sports their kids are biologically programmed to succeed in and
then recommend specific workouts based on the children’s “innate” skills. One
company claims that it can determine which youths are more susceptible to
concussions, heart attacks, and other health problems. Critics point out that the
advice being offered by these companies, based on questionable genetic testing,
is not only likely to be inaccurate but also may pose potential ethical issues and
health threats (Stein 2011). Let’s take a look at the science.

The nature perspective posits that biological differences between genders and
among racial, cultural, and national groups account for variations in athletic
ability, performance, and success. On the surface, the link between biology and
sport seems logical. Of course, some might argue, certain people and groups are
just more athletic than others. These common stereotypes about race, gender, and
sport are supported by the larger social narrative that defines differences as
rooted in biology. Biological determinism argues that human behavior,
intelligence, and athleticism are determined by genetics or by some other aspects
of physiology (such as brain size or body type). Accordingly, it argues that
Blacks run faster, run longer, and jump higher than Whites, but are genetically
deficient in intelligence (Hall 2002, 114). No evidence, biological or otherwise,
exists to support this linking of race, athleticism, and intelligence.

Current research has found more than 200 genetic variants associated with
physical performance, and more than 20 genetic variants associated with elite
athletic status. Genetic variants may also be associated with particular injury
risks and outcomes. While these associations may exist, to date no genetic
variations have been identified that provide predictability in terms of either
athletic success or injury risk outcomes (Guth and Roth 2013). Further research
has concluded that there is no association between genotypes and elite
competitive status (Coelho et al. 2016). Other sports scholars and researchers
theorize that rather than nature, nurture accounts for athletic success and related
outcomes.
The Nurture Perspective
The nurture perspective views gender, racial, cultural, and national group
differences in athleticism as products of socialization and environment. A whole
range of behaviors are socialized, including those associated with notions of
meritocracy, teamwork, rule conformance, gender norms, and sportsmanship.
For example, sport is a space where the best athletes are rewarded, and in theory
these rewards are not associated with race, gender, or class.

For years, gender norms have been reinforced by gender segregation within
individual sports. Women rarely compete directly with men in a given sport, a
practice that reinforces gender norms. Women athletes are, however consistently
challenging these norms. Stock car racer Danica Patrick, winner of the 2008
Indy Japan 300 and third-place finisher in the 2009 Indianapolis 500,
demonstrates that women can perform just as well as men in car racing. In 2003,
professional golfer Annika Sörenstam decided to enter a PGA (men’s)
tournament. She faced a lot of backlash, but nevertheless, she competed.

The pushback that women encounter when they enter what are perceived to be
male spaces in sport demonstrates how sport socialization tends to mirror the
perceptions of sport within the wider community and nation. Major institutions,
such as schools, media, teams, and local, state, and national government, use
rewards and sanctions to reinforce this socialization (Sage and Eitzen 2015).
Performing within a sport helps members learn how to obey rules, as they are
rewarded when they accomplish acceptable tasks in acceptable ways and
penalized when they violate these rules. Think for a moment about the following
aspects of sport and how they reinforce rules:

If a football player trips an opponent during a play, the player receives a

foul for inappropriate or unfair behavior. The player has violated the rules
—not only the rules of the game but also the rules of life.
Sport teams and athletes are some of the most visible members of their
schools and colleges, communities, and states.
Team seasons, competitions, and rivalries structure our time in unique
ways. There is March Madness, when college basketball teams vie for
national honors, and bowl season, when college football dominates the
airwaves and conversations. Baseball enthusiasts eagerly wait for spring
 training and the World Series. Then there are the Olympics, cheerleading
competitions, fantasy bowls, and other competitions.

Indycar and NASCAR driver Danica Patrick has had success in these male-
dominated sports, demonstrating that women can race at the highest level.

Jonathan Ferrey / Getty Images Sport / Getty Images

All of these aspects of sport provide opportunities for people to participate in a

wide range of athletic activities. But participation is also to a great extent
dictated by what is available within a community.

As we will examine in more depth, critical scholars have pointed out that sport
socialization serves to preserve the dominant gender, racial, and class hierarchy.
For example, fishing is typically cast as a male-dominated sport, and researchers
have pointed out that women are rarely featured in fishing magazines. When
they are depicted, usually in advertisements, they are often sexualized (their
clothing and other “feminine” qualities are shown as obstacles to fishing for
men) or they are presented as valued fishing companions for men (Carini and
Weber 2015).
The links among race, nurture, and sport have also been demonstrated
repeatedly. African American youth, compared to their White, Hispanic, and
Asian counterparts, are more likely to receive encouragement to participate in
sports from both family members and nonkin (Shakib and Veliz 2012). While
there are more than 150 major league professional sports franchises in the United
States, there is a significant lack of diversity among team ownership. The NBA’s
Charlotte Hornets, owned by Michael Jordan, is the only professional team
among the six biggest leagues that has a Black majority owner. In the 2012,
Pakistani-born American businessman Shahid Khan became the majority owner
of the Jacksonville Jaguars in the NFL and thus became only the second person
of color to gain this distinction (Hoenig 2014).

Critical theorists currently argue that agency (the capacity of individuals to make
choices and to act independently given access, resources, and ability) interacts
with sport in a process that links identities, nature, and nurture. This process
recognizes that there are obvious biological differences among infants. These
differences, related to motor skills and early childhood development, can have
impacts later in life. Family and prenatal care can influence not only cognitive
but also fine motor skills associated with sport. Lastly, if there is an
environment, reflected in either culture or community, that values, encourages,
and rewards athleticism, then we would expect these outcomes to be reflected in
specific ways. For example, we tend to encourage gender differences in sport
and athleticism, and this produces obvious gendered differences associated with
specific types of sports (Hofstede, Dignum, Prada, Student, and Vanhée 2015).
In high schools, girls have 1.3 million fewer opportunities than boys have to be
involved in sports. This leads to an increased likelihood that female athletes have
to look outside both high school and college to be involved in sports, and such
alternative options typically do not exist, or if they do, they cost more money
than school sports participation (Women’s Sports Foundation 2017).

Class and space can also affect who has access to sport (Carrington 2013).
Increasingly, shortfalls in public funds have forced school districts across the
country to cut funding for their athletic programs. These cuts have had
significant impacts particularly on lower-class families. In 2012, nearly 20% of
lower-income parents were forced to restrict their children’s participation in
sports for monetary reasons. An estimated 61% of middle and high school
children involved in sports were charged pay-to-play fees. Other expenses for
the families of young athletes include the costs of equipment, uniforms, and
team fees, which on average amount to an additional $381. Being a team
member in an elite volleyball club can run as much as $3,500, with another
$3,000 just for travel. Membership in a soccer club can exceed $4,000 a year,
and that does not include tournaments and equipment (Killion 2013).

Research also has demonstrated that sport participation is linked to both race and
gender. Black student-athletes tend to become concentrated and even
overrepresented in sports like football, basketball, and boxing, and are nearly
absent from all other sports (Coakley 2004). White athletes tend to have higher
participation rates in swimming, soccer, baseball, and softball (Goldsmith 2003).

Some argue that sport serves as a means through which subordinate males and
females can seek status, respect, empowerment, and upward mobility (Scraton
and Flintoff 2013). The reality is quite the opposite. Being poor and from the
inner city does not increase one’s chances of becoming a sport star. Kids
growing up in stable, more prosperous environments are more likely to develop
the skills of persistence, self-regulation, and trust, all of which are basic to sport
success (Stephens-Davidowitz 2013).

There are many more opportunities for boys to participate in school sports than
for girls, and the increasing cost of participation can make it hard for lower
income students to play.

AP Photo / Paul Sancya

The Functions of Sport
Functionalists believe that society is composed of a system of interrelated
institutions that are structured according to the functions they perform (or the
vital societal/community needs they fulfill). The functionalist theory of sport
argues that sport fulfills a multitude of needs.

Shared values: Sport both teaches and reinforces societal values. Parents
encourage their children to play sports in the hopes that they will develop
positive social values such as fair play, respect for others, and competition
(Macri 2012).
Life skills: Sport teaches and reinforces a set of core skills associated with
moral development, social relationships, self-perception, motivation, and
achievement. Ethics and good sportsmanship are considered vital, as they
help individuals become good citizens who respect and abide by laws. Sport
also teaches cooperation, respect for authority in the form of parents and
coaches, and leadership (Weiss 2016).
Socioemotional function: Sport helps individuals learn how to deal with
conflict and anger management, encourages community bonding, and
highlights the importance of rituals (Delaney 2015).
Social mobility: Sport provides individuals and groups with opportunities to
advance in socioeconomic status, both directly (through professional sport
participation) and indirectly (through college scholarships) (Delaney 2015).

The principal critique of the functionalist theory of sport is that it tends to

overemphasize the positive consequences of sport and assumes that all identity
groups (race, class, and gender) benefit equally from sport. Proponents of this
theory fail to grasp that sport is a social construction that preserves social
hierarchies benefiting privileged individuals and groups while disadvantaging
others.
Identity through Competition
Finally, the symbolic interaction perspective on sport posits that sports are
created and maintained by shared meanings and social interaction. In other
words, athletes’ identities are formed as they participate in various sports and
sport cultures. Sporting events are seen as ritual contests in which individuals
seek to obtain heroic or iconic status. Competition provides order and control for
these identities and various communities. For example, when the head coach of
Auburn University’s women’s basketball team, Nell Fortner, walked onto the
court for her first game in 2004, there were just 200 people in the stands. By
2012, when she left Auburn, her team was attracting crowds in excess of 12,000.
Under Fortner, Auburn won the Southeastern Conference championship in 2009
—the first time Auburn had won since 1989. Women’s basketball is now the
most popular team sport at Auburn. The fans come out in numbers because they
want to see winners, and Auburn’s success has helped to advance the profile of
women’s basketball nationally (Robinson 2017). A principal critique of the
symbolic interaction perspective is that it provides limited ability to understand
structural processes that create, maintain, and perpetuate inequalities among
various identity groups (Giulianotti 2016).

We are left with the conclusion that while stock theories on sport do provide
some insight, they leave much unanswered. For the rest of the picture, we turn to
the matrix approach to sport.
Applying the Matrix to Sports in the United States
The matrix of race, class, and gender operates throughout the institution of sport.
Geographic and social locations and identities across time influence how sport
and athleticism develop, which groups and identities become involved, and the
ways in which these might serve to facilitate change.

The stock story of U.S. sports has been central to our national narrative.
However, our concealed stories reveal the historical, political, cultural, and
social processes that have shaped the development of sport in the United States.
What this history reveals is that for some, sport has provided access to the
American Dream. Racial, ethnic, class, and gendered groups have frequently
used sport as a means of social mobility when other pathways were blocked.
However, sport can be a source of both resistance and transformative change, as
individuals and groups engaged in sport use their status to effect changes both
within sport and in the wider society.
 Critical Thinking

1. Clearly sport provides some useful functions within society. But in what ways do these functions
reflect values specific to certain geographical areas? How might historical factors help explain the
potential differences between these areas? More specifically, in what ways might history within
specific areas, communities, or schools have impacts on who plays and what sports they might
engage in?
2. Both the nature and nurture perspectives on sport seem to offer plausible arguments. But how might
institutions such as family, school and community environment, and culture affect athleticism? What
impact might sport have on the likelihood that an individual will be successful, marry, and have kids?
What does this suggest about how sport may influence genetic outcomes? (For example, if society
placed a value on tallness, would this lead to more tall people getting married and therefore
propagating?)
3. Symbolic interactionism argues that how we interact with sport symbols and images can affect how
sport is perceived, or valued. How does this symbolic interaction reflect cultural values? How might
identities, as reflected in cultural, gendered, class, or school values, affect how sport is perceived?
How might this account for the differences in athleticism associated with gender, race, and class?
4. In what ways do you believe your athleticism or lack thereof might be associated with nature or
nurture?
Analyzing Space and Place: Early American Sports Narratives
From the earliest point in U.S. history, sports blended the cultural and athletic
traditions of Native Americans and European immigrants. Each new immigrant
group arriving in North America brought along its own sporting traditions,
which were absorbed and transformed to produce a unique American sport
culture (Crawford 2013, 1–2). When Europeans settled the Americas, indigenous
peoples, comprising as many as 500 separate nations, were actively engaged in a
range of sport and game activities, including many that provided children with
life experiences that would help them develop the competencies and experiences
necessary for survival.

Sports and the Colonists

Several variations in sport and athleticism can be identified across U.S. regions
and across historical times. Religious attitudes within the American colonies
governed the recreational activities considered proper for men and women. In
the North, elite White women were encouraged to participate in ice skating,
while southern women were expected to develop equestrian skills. Other
recreational activities for women included dancing, quilting, and swimming.
Women were also expected to be spectators at both horse and boat races (Borish
2014).

Puritans, believing that time was a sacred gift not to be wasted, condemned all
sport (Daniels 1995). The Protestant Dutch in New York were more liberal,
however, and allowed for bowling, golf, and boat and horse racing. The Quakers
of Pennsylvania banned boxing but did allow those sports deemed useful and
necessary for recreation, such as swimming, skating, hunting, and fishing.

The 19th-century southern planters modeled themselves on European nobility

and attempted to duplicate their leisure activities. Within this culture, horse
racing became a major sport. Fox and quail hunting and bloody sports such as
bare-knuckle boxing and eye-gouging fights were also frequent events. All of
these sport activities were associated with heavy gambling, where generations of
wealth could be won or lost in a single match (Zirin 2000). Through gambling,
southern elite gentlemen asserted their manliness while distinguishing
themselves from poorer Whites and Black slaves (Carroll 2003). Sport not only
helped reinforce the White gentry’s values, but it also served to distinguish them
from subordinate groups. Sporting venues quickly became the places where
politics, economics, and culture were controlled. In many ways, sport became a
proxy for power in the South (Crawford 2013).

Race, Gender, and Early American Sports

Slaves, both male and female, were often the featured attractions providing
entertainment and profit to the southern plantation elite (Gems, Borish, and
Pfister 2008). And while boxing and other sports provided Black slaves with
entertainment and momentary escape from the harsh realities of slavery, for
some they provided a more direct route to emancipation (Harris 2000).

Black women, regardless of their status, found that sport could be a means of
rebellion. Many slave women excelled at swimming, which they often did in the
nude, a practice that tended to go against religious and racial prohibitions for
White women (Gems et al. 2008, 24). For northern White females, the bicycle
became an instrument of rebellion. After the Civil War, women’s colleges were a
vanguard in this movement. Schools offered athletic options that included
bicycle races. The bicycle became a symbol of women’s liberation and resistance
for suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and other
feminists during the late 19th century (LaFrance 2014).

Latinos have also had an impact on sports within the United States. From 1519
to 1700, the Spanish imported cattle and horses and established ranches
throughout the South and the Southwest. Cattle ranching became a dominant
economic activity as early as the 1700s in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. The
vaqueros (cowboys—the term is derived from vaca, the Spanish word for cow)
on these ranches developed a range of skills using ropes made from braided
rawhide, as well as skills in horsemanship, and they showed off these skills by
competing with each other at rodeos, which were held to celebrate the annual
cattle roundups. Rodeos became popular throughout the West and Southwest,
and “Wild West” shows featuring some of the most famous rodeo stars toured
the country through much of the 1890s (Alamillo 2013).
Tom Molineux (1784–1818), born into slavery, was possibly the first
heavyweight bare-knuckle boxing champion in the United States. Starting on the
Virginia plantation of his birth, he often would fight fellow slaves while
plantation owners placed wagers on the outcomes. After a particularly successful
boxing match, for which his owner took in $100,000 in prize money (equivalent
to about $1 million today), Molineux was granted his freedom and given $500
(equivalent to about $11,000 today).

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints

Division, The New York Public Library. (3 October 1811). The battle between
Crib [Cribb] and Molineaux. Retrieved from
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-bb84-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
Institutionalizing Sport: Industrialization, Immigration, and
Team Sports
Theorists employing a matrix or intersectional approach have characterized sport
as a mirror of capitalist society and have examined how sport has increasingly
become globally commercialized. A matrix analysis of sport demonstrates that
sporting events are more than media representations or cultural products. They
become major institutional spaces where race, class, and gender intersections are
manifested. The club movement served to preserve and magnify sport and race,
class, and gender hierarchies.

The Club Movement

Industrialism encouraged increased immigration from Europe and spurred the
club movement in the United States. The team sports that we know today
developed out of this early movement, in which elite White ethnics formed
exclusive clubs in urban industrial areas to promote group identity and enhance
status. Typically, as these new ethnic groups entered the urban industrial centers,
they were met with either acceptance or rejection. Immigrants from England,
Scotland, and Wales tended to be more acceptable within the status communities
of racialized White elites. These elite clubs tended to exclude Catholics, Jews,
and women as part of an unwritten and often unspoken agreement among White
Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) men to preserve White male privilege and
racial exclusion (Kendall 2008). Lower-status White ethnics, from other
European countries such as Ireland, Italy, and Poland, responded by creating
their own status clubs, which were closely linked to sports. Thus was born the
sports club movement.

The sports club movement was a means by which lower-status White ethnics
could gain elite status. The first sports clubs in the United States were formed by
these groups. Cricket, racquet, and yacht clubs welcomed young men who
shared an interest in various sports, and club membership became a principal
means of status enhancement. Massive immigration and the perception that the
United States was being swamped by the swarthy, unwashed masses led sports
clubs to emphasize their aristocratic British cultural connections and lineage;
thus they began introducing golf in the 1890s (Starn 2006). Golf courses and
club facilities emulated aristocratic gardens and manor houses (Ceron-Anaya
2010).
Baseball and the American Dream
Baseball, considered by many to be the quintessential American game, has been
far from a “field of dreams” for people of color. In the early 1850s, like its
probable forerunner, cricket, the game was essentially a source of entertainment
for middle-class White males. As industrialism and urbanization brought
increasing numbers of immigrants to the United States, this rural pastime
became part of the urban landscape and a form of escape. Baseball allowed
many urban residents to imagine a more rural existence. Played in parklike
settings with green fields and plenty of fresh air, it evoked images of a safe,
secure haven from the harsh world. Baseball was from its inception a male-
dominated sport with definite racial overtones (Kimmel 2005, 64). The historical
view of baseball as a homogenized space where middle-class White males could
be legitimated and glorified held sway up until the 1960s (Butterworth 2007).

The first baseball club originated in 1845 in Manhattan, when a group of young
firefighters formed the Knickerbocker Baseball Club. Blue-collar workers were
the mainstay viewers of the game until increased admission prices, lack of
accessibility, and elimination of Sunday games transformed the audience to
middle-class workers by the 1860s. The national leagues that developed
continued to draw their players primarily from new immigrants and their
audience from the White middle class until the late 1940s. This changed with the
advent of World War II, when for the first time fans saw both Blacks and women
on the field. Once these groups appeared on the national scene, it was too late to
put them back in the bleachers or on the sidelines.

As many as 55 professional Black baseball teams existed from 1883 to 1898.

Interestingly, about half of Black players in that period were part of these all-
Black teams, while the remainder played on integrated teams. From the end of
the Civil War until 1890, a number of Blacks played alongside Whites in both
minor and major baseball league teams (Kleinknect 2017). When the National
Association of Base Ball Players was formed in 1867, it formally banned all
Black players. Despite this ban, as late as the 1870s several Black players were
still active on mostly White minor league teams, and some persisted longer. In
1883, Moses “Fleetwood” Walker, from Oberlin College, signed with the
Toledo, Ohio, team in the Northwestern League and became the first Black to
play in a major league franchise. In the same year, another Black player, John W.
“Bud” Fowler, a veteran of 10 years, signed with the Northwestern League. Even
these slots were soon lost, however, when segregation became law and increased
hostility toward Black, Hispanic, Asian, and other racial minority athletes
became rampant. By the end of the 19th century, the ban on Black players in
baseball was firmly established (Pennington 2006). Rather than admit defeat,
Blacks and other athletes of color continued to play, but were often segregated
into their own leagues. The first Black professional team, the Cuban Giants, was
formed in 1885. Ironically, there were no Cubans or Hispanics on the team.

The story of baseball, with minor alterations, mirrors what was also happening in
football, basketball, and other team sports. Therefore, as we move into the 20th
century, segregated sports (by race, gender, and class) can be identified.
Identities and Resistance
Critical race theorists stress that confronting race and racism is central to any
analysis of sport. This perspective argues that sport is a central social process
that regularly legitimates, modifies, and re-creates racial hegemony. Critical race
theory also aims to combat racial hegemony within sport, while at the same time
recognizing that race is a social construction (Hylton 2010). Within sport, racism
both dehumanizes and legitimates the racial “other.” Thus, while the members of
a given group might be the objects of racial derision, their participation in sport
might also reconstruct or legitimate certain racial stereotypes.

The Legacy of Civil Rights

The civil rights movement of the mid-20th century had significant impact on
sport in the United States. Through legislation, court actions, and organized
efforts, the movement helped to abolish many of the formal mechanisms of
racial discrimination. Almost every institutional sphere was affected, including
sport.

As a registered conscientious objector, Black heavyweight boxing champion

Cassius Clay repeatedly drew attention to racial injustices prevalent in the
United States. After converting to Islam, Cassius Clay changed his name to
Muhammad Ali. One of his first announcements after his conversion concerned
his objection to the Vietnam War: “I’m expected to go overseas to help free
people in South Vietnam and at the same time my people here [African
Americans] are being brutalized and mistreated, and this is really the same thing
that’s happening in Vietnam” (quoted in Hunt 2006, 285).
On December 3, 1943, singer/actor Paul Robeson headed a group of Blacks who
met with baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and major league
team owners at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York. After being introduced,
Robeson remarked: “The time has come when you must change your attitude
toward Negroes. . . . Because baseball is a national game, it is up to baseball to
see that discrimination does not become an American pattern. And it should do
this this year” (Robeson 1978, 152). Four years later, second baseman Jackie
Robinson broke the major league color barrier. Other athletes, such as
heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, would use their celebrity status
as a form of resistance.

Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo

Critical scholars researching sport also became highly successful in bringing

about change. Harry Edwards, political activist and scholar, was a key
participant in a protest at the 1968 Olympic Games. Increasingly cynical,
Edwards concluded that U.S. sport needed a wake-up call to address the long-
standing racism that existed. He called for a Black athletic boycott of the 1968
Olympics and other sports activities to dramatize the racial inequities and
obstacles confronting Blacks. But during a period of heightened racial
awareness, Black athletes could not simply quit and be labeled as “failures.”
Instead, during the medal awards ceremony for track and field, U.S. gold and
bronze medalists John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their fists as they stood
on podium.

Women and the Impact of Title IX

It is only in the last two generations that young women in the United States have
gained the ability to grow up actively engaged in sports. In 1972, President
Richard M. Nixon signed into law the landmark U.S. Education Amendments,
including Title IX, which declared that “no person in the United States shall, on
the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or
be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal
financial assistance.” The impact of Title IX was profound. In 1971, before it
became law, fewer than 295 females participated in high school varsity athletics.
This was just under 7% of all high school athletes. By 2001, a total of 2.8
million or 41.5% of all high school varsity athletes were females (see Table 9.1)

By 2012, the number of females in high school and college sports had grown to
3,373,000 (Dangerfield and Barra 2012; TitleIX.info, n.d.). Title IX did not solve
gender inequities in sports, however. Today, roughly 28% of total money spent
on high school and college athletes goes to women, and colleges spend 31% of
recruiting dollars and 42% of athletic scholarship money on women (Title
IX.info, n.d.).

During the October 16, 1968, medal awards ceremony for track and field at the
Mexico City Olympics, U.S. gold and bronze medalists John Carlos and Tommie
Smith raised their fists in protest.
NCAA Photos / NCAA Photos / Getty Images

The impacts of Title IX have not been universal across all women. In 2012,
White females had a 51% participation rate in high school sports, but Black
females were comparatively lower at 40%. Asian/Pacific Islander and Hispanic
female high school participation was even lower, at 34% and 32%, respectively.
This differential access to sports by race and gender at the high school level
carries forward to the intercollegiate level. For example, in Division I basketball,
Black women represented 50.6% of the athletes in 2012, but they were
significantly less likely to be on indoor and outdoor track and field teams (28.2%
and 27.5%, respectively), and they were almost nonexistent in lacrosse (2.2%),
swimming (2%), soccer (5.3%), and softball (8.22%). Finally, Title IX has not
helped increase the proportion of women who are coaching women’s teams at
the intercollegiate level. In 1972, women filled 90% of coaching positions for
women’s teams. By 2012, only 44% of women’s team’s coaches were women
(Rhoden 2012).

Source: Barbara Winslow, “The Impact of Title IX,” History Now, 2012,
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/seventies/essays/impact-title-ix.

Resistance/Story
 A Female Founder’s Fight
By Lynn Le, Founder of Society Nine

Fighting isn’t always physical or contained within sport. Though my passion for mixed martial
arts has led me to this place now—as the founder of a woman’s combat sports brand—the
truth is I had some life experiences along the way that instilled the fight in me.

I grew up in a very humble, hardworking Vietnamese immigrant household where we knew

how to stretch dollars, always look presentable (because as my dad always said, you never
knew what opportunities could be presented and you needed to look put together), and be fed.
My parents were entrepreneurial with everything in their lives, from the household budget to
what it was going to take to make the next professional move in order to improve the lives of
their kids. We eventually made our way to a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle that was a
result of my parents’ devotion and conviction to provide. Their sacrifice and strength lit a fire
in my belly. Honor and a duty to make my family proud were reasons to fight. To fight means
to live with intent.
Fighting and entrepreneurship have a lot of parallels. The most important thing it’s taught me
is that power is mine to define. Fighting helped me take ownership of what is inherently
beautiful about my God-given body and mind. True femininity is pure resilience and unbridled
strength—in and out of the gym. I will always be imperfect—we all are—but now, I’m proud
to take ownership of my weaknesses and be vulnerable. It’s helped me be a better
entrepreneur, manager, daughter, sister, girlfriend, and friend.

Lynn Le

Tim Brown/Oxygen Media/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

What’s thriving in my life right now is my start-up, Society Nine. The name was inspired by
Title IX—and how far women have come since fighting for the right to play in college, to now
professionally fighting among men on the mainstream stage. What is the future for female
athletes? What are we capable of? This society represents the modern female fighter—she can
do anything. I created Society Nine with the core athlete in mind—the athlete who does
combat sports—but on a spiritual level, our heart belongs to the female fighter.

One of the most obvious boundaries maintained by sport is that of gender and
gender identity. Not only does this boundary distinguish the types of athleticism
appropriate for males and females, it also defines both masculinity and
femininity. While today women can be found surfing, skateboarding, drag car
racing, and skiing, many sports are still strongly male oriented, such as hockey,
football, boxing, and wrestling. Sport reflects our cultural biases, but structural
barriers also impede gender equity.

Women hold few positions of real power in the sports journalism industry
(Nelson 2013). Research documents that gender subjectivity and stereotyping
increase the likelihood that female athletes will be portrayed negatively in visual
media (Brandt and Carstens 2011). This trend is evident in college newspapers
across the United States. Female sports reporters are not only rare but also less
likely to be involved in playing, watching, and writing about sports (Schmidt
2013).
 Critical Thinking

1. In what ways might either geography or history affect how sport is perceived and received? What
does this suggest regarding our attitudes toward sport?
2. How does sport, or participating in sport, affect other institutions? How might other institutions affect
sport?
3. How might sport affect an individual’s identity? In what ways might this sport identity be influenced
by other identities, such as race, class, and gender? How might differences in regional or community
values influence these identities?
4. How has sport affected your life? What kinds of racial messages have been associated with your
contacts with sport? What does this suggest about you, race, and sport?
Creating a New Playing Field
Sport is an important institution within the United States. It not only provides
needed exercise and opportunities but also helps stimulate change within both
local communities and the wider society. How different athletes use their status
in sport can enhance the visibility of often marginalized members within society.
The Role of Agency and Resistance
Much of our understanding of agency (i.e., sense of control, the ability to
initiate, execute, and control one’s actions, particularly to effect change) and
resistance within sports is derived from personal narratives of athletes and
coaches. Their stories have generated our knowledge of homophobia and sexism,
racism, and ethnocentrism in sport. These narratives help us understand how we
can bring about more tolerance within our communities, our institutions, and,
ultimately, our society. They demonstrate how individuals have been able to
transform not only how they perceive themselves but also how their identities
are perceived and received within the wider community. These stories show that
racial identities are not fixed and one-dimensional; rather, they are fluid and
multifaceted (Iannotta and Kane 2002).

Jesse Owens, by taking four gold medals at the Olympics in Berlin in 1936,
destroyed Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy. Tommie Smith and John Carlos,
raising their black-gloved fists, asserted the importance of all humans as they
received their Olympic medals in 1968. In 1988, the world was shocked as
Jamaican bobsledders became internationally famous with their entry into the
Olympics. And in Rio in 2016, Ibtihaj Muhammad (pictured) became the first
U.S. athlete to compete in the Olympics wearing a hijab.
Ezra Shaw / Getty Images Sport / Getty Images

David Denson, first baseman for the Milwaukee Brewers’ minor league affiliate
in Helena, Montana, announced in August 2015 that he is gay. He became the
first active player affiliated with a Major League Baseball organization to come
out publicly (Hine 2016). A record 56 LGBT-identifying athletes competed in
the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Clearly, these athletes represent a
long list of athletes who have used their status as sport stars to engage in
advocacy and resistance. These voices, collectively, have served to change not
only sport but our country.
Closing the Athlete Graduation Gap
At the college level, the graduation gap between athletes of color and others is
most significant within football and basketball, between Black and White
players, and at the most sports-competitive schools, those in Division I of the
NCAA. In 2016, about half of the Black male athletes in the top 65 basketball
and football institutions graduated within 6 years. What makes these statistics
even more troubling is that while Black males accounted for only 2.5% of
undergraduates, they made up 56% of the football players and more than 60% of
the men’s basketball players (Harper 2016). But while Black male athletes’
graduation rates appear to be declining, those of both White and Hispanic male
athletes are on the rise (see Figure 9.2).

Figure 9.2 In 2016, Graduation Rates for Male Athletes Varied by Race

Source: NCAA Research Staff (2016).

What accounts for these differences? It might depend on the sport. Most Black
college athletes are found within football (upward of 47% in NCAA Divisions I
and II) and basketball (upward of 47% in NCAA Divisions I and II). Hispanic
players rarely make up more than 3% of total players in these same sports. The
highest sport participation for college Latino athletes is in baseball (6%)
(Lapchick 2015).

Academic underperformance is particularly pronounced among male basketball,

football, and hockey players in general, and Black men in particular (Shulman
and Bowen 2001). Some observers have argued that the racial gap in college
completion rates is less about sports and more about the resegregation of public
education, with more subtle and less obvious forms of difference (Childress
2014).

In many states, private colleges and universities have tremendous advantages in

recruiting top players, such as greater media exposure, better facilities, longer
histories of victories, and scholarships. Already, many state championships in
hockey, lacrosse, and soccer are dominated by private school teams. Trends are
similar for both collegiate basketball and football (Cacabelos 2009). These teams
also tend to be dominated by middle-class and more affluent White athletes, with
few spots going to Blacks, Asians, or Hispanics. Who gets to play sports is only
one dimension of what needs to be changed.

Scholarships also are not distributed equally, providing benefits for all. Just 7%
of high school athletes who played varsity sports got college athletic
scholarships in 2015–16 (Ecker 2017). Men are almost twice as likely as women
to get athletic scholarships, and among minority youth, the largest proportion of
these scholarships go to Black students (about 22.8%). Asian students receive
the lowest proportion (0.1%). About 65% of all athletic scholarships go to White
students (Westfall 2011).
Creating Change
Instead of waiting for change to happen, college athletes around the country
have begun to organize themselves into unions. Currently more than 17,000
Division I college athletes belong to the National College Players Association
(NCPA). This organization has testified in U.S. congressional hearings and
briefings, appeared before state legislatures, and represented college athletes in
the courts as they have sought improved athlete benefits, including a Student-
Athletes’ Bill of Rights. The NCPA has produced reports that document the
value added to colleges and universities by football and men’s basketball
programs, which annually garner for their schools an average of $137,000 and
$289,000, respectively (NCPA 2016). The nation’s richest athletic departments
made a record $6 billion in 2015, nearly $4 billion more than all the other
schools combined (Lavigne 2016). The NCPA (2016) argues that some of these
revenues should be used to minimize college athletes’ brain trauma risks, raise
scholarship amounts, pay more sports-related medical expenses, and improve
graduation rates.

Many young athletes enter sports with the hope of one day playing
professionally. Unfortunately, the likelihood of a high school or even a college
athlete becoming a professional athlete is extremely low. Baseball players have
the best chance, with 9.7% of NCAA players going on to enter MLB
organizations; ice hockey players are next, with 6.6% later becoming
professionals. For other sports, less than 2% of college players go on to play
professionally (NCAA 2017).

The odds of an athlete graduating from college are much higher, with more than
70% in NCAA Division I, II, and III graduating within 6 years. But for some,
even the dream of graduation is never realized. Just over half of Black athletes
do not graduate within 6 years (Harper, Williams, and Blackman 2013). A
number of proposals have been offered to remedy this situation. Some have
argued that the best way to raise graduation rates is to make players ineligible to
participate in both postseason play and championship contests if their team fails
to graduate at least 40% of its players within a 6-year period. College presidents
and university leaders must also do more to hold their sports programs
accountable, including being transparent when it comes to data on graduation
rates both by sport and within racial and ethnic groups. These data should be
more specific in terms of grade point averages, classroom experiences, course
enrollment, and major selection patterns (Harper et al. 2013).

Sport, as a collection of social institutions, reflects the values, customs, and

histories of society. As an institution it also reflects the hierarchical relations
between and among racial, gendered, and class groups within society. And these
relations change as social dynamics, values, and attitudes change and as
individuals and groups transcend the normal boundaries and challenge those
very same norms. Despite the progress that individuals have made, however, it
takes widespread institutional change to eliminate structural impediments to
racial and gender equality in sport. Acknowledging the lack of sufficient
mentors, sponsors, formal and informal networks, role models, leadership and
coaching workshops, and opportunities would be a good start (Kamphoff and
Gill 2013).

Further improvements in collegiate sport can come only if we reaffirm

commitments to all students and remove lingering racial, gender, and class
inequities. Given the interdependency and interrelatedness of institutions,
systemic, society-wide change will be required to resolve these problems.
Ultimately, we might just conclude that high-priced sports are not compatible
with higher education.
 Critical Thinking

1. How does participation in sports affect racial identity? How does racial identity affect perceived
competency in different sports? Some racial groups participating in sports appear to have different
outcomes when it comes to college graduation. How might gender or class or even type of sport
influence these outcomes?
2. Over time different racial groups appear to dominate particular sports. In what ways might this be a
result of racial hierarchies operant within society, in different geographic areas, or in different
historical periods? What does this suggest regarding the social construction of sport?
3. Sport provides many different types of opportunities and challenges for athletes. In what ways is
racial identity reflected in these opportunities and challenges?
4. What might you do to effect changes in the institution of sport? As a student? As a consumer? As an
athlete?
Key Terms

agency, p. 314
club movement, p. 319
communal experience, p. 303
cultural values, p. 303
functionalist theory of sport, p. 315
nature perspective, p. 312
nurture perspective, p. 312
sport, p. 304
symbolic interaction perspective on sport, p. 316
Title IX, p. 322

Chapter Summary
LO 9.1 Explain the state of sport in the United States.
The institution of sport is an integral part of the nation. Millions of fans and players watch and
actively participate in sports ranging from the high-powered, no-holds-barred rezball played
on Native American reservations to the many individual and team sports represented at the
Olympic Games. Football is the most popular American sport, capturing the largest TV
audience. While the NFL is most popular among major sports leagues, however, Major League
Soccer is the most diverse. Clear gender and racial hierarchies are reflected in what sports are
played by whom, who is most rewarded (in terms of both income and endorsement deals), and
who makes up the fan bases. Clearly the gendered segregation of sports has implications for
both viewers and endorsement deals, accounting for the small number of women among the
athletes who earn the highest salaries (just 2 of the top 100 earners are women). Also, the fact
that males dominate in viewership explains to some extent their much higher levels of pay and
their more lucrative endorsement contracts. Once we consider these, we are still left with the
fact that only one professional sports league, Major League Soccer, is truly diverse; most
national professional leagues have high concentrations of players in one or two racial groups.
LO 9.2 Compare stock theories about U.S. sport.
Four theoretical perspectives have traditionally been supported regarding U.S. sport: the nature
perspective, the nurture perspective, the functionalist perspective, and the symbolic
interactionist perspective. These represent stock stories, or the standard justifications that are
used to explain the prevalence of sport and athleticism. The nature argument posits that
biology and talent account for athleticism and sport development within specific groups and
across the nation. The nurture perspective argues that environment, culture, and socialization
explain how athletes and sport develop. Research indicates that both nature and nurture are
significant but not sufficient to account for athletic ability and sport development.
Functionalist theory explains the development of sport in terms of the vital or important needs
accomplished by sport. These functions include shared values, life skills, socioemotional
functions, and social mobility. The limitations of this theory include its overemphasis on the
positive consequences of sport and its failure to account for unequal results for race, class, and
gendered groups, and how sport serves to preserve inequalities. Symbolic interaction
investigates the shared meanings that are created and maintained within sport, communities,
and athletes. These shared meanings help produce sport cultures that replicate rituals, create
sport heroes, and symbolically link sport to the community. Symbolic interaction provides
limited insight into the structural processes that create, preserve, and distribute inequalities
among various identity groups within sport. Collectively, while providing some insight into
sport and athleticism, traditional stock theories offer a limited understanding regarding sport
and athleticism.
LO 9.3 Apply the matrix approach to sport.
The matrix, with its focus on intersectional differences, helps fill the gaps in our understanding
of how sport and athleticism create institutions that have differential impacts on racial, class,
and gendered groups within U.S. society. The perspective anticipates that geographic and
social locations, identities across time, and agency provide necessary insights into how this
process operates. Institutional analysis demonstrates that sport and sporting events produce
medial and cultural products. Through these processes race, class, and gender interactions are
manifested. Space and place concerns within the matrix approach highlight the importance of
geographical and historical spaces that affect social identities within sport. Identities are
constantly affected by sports as they legitimate, modify, and re-create racial hegemonies.
Finally, both agency and resistance have been demonstrated by multiple individuals and
groups who have utilized their status within sport to transform both sport and the nation. An
examination of U.S. sport through time reveals many concealed stories. Native Americans,
long before European colonization, were active creators of sport and games. Most of these
were directly associated with the needs of hunting and gathering communities. Consequently,
stick games, racing, hunting, and archery were frequently vital parts of youth socialization.
Industrialization served to transform the U.S. sport landscape as it drew an increasingly large
number of immigrants and others into the urban centers. One of the significant outcomes of
this transformation was the rise in team sports. From the early 19th century, elite sport clubs
catering to White ethnics were established throughout the Northeast. Baseball and other team
sports were soon to follow.
LO 9.4 Describe strategies for transforming the
institution of sport.
Transformative stories are possible as athletes both individually and collectively push for
change. Black male athletes at top-performing NCAA Division I institutions have the largest
graduation gap among athletes. And this gap is widening. Some reasons for this may be
increased pressure to perform athletically, lack of support (both financial and community), and
limited number of mentors. But Black males are not the only college athletes with these
problems—all male student-athletes, particularly in basketball, football, and hockey,
underperform as students. These differences only highlight a series of other inequities that
dominate collegiate sports and in many ways mirror those in the wider society. For example,
male athletes are almost twice as likely as female athletes to receive collegiate athletic
scholarships. And Black students receive significantly more athletic scholarships than either
Asian or Hispanics students. Almost two-thirds of all athletic scholarships still go to White
athletes. Student-athletes themselves are beginning to organize to challenge both institutions
and governments, seeking better treatment, fairer processes, and increased support.
Chapter 10 The Military, War, and Terrorism

Tammy Duckworth is a decorated veteran, the daughter of a veteran and an

immigrant, and an exemplar of the unique mix of race, class, and gender that
characterizes the United States.

Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images

Chapter Outline

Class, Gender, and Race, in the U.S. Military

Socioeconomics and Recruiting
Gender and Enlistment
Racial Minority Representation
Military Sociology Stock Stories
Functionalism
Symbolic Interactionism
Monopoly and Materialist Perspectives
Applying the Matrix Approach to U.S. Military History, War, and
Terrorism
Revolutionary War
Wars and Native Americans
Civil War
World War II
Vietnam War
Wars on Terrorism
A More Inclusive Future
Strength through Diversity
World Security and Sustainable Economies
 Learning Objectives

LO 10.1 Examine the contemporary reality of race, class, and gender in the U.S. military.
LO 10.2 Explore the stock sociological theories regarding the U.S. military, war, and terrorism.
LO 10.3 Apply the matrix approach to U.S. military history, war, and terrorism.
LO 10.4 Evaluate the possibilities for a more inclusive future.

Politician, mother, wife, double amputee, disabled combat veteran, and hero—all
of these describe U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois. Her story, like that
of thousands of veterans throughout history, is entwined with society’s collective
narrative. Duckworth’s father was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who could trace
his family’s military roots back to the American Revolutionary War (Weinstein
2012). Her mother, a native of Thailand, is of Chinese ancestry. Duckworth
joined the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps as a graduate student and was
soon commissioned a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve. Since piloting was
one of the few combat jobs open to women, she attended helicopter flight
school. Upon graduation, she joined the Illinois National Guard. While she was
earning her PhD in political science, her unit was deployed to Iraq. On
November 12, 2004, her UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was hit by a rocket-
propelled grenade. She lost both of her legs and much of her right arm. Her valor
earned her the Purple Heart, the Air Medal, and the Army Commendation
Medal.

After leaving the military, Duckworth served as the director of the Illinois
Department of Public Affairs from 2006 to 2009, after which she became
assistant secretary of public and intergovernmental affairs at the U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs. Thousands were moved by her story when she
spoke at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and in 2011 she resigned her
position at the Department of Veterans Affairs and announced her candidacy for
the U.S. House of Representatives. She went on to win that election and
represented Illinois’s Eighth Congressional District from January 2013 to
January 2017. In November 2016, she was elected to the U.S. Senate, where she
now serves along with 20 other women and 79 men. Senator Duckworth has
been a staunch supporter of American veterans and those who have disabilities,
and her story uniquely reflects the matrix of race, class, and gender.
A single act of war or violence can define the life of a person, a community, and
a nation. Consider the U.S. use of atomic bombs in Japan during World War II,
or the terrorist acts carried out against the United States on September 11, 2001.
Nothing seems so central to our collective experience, or as controversial, as
war. Similarly, nothing seems so apt to bring us together or tear us apart, and
nothing seems so central to the understanding of these moments as race, class,
ethnicity, and gender.
Class, Gender, and Race in the U.S. Military
The five branches that make up the U.S. military—the Army, Navy, Air Force,
Marine Corps, and Coast Guard—are authorized to use deadly force to support
the national interests, specific entities, and citizens of the United States. The
U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), an executive branch department of the
federal government, is charged with coordinating all agencies and functions
associated with national defense and U.S. armed forces. The DoD is the largest
employer in the world, with an estimated 1.3 million service members on active
duty and another 865,000 in reserve (Defense Manpower Data Center 2017);
these numbers make it the third-largest military in the world, following China
and India (Shaw 2016). The United States spends more on its military than any
other country. In fact, U.S. military expenditures account for a third of all global
defense spending (Taylor and Karklis 2016). The defense budget, representing
16% (or $602 billion) of the entire federal budget, is devoted primarily to costs
related to the DoD. A smaller portion supports military operations in
Afghanistan and other international security operations (Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities 2016). Recruiting within the armed forces is closely tied to the
economy and job prospects. The high unemployment rate among youth during
the past decade has been associated with higher rates of enlistment. The
demographic profile of the U.S. military tends to reflect these and other national
trends (Alvarez 2009).
The military in the United States includes five branches: the U.S. Army, Navy,
Air Force, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps.

United States Department of Defense

While the military is predominantly male, White, and young, significant
differences are seen across the various branches. For example, recruits going into
the air force tend to be older, while about half of all Marine Corps recruits are
17–18 years old. Most army and navy recruits fall into the 19–20 age group
(U.S. Department of Defense 2014).
Socioeconomics and Recruiting
Although a significant number of new soldiers come from large states such as
California and Texas, close to 45% of all recruits hail from the southern region
of the country. It might be tempting to assume that most recruits come from
lower socioeconomic groups, but the opposite is actually true. The largest
proportion of armed forces recruits come from middle-class communities, from
families with annual incomes in the range of $36,875 to $76,980. Tangentially,
the majority of enlistees are married (52.3%), with the largest proportion of
married recruits choosing the air force (57.3%), followed closely by the Coast
Guard (54.8%). Fewer (42.6%) married enlisted recruits choose the Marine
Corps (U.S. Department of Defense 2014).

The number of federal elected officials who are veterans was at an all-time low
in 2013. Only 20% of them had served, and less than 1% of their children had
enlisted (DeSilver 2013). This latter number matches the proportion of enlistees
who come from Ivy League schools, where less than 1% decide to join the
military (Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer 2006).

The U.S. military has, at least since World War II, been perceived as an avenue
through which young people can see the world and gain highly marketable skills.
The military, particularly the army, has offered a pathway out of poverty for
many. The GI Bill, signed into law in 1944, provided opportunities for millions
of World War II veterans to gain college degrees, buy homes, and receive
preference in federal, state, and many corporate hiring pools. Recent research
indicates that not all have benefited from military service, however, particularly
children of immigrants (Homan and Pianin 2014).
Gender and Enlistment
In January 2016, the U.S. armed forces finally removed the last barriers
preventing women from serving in all aspects of the military. Women can now
drive tanks, fire mortars, lead infantry combat missions, and serve in elite
military units such as the Green Berets, the Navy SEALs, and the Air Force
Pararescue (Codinha 2017). However, women continue to be underrepresented
in the military, making up only about 15% of the armed forces. Females are most
likely to enlist in the air force, where they constitute 13.2% of enlisted personnel
and 17.9% of commissioned officers (i.e., officers holding the rank of second
lieutenant or above). The Marines have the smallest proportion of females, either
as enlisted personnel (7.7%) or as commissioned officers (6.9%). In the Navy,
Air Force, and Marine Corps, the proportion of female commissioned officers
tends to mirror that of enlisted women. The greatest gap exists in the army,
where just under 18% of officers and just over 13% of enlisted personnel are
women (U.S. Department of Defense 2014).
Racial Minority Representation
In 2014, while racial minorities made up 23.4% of those ages 18 to 44 in the
total U.S. population, they constituted 32.9% of enlisted personnel. Women of
color are more likely to enlist in either the army or the navy. And within the
army, the percentage of enlisted racial minority women is almost double that of
racial minority men (see Figure 10.1).

Figure 10.1 Racial Groups Show Gender Differences across All Branches of
Service

Source: U.S. Department of Defense, Population Representation in the

Military Services: Fiscal Year 2014 Summary Report (Washington, DC:
Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and Readiness, 2014),
http://www.people.mil/Portals/56/Documents/2014%20Summary.pdf?
ver=2016-09-14-154051-563.

There has never been a U.S. war in which foreign-born persons have not
participated on the side of the United States. From the Revolutionary War to the
1840s, nearly half of military recruits were foreign-born, and during the Civil
War, nearly 20% of the Union army was made up of foreign-born troops. On
average, 8,000 immigrants and noncitizen permanent residents enlist in the U.S.
military annually (Powers 2016). Joining the armed forces is the fastest way to
gain citizenship. It is estimated that more than two-thirds of non–U.S. citizen
veterans ultimately become naturalized citizens (Batalova 2008). As Figure 10.2
shows, these trends have been generally increasing since 9/11, peaking at over
11,000 in 2011 and leveling off to slightly less than 8,000 annually by 2014
(Lawrence 2016).

Figure 10.2 The Rate of Non–U.S. Citizen Veterans Becoming Naturalized

Peaked in 2011

Source: Graph: “Naturalized Service Members, By Fiscal Year.” Credit:

Alyson Hurt/NPR. From “Service Members, Not Citizens: Meet the
Veterans Who Have Been Deported,” NPR Morning Edition, January 13,
2016.

A whole range of theories have been proposed, and a great deal of research has
been conducted over the years in attempts to answer questions about the military,
including who serves and under what conditions. Even a cursory examination of
any news media reveals that the military, terrorism, and war are intricately
interwoven into the American social landscape. And this landscape is reflective
of our matrix and the intersection of race, class, and gender. An examination of
the stock theories will shed some insight into why this is so.
 Critical Thinking

1. Does the fact that the United States has one of the world’s largest military budgets improve the
security of the United States or of the world?
2. How might other institutions, such as education, family, and health care, influence or be influenced
by the current U.S. military? How might these same institutions influence the military?
3. What kinds of policies might increase diversity, including diversity in race, gender, and class, in the
U.S. military?
4. In what ways are you affected by the military? Would you consider joining/serving? Why or why
not?
Military Sociology Stock Theories
Military sociology, the sociological analysis of armed forces and war, has been
a central concern within the sociological discipline since at least World War I
(Bottomore 1981). Three key sociological theories have controlled the field:
functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and monopoly and materialist
perspectives. Like all stock stories, these theories are both dominant within the
discipline of sociology and traditionally relied upon as explanations. In many
ways they also justify our use of the military, our involvement in wars, and our
concerns regarding terrorism.
Functionalism
Functionalist theory assumes that institutions come into being to meet specific
and basic societal needs. A functionalist approach to the military argues that
the military, war, and terrorism serve specific and important tasks, or functions,
within society. Some of these functions are socialization, integration, and
reduction of conflict. War, defined as the use of organized force, represents a
state of armed conflict between different nations, states, or groups within a
nation or state. War functions to legitimate state claims, regulate conflict
between states, minimize collateral damage among noncombatants, and extend
the social, political, and economic values of the victor upon the vanquished
(Park 1941). Terrorism is the unlawful use of force, particularly against
civilians, in pursuit of political, economic, or social aims. Functionalism views
terrorism as dysfunctional, as it disrupts social structures, increases stress, and
violates norms and rules of engagement. An examination of how functionalist
theorists view the military, war, and terrorism provides some key insights.

The Military Preserves Social Values

The military functions to preserve social values by encouraging patriotism,
compliance with normative expectations, and order, both domestically and
internationally. Accordingly, the stratification that occurs within the military,
such as along racial and gender lines, reflects these functions. Those tasks
considered most functionally important, such as those performed by officers and
in combat roles, require higher levels of training and responsibility, and are
therefore rewarded to a higher degree than other tasks and roles. For example,
generals in the U.S. Army are graduates of the United States Military Academy
at West Point; have advanced training in military tactics, troop deployment,
leadership, and logistics; and have spent several years advancing through the
ranks. On the other hand, an army private typically is qualified to serve after just
8 weeks of basic training. It is presumed that the inequality that results reflects
the functional differentiation associated with the valuing of different tasks.
Structural functionalists also stress the integrative functions served by the
military (Cardoso 2001, 164). The military provides these functions at multiple
levels. At the national level a strong military helps maintain social cohesion and
relative calm, as it is perceived as a deterrent to hostile and wanton attacks. The
military also serves at the individual level by socializing individuals and
advancing such notions as patriotism, maturity, and solidarity.
War Is a Bonding Experience
War, viewed functionally, helps citizens develop a form of social bonding or
solidarity. A nation and all of its citizens must come together to fight a common
enemy. Recall the scene at the U.S. Capitol in the aftermath of the attacks on
September 11, 2001, and similar scenes across the nation. Republicans and
Democrats, Asians, Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics, urbanites and rural dwellers,
gay, straight, and indifferent—all appeared to join hands in a collective show of
solidarity. Wars produce cultural artifacts such as art, shared collective
memories, and a sense of common purpose. And with the billions of dollars
associated with modern wars, war also functions to stimulate the economy by
providing jobs in the production of war/military goods and services. As we will
see in our examination of the history of war, war has been a significant factor in
the social mobility of women, people of color, immigrants, and the poor across
the United States. Finally, wars have served to stimulate advances in technology,
production processes, and sciences, leading to leaps forward in many areas, from
airplanes and jets to space flight, medical innovations, mass transit, and the
Internet (Lin 2010).

Terrorism Is Dysfunctional
Most sociologists ignored the topic of terrorism prior to the attacks on
September 11, 2001. Since those pivotal events, a great deal of scholarly
attention has been expended in efforts to understand them and prevent similar
attacks. Terrorists, from a functionalist perspective, are viewed as deviants who
violate basic norms of both civilization and war by targeting noncombatants.
Unfortunately, the label of “terrorist” is applied depending on an individual’s
perspective. A person might be viewed as a terrorist by one group but seen as a
revolutionary or even a patriot by another.

War, or violent attacks like those of September 11, 2001, can bring people
together, like the more than 1,000 who gathered at this candlelight vigil in the
wake of al-Qaeda’s attack.

Steve Liss / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty Images

Terrorism can be in the eye of the beholder. The United States originated from an
act that may be seen as terrorism, when the Sons of Liberty boarded ships
belonging to the East India Company in Boston Harbor and threw 342 chests of
tea overboard to protest what they believed to be an unjust law.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540

USA

Race/Ethnicity Is the Missing Piece

Functionalist approaches to the military, war, and terrorism ignore how these
institutions serve the interests of the powerful within society and fail to provide
specific analysis of race and ethnicity. The emphasis on the idea that the military
and war unify society obscures the fact that they can also be forces for disunity
and oppression. As we have observed earlier, terrorism, while viewed as
dysfunctional, may be functional and a form of resistance for those who feel that
their freedoms are being denied. Specifically, who gets to label an individual or
group as terrorist in many cases reflects the very power dynamics that the acts
are intended to alter. The definition is critical and it is political, and often it also
mirrors our concerns with race, class, and gender.
Symbolic Interactionism
A symbolic interactionist approach to the military investigates how we attach
meaning to things (flags and memorials), events (wars), and other
representations (heroes and patriotism) in support of war, terrorism, and the
military. Symbolic interactionists point out that military organizations have their
own values, symbols, hierarchies, cultural rituals, and forms of socialization.
The military socializes individuals to facilitate their entry into a specific
community whose ultimate goal is to engage in war and conflict. In other words,
the military creates symbolic meanings, representations, and recognitions that
attempt to create a specific military personality that fosters group interaction,
cohesion, and conformity.

Symbolic interactionism studies military life histories, the process of

recruitment, and how civilians are transformed into soldiers. Establishing the
legitimacy of the military and war is accomplished through the manipulation of
symbols such as patriotism, heroes, enemies, and justice. The legitimacy of war,
particularly, relies on the redefining of the killing of enemy soldiers, or
combatants, as casualties of war. For example, using the term collateral damage
instead of victim is one way this symbolism is extended to legitimate the
“accidental” killing of innocents, or noncombatants (Cockerham 2003).

One of the critiques of symbolic interactionism is that it fails to account

adequately for how social structures, identities, and military organizations
interact (Giddens 1984). Symbolic interactionists have provided no insight, for
example, into how racial, ethnic, and religious hostilities erupt into war, leading
to events such as the 9/11 attacks (Cockerham 2003).
Monopoly and Materialist Perspectives
Finally, the monopoly and materialist perspectives posit that military
organizations must maintain a legitimate monopoly on the use of force, and the
use of this force is uniquely tied to the material instruments of war. In other
words, the military argues that a central feature of the modern state is its
monopoly over the legitimate use of coercive force (Weber 1978, 50–56).
Coercive force is force in which intimidation is used to obtain compliance. The
monopoly perspective suggests that the state and its agents have an exclusive
right or privilege, granted by the citizens of the state, to use such force in order
to gain compliance.

Contextualizing the Military

Clearly, the link between the military and its use of coercive force is important.
Some scholars have argued that military institutions are a direct result of either
the real or potential struggles of war and armed conflict (Kestnbaum 2009).
They insist that if we are to understand the military, we must understand war.
War highlights not only inequities but also the structural and organizational
foundations of both conflict and coercion. National resources and their effective
military mobilization determine the origins and likelihood of successful military
campaigns. The basic questions that come from these lines of interest are
concerned with how wars are waged and the consequences of wars for national
existence (Kestnbaum 2009). Further, it is argued that the military force
represents the essential quality of the modern state. By extension, both war and
military violence are uniquely social events that create, maintain, and transform
states as well as individuals and societies (Weber 1991).

Assuming Legitimacy
The major criticism of this approach is that it assumes that the military has a
monopoly on the coercive use of force and, further, that such use is legitimate.
This theory also assumes that interstate forms of war (conflicts involving
national states, such as World Wars I and II) are somehow more legitimate than
intrastate forms of war (conflicts that exist or occur within the boundaries of
particular states). Third, this approach tends to overemphasize the material basis
of war, dismissing or marginalizing other major sources of struggle, such as
political, cultural, and other social dimensions and roots of both international
and intranational forms of conflict (Kestnbaum 2009). Several implications
follow from these criticisms. First, most of the wars fought by the United States
prior to 9/11 were against nations, with clearly defined and universally
recognized rules of war (as governed by the United Nations). The terrorist
attacks of 9/11 signaled a shift in how wars are fought. Now, what are termed
nonstate actors (individuals or organizations with economic, political, or social
power that allows them to influence both national and international events,
typically with violence) are most often the initiators of terrorist attacks, wars,
and other conflicts. The reality is that most recent wars and other conflicts have
involved nonstate actors. As we will see, nonstate actors such as ISIS (the so-
called Islamic State), al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram are on the rise and pose a
definite threat, not only to the United States but also to the world in general
(Brady 2017).

Second, and more central to our concerns with the matrix, is that this approach
ignores how the military, war, and terrorism tend to reflect, duplicate, and in
some cases actually transform the race, class, and gender hierarchies present
within society. Both state and nonstate actors utilize both organized and
unorganized strategies to effect change. Wars and other conflicts are waged on
multiple fronts and include actual combat as well as, and increasingly,
campaigns of terror that may include lone terrorists and cells. Methods and
strategies might range from simple tactics such as writing editorials and holding
press conferences to hacking into secure networks and planting fictitious stories
in formal news and social media outlets. As we will see when we apply the
matrix to this institution, race, class, and gendered differences in the military’s
allocation of human resources duplicates the hierarchies within the host society.
This means that military hierarchies, such as the hierarchy of the chain of
command and the hierarchy of honors and other sanctions, tend to reflect status
arrangements that are present within the wider society. Finally, this approach
does not address the issues involved when a state uses the military to coerce
compliance by domestic and/or indigenous groups, as when the U.S. military
was used to control the Native American populations during westward
expansion. The very presumption of the state’s legitimacy hides the racial and
gendered use of this force to preserve the racial hierarchy.

Concealed Stories: Critical Race Theory and Military Sociology

Critical race theorists began to challenge the overly conservative and apologetic approach
typically taken within military sociology. The earliest work by military sociologists found
military organizations to be necessary features of modern democracies. At the core of such
societies is a tension between violence and reason that war and the military serve to regulate
and mediate (Foucault 1977). All of our moral values and intellectual definitions of right and
wrong are derived from this viewpoint. Finally, the laws that we ultimately construct are a
direct consequence of violence and war. Their intent, critical theorists insist, is to preserve
peace and tranquility by establishing order, minimizing conflicts, and punishing violators. This
means that power, inequalities, and social existence are anchored in relationships of force that
are controlled through institutions, particularly those of the military (Foucault 2008).
Therefore, the race, gender, and class inequities that exist are not only manifested but also in
many ways preserved in military hierarchies. Obviously, as we will see, these inequalities
actually preceded military hierarchies.

Finally, the military serves the interests of the corporate elite in their pursuit of profits and
power. An informal alliance exists between the nation’s military and the major industries that
produce arms and other military materials, which seek to influence public policy. This
alliance, termed the military–industrial complex, is dominated by major U.S. corporations
and serves to preserve race, class, and gender hierarchies. By separating ownership from
management, the corporations in the military–industrial complex have effectively emancipated
themselves from stockholders. By reinvesting profits, they have eliminated the influence of
both financiers and the capital market. And through effective lobbying, they have come to
dominate and manipulate the state and governmental control (Galbraith 1967). The U.S.
military–industrial complex is structured by violence and aimed at creating, preserving, and
manipulating racial boundaries. This was clearly the case during the country’s period of nation
building and the Indian removal process (Perret 1989).

Contemporary research also highlights a stratified internal labor market within the military
consisting of two spheres: one for enlisted personnel (working class) and one for officers
(middle or managerial class). The different social locations or backgrounds of the people in
each sphere reflect societal norms. For example, typically enlisted ranks require at least a high
school degree, while officer grades require some college. These status distinctions, reflecting
access to and quality of educational institutions, consequently tend to reflect the racial,
gendered, and class hierarchies in the wider society. Hence, racial and ethnic minorities tend to
be concentrated in the enlisted ranks, and women tend to be concentrated in the support,
clerical, and medical fields (Booth and Segal 2005). Up until recently, women in the armed
forces were also limited to noncombat positions, which further reduced their likelihood of
promotion.
Lastly, as critical theorists have considered terrorism, again they have identified how race,
class, and gender affect not only how particular acts are perceived but also who is most likely
to be at risk of harm from terrorism. And, as to be expected, White, privileged males are less
likely to perceive themselves at risk for various types of terrorism—typically, they view
themselves as invulnerable. Women, across all groups, are more likely to be anxious about
being the targets or victims of terrorist attacks (Finucane, Slovic, Mertz, Flynn, and Satterfield
2000). After 9/11, a national study found that women and racial/ethnic minorities were more
likely than White males to have experienced sustained psychological distress and emotional as
well as physical health problems (Chu, Seery, Ence, Holman, and Silver 2006).
 Critical Thinking

1. How might the stock stories of military sociology account for the terrorist attacks on 9/11?
2. In what ways do the stock stories reflect both the historical periods in which they were developed and
the official perspective of the United States? Why are such stock stories appealing? What is the
difficulty in automatically assuming their reliability?
3. How might the stock stories be utilized to minimize the concerns of racial, gender, and class groups
or to marginalize such groups?
4. Almost all of us are affected in some way by the military, war, and acts of terrorism. How have these
affected you or your family?
Applying the Matrix Approach to U.S. Military
History, War, and Terrorism
Each war has shaped new traditions and created new social norms, heroes, and
methods of military engagement. Exploring how various wars have also
reflected our changing intersectional landscape of race, class, and gender will
provide insight into the operation of the matrix within military organizations.
One way to organize our discussion is to focus on those wars that have defined
us as a people, and that have cost us the most in terms of human life. We begin
with the Revolutionary War and then examine some of the U.S. government’s
hidden wars with Native Americans. With these as a backdrop and in the
interests of brevity, we then explore the costliest wars (in terms of both people
and capital) that the nation has waged: the Civil War, World War II, the Vietnam
War, and our current wars on terrorism.
Revolutionary War
The Revolutionary War (1775–83) involved 217,000 colonial soldiers. Of those,
4,435 died in combat, and another 6,188 were wounded (U.S. Department of
Veterans Affairs 2017). The U.S. military has always been a complex mix of
race, class, gender, and sexual identities. Native Americans, Blacks, immigrants,
Whites, women, the affluent class, the middle class, the working class, and the
poor have all constituted significant portions of our military. This was also true
of the first group of patriots to give their lives for this nation during the Boston
Massacre on March 5, 1770. Crispus Attucks, a mulatto (African mixed race), a
sailor by the name of Patrick Carr, an Irish immigrant, and two Englishmen—
Samuel Maverick, a teenage apprentice, and a rope maker named Samuel Gray
—all died from shots fired by the British soldiers that day. None were armed
(Brooks 2011). These first to die in our country’s history remarkably reflect the
diversity of our nation and those willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice.

Boston silversmith Paul Revere called the nation to arms in 1775 and was
answered by thousands of militiamen. On April 19, 1775, the first battle was
waged in Concord, Massachusetts, where 89 men from Massachusetts died or
were wounded. Within weeks of the first call, 6,000 men were mobilized. These
were soon joined by 16,000 more from the other four New England colonies
(Ferling 2010).

Black Soldiers
The British were the first to tap the support of Black slaves. Black militias were
established in all of the English colonies. Virginia governor John Murray issued
a proclamation on November 7, 1775, that granted full freedom to any and all
Blacks willing to serve. The only caveat was that the offer applied only to slaves
owned by the rebels, not to those owned by British Loyalists. The offer was
aimed at punishing and threatening the rebels. North Carolinian Joseph Hews,
one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, accused the British of
planning to “let loose Indians on our Frontiers” and to “raise the Negros against
us” (quoted in Ashe 1908, 473).

Black men and women worked as British spies in New York. They created
networks that helped others to escape, planned sabotage in rebellious cities, and
otherwise aided in the British cause. More than 300 escaped slaves immediately
joined the British within the first month of the war. Over the next few months
more than 30,000 slaves would escape and fight for the British. This represented
the single largest emancipation to take place within the United States until the
Civil War. With the former slaves, the British established three full companies of
colonial marines. These regiments took part in the sacking of Washington and
fought in the Battle of Baltimore and along the coast (Lender 2016, 114).

George Washington was adamantly against the use of slaves in the military, but
the ravages of the winter of 1777–78 and the devastation of the Continental army
by both disease and desertion forced him to reconsider. He reluctantly granted
Rhode Island permission to raise a regiment of free Blacks and slaves. A total of
5,000 free Blacks and slaves served in the Continental army, and the first
integrated units of the U.S. military were created. Black and White men fought
alongside each other almost on an equal footing, receiving the same pay, facing
the same dangers, and providing the same levels of skill and courage (Lanning
2000, 73).

White Ethnic Soldiers

All forms of immigration were halted when the Revolutionary War began, but a
large percentage of White immigrants and their descendants served in the
Revolutionary War. For example, Irish and German immigrants fought on both
sides of this war, but those living in the Mid-Atlantic states comprised the largest
proportion of recruits in the Continental army. Roughly one out of every four
Continental soldiers was of Irish descent, and both groups fought in all-Irish and
all-German battalions. When the Revolutionary War broke out, many European
nations provided soldiers to both sides. Of these, several German states actually
provided mercenaries to the British army (Lutz 2008).

The Role of Women

The Revolutionary War afforded women on both sides of the conflict a variety of
roles, including combat. One of the little-known achievements of women during
the Revolutionary War was a successful boycott of British goods starting in the
1760s and continuing through the 1770s. Many women avoided purchasing
British goods by making their own products at home, particularly clothing, and
therefore effectively changed the consumption patterns of households. Acts of
sabotage were also frequently carried out by women; for example, Catherine Van
Rensselaer Schuyler, wife of General Philip Schuyler, burned the wheat fields
around Albany, New York, thus denying the harvest to British forces (Best 2012,
23). Both the British and colonial forces utilized women in their traditional roles
as homemakers and domestic servants to carry out espionage. As cooks and
maids, who were routinely ignored, women were able to gain unrestricted access
to military operations and move easily to gather information about troop
movements, leadership changes, and equipment shortages. Some reported
directly to General Washington and became highly accomplished spies. Of
special note is Ann Simpson Davis, whom Washington personally selected to
carry messages to his generals in Pennsylvania. Slipping through British-
occupied areas unnoticed, she would often carry secret messages in sacks of
grain or in her clothing. She received a letter of commendation for her services
from Washington (Rhoades-Piotti 2017, 251). Women also served in more
conventional roles as nurses and medics (Figley, Pitts, Chapman, and Elnitsky
2015).
Wars and Native Americans
Some of the most violent and cruel wars in U.S. history took place on our own
soil, against Native American populations. American military forces fought 29
major wars against Native Americans, stretching from precolonial times to well
into the 20th century. These wars cost thousands of lives, and Native Americans
lost thousands of acres of land, from Georgia to Ohio, from Illinois to Alabama,
and from Florida to Texas. The only other war on our soil to match this dreadful
toll in both destruction and lives lost was the Civil War (Stout 2009).

Native Americans and the Revolutionary War

General George Washington, fearful of the Native Americans’ potential strategic
advantage, attempted to neutralize their ability to act at the start of the
Revolutionary War. With few exceptions, the Native Americans sided with the
British. Four of the six Iroquois nations joined forces with the British, and
Loyalist forces devastated the Continental forces in western New York and
Pennsylvania in 1778 and 1779. In spite of significant Native American support,
not a single Native American representative was invited to the European treaty
negotiations that concluded the war in 1783. As a result, the British ceded much
of lands occupied by Native Americans between the Appalachian Mountains and
the Mississippi River (Callaway 1995).

During the Revolutionary War, the Seminoles and a large contingent of African
ex-slaves also allied with the British. This alliance was not without its difficulty,
as the Seminoles also held slaves. Slavery among the Native Americans was
radically different from that found among the Europeans. Among the Seminoles,
slaves gradually became part of the group through marriage. After the
Revolutionary War, southern slaveholders became increasingly alarmed at the
armed Black and Native American communities throughout Florida. The
territory, formally under Spanish rule, was a safe haven for escaped slaves. The
first effort to deal with the escaped slaves was in the Treaty of New York (1790),
which attempted to force Seminoles to honor new boundary lines and return
African slaves to their masters. The Seminoles and other Native Americans
refused to honor the treaty and return the Black fugitive slaves. From these
humble beginnings the Black Seminoles came into being. Black Seminole
culture, a blend of African, Native American, Spanish, and slave traditions,
solidified during the 1800s (Ray 2007, 100).
War of 1812
A total of 286,730 soldiers fought in the War of 1812 (1812–15). Of these, 2,260
died in combat, and another 4,505 were wounded (U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs 2017). Land, specifically Native American land, was the principal source
of the tensions that gave rise to this conflict between the United States and Great
Britain over British violations of U.S. maritime and trading rights with Europe.
It quickly became a war that pitted the United States against the Native
Americans, who were allied with Britain and France. All of the major players
wanted to consolidate or actuate their claims on Native American homelands
throughout the interior of the continent. Tribal nations immediately understood
the risk to their lands, and a diverse group of Native American military leaders
banded together. A faction of the Seneca joined with the Americans in the
Battles of Fort George and Chippewa. Most other Native Americans sided with
the British against the United States, believing that a British victory would lead
to a cessation of land expansions. About a dozen Native American nations
participated in the war (Fixico 2008).

One of the most diverse groups of soldiers participating in this war consisted of
Choctaw Indians, free Blacks, Creoles, slaves, pirates, and Filipino sailors.
Operating out of a swamp, this motley crew fought the decisive Battle of New
Orleans in January 1815. In this battle, considered the final major battle of the
war, the invading British army was defeated; the British had been intent on
seizing New Orleans and subsequently all of the lands associated with the
Louisiana Purchase. Although the British were defeated, the increasingly bitter
relationship between the United States and the Seminoles continued. The War of
1812 was also the harbinger of the various Seminole Wars (Warshauer 2007).

The U.S. victory in the War of 1812 marked the acceleration of westward
expansion and the destruction of much of what had been Native American lands.
Andrew Jackson wasted no time in pushing for passage of the Indian Removal
Act; this 1830 law banished all Native Americans to lands west of the
Mississippi River. The Indian Removal Act is most directly associated with what
became known as the Trail of Tears (1838–39), the name given by Native
Americans to the devastating relocation process, which resulted in thousands of
deaths from disease and exposure as tribes were forced to leave their lands
(Warshauer 2007).

Seminole Wars
During the War of 1812, both African escaped slaves, known as maroons, and
Black Seminoles waged war against the United States. Their combined strength
made them targets of General Andrew Jackson. After the War of 1812 was
concluded, Jackson led army forces in an attack on Fort Gadsden (also known as
the Negro Fort) in an attempt to disrupt Florida’s maroon communities. Thus the
first of the Seminole Wars (1817–18) began. The Seminole Wars were three
conflicts in Florida between the United States and the Seminoles. Often these
conflicts were instigated by the British against U.S. settlers migrating south into
Seminole territory. The fact that the Seminoles provided sanctuary to escaping
Black slaves also precipitated these conflicts. The three Seminole Wars were
never officially declared “wars” by the U.S. government. They were essentially
the continuation of the U.S. policy aimed at stripping Native Americans of their
lands and forcing them west of the Mississippi. Collectively, the Seminole Wars
resulted in the removal of almost 4,000 Seminoles to Oklahoma. In later years,
some Black Seminoles went on to become members of the famed Buffalo
Soldiers (Calvin 2015).

By 1837, John Horse was an ex-slave and a formidable military leader and
member of the Seminole tribe. He launched several successful campaigns
throughout the Florida Everglades. At the age of 36, he was elevated from
subchief to war chief. He commanded both fellow ex-slaves and Black
Seminoles. Black Seminoles had been instrumental in the liberation of slaves
from plantations throughout Florida and Georgia, and were frequent instigators
of Native American rebellions against the U.S. government’s policy of forced
removal to present-day Oklahoma. Captured by Union troops in November
1837, John Horse met and became allies with another Seminole war leader—
Wild Cat. After their escape, they inspired hope and resistance among both
Black and Seminole people. The ultimate battle would come on Christmas Day
in 1837, as a sizable U.S. force pursued the Seminoles into the Everglades of
southern Florida. With fewer than 380 defenders, the Seminoles faced Union
soldiers totaling more than 1,000. Thus began the Battle of Lake Okeechobee,
the bloodiest contest of the Seminole Wars. His forces decimated, John Horse
and his followers fled south with the Seminoles toward the last safe zone in
Florida. Fearing for the survival of his own wife and children, John Horse
surrendered during the spring of 1838. By the end of the summer of 1838, he and
his family had joined other Native Americans in Indian Territory in present-day
Oklahoma (Bird 2008; Tucker 1992).

Mexican–American War
From 1846 to 1848, the United States was at war with Mexico. A total of 78,718
soldiers were engaged in the Mexican–American War. Among those who
served, a total of 1,733 died, while 4,125 suffered nonmortal wounds (U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs 2017). The Mexican–American War was
primarily an outcome of the U.S. government’s desire to annex Texas,
California, and other Mexican territories. U.S. forces launched a three-pronged
offensive: from the north through Texas, from the east through the Port of
Veracruz, and from the west through present-day California and New Mexico.
The Mexican–American War was concluded in 1848 with the signing of the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In this treaty, Mexico ceded all lands now
considered the American Southwest. In return, all Mexicans living on that land
were to be granted full U.S. citizenship. Actions taken by both the U.S. Congress
and the Supreme Court denied American citizenship to both Black Mexicans and
Pueblo Indians, even though both groups had previously been Mexican citizens.
Black Mexicans in Texas were given the choice of staying in Texas and
becoming slaves or being deported to Mexico, where slavery was outlawed.
Pueblo Indians would not gain the right to vote until 1924. Finally, many other
Mexican Americans lost their lands to White American settlers. The Mexican–
American War highlighted not only the differences between regions but also the
influence of slavery. The nation was on a collision course that could only lead to
civil war.

After the Mexican-American War, Mexico ceded a huge swath of land to the
U.S. with the condition that all the Mexican citizens residing there be granted
American citizenship. Despite these terms, the U.S. denied citizenship to many
black Mexicans and Pueblo Indians in the region.

George Eastman House / Premium Archive / Getty Images

Civil War
If the Revolutionary War defined the United States as a republic, then the Civil
War defined it as a nation. The Civil War was a struggle over who would be
covered under “we the people” and who would not. Consequently, this conflict
also helped define the meaning of U.S. citizenship. The war affected not only
native-born Whites and African Americans but also foreign-born residents and
Native Americans. A total of 2,213,363 soldiers served in the Union army, and
1,050,000 served in the Confederate army. A total of 140,414 Union soldiers
died in battle, as did 74,524 Confederate soldiers. Among Union soldiers,
281,881 suffered nonmortal wounds; it is unknown how many Confederate
soldiers were wounded (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs 2017).

The Union, the Confederacy, and Ethnicity

On the eve of the Civil War, the United States was truly becoming a nation of
immigrants. For the first time the old immigrants (people who came in the
earliest waves of immigration, from England, Scotland, and Wales) were being
supplanted by new immigrants (people from Ireland, Switzerland, Poland,
Germany, and other Southern European countries). In 1860, about 13% of the
U.S. population was foreign-born. This group overwhelmingly not only
supported the Union cause but also volunteered for the army in numbers that far
exceeded their proportion in the U.S. population. A quarter of the Union armed
forces were foreign-born (i.e., 543,000 out of the more than 2 million Union
soldiers). Collectively, immigrants and the sons of immigrants accounted for
about 43% of the Union army. Many of these were segregated into ethnic
regiments (Doyle 2015). In contrast, the Confederate army was 91% native-born,
primarily the descendants of old immigrants.

Race and Gender in the Civil War

The Union army, despite intense prejudices, actively recruited Native Americans
under the condition that they would fight only in Indian Territory. Two regiments
—the First and Second Indian Home Guards—were established. Initially serving
under White officers, Native Americans eventually assumed leadership of these
regiments.

The start of hostilities put a strain on the Union army and forced it to abandon
many of its forts in Indian Territory. This provided a unique opportunity for the
Confederates to open up an alliance with the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw,
Chickasaw, and Seminole. Their geographic location also ensured that they were
culturally tied to the Confederacy. Native American tribes siding with the
Confederates were part of the Texas regiments and fought against Union troops
(National Park Service 2010).

Although it is difficult to document the contributions of women during the Civil

War, we do know of distinguished service by some women. At least 250 women,
dressed as men, are known to have fought on both sides of the war (Blanton and
Cook 2002). Harriet Tubman, who was born a slave, served as a spy, scout, and
hospital nurse during the war. Because of Tubman’s knowledge of escape routes
from the South, Union officers recruited her to organize an intelligence service
to provide troop deployment and other tactical information on Confederate
military operations (Moore 1991).

Rape is one of those peculiar atrocities of war visited upon women, and it
remains a widespread weapon of war today. The Civil War was no exception.
Even though President Lincoln—in General Order No. 100, known as the Lieber
Code of 1863—established strict guidelines prohibiting wartime atrocities,
particularly rape, such atrocities nevertheless occurred. What is important about
the Lieber Code is that it represents the first time Black women were afforded
protections against rape by White men. As many as 450 cases involving sexual
crimes were tried by Union military courts (Feimster 2013), and at least 20 of
these cases were prosecuted on behalf of “colored” women (Stutzman 2009).
Resistance/StorIES
Cathay Williams
Cathay Williams (1844–92) was the first documented woman ever to enlist and serve in the
U.S. Army while posing as a man. Williams was born a slave on the Johnson plantation on the
outskirts of Jefferson City, Missouri. In 1861, as Union forces occupied Jefferson City during
the early period of the Civil War, the slaves were declared contraband, and many were forced
into military service in support roles such as cooks, laundresses, and nurses. Williams, then 17
years old, was pressed into service in the Eighth Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment, under
the command of Colonial William Plummer Benton. Over the next few years, as a soldier in
the Eighth Indiana, Williams participated in campaigns in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Georgia.
She participated in the Battle of Pea Ridge and the Red River Campaign. Later, Williams was
transferred to Washington, D.C., where she served with General Phillip Sheridan’s battalion.
As the war drew to a close, she worked at Jefferson Barracks. After the war, Williams enlisted
for a 3-year term in the U.S. Regular Army on November 15, 1866, in St. Louis, Missouri.
During this term she served with the famed Buffalo Soldiers. When she suffered a bout of
smallpox, a medical examiner discovered that she was a woman. As a result, she was
discharged from the army on October 14, 1868.

Cathay Williams, who later altered her name to William Cathay, hid her gender as the nation’s
 only female Buffalo Soldier, as a private from 1866 to 1868. A bronze bust memorial was
dedicated to her on July 22, 2016, at the Richard Allen Cultural Center and Museum in
Leavenworth, Kansas.
Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration

After the Civil War, the army disbanded all of the volunteer “colored” regiments
and established six segregated Black regiments under White officers. In 1869,
the infantry regiments were reconstituted into the 24th and the 25th Infantries.
Two cavalry regiments, the 9th and the 10th, remained intact. These regiments
saw combat in both the Southwest and the West in the so-called Indian War, and
during the Spanish–American War.
World War II
World War II (U.S. involvement 1941–45) was, among other things, a scramble
for raw resources such as oil, gold, and diamonds that spanned Europe, Africa,
Asia, and the Middle East. A total of 16,112,566 Americans served in World War
II. Of those, 53,402 died in battle and 670, 846 were wounded. In 2017,
1,711,000 World War II veterans were still living (U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs 2017).

Unrest at Home and Abroad

From its beginning in 1939, World War II was cast as a race war as Adolf Hitler
and Nazi Germany stormed through Poland and the Soviet Union, killing Jews
(some 6 million over the course of the war) and declaring Slavs (mainly ethnic
Poles, Serbs, and Russians) to be subhuman (Timm 2010). The Japanese, allied
with Germany in this effort, believed that they were the superior race and
attempted to overpower China and other Asian countries. The Japanese held the
United States in equal contempt, describing Americans as a decadent and
mongrel people (Baofu 2014).

Meanwhile, here in the United States, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the
Japanese in December 1941, 120,000 citizens of Japanese ancestry were ordered
into concentration camps. As our nation castigated both Germany and Japan for
their racist imperialism, Jim Crow laws ruled the South and the military.
American cities were repeatedly rocked by race riots. Whites attacked Blacks in
shipyards in Mobile, Alabama; Whites targeted both Blacks and immigrants in
Detroit; White workers rioted in Beaumont, Texas; and White servicemen beat
Mexican Americans in Los Angeles during the so-called Zoot Suit Riots. In
1943 alone, 242 separate violent attacks targeting African Americans occurred in
47 U.S. cities as southern White migrants clashed with Black residents over
access to public spaces, jobs, and housing (Honey 2007).

African Americans: Upward Mobility and Continued

Discrimination
During the war, some 400,000 women served in the American military, primarily
in the Women’s Army Corps and the Army and Navy Nurse Corps. Black
women constituted the largest group of women of color within the Women’s
Army Corps, accounting for 10.6% of the total (Honey 2007). Black women in
particular made significant gains in the labor force during the war, although
these advances were significantly curtailed by legally sanctioned racial and
gendered segregation across the entire country.

While President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 Executive Order 8802 prohibited

racial discrimination in the defense industries and civil service jobs, this rule was
rarely enforced. Most employers turned to non-Whites only when they had
exhausted the White labor supply. Even then, non-Whites were relegated to the
most menial and dangerous positions, frequently on night shifts and in janitorial
slots. Unions further hindered Black women’s ability to gain employment in
unionized blue-collar jobs. When Black people were hired, they were forced to
use separate restrooms and were often paid the lowest salaries for the most
difficult work. Hate strikes, a series of White supremacist wildcat strikes, were
triggered throughout the war, such as in 1943 when White women working at the
Baltimore Western Electric plant demanded toilet facilities separate from those
used by the Black women working at the plant. Ultimately, the racial restrictions
in the military–industrial complex forced Black women to remain in the private
sector, serving as maids (Honey 2007).

Fully qualified African American nurses often found that racial segregation and
discrimination hampered their entry into military service during World War II.
And even those who made it in found Jim Crow discrimination waiting for them
at the door. In 1945, thanks to pressure applied by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt,
60 Black women were sent to Lovell Hospital at Fort Devens (outside Boston) to
be trained as medical technicians. The commanding officer objected to Black
medical technicians placing thermometers in the mouths of White servicemen,
and he ordered these women to be reclassified from medical technicians to
orderlies. A group of African American servicewomen met with the
commanding officer, only to be insulted and dismissed. They walked out of the
meeting and refused to report to work the next morning. After being threatened
with charges of mutiny, most returned to work. Six did not. When these six were
threatened with execution, still four stayed away. They were eventually court-
martialed for refusing to obey orders, found guilty, and sentenced to a year of
hard labor. The also received dishonorable discharges. A national protest led by
the NAACP, the ACLU, and Mary McLeod Bethune’s National Council of
Negro Women forced a reversal of the decision (Bray 2016), but resistance to
African American women serving across all of the armed forces persisted
throughout the war (Wynn 2010).
For many Black men, the military offered decent wages and the potential for
upward mobility after the war. But the military life, they discovered, was a
continuation of the discrimination and segregation prevalent in the wider society.
Often both the military and government officials looked upon Black soldiers as
inferior. They rejected Blacks as leaders, assuming that Blacks would serve best
under White officers. While the U.S. Army maintained separate Black
regiments, the navy restricted Blacks to positions as cooks, janitors, and waiters.
The Marine Corps refused to allow Blacks to join altogether. But possibly the
worst treatment occurred among those Blacks serving in the South. Here even
Nazi prisoners of war were accorded better treatment than Black soldiers.
Prisoners of war could dine with Whites, often ride on the trains, and even go
into town to view movies. Black soldiers and civilians were denied all of these
(Wynn 2010).

In 1940 just 4,000 African Americans served in the U.S. Navy, most of them as
cooks or dishwashers or in the engine rooms. Another 12,500 served in naval
construction units such as the Seabees and another thousand in the Coast Guard.
It was not until 1943 that African Americans were admitted into all naval
branches on a proportional basis, and the first Black naval officers were
appointed in February 1944. Segregation still prevailed, and the only way Blacks
could crew a ship was if it was entirely Black. In 1944 the USS Mason and the
submarine chaser PC-1264, both with all-Black crews, were commissioned to
escort destroyers. That same year the first integrated crews were introduced on
25 auxiliary vessels. By the end of the war, 165 African Americans were serving
in the navy and 5,000 in the Coast Guard. The overwhelming majority of these,
95%, still served in mess halls. Only 54 Black naval officers and 700 Coast
Guard officers were serving at the close of hostilities, in 1945 (Wynn 2010).

Labor Shortages and the Bracero Program

Latino men and women also benefited from the labor needs of the military–
industrial complex during World War II. In 1942, labor shortages on railroads, in
mining operations, at shipyards, and in agriculture forced the U.S. government to
establish the Bracero Program, which allowed 50,000 agricultural workers and
765 railroad workers from Mexico to enter the United States as contract guest
workers (bracero is the Spanish word for manual laborer). These workers were
critical to the nation’s wartime economy. The program established basic workers’
rights (sanitation, adequate shelter and food) and a minimum wage of 30 cents
an hour. Through various extensions of the program, 4.6 million contracts were
signed from 1942 to 1964, with many workers coming back year after year.
From its inception, however, the Bracero Program was fraught with problems, as
desperate Mexican workers were often relegated to the most difficult, least
desirable, and lowest-paying jobs in agriculture. In theory the workers were
protected, with guaranteed sanitary housing, decent meals at reasonable prices,
occupational insurance at the farm owners’ expense, and free transportation back
to Mexico at the ends of their contracts. In reality, these rules were often and
flagrantly broken as farm wages dropped and abuses ran rampant (Gonzalez
2013).

Asian Americans in the Enlisted Ranks

One particular group that faced systematic discrimination during the war
consisted of about 500 Nisei (second-generation Japanese—i.e., children of
immigrants) women who served in the U.S. forces in the enlisted ranks and
worked as office personnel, translators, and medical professionals. They had to
contend not only with the reality that their families were being held in
internment camps but also with the Japanese cultural expectation that women
should be docile and subservient to men. For many of these women, their
wartime experience was a turning point in their lives as they navigated racial,
gender, and national identities. The military experience for Japanese American
(as well as for Korean and Chinese American) women was different from that of
African American women in that they did not serve in segregated units (Moore
2003).

Correcting the Record

The Medal of Honor, often called the Congressional Medal of Honor because it
is awarded in the name of Congress, is the highest military honor that an
individual can receive for combat heroism. Racial discrimination was so extreme
during World War II that not a single African American received a Medal of
Honor during the war or immediately after. This injustice began to be remedied
somewhat only after researchers at Shaw University conducted a study in the
mid-1990s and found that systematic racial discrimination had prevented Blacks
from being considered (Converse, Gibran, Cash, Griffith, and Kohn 1997).
The 100th Infantry Battalion, or the 42nd Regimental Combat Team, composed
exclusively of Japanese Americans, was one of the most highly decorated units
in the U.S. military, yet the battalion’s members were denied the nation’s highest
combat award. Among the unit’s citations were an accumulated 18,000
individual decorations, but only one wartime Medal of Honor, 53 Distinguished
Service Crosses, 9,486 Purple Hearts, and 7 Presidential Unit Citations. Anti-
Japanese sentiment would deny many the nation’s highest honor. It would take
another 57 years before 21 more would receive the Medal of Honor (Williams
2000).

Bettmann / Bettmann / Getty Images

Of the 3,488 Medals of Honor awarded as of June 2016, 263 have gone to Irish
Americans, 87 to African Americans, 42 to Hispanic Americans, 47 to Asian
Americans, 22 to Native Americans, 25 to Italian Americans, and at least 28 to
Jewish Americans. Only one Medal of Honor has been awarded to a woman.
The numbers of Medal of Honor recipients of various races and ethnicities are
even more telling when we look behind the scenes. Most of the Jewish,
Hispanic, Asian, and African American recipients have been recognized only
after decades of anonymity and historical amnesia. Over the past three decades,
each U.S. president has held special ceremonies to honor these heroes for their
service and sacrifices. These delayed recipients of the nation’s highest
recognition of valor have been identified through a congressionally mandated
review.

On January 13, 1997, President Bill Clinton awarded the Medal of Honor to
seven African American World War II veterans. Only one recipient, Vernon
Baker, was still alive to receive it. On June 21, 2000, after more than 50 years,
the government recognized and awarded 22 Asian American soldiers for their
valor during World II. In awarding these medals, President Clinton stated, “It’s
long past time to break the silence about their courage . . . rarely has a nation
been so well-served by a people it has so ill-treated” (quoted in Williams 2000).
Most recently, President Barack Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to 24
overlooked Black, Hispanic, and Jewish heroes. In all of these cases, a military
tribunal declared that all were “denied Medal(s) of Honor years ago because of
bias” (Straw 2014).

Concealed Story: Marcario García

Marcario García answered his nation’s call to go to war. García, a native of Mexico, grew up
in the Fort Bend area in Texas. In November 1942 he was drafted and was soon bound for the
European theater. There, during the Normandy attack in November 1944, he was wounded.
When VE Day ended the war in Europe on May 8, 1945, he returned to the United States and
his hometown. VJ Day, announcing the Japanese surrender and the end of World War II,
occurred on August 14, 1945. Less than two weeks later, on August 23, 1945, Harry Truman
awarded García the Medal of Honor in a White House ceremony. García was a hometown
hero.

Marcario Garcia

Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration

A fabulous party was held to celebrate the local hero. A story in the Houston Post on
September 7, 1945, was headlined “Sugar Land War Hero.” But just a day after this public
welcome, Staff Sergeant García was refused service at the Oasis Café in the nearby city of
Richmond. He was then beaten with a bat, resulting in his hospitalization; he was subsequently
charged with drunkenness and disorderly conduct. The charges were ultimately dropped, but
this incident illustrates the racial climate in America at the time—a climate in which
individuals could honorably serve, putting their lives on the line on foreign battlefields, and
still come home to a place where their basic freedoms were circumscribed by race, class, and
gender.

Source: Michael A. Olivas, “The ‘Trial of the Century’ That Never Was: Staff Sgt. Marcario
García, the Congressional Medal of Honor, and the Oasis Café,” Indiana Law Journal 83, no.
4 (2008): 1391–1403.

Although five Native Americans who served in World War II were Medal of
Honor recipients, few have acknowledged the clandestine and important mission
served by the group known as code talkers. Their story is both unique and
important. The Japanese military had become very adept at breaking the
sophisticated codes utilized by the U.S. forces. In the search for a solution, it was
suggested that the language of the Navajo might be effective in thwarting the
Japanese code breakers. This language, without an alphabet or symbols, was in
use only in remote areas of the American Southwest. At the onset of World War
II no more than 30 non-Navajo could understand the language. Therefore its
potential as code was immediately recognized. During one of the most hard-
fought battles in the Pacific theater, at Iwo Jima, a strange language was
intercepted coming from American radios. The secret messages were derived
from the Navajo language and transmitted by Native American soldiers. A total
of 400 Navajo served in the Marines Corps as code talkers. While the value of
what they contributed was significant, it was not until September 17, 1992, that
they were honored in a ceremony at the Pentagon (Asturias 2008).
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (1954–75), one of the most contentious conflicts this nation
has seen, continues to define U.S. politics, military wisdom, and national policy.
President George H. W. Bush euphemistically declared that the 1991 Persian
Gulf War would “not be another Vietnam,” and all succeeding presidents have
found themselves arguing with the war’s ghost—Bill Clinton in the Balkans,
George W. Bush in Iraq, and Barack Obama in Afghanistan. The Vietnam War
resulted in an estimated 1.1 million Vietnamese army and Viet Cong military
deaths and another 533,000 civilian deaths. Of the 2.1 million U.S. men and
women who served, 90,220 died and 153,303 were wounded. Today, an
estimated 7,391,000 Vietnam veterans are living (U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs 2017). The Vietnam War coincided with various civil rights movements
—the Black civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, the
Native American movement—and a whole slew of countercultural movements,
and, of course, it was the entire reason for the antiwar movement. But this does
not totally explain why this was the most unpopular, most debated, most
contentious war in U.S. history.

The Vietnam War challenged Americans and their leaders to reconsider how
wars should be fought and, more important, by whom. As images of body bags
and military misconduct in combat filled the airwaves, talk about a new military
emerged among both military leaders and politicians. The draft was one casualty
of the Vietnam War. While draftees made up only 25% of the U.S. military at
that time, they were more than half of the army’s battle casualties. More than
half of the young men of draft-eligible age between 1964 and 1973 never served.
Richard Nixon promised to end the draft when he was campaigning for the
presidency in 1968. In February 1970, a presidential commission recommended
the creation of an all-volunteer force (Eikenberry 2013). The Vietnam War
forced the nation to reconsider how race and duty intersect.
Blacks were overrepresented in the military during the Vietnam War and made
up a yet larger proportion of casualties.

Ian Brode / Hulton Archive / Getty Images

More Blacks served in Vietnam than in any war before or since. During the
height of the war (1965–69), Blacks accounted for 11% of the American
population but made up 12.6% of the soldiers in Vietnam. They also made up
14.1% of the war dead (National Archives 2016). Military recruitment
advertisements were carefully crafted to feature African American men and
women but avoided overrepresenting them. The advertising agencies charged
with crafting these ads took into consideration both the arguments of civil rights
activists that Blacks were overrepresented among war casualties and the fears
that an all-volunteer military would become disproportionately populated by
lower-income minorities. The ads they developed attempted to strike a balance,
featuring Blacks and Whites, and males and females, in identical environments
(Bailey 2009).

As noted above, the Vietnam War took place during the height of several civil
rights movements. Most significantly, Black civil rights activists began to point
out the multiple forms of racism associated with the military. Under pressure
from civil rights groups, President John F. Kennedy in 1962 reactivated the
Committee on Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces. The committee released
a report in 1964 that identified several racial problems. It noted that while
African Americans made up close to 13% of the U.S. population, they
constituted only 9% of the various branches of the armed forces. Throughout the
military, Black troops were unevenly promoted, and their opportunities were
restricted within both the National Guard and the Army Reserve. Most still
served in segregated units, and they faced high levels of discrimination both on
military bases and in the surrounding communities (Coffey 1998).

As U.S. involvement in Vietnam increased, so did the numbers of African

American recruits. These increases were associated with a discriminatory draft
and other governmental policies. For example, the draft deferments for both
college and employment favored middle-class White youth. A majority of those
drafted were poor, undereducated, and urban. Blue-collar workers and the
unemployed faced an increased likelihood of being drafted. Finally, less than 1%
of those serving on Selective Service draft boards (boards made up of citizen
volunteers charged with determining who within their communities would serve
or receive deferments, postponements, or exemptions) were Black, and the draft
boards in seven states had no Blacks at all (Coffey 1998).

Most of the deaths of Black soldiers in Vietnam occurred during the war’s first
phase. Blacks were overrepresented in the infantry at that time and consequently
had significantly higher casualties. Interestingly, as the military shifted to a
withdrawal phase, deaths among Black servicemen declined, while a
disproportionate number of Hispanics died in combat. Some speculate that this
shift reflects the effectiveness of civil rights activism, which applied pressure to
decision makers to replace African Americans with members of less politically
mobilized ethnic groups, such as Hispanics, during the withdrawal phase of the
war (Talbot and Oplinger 2014).

Obviously absent from the binary construct of military advertisements was the
possibility of recruiting either Latino or Asian Americans. Part of this might
have been deliberate avoidance, particularly of Hispanics, as Chicano antiwar
leaders were extremely vocal about their opposition to any form of military
service (Oropeza 2005).

Vietnam veterans constitute nearly half of all homeless veterans today. Of these,
close to 45% are African American or Hispanic, despite the fact that these
groups make up only 10.4% and 3.4%, respectively, of the U.S. veteran
population (National Coalition for Homeless Veterans 2017).
Wars on Terrorism
Terrorists function to disrupt social, political, and economic processes, with the
aim of accomplishing specific ends. There are three forms of terrorism:
individual, group, and state sponsored. Many observers today believe that state-
sponsored terrorism is the biggest challenge to world peace.

The war on terrorism, also often called the global war on terrorism or the war
on terror, consists of a series of military and legislative campaigns that began
after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. These have involved
both covert and overt military operations, new legislation aimed at increasing
national security, and efforts to block the flow of money going to terrorists.
Those critical of such efforts argue that they stem primarily from an ideology of
fear and repression that targets specific groups, and that they actually promote
violence, thus strengthening terrorist recruitment efforts (Hafetz 2011).

The phrase “war against terrorism” first appeared in 1984 in reaction to the 1983
Beirut barracks bombings, a set of terrorist attacks that occurred during
Lebanon’s Civil War. In the attacks, two truck bombs were used to target
separate buildings that housed peacekeeping forces, specifically U.S. and French
soldiers. In the suicide attacks, 241 American and 58 French soldiers, 6 civilians,
and 2 attackers were killed. The Reagan administration used these provocations
to seek enhanced powers to freeze the assets of terrorist groups and respond
quickly to perceived threats with military action. The U.S. strike on Libya in
April 1986 was the first strategic use of this policy. In this attack, code-named
Operation El Dorado Canyon, the U.S. military conducted air strikes in
retaliation for Libyan sponsorship of terrorism against Americans. During the
same period, the Reagan administration was also covertly involved in trying to
topple several governments. One example is the Iran-Contra affair, in which
senior administration officials violated the law by facilitating the acquisition of
military arms for both Iran and the Contras in Nicaragua, as part of an attempt to
destabilize autonomous governments. A total of $212 million in covert U.S.
military aid flowed into Central American states in 1986 alone. By 1992, when a
United Nations–brokered peace was established, more than 80,000 Salvadorans
had been killed, 8,000 more had disappeared, and more than a million of El
Salvador’s 5 million citizens had been displaced (Sandford 2003, 70). Often
indigenous peasants were targeted, as was the case in Guatemala, where more
than 200,000 people died (Sullivan and Jordan 2004). These covert operations
included disseminating propaganda and arming and training Indian leaders
willing to fight (Krauss 1986, 569).

The current war on terrorism is associated with the events that occurred on
September 11, 2001. Since that time, Arab and Muslim Americans have been
systematically targeted, racialized, and often ostracized for acts they did not
commit, accused of things they did not do, and presumed guilty despite their
firm assertion of their commitment to the United States as citizens (Aziz 2012).
Pervasive levels of Islamophobia, or intense fear and paranoia regarding
Muslims and Arabs (both those living in the United States and those abroad),
have consistently and increasingly been identified among U.S. citizens, and hate
crimes against people assumed to be Muslim have spiked dramatically (Ogan,
Wilnat, Pennington, and Bashir 2013). These anxieties suggest simmering
resentment and condemnation of Arab and Muslim Americans. Islamophobia
ultimately asserts that a fundamental incompatibility exists between Islam and
Western values associated with democracy, tolerance, and civility (Panagopoulos
2009).

Anti-Muslim crimes have increased fivefold since the 2001 attacks on the United
States (see Figure 10.3). In the year prior to 9/11, hate crimes targeting Muslims
averaged between 20 and 30 per year. In 2001 that number jumped to 500. Since
then, hate crimes against Muslims have averaged 100–150 annually (Ingraham
2015).

Figure 10.3 9/11 Changed Things for American Muslims

 Source: “Anti-Muslim hate crimes are still five times more common today
than before 9/11,” by Christopher Ingraham. Washington Post, February 11,
2015.

To a great extent, how we ultimately view terrorism is structured by the

intersectional lens that we have constructed. We rarely think of terrorists as
being rich, wealthy, White, and female (Cole 2011). The reality is that women,
particularly affluent White women, are being effectively recruited by various
terrorist organizations. These women are attracted to such organizations because
they perceive that by joining they can be empowered and add meaning to their
lives. These groups use Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites as
primary arenas for recruitment of both women and men (Ferran and Kreider
2015).

Early in his administration, President Donald Trump vowed that he would

protect the American people from terrorists. He signed an executive order
banning entry into the United States for 90 days by all persons from seven
Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
None of the terrorists responsible for any attacks within the United States has
come from any of the countries included in this travel ban. In fact, the majority
of individuals involved in terrorism since 9/11 were citizens, either born in the
United States or naturalized (see Figure 10.4). Moreover, a U.S. citizen is 253
times more likely to die from ordinary homicide than from a terrorist attack
carried out by a foreigner in the United States (McCarthy 2017).

Figure 10.4 The Majority of America’s Post 9/11 Era Terrorists Are U.S. Born
or Naturalized Citizens

Source: Adapted from “Most Terrorists in the U.S. Since 9/11 Have Been
American Citizens or Legal Residents,” by Niall McCarthy. Forbes, January
31, 2017.
 Critical Thinking

1. In what ways have the wars in which the United States has been involved changed over both times
and places? What does this suggest about us as a nation? What are the implications for our future?
2. The U.S. military, as an institution, has been transformed by wars and terrorism. What changes have
occurred in how the United States conducts wars?
3. What does the belated awarding of Medals of Honor suggest about the operation of the racial matrix
(both historically and in contemporary times)? What may account for these shifts?
4. How have you been affected by the war on terrorism? How have your family and friends been
affected? What does this suggest about race, gender, and class?
A More Inclusive Future
In 2001, when the United States started the current war on terrorism, the cost of
that war was estimated at $31 billion. By 2003 that figure was up to $111.9
billion, and 65,000 troops from 42 nations had become involved. And in 2017,
the figure was $97.9 billion. To date, the United States has spent some $2.02
trillion on the war on terrorism. And there is no end in sight (Amadeo 2017).

It is almost inconceivable to think of a time when we might be free of conflict.

However, we can develop more sane, reasonable, and just ways of resolving
conflict that avoid the destructive and vastly inequitable structures, processes,
and practices that all too frequently reflect race, class, and gender. Engaged
citizens are the most significant deterrent to domestic terrorism. Engaged
citizens are also the most effective safeguards when national policies are
misdirected.
Strength through Diversity
Our best chance of averting wars lies in efforts to increase world security by
working toward sustainable jobs and economies. Asserting the basic dignity of
all, regardless of race, class, ethnicity, religion, age, or gender, is a good starting
place. We cannot fight wars, protect our shores, or fight terrorism abroad or at
home through racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, or Islamophobia. Measures such as
random bag checks, airport strip searches, and racial profiling have done little to
make us any safer, but they have increased the threats to our basic freedoms.
Homeland security begins with a basic level of trust between us as citizens of the
United States and of the world. At the core of the American judicial system is
the presumption of innocence, yet we have targeted our citizens for internment,
hostility, and even death, with no basis for our accusations other than our fear.
Fear is a poor substitute for trust, and it erodes the very democratic principles
that we cherish.

Our military institutions, the most diverse institutions in the nation, hold the key
to the effective and efficient use of all our human resources. Encouraging all
citizens to serve in, participate with, and provide oversight of our military
institutions can be the greatest deterrent to abuses, the greatest safeguard to
peace, and the most effective weapon against terrorism.

In May 2016, a group of fourth-year female cadets at the U.S. Military Academy
at West Point posed for a picture in their dress gray uniforms with crossed
sabers, reflecting a long tradition of academy graduates. The difference was that
all 16 of these women were Black. The photo was disseminated across social
media channels, and many interpreted it as part of the Black Lives Matter
movement. It is also important to note that these Black women were raising their
fists, a gesture that historically has been taken as a political statement. An
investigation by the army found that this was not a political protest, but the
academy superintendent publicly chastised the cadets just the same, noting that
“a symbol or gesture that one group of people may find harmless may offend
others. As Army officers, we are not afforded the luxury of a lack of awareness”
(quoted in Sicard 2016).

If we are going to diversify the military, the change needs to start from the top
(Sicard 2016)—something on which 25 four-star generals, admirals, and other
military leaders agree (Duster 2013). While race and gender are factors in the
appointment process, those admitted to our military academies continue to be
among the best that our nation has to offer. In the West Point class of 2016,
1,150 cadets graduated. Among these were 322 minorities, 15 international
cadets, and 35 combat veterans. The 2019 graduating class is the most diverse in
the academy’s 214-year history (Sicard 2016). These same patterns need to be
replicated across all military academies if the armed forces are going to become
truly diverse.
World Security through Sustainable Economies
The one clear enemy of democracy is tyranny. And the principal allies of tyranny
are poverty, hopelessness, and inequity. If we are going to stop terrorism, then
we must first prevent it by supporting equal access to education; alleviating
poverty, hunger, and misery; and promoting civil liberties and freedom (Martin
2015).

Wars are more likely to occur where lawlessness, hopelessness, and helplessness
prevail. The most likely to suffer are those most vulnerable, regardless of
whether they are in the United States or abroad. In such situations it is difficult
to determine who is right or wrong, evil or good. In reality, none of these terms
make any sense in the face of devastated lives, pain, and suffering. We should
realize that during our own Revolutionary War, we were the extremists, the
terrorists, and the discontents.

As a nation among other nations, the United States needs to join with the United
Nations to help sustain the rule of law around the world. All parties need to be
brought to the table, and all need to be held to the same standard. The
International Criminal Court offers a place where the world can hold accountable
those who commit crimes against humanity, whether they are state agents or
nonstate actors (Rothkopf and Lord 2013).

Within our own country, we need to encourage service by all as part of what it
means to be a citizen. The idea that military service and other forms of public
service should be shared equally by all, regardless of race, class, or gender,
reflects the fact that we all have a stake in this democracy. The most secure
democracy is one in which all citizens participate.
 Critical Thinking

1. How do the societal values of diversity and inclusion become manifested in the military? How might
our values effect changes in the military?
2. How could the establishment of more global institutions lead to decreasing numbers of terrorist acts?
What role should the United States play in such institutions? What role should the United Nations
and the International Criminal Court play?
3. Over time, who might be considered a terrorist or a patriot changes. How might such shifting
definitions be applied within our country? How might our attitudes toward non–U.S. identities and
marginalized U.S. identities affect our struggles toward democracy?
4. What kinds of information, messages, or images prevail regarding people who are not like you, not of
your same culture or nationality? Are these barriers or bridges to interactions?
Key Terms

Battle of New Orleans, p. 349

Bracero Program, p. 356
coercive force, p. 342
dysfunctional, p. 340
functionalist approach to the military, p. 339
hate strikes, p. 355
interstate forms of war, p. 343
intrastate forms of war, p. 343
Islamophobia, p. 362
Medal of Honor, p. 357
Mexican–American War, p. 350
military sociology, p. 339
military–industrial complex, p. 344
monopoly and materialist perspectives, p. 342
new immigrants, p. 351
nonstate actors, p. 343
old immigrants, p. 351
Seminole Wars, p. 350
symbolic interactionist approach to the military, p. 342
terrorism, p. 340
Trail of Tears, p. 349
war, p. 349
War of 1812, p. 349
war on terrorism, p. 361
World War II, p. 354

Chapter Summary
LO 10.1 Examine the contemporary reality of race,
class, and gender in the U.S. military.
The contemporary U.S. military accounts for 16% of the total U.S. budget, which represents a
third of all moneys spent globally on defense. Although it is predominantly male, White, and
young, the U.S. military is one of the most diverse institutions in the nation. Race, gender, and
age differences occur across all the branches. Younger recruits tend to join the Marine Corps,
while the air force attracts older recruits. Women are underrepresented in all branches, but they
are most likely to enlist in the air force. Close to a third of all enlisted personnel are members
of racial minority groups. While racial minorities constitute 23.4% of those eligible to enlist,
they make up 32.9% of enlisted ranks. Middle- and upper-class individuals are least likely to
be found among enlisted personnel. Clear gender differences are evident across the various
services. Women of color are more likely to serve in either the army or the navy than in other
military branches. Immigrants continue to join the military as a means of becoming
naturalized citizens.
LO 10.2 Explore the stock sociological theories
regarding the U.S. military, war, and terrorism.
Three central sociological theories dominate the field of military sociology and represent stock
stories. The functionalist approach holds that the military, war, and terrorism serve specific
and important tasks within society. Symbolic interactionism investigates how we attach
meaning to such things as war and remembrance, flags and memorials, and other
representations that support wars, terrorism, and the military. Monopoly and materialist
perspectives posit that military organizations maintain a legitimate monopoly on the use of
coercive force that is uniquely tied to the material instruments of war. Stock theories tend to
oversimplify the military, war, and terrorism while underemphasizing the impacts of race,
class, and gender. Functionalism, specifically, fails to anticipate change and tends to ignore
powerful interests within society. Symbolic interactionism, with its emphasis on micro-level
analysis, fails to account adequately for social structure, identity, and military organizations.
And monopoly and materialist perspectives, by linking all manifestations of the military, war,
and terrorism to the state, fails to anticipate how nonstate entities, civil war, and ethnic/racial
conflict can be the sources of war and military conflict. Critical sociologists have stressed the
intersections of race, class, and gender as being central in any theories, scholarship, and
research interrogating the military, war, and terrorism. Critical race theory also examines how
military hierarchies represent internally stratified labor markets that reflect hierarchies in
wider society. Terrorism often highlights the vulnerability of specific racial groups
LO 10.3 Apply the matrix approach to U.S. military
history, war, and terrorism.
Every generation of U.S. citizens since the birth of the nation has witnessed wars. These wars
have served to define our national character, norms, and identity. Each war has served to shape
new traditions, new heroes, and new ways of deploying military technology. Concentrating on
the most significant wars throughout our history provides a central set of events by which and
through which the matrix lens can be utilized. The Revolutionary War highlights that the
military of the United States has never been homogeneous, as Native Americans, Blacks,
immigrants, Whites, women, and various class groups have participated. Our national identity
was initially forged in this war. Across our history, the U.S. military engaged in 29 major wars
with Native American populations. These wars were responsible for the loss of thousands of
lives as well as Native Americans’ loss of tribal lands. The Civil War highlights the
importance of race, class, and gender. At least 250 women, often dressed as men, fought on
both sides. Rape, a particular atrocity of war, targeted women, especially Black women. World
War II highlighted the nation’s bifurcated stance with regard to race. On the one hand, the
United States was waging a war against fascism and racial imperialism, while on the other it
was upholding Jim Crow laws in both the South and the military. The Vietnam War, our most
contentious war, revealed the ugly scars of racism as both Blacks and Hispanics were
significantly overrepresented among U.S. casualties. Agitation over these deaths and the
morality of the war challenged our country and its leaders to reconsider how wars should be
fought. Amid these controversies an all-volunteer force was created. Wars against terrorism,
involving both covert and overt military operations, security legislation, and new regulations,
derive from the September 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. soil. The current war on terrorism has
tended to target both Muslims and Arabs, principally from the Middle East. Such concerns
seem to be misplaced, as the average U.S. citizen is more than 253 times more likely to die
from a homicide than from a terrorist attack carried out by a foreigner in the United States.
LO 10.4 Evaluate the possibilities for a more inclusive
future.
Our military institutions, the most diverse institutions in the nation, hold the key to the
effective and efficient use of all our human resources. Encouraging all citizens to serve in,
participate with, and provide oversight of our military institutions can be the greatest deterrent
to abuses, the greatest safeguard to peace, and the most effective weapon against terrorism.
Wars are more likely to occur where lawlessness, hopelessness, and helplessness prevail. The
most likely to suffer are those most vulnerable, regardless of whether they are in the United
States or abroad. In such situations it is difficult to determine who is right or wrong, evil or
good. In reality, none of these terms make any sense in the face of devastated lives, pain, and
suffering. We should realize that during our own Revolutionary War, we were the extremists,
the terrorists, and the discontents.
Conclusion

We have provided you with the tools and knowledge to examine the social
construction of identities and the systems and experiences of oppression and
privilege that pervade social institutions. While our text concludes here, your
work is only beginning!

You now have the ability to center other social identities in the Matrix. Identify
an important identity in your own life, whether gender, class, ability, or some
other constructed identity shaped by inequality. As you pay more attention to
racial dynamics in the institutions you exist in, start to think about one of these
other identities in detail at the same time. Alternatively, start to pay close
attention to how racial dynamics intersect with other specific identities, on a
micro level, as well as in the way people are treated, the general culture, the
policies and informal practices, and more. For people with privilege, it takes
training and practice to actually see the privileges you benefit from. Yet when we
take up an intersectional lens, we can see that we each benefit from some form
of privilege, so we are each implicated in the vast inequality that pervades our
nation and the globe.

We also encourage you to examine other institutions not included in this text.
Perhaps the easiest one to start with is the media. What are the stock stories we
learn from the media about race, racism, and specific racial groups? How have
they changed over time? Find examples of concealed and resistance stories.
Think creatively about some of the ways media can be transformed to advance
equality rather than to reinforce the status quo.

While this text has primarily examined our domestic context, scholars are
exploring race on a global scale. Of course we know that constructions of race
vary geographically. Examine the ways that racial constructs vary across nations
and cultures. In some nations it is not race, but ethnicity or religion that is the
primary source of oppression and privilege. We also need to ask how the
dominance of whiteness on a global scale has historically been imposed,
maintained, and is advancing.

The issues we have examined throughout this text are serious, impacting
people’s quality of life and life itself. They can seem overwhelming, and they
are. But that should not be an excuse for doing nothing. Knowing what you now
know, is doing nothing an option for you anymore? There are many, many
different ways to do something, no matter where you live, your career field, or
any other details of your life. You do not have to drop everything and become a
full-time activist, but you can support activists and activist organizations.

Other small changes that can take place on a daily basis: Interrupt racist jokes,
statements of prejudice, etc. Try to explain why you find them offensive. You are
always educating others with what you say and do. It may be hard to find the
courage, but it gets easier with practice, and there are many books and online
tools designed to help you. Question policies, practices, and the curricular
offerings in your school and workplace. Students have more power than they
realize. Look at the racial demographics of students and faculty on your campus.
Question any inequality you may find. Write to members of congress. Educate
others. Speak up.

When we do nothing, we are complicit in reproducing racism, oppression, and

privilege. Continue to educate yourself about oppression and privilege. They are
everywhere. Study history. There have been many white people who have
devoted their lives (and lost them) in fighting racism. There are many men who
have fought historically for women’s rights. Seeing these role models is
important. It is just as important to find a support network of others you can
continue to examine oppression and privilege with. Develop real relationships
with people who vary from you racially, and carefully listen to their stories, but
do not expect them to educate you. Learn from the oppressed and follow their
lead.

Acknowledge that you will make mistakes and accept that. That is how we learn.
This is a lifelong journey, and humility is important. Much has been written
about how to do ally work. These are easy to find online. You can also find many
“action continuums” to consider where you stand. Do your behaviors and words
draw upon common derogatory stereotypes? Do you tacitly support the
reproduction of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other systems of oppression
through your silence? Do you work to educate yourself and others? Do you work
toward creating change on campus, in your family, on the job, etc?

Remember, institutions constrain our roles and behaviors, but they are also
reproduced on a daily basis by the people within them. Everything we do, we do
within an institution. It is individual people, working together, who get campus
policies changed. In fact, Ethnic Studies programs are largely the result of
student demand. People implement and can challenge law, policies, and
practices. As we have seen throughout this text, many of the answers we need
already exist; what is missing is enough people with the will to make change
happen. What role will you play?
Glossary

affirmative action:
Programs, begun under the administration of President Richard Nixon,
requiring employers receiving federal funding to take affirmative steps to
eliminate discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national origin, or gender
in the hiring and treatment of employees.

agency:
The ability to effect change, to act independently, and to exercise free
choices.

American Medical Association:

A formal organization established by physicians as a way of defining
themselves as the only authentic and legitimate practitioners of medicine.

ancestry:
An individual’s point of origin, lineage, or descent.

apprenticeship model of education:

A form of education in which skills are transferred from a master/teacher to
an apprentice/student and the skills needed to perform a job are learned on
the job.

assimilation:
The process through which people gradually accept and adapt to the
dominant culture after immigrating to a new society. The stages of
assimilation generally begin with adoption of the dominant language and
cultural patterns and then advance to increased interaction between
newcomers and dominant group members, reduced levels of prejudice and
discrimination, intermarriage, and eventually full integration and
acceptance.

Atlanta Compromise:
An agreement articulated by Booker T. Washington in 1895 to pacify White
business owners; it suggested that Blacks and Whites could work together
to play their economic roles while remaining socially separate.
Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676:
A revolt in which Black, Irish, Scottish, and English bond servants fought
against the planter elite in Virginia.

Battle of New Orleans:

The final major battle of the War of 1812, in which the British army was
defeated and prevented from seizing New Orleans and subsequently all the
lands associated with the Louisiana Purchase.

binary constructs:
In relation to identity groups, the representation of two groups in opposition
(such as White/Black, male/female); such constructs normalize and
legitimate racial and gender hierarchies at the expense of other outsiders,
such as other racial minorities (Jews, Hispanics, Italians) and gender groups
(LGBT).

biological determinism:
The concept that an individual’s behavior is innately related to components
of his or her physiology, such as body type and brain size.

Black civil rights movement:

A movement orchestrated by southern Blacks—in partnership with northern
allies, both White and Black—in the period 1955–68 that not only
challenged but also effectively nullified the intimidation and segregation of
the Old South.

Black Code:
France’s Colonial Ordinance of 1685, which legislated the life, death,
purchase, marriage, and religion of slaves, as well as the treatment of slaves
by their masters.

boycotts:
Voluntary acts of protest in which individuals or groups seek to punish or
coerce corporations, nations, or persons by refusing to purchase their
products, invest in them, or otherwise interact with them.

Bracero Program:
Guest worker program established in 1942 because of labor shortages
caused by World War II; allowed Mexican contract laborers to enter the
United States to work in agriculture and on railroads.
broken windows theory:
A theory of crime that asserts that a relationship exists between urban
disorder and vandalism, such that if vandalism can be stopped, serious
crime will decrease.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka:

The landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down the 1896
decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, making the racial segregation of public
accommodations, including public schools, illegal.

capitalism:
A type of economy in which the means of production are held and
controlled by private owners, not the government, and in which prices are
set by the forces of supply and demand with minimal government
interference.

chattel slavery:
Slavery in which the enslaved persons are considered personal property,
owned by their masters for life, and their children are the owners’ property
as well.

citizenship:
A status reflecting the legal process countries use to regulate national
identity, membership, and rights.

class:
A person’s location in the social stratification, which encompasses
particular levels of access to and control over resources for survival.

class approach:
An approach to issues of power, politics, and identity that assumes that
power is derived from having control over specific economic structures
within society.

club movement:
A late 19th-century movement in the United States through which lower-
status White ethnics sought to gain elite status through the establishment of
exclusive sport groups.

coalitional politics:
 Politics characterized by alliances of various identity groups whose shared
purpose is to establish a specific political agenda.

coercive force:
Force that involves the use of intimidation to obtain compliance.

colonialism:
A set of hierarchical relationships in which groups are defined culturally,
ethnically, and/or racially and in which these relationships serve to
guarantee the political, social, and economic interests of the dominant
group.

colonization of the mind:

From the work of Frantz Fanon, the concept that our cognitions, our
ideologies, and our worldviews are often those of those in power.

color blindness:
The view (or assertion) that one does not see race or ethnicity, only humans.

color-blind racism:
An ideology with four components: abstract liberalism, which
encompasses abstract concepts of equal opportunity, rationality, free choice,
and individualism and is used to argue that discrimination is no longer a
problem, and any individual who works hard can succeed; naturalization, in
which ongoing inequality is reframed as the result of natural processes
rather than social relations; cultural racism, in which inherent cultural
differences are used to separate racialized groups; and minimization of
racism, or the argument that we now have a fairly level playing field,
everyone has equal opportunities to succeed, and racism is no longer a real
problem.

communal experience:
Shared knowledge across group members occupying the same spaces.

concealed stories:
Narratives consisting of the data and voices that stock stories ignore; these
stories often convey a very different understanding of identity and inequity.

conversion therapy:
Treatment programs that purport to change the sexual orientations of gays
 and lesbians.

crime:
A form of deviance that violates moral and ethical standards and is
generally defined as such by law.

critical pedagogy:
Strategies of education that seek to create structures of liberation rather than
reproduce the status quo.

critical race theory:

A theoretical approach that represents an attempt by scholars and activists
to transform the relationships among race, racism, and power.

cultural capital:
The resources that individuals have, from their social networks, that enable
them to interact in certain social situations and move up the socioeconomic
ladder through the adoption of particular styles, tastes, and dispositions.

cultural values:
Sets of beliefs and interpretations that are shared across group members.

culture of poverty:
An approach to crime and deviance that associates self-perpetuating cycles
of dependency with poor families, specifically poor families of color.

curandero/as:
Traditional or native healers in Latino/a cultures.

Dawes Act:
Law passed by the U.S. Congress in 1887 that required Native American
nations to divide their communal reservations into individual plots of 160
acres, with each assigned to a family head. The remaining land was given to
White homesteaders and various corporations, such as railroads and
ranching companies.

de facto political practices:

Extralegal processes and methods that restrict political and other rights.

de jure political practices:

 Legal enactments and processes that restrict political and other rights.

democratic equilibrium:
A dynamic working balance between and among various groups.

deviance:
Actions and behaviors that defy social norms, from crimes to failures to
meet social expectations.

differential association theory:

A theory that proposes that differences in criminal involvement among
groups result from the groups’ different definitions of criminality.

differential labeling:
The systematic singling out of individuals for labeling as deviant by virtue
of their membership in particular groups.

discrimination:
The differential allocation of goods, resources, and services, and the
limitation of access to full participation in society, based on an individual’s
membership in a particular social category.

disenfranchisement:
Revocation of the right to vote.

drapetomania:
A “mental illness” invented to explain why slaves tried to escape slavery.

dysfunctional:
Disruptive to social structures, increasing stress and violating norms and
rules of engagement.

economic restructuring:
The shift from a manufacturing- to a service-based economy in urban areas.

epidemiology:
The study of the causes and distribution of diseases and injuries in a
population.

ethnicity:
 Identity that encompasses cultural aspects of an individual’s life, including
religion, tradition, language, ancestry, nation, geography, history, belief, and
practice.

eugenics:
A science concerned with improving genetic quality or desired
characteristics of a population through practices of breeding and/or
extermination.

Fair Deal:
A series of federal programs initiated in the late 1940s and early 1950s by
President Harry Truman to protect workers from unfair employment
practices, raise the minimum wage, and provide housing assistance, among
other goals.

formal or overt racism:

Discriminatory practices and behaviors that are sanctioned by official rules,
codes, or laws of an organization, institution, or society.

frontiers:
Contested spaces or borders, such as those between the Spanish, French,
and English colonies in the Americas.

functionalist approach to the military:

The theory that the military, war, and terrorism serve specific and important
tasks, or functions, within society, including socialization, integration, and
reduction of conflict.

functionalist theory of sport:

A theory that argues that sport fulfills a multitude of societal needs, such as
shared values, acquisition of life skills, conflict management, and social
mobility.

general strain theory:

A theory that proposes that racism produces stressful events and
environments, which in turn lead to emotional reactions (such as anger,
fear, depression, and rage) that indirectly or directly lead to acts of crime.

genocide:
The large-scale, systematic destruction of a people or nation.
gestational surrogacy:
The practice of a woman carrying an implanted embryo, not her own, to full
term for the biological parent(s).

GI Bill of Rights:
The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, passed in 1944 to support veterans.
The law included provisions for low-cost guaranteed loans for college
degrees, new homes, and businesses; job training; and unemployment
benefits.

grandfather clauses:
Legal provisions used in the South to restrict voting rights; such clauses
granted the right to vote to anyone whose grandfather qualified to vote prior
to the Civil War.

Great Compromise of 1787:

Compromise reached during the Constitutional Convention, under which
the Congress would be composed of two governing bodies, one in which
population would determine the number of seats each state would hold (the
House of Representatives), and one in which each state would have two
members (the Senate). It was further decided that each slave would be
counted as three-fifths of a person in population counts determining
numbers of representatives as well as presidential electors, and for purposes
of taxation.

Great Migration:
The movement, from 1916 to 1970, of more than 6 million African
Americans out of the rural South to the urban areas of the North, Midwest,
and West, in search of greater safety and higher-paying, industrial jobs.

hate strikes:
A series of White supremacist wildcat strikes that took place throughout
World War II, targeting Black workers competing with White labor.

human capital:
The resources that individuals have from their education and training that
can be traded for status in an occupational market.

Human Genome Project:

An international research collaboration (begun in 1990, completed in 2003)
 that mapped all human genes.

identity politics:
A political process/structure that relies on people of specific religions, racial
and ethnic groups, or social backgrounds to form exclusive political
alliances.

ideology of domesticity:
An ideology in which the home and family became defined as women’s
realm, and women were not expected to work for pay outside the home.
This ideal was generally attainable only by well-off White families.

income:
The sum of earnings from work, profit from items sold, and returns on
investments.

indentured servants:
Persons who are legally bound to work for their masters for a set number of
years.

informal or covert racism:

Discriminatory practices and behaviors that are not formally sanctioned but
rather are often assumed to be the natural, legitimate, and normal workings
of society and its institutions.

insider groups:
Those groups that hold the bulk of the power in society.

instrumentalism:
Derived from the class approach to issues of power, politics, and identity,
assumes that the state is dominated by an elite class that controls both the
political and economic spheres.

internalized racism:
The acceptance by members of minority groups of White society’s negative
beliefs about, actions toward, and characterizations of them.

intersectional theories:
Theories that argue that race and gender (as well as other salient social
identities) are intertwined and inseparable, and no individual social identity
 can be fully comprehended on its own.

interstate forms of war:

Conflicts involving national states, such as World Wars I or II; considered
to be legitimate wars.

intrastate forms of war:

Conflicts that exist or occur within the boundaries of particular states;
considered to be less legitimate than interstate wars.

Islamophobia:
Intense fear and paranoia regarding Muslims and Arabs, both those living in
the United States and those abroad.

Jim Crow laws:

Laws designed to preserve Whiteness by criminalizing and sanctioning
Blacks, Native Americans, and other racial and ethnic minorities; such laws
were widespread across the United States from the 1880s to the 1960s.

Jim Crow racism:

Racism supported by the laws and practices that originated in the American
South to enforce racial segregation.

left-handed marriages:
Temporary alliances between men and women equivalent to common-law
marriages, particularly common in the French colonies in the Americas.
These unions often resulted in children who served as interpreters and
mediators.

legacy of slavery thesis:

A theoretical approach that argues that Black family structures are the result
of the long history of structural inequality faced by Blacks since slavery.

literacy tests:
De jure enactments employed in the South to disadvantage Blacks by
restricting the access to vote to those who could read and interpret sections
of the state constitution.

marriage promotion programs:

State and federal programs that teach relationship and communication skills
 to women in poverty, with the aim of increasing their chances of marriage,
as marriage is assumed to be a solution to poverty for single mothers. No
research evidence exists to support the ideas on which such programs are
based.

marriage squeeze:
A change in demographic patterns leading to fewer marriages and fewer
suitable partners for Black women.

Marxist theories:
Social theories concerning the impacts of economic change on class
relations and conditions, as examined in the work of Karl Marx.

matrix:
The surrounding environment in which something (e.g., values, cells,
humans) originates, develops, and grows. The concept of a matrix captures
the basic sociological understanding that contexts—social, cultural,
economic, historical, and otherwise—matter.

Medal of Honor:
The highest military honor awarded in the United States for combat
heroism; often called the Congressional Medal of Honor because it is
awarded in the name of Congress.

medical sociology:
The sociological study of the field and practice of medicine and their social
effects.

Mendez et al. v. Westminster School District of Orange County:

The 1946 U.S. Supreme Court case in which the segregation of Mexicans
and non-Mexicans in public schools was found to be unconstitutional.

Mexican–American War:
Conflict (1846–48) primarily associated with the U.S. government’s desire
to annex Texas, California, and other Mexican territories.

microaggressions:
Intentional or unintentional brief insults to a person or group; these may be
verbal, nonverbal, or behavioral.
military–industrial complex:
The informal alliance between the U.S. military and major industries that
produce arms and other military materials and seek to influence public
policy.

military sociology:
The sociological study of armed forces and war.

millennials:
People in the generation born roughly from 1980 to 2000.

miscegenation:
The mixing of different racial groups.

monopoly and materialist perspectives:

Perspectives on the military that posit that military organizations must
maintain a legitimate monopoly on the use of force, and the use of this
force is uniquely tied to the material instruments of war.

morbidity rates:
Rates of disease.

mortality rates:
Rates of death.

national origins formula:

A formula instituted under the 1921 Emergency Quota Act to set annual
limits on the numbers of immigrants admitted to the United States from
individual countries; quotas were calculated at 3% of the total number of
foreign-born persons from particular countries as recorded in the 1910 U.S.
census.

nature perspective:
A view of sport that posits that biological differences between genders and
among racial, cultural, and national groups account for variations in athletic
ability, performance, and success.

neoliberal theory:
A social theory that embraces individualism, free markets, free trade, and
limited government intervention or regulation. Also known as market
 fundamentalism.

New Deal:
A series of programs initiated in the mid-1930s by President Franklin
Roosevelt in response to the Great Depression, with the aim of providing
economic relief and instituting banking reform.

new immigrants:
Immigrants to the United States from Ireland, Switzerland, Poland,
Germany, and other Southern European countries between 1886 and 1920.

nonstate actors:
Individuals and organizations with economic, political, or social power that
allows them to influence both national and international events, typically
with violence.

nuclear family:
A family consisting of a mother, a father, and their children (biological or
adopted), living together. The idea of the “ideal” and “traditional” nuclear
family usually assumes a working father and stay-at-home mother.

nurture perspective:
A view of sport that sees gender, racial, cultural, and national group
differences in athleticism as products of socialization and environment.

old immigrants:
Immigrants to the United States from England, Scotland, and Wales.

one-drop rule:
The rule, based on a definition in the 1924 Racial Integrity Act, that a
person was to be considered Black if he or she had any Black or Native
American ancestry at all (i.e., “one drop” of Black blood).

oppression:
The systematic devaluing, undermining, marginalizing, and disadvantaging
of certain social identity groups in contrast to a privileged norm.

organized crime:
Crime involving groups of people participating in highly centralized
criminal enterprises.
outsider groups:
Those groups within a society that are marginalized and have limited
power.

panethnicity:
The placing of various regional groups into one large ethnic category.

pedagogy of liberation:
From the work of Paulo Freire, an empowering approach to education in
which the pedagogical process goes both ways—teachers becoming
students, students becoming teachers—leading to altered social structures
of liberation and equality.

phenotypical traits:
Physical traits such as skin color, hair texture, and facial features typically
used to characterize people into racial groups.

pigmentocracies:
Governments and other social structures that grant political power based on
a hierarchy defined by skin tone, regardless of race or social status.

plaçage:
The name given to the social arrangement of left-handed marriages by free
people of color in the colonial era. A woman involved in such an
arrangement had a status lower than that of a wife but higher than that of a
concubine.

Plessy v. Ferguson:
The landmark 1896 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared the
doctrine of separate but equal to be constitutional and the law of the land,
leading to Jim Crow segregation in all public facilities.

pluralism:
An approach to the issue of power within society that posits that power is
decentralized, widely shared, diffuse, and fragmented.

political activism:
Actions of political involvement that go beyond voting; includes posting
opinions online and participating in letter-writing campaigns, boycotts,
protests, and demonstrations.
political identities:
Political positions based on the interests and perspectives of social groups
with which people identify.

political sociology:
The study of government, political behaviors, institutions, and processes
that occur between the state and its society and citizens.

politics:
All of the processes, activities, and institutions having to do with
governance.

poll taxes:
Taxes a person must pay to qualify to vote; before the practice of levying
such taxes was prohibited, southern states enacted poll tax laws as a way of
restricting voting by Blacks.

power:
The ability to acquire scarce resources.

power elite model:

A model of the distribution of power in society that posits that power is
concentrated among discrete elites of relatively equal power; these elites
control the resources of significant social institutions.

prejudice:
A judgment of an individual or group, often based on race, ethnicity,
religion, gender, class, and other social identities.

prison–industrial complex:
The system resulting from policies of aggressive policing targeting specific
groups, which have greatly expanded the U.S. inmate population. In this
system, government and industry uses of surveillance, policing, and
imprisonment have been merged in an effort to solve economic, social, and
political problems.

privilege:
The systemic favoring, valuing, validating, and including of certain social
identities over others.
quadroon:
A person who is one-fourth Black by descent.

quinceañera:
The custom in many Latino cultures of celebrating a girl’s transformation
from a child to an adult at age 15.

race:
A social and cultural system by which people are categorized based on
presumed biological differences.

racial caste system:

A hierarchical social system based on race that is considered to be
permanent.

racial categorizations:
Categorizations of people according to race that employ reputed differences
in behaviors, skill sets, and inherent intelligence; such categorizations are
uniquely social creations that have been purposefully constructed.

racial consciousness:
The awareness of race shared by members of a racial group and the wider
society.

racial frames:
The ideological justifications, processes, procedures, and institutions that
define and structure society.

racial profiling:
The targeting of particular racial and ethnic groups by law enforcement and
private security agencies.

racial violence:
Violence in which one racial group is pitted against another.

racism:
A system of oppression by which those groups with relatively more social
power subordinate members of targeted racial groups who have relatively
little social power.
redlining:
A practice of evaluating mortgage lending potential for designated areas
that typically discriminated against racial and ethnic minorities.

relational aspects of race:

A concept that encompasses the defining of categories of race in opposition
to each other (e.g., to be White means one is not Black, Asian, Hispanic, or
Native American) and according to where they fall along the continuum of
hierarchy.

reproductive justice:
A concept involving the right to have or not have children, and to parent
children in safe and healthy environments.

resistance stories:
Narratives that directly challenge stock stories by speaking of defying
domination and actively struggling for racial justice and social change.

resocialization:
A process whereby an individual is taught new norms and is expected to act
accordingly in order to fulfill institutional and social obligations.

restrictive covenants:
Rules inserted into real estate contracts that specify which racial groups
may purchase the land.

revisionist thesis:
A theoretical approach, developed in direct response to stereotypes and the
legacy of slavery thesis, involving research that redirects attention to the
strength and resilience of Black families.

Seminole Wars:
Three conflicts (circa 1817–98) that took place in Florida between the U.S.
military and the Seminole, who allied with African escaped slaves and
Black Seminoles.

separate spheres:
The concept that men’s area of influence, or sphere, is the world outside the
home, and women’s sphere is the home and domesticity. The ideology of
separate spheres for men and women developed along with industrialization
 and created a public/private dichotomy.

settler colonies:
Colonies created by external, imperialist nations in which those nations
control political, economic, social, and cultural mechanisms through a
colonial elite.

silent generation:
People born from 1925–45.

slave patrols:
Organized groups of White men with police powers who systematically
enforced the slave codes in the pre–Civil War South.

social cohesion:
A sense of togetherness in a social structure.

social construction of race:

The concept that the outcomes of the systematic distribution of rewards,
privileges, and sanctions across populations through time have produced
and reproduced social hierarchies that reflect society’s racial
categorizations.

social Darwinism:
An ideology that attempts to apply Charles Darwin’s theory of natural
selection to people at the individual or group level over a few generations,
based on a misguided and incorrect interpretation of Darwin’s work.

social disorganization:
A theory that links crime to neighborhood ecological patterns.

social institutions:
Patterned and structured sets of roles and behaviors centered on the
performance of important social tasks within any given society.

socialization:
The process through which individuals are taught the norms and
expectations of their societies.

split labor market:

 A labor market in which higher-paid workers, largely White, try to protect
their jobs and wages (often through unions) by excluding new groups (often
minorities) entering the labor market from the higher-paying jobs.

sport:
A range of activities that involve physical exertion and skill. These
activities are organized around sets of rules and can be played at either the
individual or the team level.

stereotypes:
Assumptions or generalizations applied to an entire group.

stock stories:
The narratives of the dominant group, often embraced by those whose
oppression these stories reinforce. Such stories are shaped by the White
racial frame, and they inform and organize the practices of social
institutions and are encoded in law, public policy, public space, history, and
culture.

structural inequities:
Institutional processes that deferentially distribute rewards such as status,
privilege, compensation and access according to membership in specific
categories or group membership.

structuralism:
Derived from the class approach to issues of power, politics, and identity,
assumes that the state and all political institutions exist relatively
independent of each other and are essentially by-products of conflict
between and within class groups.

symbolic interaction perspective on sport:

An approach that posits that sports are created and maintained by shared
meanings and social interaction.

symbolic interactionist approach to the military:

A theoretical approach concerned with how people attach meaning to things
(flags and memorials), events (wars), and other representations (heroes and
patriotism) in support of war, terrorism, and the military.

systemic nature of racial oppression:

 The manifestation of core racist realities, values, and ideologies in all of the
major institutions within society.

terrorism:
The unlawful use of force, particularly against civilians, in pursuit of
political, economic, or social aims.

Title IX:
Legislation enacted in 1972 that declared that “no person in the United
States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be
denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program
or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

traditional medicine:
Physical, mental, and spiritual healing that makes use of indigenous
knowledge, skills, and practices that have been passed down over
generations.

Trail of Tears:
Name given by Native Americans to the forced relocation, 1838–39, of
tribal groups from their traditional lands to Indian Territory, west of the
Mississippi River; during this relocation, thousands died of exposure and
disease.

transforming stories:
Narratives that demonstrate how change and social justice come about.

transmigrants:
People who live their lives crossing national borders, for whom
participating in more than one nation is central to their lives.

triple glass ceiling:

Limits placed on women because of threefold discrimination based on race,
gender, and class.

Turner thesis:
The theory, developed by historian Frederick J. Turner in the late 19th
century, that the American identity—including democratic governance,
rugged individualism, innovative thinking, and egalitarian viewpoints—was
forged in the nation’s frontier experience.
war:
The use of organized force; a state of armed conflict between nations,
states, or groups within a nation or state.

War of 1812:
A military conflict between the United States and Great Britain that began
because of British violations of U.S. maritime and trading rights with
Europe and quickly became a war pitting the United States against Native
Americans, who forged alliances with Britain and France.

war on terrorism:
A series of military and legislative campaigns that began after the
September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

wealth:
The market value of all assets owned (such as homes, cars, artwork,
jewelry, businesses, and savings and retirement accounts) minus any debts
owed (such as credit card debts, mortgages, and college loans).

welfare:
Policies and programs designed to support people in great financial need.
Examples of forms of welfare are food stamps, Social Security benefits,
Medicare, and Medicaid.

welfare fraud:
The illegal use of deception to collect more funds than allowed from state
welfare systems.

White flight:
The movement of Whites from urban areas to suburbs in response to Black
civil rights activism.

White normative structures:

Norms and institutions that obscure the racial intent of laws, practices, and
behaviors that preserve and (re)create societal benefits for White people,
creating the illusion that White privilege is natural and normal.

White privilege:
The advantage that White people have (over Blacks, Native Americans,
Asians, Hispanics, and others) as the result of laws, practices, and behaviors
 that preserve and (re)create societal benefits for them.

white-collar crime:
Crime, typically nonviolent, committed by business or government
professionals; the motivation for such crime is often financial.

Whiteness studies:
An interdisciplinary subfield of scholarship examining Whiteness and
White privilege that includes contributions by literary theorists, legal
scholars, anthropologists, historians, psychologists, and sociologists.

World War II:

A major worldwide conflict (U.S. involvement 1941–45) that spanned
Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
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Index

AARP (American Association of Retired Persons), 278 (photo)

Abortion, access to, 191 (figure)
Abstract liberalism, 27
Affirmative action, 149–150
Affordable Care Act, 156 (photo), 158, 173
African American Policy Institute, 219–220
African Americans. See Black Americans
“Afrocentric Idea in Education, The” (Asante), 212
Age, and unemployment rates, 126
Agency, 30, 293, 325–326
Aid to Dependent Children, 101–102
Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), 123
Ali, Muhammad, 321–322
al-Qaeda, 343
Alzheimer’s disease, and racial/ethnic disparities, 176 (figure)
Amarelos, 6
America. See Social construction of race in the United States
American Birth Control League, 188
American dream, 48, 130, 263, 282, 304, 316, 320–321. See also Sports
Americanese: 180 Degrees (Kasahara), 87 (photo)
American Federation of Labor (AFL), 137
American Health Care Act, 174
American Indians. See Native Americans
American Medical Association, 160
Americans with Disabilities Act, 140–141
Ancestry, 14
Andersen, Margaret, 152
Anderson, Elijah, 243
Anthony, Susan B., 318
Apprenticeship model of education, 206
Arpaio, Joe, 236
Art, as resistance, 87
Artichoker, Karen, 201
Asante, Molefi, 212
Asian Americans, 11, 15–16, 84
as “model minority,” 31, 72–73, 145–146
education and, 31, 52, 197
health care and, 173, 176
intermarriage, 108, 295
military and, 356–357
politics and, 277, 286
sports and, 323, 328
work/wealth and 126, 128, 136
See also Race
Asset-based economic policies, 150–151
Assimilation
Native Americans and, 82–83
theory, 89–90
Athletes. See Sports
Atlanta Compromise, 202
Attucks, Crispus, 346
Australia, constructing race in, 8
Avery, Byllye, 188
Aylmer, Lucy, 5 (photo)
Aylmer, Maria, 5 (photo)

Bacon’s Rebellion (1676), 67, 68 (photo)

Baker, Vernon, 357
Baldwin, James, 103
Baltimore protests (2015), 51 (photo)
Barnett, Bernice McNair, 29
Baseball, and the American dream, 320–321
Battle of Lake Okeechobee, 350
Battle of New Orleans, 349
Beauregard, P.G.T., 4
Bell, Lee Anne, 26
Benton, William Plummer, 353
Beoku-Betts, Josephine, 98
Bernstein, Basin, 213
Bethune, Mary McLeod, 355
Biles, Simone, 304
Billingsley, Andrew, 93
Binary constructs, 278
Biological determinism, 238
Biosocial theories of deviance, 238–239
Black Americans, 10–15, 17, 27, 33
civil rights movement, 286, 290–291, 294, 359
crime and, 228, 229–233, 235–236, 238–239, 242–243, 245–259, 262
education and, 28, 49, 52–53, 195–200, 201–204, 208–209, 215, 219,
family and, 83, 90–94, 97–101, 105, 108
health care and, 157–162, 169–170, 175–183, 185, 188
military and, 346–347, 351, 353–361, 366
politics and, 269–271, 273–282, 288–291, 295
soldiers, 346–347, 355, 361
sports and, 304, 307–308, 312–314, 318–323, 326–328
women, 29, 52, 93, 98–99, 101, 108, 110–111, 159, 173, 179, 188,
189, 220, 245, 248, 354–355, 366
work/wealth and, 122, 123, 125–126, 128, 135–139, 142–144, 147,
150
See also Race
Black Code, 64
Black Girls Matter (African American Policy Institute), 219–220
Black Lives Matter, 219, 292, 294–295, 366
Blackmun, Harry, 37
Black Seminoles, 348
Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon), 208
Blakinger, Keri, 260
Blassingame, John, 93
Boko Haram, 343
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo, 27
Boone, Daniel, 69, 70 (photo)
Borderlands, 68–70
Boston Massacre, 346
Bourdieu, Pierre, 209
Bowie, James, 69, 70 (photo)
Bowles, Todd, 309, 310 (photo)
Boycotts, 294
Bracero Program, 356
Brancos, 6
British colonialism, 65–68
Broken windows theory, and crime, 241
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 137
Brown, Linda, 203 (photo)
Brown, Michael, 219, 261, 295
Brown, Oliver, 203 (photo)
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 39, 52–53, 196, 203–204
Brunsma, David, 41 (photo), 42
Bryant, Kobe, 307
Buck, Carrie, 165
Buck v. Bell, 165
Buddha in the Attic, The (Otsuka), 85
Bush, George H. W., 213, 359
Bush, George W., 102, 213, 359

Cano, Robinson, 306 (photo)

Capitalism, 116
Capital punishment, 251–252
Carlos, John, 322, 323 (photo), 326 (photo)
Carr, Patrick, 346
Cartier, Jacques, 63
Cartwright, Samuel, 181
Catlett, Elizabeth, 135 (photo)
Chae, David H., 181
Chattel slavery, 134
Chavez, Cesar, 291, 292 (photo)
Check-cashing businesses, 127 (photo)
Chicago Ugly Law, 164
Children, socialization of, 103–104
Chinese Exclusion Act, 85
Choice, and crime, 263–264
Citizenship
education and, 212–214
national identity and, 284–285
Civil rights, and sports, 321–322
Civil Rights Act, 139–140, 142, 291
Civil rights movement, 290
Civil War, 287–289, 351–353
Clark, Kenneth, 203
Class, 117
economic inequality and, 127
education and, 209–210
health and, 173–174
military and, 334–339
politics and, 280
Clay, Cassius (Muhammad Ali), 321–322
Clinton, Bill, 357, 359
Clinton, Hillary, 269, 294
Club movement, in sports, 319–320
Coaches, in sports, 308–310
Coalitional politics, 290–292
Coalition of Immokalee Workers, 148
Coates, Rodney, 38–40
Code talkers, 359
Coercive force, 342
Collateral damage, 342
Collins, Patricia Hill, 103
Colonialism, 58–70
Colonization of the mind, 208
Color-blind ideology, 27
Color blindness, 26
Color-blind racism, 27
Columbus, Christopher, 54, 58
Colvin, Claudette, 290
Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, 149
Communal experience, 303
Competition, and identity, 316
Concealed stories, 26–29, 96, 133
Blakinger, Keri, 260
Colvin, Claudette, 290
crime and deviance and, 230, 246
critical race theory, 281, 344–345
economic inequality and, 135, 141–142, 145, 147, 152
education and, 207–214
García, Marcario, 358
health care and, 160–161
 invisible fathers and, 99
legacy of slavery, 92–94
LGBT individuals and, 109–111, 220–221
military sociology, 344–345
sports and, 316
welfare and, 123, 125
women’s, 97–99
Concrete ceiling, 128
Condition of Education, The (National Center for Education Statistics), 214
Confederate monuments, 2, 3–4
Congressional Black Caucus, 280, 282 (photo)
Congressional Hispanic Caucus, 280
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), 137
Connor, David J., 28
Constitution (U.S.), framers of, 284 (photo)
Contested spaces
benefits of, 63
understanding, 69–70
Conversion, and education, 208–209
Conversion therapy, 167
Cool poise, 244
Cooper, Anna Julia, 28–29, 35
Cotton, Ronald, 262
Creation myth, 54
Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams, 281
Crime, 230
ecological perspectives on, 239–241
types of, 252–259
Crime and deviance, 228–266
adjusting the narrative of, 264
applying the matrix to, 242–259
history of, 230–237
spaces and places of, 243–245
structure and context of, 245–252
theories of, 237–241
transforming, 260–264
Critical pedagogy, 213
Critical race theory, 281
Crockett, Davy, 69, 70 (photo)
Crutcher, Terence, 229
Cultural capital, 209–210
Cultural racism, 27
Cultural values, 303
Culture of poverty, 91, 239–241
Curanderismo, 159
Curandero/as, 159, 160 (photo)

Dame schools, 206

Darwin, Charles, 162
Davenport, Charles, 164
Davis, Ann Simpson, 348
Davis, Hugh, 231
Davis, Jefferson, 3
Davis, Kingsley, 83
Dawes Act, 82
de Blasio, Bill, 206
Deep poverty, 119
De facto political practices, 287, 289
De jure political practices, 287–289
Demographics, changing, 48–50
Denson, David, 326
Desmond, Matthew, 24
Deviance, 230, 238–239, 244 (photo). See also Crime and deviance
DeVos, Betsy, 213
Differential association theory, 240
Differential labeling, 252–253
Discrimination, 4, 27,
black Americans and, 93, 354–356, 357, 360
defined, 31
Latino/as and, 95
laws and, 289, 291
modern medicine and, 160–161, 179–181
prejudice and, 31–32, 34
sexual orientation and, 110
sports and, 321–322
workplace, 52, 84, 125, 128, 131, 132, 135, 138–144, 147–150
Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race (Cartwright), 181
Disenfranchisement, 273
Diversity
of millennials, 297 (figure)
in sports leagues, 309 (figure)
sources of, 52–53
strength through, 365–366
Diversity problem, 122
Domesticity, 83, 90
Douglass, Frederick, 28
Drapetomania, 181
Du Bois, W.E.B., 35, 137, 170, 182, 202
Duckworth, Tammy, 332 (photo), 333
Dumezweni, Noma, 35 (photo)
Durant, Kevin, 307
Durkheim, Émile, 179, 205
Duster, Troy, 184
Dysfunctional, 340

Ecological perspectives
on crime, 239–241
on health research, 183–184
Economic change, 120
Economic inequality. See Work and wealth inequality
Economic restructuring, and changing occupations, 120–122
Education, 194–227
alternative movements, 223–226
applying the matrix to, 207–221
as a human right, 225–226
citizenship and, 212–214
class construction and, 209–210
conversion and, 208–209
future of, 223–226
history of, 200–204
intersectional realities, 214–221
skills acquisition and, 205–206
socialization process of, 205
 theories of, 205–206
today, 197–200
worker creation and, 210–212
Edwards, Harry, 322
Electorate, understanding the, 270
Ellis, Havelock, 166
Emancipation Proclamation, 287
Emergency Quota Act, 286
Emirbayer, Mustafa, 24
Engels, Friedrich, 170
Enlistment (military), and gender, 336–337
Environmental racism, 182–184
Environmental risks, and health, 183
Epidemiology, 183–184
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 139
Ethnicity, 14–19
Eugenics, 162–166, 185, 188
Evolutionary theory, 163

Fair Deal, 138

Fair Housing Act, 291
Families, 78–113
applying the matrix to, 96–104
as social constructs, 96–97
changing, 88
early, 80–83
formation, and immigration policy, 84–86
historical regulation of, 80–88
ideal narrative of, transforming, 104–111
inequality theories, 89–96
interracial marriage and, 78 (photo), 107–109
LGBT, 109–111
white, support for, 100–103
Fanon, Frantz, 208
Fathers, invisible, 99–100
Federal Housing Authority, 289
Ferber, Abby, 40–41
Fire Next Time, The (Baldwin), 103
“Fit” and “unfit” bodies, 162–167
Formal or overt racism, 33
Fortner, Nell, 316
Fowler, John W. “Bud,” 321
Francis, Norman, 196
Franklin, Benjamin, 196
Franklin, Donna, 98
Franklin, John Hope, 94
Frazier, E. Franklin, 92
Freire, Paulo, 213, 223
French colonialism, 62–65
Frontiers, 68–70
Functionalism, and military sociology, 339–341
Functionalist theory of sport, 315

Galton, Francis, 163

García, Marcario, 358
Garner, Eric, 295
Garrett, Jimmy, 209
Gender
education and, 216–220
health care and, 172–173
military enlistment and, 336–337
unemployment rates and, 127
work/wealth and, 52
General strain theory, 243
Genocide, 51
Genovese, Eugene, 93
Gestational surrogacy, 106, 107 (photo)
GI Bill of Rights, 138–139
Girlfriend theory, 250
Glass ceiling, 128
Goddard, Henry, 164
Gordon, Linda, 98
Gordon, Milton, 89
Goshen College, 42 (photo)
Gould, Stephen Jay, 165 (photo)
Graduation gap, for athletes, 326–328
Grandfather clauses, 288
Grant, Ulysses S., 234
Gray, Freddie, 51 (photo)
Gray, Samuel, 346
Great Compromise (1787), 284
Great Depression, 138
Great Migration, 93

Hackett, Katherine, 115–116

Half the Sky (Kristof and WuDunn), 216
Hare, Nathan, 197, 209
Harlan County War, 136
Harlem Renaissance, 202
Harry Potter (Rowling), 53
Hate crimes, 253–254
Hate Crime Statistics Act, 253
Hate strikes, 355
Health and health care inequality, 156–193
applying the matrix to, 171–185
“fit” and “unfit” bodies, 162–167
future of, 190–192
intersectional approach to, 172–181
life expectancy and, 169–170
patterns of, 158–167
theories of, 168–170
transforming, 186–192
urban American Indians and, 186–187
women’s health movement and, 187–190
Her, PaKou, 146
Hews, Joseph, 346
Hill, Robert, 93
Hill, Shirley, 97
Hispanics/Latinos, 17–19, 21, 28, 33, 49, 52
crime and, 230, 235–236, 247, 249–252, 256–257, 259, 261–262
education and, 52–53, 197–200, 208, 215
 family and, 90–91, 94–96, 104–106, 108
health care and, 159, 161, 176–177, 179
military and, 356–358, 361
politics and, 269–274, 280, 289, 291
sports and, 305, 308–309, 313, 318–319, 321, 326–328
work/wealth and, 119, 122, 128, 143, 145, 147
See also Race
Hitler, Adolf, 165, 354
Hmong, 15, 31
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 165
Homosexual, inventing the, 166–167
Horse, John, 350
Human capital, 206
Human capital theory, of education, 206–207
Human Genome Project, 184–185
Hunger Games, 53 (photo)
Hurston, Zora Neale, 196
Hypermasculinity, 244

Iberian hypothesis, 9
Identities. See Politics
Identities and resistance, in sports, 321–325
Identity, through competition, 316
Identity politics, 281
Ideology of domesticity, 83, 90
Immigration, 16–19
effects of, 234–235
eugenic ideology and, 164
family formation and, 84–86
health and, 177
immigrants, old and new, 351–352
legacy of, 84–86
permanent, 147–148
restrictions, 292, 298, 347
stories, 145–147
team sports and, 319–321
U.S. national identity and, 284, 285–287
 work and wealth inequality and, 145–148
Immigration Act (1965), 145
Immigration Act (1990), 146
Immigration and Nationality Act, 286–287, 291
Immigration Law (1891), 164
Incarceration, alternatives to, 263
Income, 116
Indentured servants, 134
Indian Health Service, 186
Indian Removal Act, 349
Indigenous peoples, in America, 54–58. See also Native Americans
Industrialization, and team sports, 319–321
Industrial Revolution, 135–137
Inequality. See Education; Families; Health and health care inequality;
Race; Work and wealth inequality
Informal or covert racism, 33–34
Innocence Project, 262
Insider groups, 277
Instrumentalism, 280
Internalized racism, 179–180
Interracial marriage and families, 78 (photo), 107–109
Intersectionality, and the U.S. matrix, 71–73. See also Matrix; Race
Intersectionality paradox, 178–179
Intersectional theories, 28
Interstate forms of war, 343
Into Our Own Hands (Morgen), 186
Intrastate forms of war, 343
Iran-Contra affair, 362
ISIS (Islamic State), 343
Islamophobia, 362

Jackson, Andrew, 349

James, LeBron, 306 (photo), 307
Japanese Americans, in World War II, 357 (photo)
Jewish immigrants, 41 (photo)
Jim Crow
era, 202
 laws, 160, 232, 288–289, 354
racism, 27
segregation, 135, 139
Johnson, Lyndon, 140, 149
Johnson, Pierre, 195
Jordan, Michael, 314
Journal of the National Medical Association, 161
Jung, Soya, 146

Kasahara, Margaret, 87 (photo)

Ken, Ivy, 28
Kennedy, John F., 149, 360
Khan, Shahid, 314

Labeling, differential, 252–253

Labor
crisis, and slavery, 64
shortages, and the Bracero Program, 356
unions, the rise of, 137
Landis, Kenesaw Mountain, 322 (photo)
Landrieu, Mitch, 4
Latino/a. See Hispanics
Law. See Crime and deviance
Le, Lynn, 324
Ledecky, Katie, 304
Lee, Robert E., 2, 4
Left-handed marriages, 65
Legacy of slavery thesis, 92–93
Legitimacy, assuming, 343–344
LGBT families, 109–111
LGBTQ students, and harassment, 222 (figure)
Liang, Peter, 295 (photo)
Lieber Code, 352
Life expectancy, historical advances in, 169–170
Life skills, 315
Lincoln, Abraham, 233, 287
Literacy tests, 288
Lombroso, Cesare, 238

Madoff, Bernie, 259 (photo)

Majok, Ater, 47
Maker, Thon Marial, 47
Mann, Horace, 200
March Madness, 313
Marks, Stephen, 111
Marriage
interracial, 107–109
promotion programs, 106
squeeze, 98
See also Families
Marshall, Thurgood, 203
Martin, Emily, 185
Martin, Trayvon, 295
Martinez, Susana, 274
Marx, Karl, 132, 210
Matrix, 22
applying to crime and deviance, 242–259
applying to education, 207–221
applying to families, 96–104
applying to health and health care inequality, 171–185
applying to the military, 345–364
applying to politics, 282–292
applying to the Revolutionary War, 346–348
applying to sports, 316–325
applying to work and wealth inequality, 133–141
humans as active agents in, 30
intersectionality and, 71–73
social matrix of race, 22–31
See also Race
Maverick, Samuel, 346
McAuliffe, Terry, 273
McCarran-Walter Act, 81 (photo)
McIntosh, Peggy, 35
Medal of Honor, 357
Medical sociology, 168
Medicine
modern, and discrimination, 160–161
objectivity in, 170
See also Health and health care inequality
Mendel, Gregor, 162
Mendez, Sylvia, 204 (photo)
Mendez et al. v. Westminster School District of Orange County, 204
Mestizos, 6
Mexican-American War, 350–351
Meyer, Stephenie, 53
Mezey, Nancy, 110
Mickelson, Phil, 306 (photo)
Microaggressions, 34 (photo), 179–181
Military, the, 332–369
applying the matrix to, 345–364
class, gender, and race in, 334–339
contextualizing, 342–343
enlistment and gender, 336–337
future of, 365–367
racial minority representation in, 337–339
recruiting, 336
theories of, 339–345
Military–industrial complex, 279, 344
Military sociology, 339
Millennials, 275, 296–297
Mills, C. Wright, 196
Minimization, of racism, 27
Minority-Majority nation, 21 (figure)
Minority representation, in the military, 337–339
Minority vulnerability thesis, 142
Miscegenation, 65
Model Minority Mutiny, 146
Molineaux, Tom, 319 (photo)
Monopoly and materialist perspectives, and military sociology, 342–344
Morbidity rates, 174
More, Pat, 160 (photo)
Morgen, Sandra, 186
Mortality rates, 158
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 93
Mr. Wong’s Theatre Company (Shimomura), 87 (photo)
Muhammad, Ibtihaj, 326 (photo)
Mulatto, 6
Muo, Mathiang, 47
Murray, John, 346

Nakagawa, Scot, 146

National Association of Colored Women, 188
National Black Women’s Health Project, 188
National Center for Education Statistics, 214
National College Players Association, 328
National Commission on Excellence in Education, 213
National Farm Worker Association, 292 (photo)
National Healthcare Disparities Report, The, 158
National Hospital Association, 161
National identity, U.S., 283–287
National Medical Association (NMA), 160, 161 (photo)
National Organization for Women, 140
National origins formula, 286
National Women’s March, 295 (photo)
Nation at Risk, A (National Commission on Excellence in Education), 213
Native Americans, 10, 11, 15, 16 (figure), 33, 54–58, 285 (photo)
boarding schools, 200–201
reservations, sports on, 302 (photo), 303
resistance and assimilation, 81, 82–83, 234, 292
urban, and health care, 186–187
wars and, 344, 348–353
See also Race
Native-born, or descended, 61
Naturalization, 27
Naturalization Act, 285
Nature perspective, of sports, 311–312
Neoliberal theory, 130–131
New Deal, 138
New immigrants, 351–352
New Orleans, 2, 3–4
Newton, Cam, 307
Niagara Movement, 202
9/11 attacks, 341 (photo)
Nisei, 356
Nishikori, Kei, 306 (photo)
Nixon, Richard, 149, 246, 247 (photo), 322, 359
Nonstate actors, 343
Nuclear family, 88
Nurture perspective, of sports, 312–315

Obama, Barack, x, 27 (photo), 49, 204 (photo), 213, 274, 358–359

Obergefell v. Hodges, 109
Objectivity, in medicine, 170
Occupational change, 120–122
Occupational segregation, 128–130
Occupy movement, 117 (photo)
Old immigrants, 351
One-drop rule, 10
Oppression, 32
O’Reilly, Bill, 246
Organized crime, 255–256
Otsuka, Julie, 85
Outsider groups, 277
Owens, Jesse, 326 (photo)

Page Law, 85
Paine, Thomas, 196
Panethnicity, 15
Pardos, 6
Parks, Ezra, 92
Parks, Rosa, 290
Pathology narrative, and Latino/a families, 94–96
Patrick, Danica, 312, 313 (photo)
Pedagogy of liberation, 223
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire), 213
Perceptions of reality, competing, 245–246
Permanent immigration, 147–148
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act
(PRWORA), 123
Phenotypical traits, 6
Philadelphia Negro, The (Du Bois), 170
Pierce, Chester, 180
Pigmentocracies, 8, 61
Plaçage, 65
Place, and environmental racism, 182–184
Planned Parenthood, 188
Players and coaches, in sports, 308–310
Plessy v. Ferguson, 202–203
Pluralism, 277
Pluralist approach, to politics, 277–278
Political activism, 293–296
Political identities, 270–273
Political practices, 287–289
Political sociology, 276
Politics, 270, 268–301
alternatives, 292–298
applying the matrix to, 282–292
coalitional, 290
contemporary, 270–276
national identity and, 283–287
race, class, and gender in, 273–274
regional differences in, 270–273
social movements, rise of, 290–292
theories of, 276–281
Poll taxes, 288
Popular culture, evolving narrative of, 53
Poverty
culture of, 91, 239–241
link to crime and deviance, 249–250
Power, 283. See also Politics
Power elite model, of politics, 278–279
Prejudice, 31
Presidential election of 2016, analyzing, 274–276
Pretos, 6
Prison-industrial complex, 246–248
Privilege
oppression and, 100–103
understanding, 34–36
Profiling, racial, 235–236
Punishment. See Crime and deviance

Quadroon, 65
Quinceañera, 95 (photo)

Race, 2–44
defining, 5
as a narrative, 25–28
as inherently social, 24–25
as institutional and structural, 29–30
as relational and intersectional, 28–29
categories (U.S. Census Bureau), 11
ethnicity and, 14–19
in the contemporary United States, 10–22
in the future, 19–22
key insights about, 24 (table)
social construction of, 4–21, 46–75
social matrix of, 22–31
See also Crime and deviance; Education; Families; Health and health
care inequality; Matrix; Military, the; Politics; Sports; Work and
wealth inequality
Race relations cycle, 92
Racial caste system, 61
Racial consciousness, 231
Racial frames, 25
Racial identity, 28–29
Racial ideology, constructing, 59–61
Racial Integrity Act, 10
Racial profiling, 235–236
Racism
color-blind, 27
cultural 27
environmental, 182–184
formal or overt, 33
informal or covert, 33–34
internalized, 179–180
Jim Crow, 27
minimization of, 27
operation of, 31–36
See also Race
Randolph, A. Philip, 137
Reagan, Ronald, 122, 213, 247
Reality, competing perceptions of, 245–246
Recession, and race, 125–127
Reconstruction, challenges of, 201
Recruiting (military), and socioeconomics, 336
Redlining, 289
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 149
Regional differences, in political identities, 270–273
Reparations, 150
Reproduction, and women’s health movement, 187–190
Reproductive justice, 188
Reproductive technologies, new, 106–107
Resistance
appraising, 72–73
as art, 87
in sports, 321–325
Native Americans and, 82–83
Resistance stories, 26–29
art, 87
Colvin, Claudette, 290
crime and deviance and, 236
families and, 89, 97
health care and, 158, 168
Her, PaKou, 146
Le, Lynn, 324
Mezey, Nancy, 110
 race and, 67, 73, 133
Ross, Loretta, 189
wealth inequality and, 149, 152
Williams, Cathay, 353
Yousafzai, Malala, 218
Resocialization, 208
Restrictive covenants, 289
Revisionist thesis, 93–94
Revolutionary War, applying the matrix approach to, 346–348
Rezball, 302 (photo), 303
Robeson, Paul, 322 (photo)
Robinson, Jackie, 322 (photo)
Robnett, Belinda, 29
Roe v. Wade, 190
Romney, Mitt, 274
Rooney Rule, 309–310
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 355
Roosevelt, Franklin, 138, 354
Ross, Loretta, 189
Rossatto, César Augusto, 223
Rowling, J. K., 53
Ruiz, Vicki, 29

Sanctuary cities, 298

Sanger, Margaret, 188
Schimmel, Shoni, 304
School desegregation, 202–204
Schooling in Capitalist America (Bowles and Gintis), 211
Schuyler, Catherine Van Rensselaer, 347
Schuyler, Philip, 347
Scientific advances, and crime and deviance, 262
Security (world), through sustainable economies, 366–367
Selig, Bud, 310
Seminole Wars, 349–350
Sentencing outcomes, different, 250–251
“Separate but equal,” 201–202
Separate spheres, 83, 90
Settler colonies, 59
Sexual minorities, and education, 220–221
Sharapova, Maria, 307
Sharecropping, 135
Shared values, 315
Shaull, Richard, 213
Shelby, Betty, 229
Sheridan, Phillip, 353
Sherman, William, 234
Shimomura, Roger, 87 (photo)
Silent generation, 275
SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, 189
Skills acquisition, and education, 205–206
Slave
codes, 232
patrols, 232
rebellions, 67–68, 233 (photo)
system, 61–62
Slavery
building a tradition of, 66–67
chattel, 134
colonial economy and, 134–135
French colonialism, 64
labor crisis and, 64
legacy of, 92–93
national identity and, 283–284
to sharecropping, 135
Smedley, Audrey, 25
Smith, Edward, 47
Smith, Tommie, 322, 323 (photo), 326 (photo)
Social cohesion, 205
Social construction of race, 4–21
around the world,
definition, 5
ethnicity and, 14–19
in the future, 19–22
See also Race; Social construction of race in the United States
Social construction of race in the United States, 8–21, 46–75
colonialism and, 58–70
 indigenous peoples and, 54–58
intersectionality and, 71–73
race today, 48–54
See also Race
Social Darwinism, and the rise of eugenics, 162–164
Social disorganization, and crime, 239
Social-functional theory, of education, 205
Social institutions, 24. See also Crime and deviance; Education; Families;
Health and health care inequality; Military, the; Politics; Sports; Work and
wealth inequality
Socialization
education and, 205
of children, 103–104
Social matrix of race, 22–31. See also Matrix; Race
Social media
harnessing, 294–296
impact of, 53–54
Social mobility, 315
Social movements, rise of, 290–292
Social policy, effects of, 137–141
Social safety net, disappearing, 122–125
Social Security Act, 101
Social values, preserved by the military, 340
Society Nine, 324
Socioeconomics and recruiting, in the military, 336
Socioemotional function, 315
Sociological theories
of crime and deviance, 237–241
of education, 205–206
of families, 89–96
of health and health care inequality, 168–170
of politics, 276–281
of sports, 310–316
of the military, 339–345
of work and wealth inequality, 130–132
Sociology, of racism, 32–33
Sörenstam, Annika, 312
South Africa, constructing race in, 6
South America, constructing race in, 6–8
Southern Poverty Law Center, 95
Sovereign peoples, and national identity, 285
Spanish-born, or descended, 61
Spanish colonialism, 59–62
Spelman, Elizabeth, 28
Spencer, Herbert, 163
Split labor market, 132
Sport, definition of, 304
Sports, 302–331
applying the matrix to, 316–325
functions of, 315–316
graduation gap, closing, 326–328
industry, 304–305
in early America, 317–319
institutionalizing, 319–321
media, 305–307
nature perspective of, 311–312
nurture perspective of, 312–315
players and coaches, 308–310
team, 319–321
theories of, 310–316
today, 304–310
transforming, 325–329
Stack, Carol, 94
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 318
Stereotypes, 31
Stewart, Maria, 28
Stock stories, 26–27, 30, 96
assimilation, 89–91
crime and deviance and, 230, 237–238, 262
education and, 196, 205, 207, 209, 210, 212
families and, 80, 89–91, 94, 97, 106, 108, 109
health and illness, 158, 162, 168–169, 170, 181, 185
impact of, 36
military and, 339
Native Americans and, 57
politics and, 282–283
race and, 32
sports and, 311, 313,
 Turner thesis, 69
wealth inequality and, 124, 130, 132, 141, 145, 147, 150, 152,
Stock theories. See Sociological theories
Stories. See Concealed stories; Resistance stories; Stock stories;
Transforming stories
Storytelling for Social Justice (Bell), 26
Strength through diversity, 365–366
Stress and microaggressions, and health, 179–181
Structuralism, 280
Studies in the Psychology of Sex (Ellis), 166
Sustainable economies, and world security, 366–367
Symbolic interactionist approach, to the military, 342
Symbolic interaction perspective, on sports, 316
Systemic nature of racial oppression, 32
Systemic racism, 243

Tax code, revision of, 151

Team sports, and industrialization and immigration, 319–321
Technology, impact of, 53–54
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), 123, 125 (photo)
Terra nullius, 8, 59
Terrorism, 340, 341, 361–365. See also Military, the
Theories. See Sociological theories
Thompson, Jennifer, 262
Title IX, and women in sports, 322–325
Tochluk, Shelly, 35
Traditional healing, 159–160
Traditional medicine, 159
Trail of Tears, 349
Trait Book (Davenport), 164
Transforming stories, 26. See also Stories
Transmigration, 105–106
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 350–351
Treaty of New York, 348
Triple glass ceiling, 52, 128
Truman, Harry, 138, 358
Trump, Donald, 49, 213, 268 (photo), 269, 294, 363
Truth, Sojourner, 28
Tsukamoto, Mary, 86
Tubman, Harriet, 352
Turner, Frederick J., 69
Turner thesis, 69, 70 (photo)
Tuskegee Study, 182
Twilight (Meyer), 53
Twine, France Winddance, 107

Unemployment rates
age and, 126
gender and, 127
“Unfit,” eliminating the, 164–166
Union, Confederacy, and ethnicity, 351–352
United States. See Social construction of race in the United States
University of California v. Bakke, 37
U.S. Naturalization Law, 232

Vietnam War, 359–361

Violence
against women, 255
climate of, 243–245
racial, 39 (photo), 51
Voter disenfranchisement, 273
Voting Rights Act, 291

Wage gap, and occupational segregation, 128–130

Walker, Moses “Fleetwood,” 321
War, as a bonding experience, 340. See also Military, the
Warner, W. Lloyd, 92
War of 1812, 349
War on drugs, 247 (photo)
War on Poverty, 140
War on terrorism, 361–365
Washington, Booker T., 200, 202
Washington, George, 347–348
Wealth, 117, 152. See also Work and wealth inequality
Welfare, 123–124
Welfare fraud, 258
Wells, Ida B., 28, 35
Western expansion, and economic inequality, 135–136
White-collar crime, 256–259
White flight, 40, 214
Whiteness, 8–9, 68, 109, 166, 210, 370
building a foundation of, 230, 231–235
expanding category of, 84
privilege of, 34–35
studies, 35
See also Whites; White supremacy
White normative structures, 231
White privilege, 231–233
“White Privilege and Male Privilege” (McIntosh), 35
Whites, 21
crime and, 230, 238–240, 245–246, 248, 250–251, 256–259, 263
education and, 52, 197–200, 215
ethnic groups, 17
family and, 81–83, 100–104, 107, 109
health care and, 157–159, 163–164, 169–170, 175–177, 182–183
military and, 336, 347, 351–355, 360
politics and, 269–276, 279–280, 285, 288–289, 294
racial frame, 25–26
sports and, 305, 308–310, 314–315, 318–321, 323, 326–328
women, 98, 120, 138, 149, 158–159, 161, 231, 248, 294, 318, 363
work/wealth and, 123, 125–129, 132, 134–140, 142–145, 150, 152
See also Race
White supremacy, 4, 41, 72, 94, 146, 162–163, 181, 189, 208, 212,
231–232, 355. See also Whiteness; Whites
Wild Cat, 350
Williams, Cathay, 353
Williams, Serena, 306 (photo), 307
Wilson, Darren, 261
Wirth, Louis, 240
Women
 concealed stories of, 97–99
health movement and, 187–190
in the Revolutionary War, 347–348
Title IX and, 322–325
violence against, 255
See also Black Americans, women; Whites, women
Woodson, Carter G., 196, 202
Work, gender and race in, 52
Work and wealth inequality, 114–154
applying the matrix to, 133–141
class and, 127
immigration and, 145–148
increasing, 116–119
recent trends in, 116–130
shifting organization of, 134–137
theories of, 130–132
transforming, 141–152
western expansion and, 135–136
Workers, creation of, 210–212
Workfare, 124
Workplace discrimination, 142–144
World, changing, 51–52
World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education (UNESCO, 216
World security, through sustainable economies, 366–367
World Series, 313
World War II, 354–359
Wretched of the Earth, The (Fanon), 208

Yousafzai, Malala, 216, 218 (photo)

Zimmerman, George, 295

Zoot Suit Riots, 354
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, “Measuring Race and Ethnicity across the
Decades: 1790–2010,” http://www.census.gov/population/race/
data/MREAD_1790_2010.html.
 Table of Contents
Half Title
Publisher Note
Title Page
Copyright Page
Brief Contents
Detailed Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Part I Introduction to Race and the Social Matrix
Chapter 1 Race and the Social Construction of Difference
Chapter 2 The Shaping of a Nation The Social Construction of Race in America
Part II The Matrix Perspective on Social Institutions
Chapter 3 The Social Construction and Regulation of Families
Chapter 4 Work and Wealth Inequality
Chapter 5 Health, edicine, and Health Care
Chapter 6 Education
Chapter 7 Crime, Law, and Deviance
Chapter 8 Power, Politics, and Identities
Chapter 9 Sports and the American Dream
Chapter 10 The Military, War, and Terrorism
Conclusion
Glossary
References
Index
Publisher Note