When Sociologists argue that race/ethnicity are socially constructed, they don’t simply mean

When Sociologists argue that race/ethnicity are socially constructed, they don’t simply mean that people believe in these things. Sociologists claim that race and ethnicity are Social Facts (Durkheim, 1982), which implies that they exist independently of any one person’s beliefs. In addition to that, these social facts have coercive power, meaning they have a force of their own that molds our perceptions of ourselves and others, as well as the major institutions that impact how our society functions. Differences between people based upon the construction of race/ ethnicity can then have an enormous impact on the opportunities they have (or don’t have), and how others see them. The Historical Underpinnings of the Construction of Race/ Ethnicity To understand how these categories became such powerful determinants of our social worlds, we need to look at the history of how race/ethnicity as we understand them today came to be constructed as meaningful categories. Let’s go back to a familiar year. 1492! Columbus sails across the Atlantic (believing he was headed to India) and lands on what would become Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Cuba. His group encounters the Taino, an Arawak tribe with a large presence throughout the Caribbean basin. Professor of Caribbean Literature Peter Hulme (1978) tells us that the first time the word ‘Cannibal’ appears in a European text is in the diary attributed to Chris Columbus. It’s possible that Columbus himself didn’t write the diary, and more likely that one of his subordinates did, but the use of the word is telling nonetheless. The Taino were by no means cannibals. They were a highly sophisticated people with their own language, culture, economy, and cuisine that didn’t include other people. But the use of the word is evidence of a way of thinking about nonEuropeans typical to Europeans of that era. Race and Ethnicity in the United States Colonial discourse, i.e. the way Europeans talked, thought, wrote about, and related to these others was responsible for the creation of the social construction of race/ethnicity that imply a familiar hierarchy: One that claims white, Euro-descended people are culturally, technologically, and intellectually superior. This claim directed the creation of systems of government, the legal definitions of rights and citizenship, and so forth the world over– the United States being no exception. Woven into the fabric of our founding documents was the notion of white supremacy, allowing for slaves to be denied rights, freedoms, and so on. 1 As clear as it is that slavery in the South was an engine for economic growth (for whites) and formed the basis of race relations in the U.S., how then did racial difference and disparity persist once the institution was abolished? Eventually, the freeing of slaves in the U.S. reshaped our laws to give people of color equal protection under law. But it is important to know that the construction of race by that time had long placed whites and blacks in the U.S. on different political and economic paths. Newly freed slaves and no real wealth individually or collectively. They had no real property. They had few options as far as finding work. They had little to no education, nor was the education system ready or willing to help them acquire skills. They had no representation in the political sphere to advocate for systemic change. And of course, on top of their economic/political disadvantages, they were still seen as inferior (in cultural) terms by many whites. Sociologist, W.E.B. Du Bois suggested that Black Americans would never be equal without a broad effort to reshape our political, legal, and economic institutions to be more inclusive of people of color. Du Bois understood that the social construction of race (and implicitly ethnicity too) was achieved over a long period of time that built institutions around the idea of the superiority of whites. According to Du Bois only by reshaping those institutions, and by giving those Black Americans with potential the same opportunities as whites, could we begin to change the way race was constructed at a fundamental level. Failing to do so, according to Du Bois, would mean that Blacks would continue to remain at the bottom of a racial ‘caste’ system. This makes Du Bois among the earliest Americans to call publicly for diversity. Perceptions of Gender and Sexuality in Our Society In 1987, West and Zimmerman wrote a well-known article entitled Doing Gender, which tackles this problem. They start out by suggesting that conventionally, people strictly separated sex (biological) from gender (which they saw as both an achieved and ascribed status). Sociological thought through much of the 20th century was that sex was obviously fixed, and that gender was learned but very quickly became fixed and stable throughout the rest of the person’s life. West and Zimmerman disagree, arguing that gender is a practical everyday accomplishment, neither fixed not stable. They consider gender to be “an emergent feature of social situations: both an outcome and a rationale for various social arrangements and as a means of legitimating one of the most fundamental divisions of society.” West and Zimmerman make a bit of a different distinction between sex and gender: 1. Sex–A determination made through the application of socially agreed upon biological (phenotypical) criteria. 2. Sex category–Achieved by application of sex criteria, but also dependent on social displays. “Being woman” or “being man.” 3. Gender–The management of conduct based upon the standard attitudes about what is appropriate based on one’s sex category. 2 Our perception (in Western/North American culture) are that biological sex implies a certain set of expected behavioral propensities, that can be predicted from their reproductive functions. These expected behaviors are supported by the contemporary division of labor in households, which people often suggest is “natural and biologically rooted.” As a result many social roles are already gender-marked. Roles that involve care work of one kind or anotheraremarkedfeminine,andtheexpectationisthatwomenwillfulfillthem . Roles that involve rationality or physical ability are marked masculine and expected to be fulfilled by men. Contending with matters of diversity one can understand how this could, whether in regard to gender or biological sex, shape peoples’ perceptions of one another in a workplace or elsewhere. At the nexus of sex and gender are many notions about the physical and mental capabilities of men and women, and these ideas might lead those in power in organizations to promote (or not) less on evidence than stereotypical thinking. Class and Opportunity (or lack thereof) Though there is a cultural tendency in the U.S. to identify with middle class identity, the reality is that we are a deeply stratified society. But what does that mean when it comes to issues of diversity and difference? To answer that, we have to think about how class-based difference structures one’s opportunities in life, especially in terms of how one is able to participate in important institutions like schools/colleges. Sociologist Annette Lareau (2003) studied two elementary schools to better understand the relationship between social class and how parents participate in their child’s education. She chose two schools– one with almost exclusively upper-middle class families and the other with almost exclusively working class families, and utilized participant-observation as well as interview methods to address the problem. Lareau distinguished between two parenting styles based upon class difference. Middle class parents engaged in what she called ‘Concerted Cultivation,” while working class parents engaged in “Natural Growth.” While both sets of parents loved their children and wanted the best for them, middle class parents took advantage of having knowledge of how institutions worked, teaching their children not only the school curriculum, but also how to interact with teachers, administrators, and so on. Middle class parents were able to teach the kinds of supplementary skills that typically lead to success in professional careers, such as time management. Conversely, working class parents tended to let their children play without structure after school, as opposed to scheduling them to supervised activities like sports, music, etc. While this choice does allow children opportunity to grow as creative individuals, it does not necessarily teach the types of skills that lead to success in schools or work later in life. Moreover, working class parents tended to interact less with teachers than their middle class counterparts– this was because working class parents saw themselves as lacking the expertise or credentials to engage with teachers, and thus left the decision-making about their children to the experts. In this study we see how class not only impacts how people interact with the major institutions in society, but how class difference potentially reproduces itself over generations.