Random Thoughts on Race Relations and Racism

Prejudice plays a large role in race relations. Prejudice, or pre-judging someone, does not have to necessarily be racial, and everyone makes assumptions about others rooted in prejudice, or making a negative judgment about someone else based on the way they look or any possible category. Thus, prejudice plays a key role in maintaining racial and social hierarchies in that members of the majority group have additional power in their prejudice or unfounded assumptions about out-group individuals based on some feature or characteristic. In the case of race relations, prejudice clearly uses skin color, facial features, and other external factors to differentiate in-group and out-group. Prejudice, in the context of differing racial or ethnic groups, can then manifest in discrimination, or the acting upon one’s prejudice toward others.

Prejudice, not a rational judgment, is a premeditated action based on social hierarchies in which certain individuals, usually majority in the case of US whites versus people of color, believe or assume something about the latter because of racial stereotypes. For instance, a white woman walking down the street passes by a white male and simply walks by. Later, perhaps a block later, she passes a Black male and quickly ensures her purse is pressed against her body and takes on a aggressive or fearful demeanor because she prejudged the black male to be a thief, rapist, and criminal. This type of prejudice is rooted in social theory of in-group and out-group relations, racialized and gendered in this example. Instances of prejudice such as these are often a driving force behind discrimination in American society, manifesting itself in three forms of discrimination, individual, institutional, and structural. Realistic Conflict theory argues that the prejudice results from competition between in-group and out-group, which definitely plays a part in prejudice since many justify their discriminatory or racist views on perceived or real competition over jobs, resources, or access to education.

The white woman in the aforementioned case exemplifies individual discrimination. In addition, these forms of discrimination, rooted in prejudice and stereotypes about Black criminality, influence housing segregation and segregation more broadly since it fuels white resistance to open housing, banks redlining neighborhoods inhabited by Blacks, and the maintenance of segregated neighborhoods since whites will no longer want to live in a neighborhood where their property loses value and demographic changes will be seen as bringing crime. This is why prejudice is a primary factor in understanding race relations, since it can lead to discriminations which can also be reinforced in structurally or through institutions. The end result is racism, or the continuing dominance of whites over many people of color politically, economically, and socially in terms of access to higher-paying jobs, better education, more valuable neighborhoods, and political power. People of color themselves, operating in a broader society dominated by European-Americans, also occupy varying niches within this broader society and relate to each other in ways that also demonstrate the influence of white American racism, which may be reflected in the denigration of blackness and the desire for light complexion among Latinos, Asians, and African Americans.

When analyzing relations between particular minority groups it is necessary to do so with attention paid to the multiple contexts of that particular relationship. For instance, when examining race relations between African Americans and Asian Americans, it is necessary to look back through history for various contexts as well as the present to put the relationship of Africa and Asia throughout history. Thus, the relationship between Japanese-American and Blacks in the U.S. requires one to research the context of their relationship earlier in Japanese history. Once that is done, it can be understood that the first Africans the Japanese encountered were likely servants or enslaved subjects of Portuguese traders in the 16th century, meaning that for several centuries Japan’s only experience with Africans and African-Americans is that of seeing them as enslaved, servile peoples with all of the negative stereotypes from Europeans and Americans permeating Japanese society. However, it becomes clear that Japan lacked the concept of “race” as a biological concept rooted in skin color and European-derived theories of racial inferiority, especially because an African-American aboard an American ship was assumed to be the leader of the expedition by Japanese. Later, however, in the age of European colonial dominance in Asia and Africa, as the Japanese became an imperial power themselves, they tried to define themselves in terms of whiteness as a way to deflect racist attacks on their nation. Meanwhile, African Americans simultaneously were praising Japan as a non-white world power while the Japanese were only interested in achieving the privileges and respect endowed with whiteness for Japan and Japanese immigrants in the US. Needless to say, this impacts contemporary Japanese-American and Asian-American relations with Blacks because of the historical context of Japanese desires to separate themselves from people of color and the influence of western racism. Negative stereotypes of Blacks, as well as the troubling tendency within Japanese popular culture to dehumanize or use the aforementioned stereotypes, in anime, for instance, illustrates some of these problematic relations with dark-skinned people and African-Americans.

In addition to historical context, understanding race relations between minority groups must also take into account cultural differences between different geographical locales and the unique views of race among these communities. Latinos, a heterogeneous group with many of African descent, for example, often define blackness very differently. The US uses hypo-descent or the one-drop rule to identify African-Americans, but racial identity in Latin America has historically been more fluid. Thus, many Latinos in the US of African descent or perceived as black do not identify as African American, challenging the American socio-political concept of Black. The unique forms of mestizaje and national identity espoused by Mexico and other Latin American states also exclude and deliberately erase the African historical presence and contributions to their national identity also impact Latino-Black relations in the US. Many Latinos, not knowing anything about the contributions or even the existence of people of African descent in Latin America will believe or assume the worst of negative stereotypes about African Americans. Likewise, through competition or perceived competition for resources, Blacks will have prejudices and possibly discriminate against Latinos, though Blacks and Latinos in the US face similar obstacles to progress through mass incarceration, inferior schools and segregation. However, location is a hugely important context that influences these relations, since Latinos, such as Puerto Ricans in New York, have far more in common with African Americans and ethnic tension between the two groups is not the same as ethnic conflicts or geographical separation between Blacks and Latinos in Milwaukee. As mentioned previously, the omnipresence of white racism taints all these interactions between people of color in the US, too.

Two theories developed to elucidate the nature of race relations include Social Identity Theory and Common Intergroup theory. People of color base the latter on reacting against white supremacy, emphasizing the common experience of racism, although experienced in different ways. As an expansion of the Social Identity Theory model, coalitions between different minority groups are plausible if they adopt a collective in-group mentality of minorities against whites. This may be the result of the increasingly majority-minority demographics of the US, but there are many threats. The distinctiveness of each group would be imperiled and each minority group has its own needs and requires its own identity. There also is a categorization threat since some minority groups will not want the common label of people of color. For instance, South Asians may not want to be associated with or seen as “Black.”  In addition, a value threat also means that, despite being the majority, people of color would see that they don’t have a lot of power in high positions. However, this theory has many weaknesses, including the aforementioned problems of people of color not wanting to be identified or associated with each other (South Asians and Blacks). Furthermore, it is not really a theory and does not account for those who are both white and non-white, like the equally problematic Social Identity Theory model. Furthermore, according to some sociologists some minority groups seem to be assimilating and becoming “honorary whites” while Blacks remain outliers, at least according to rates of interracial relationships and indicators of socio-economic status. Moreover, Common Intergroup theory is not really a theory, and assumes that race is a unique category that cannot be applied to other models of in-group-out-group relations. However, it is centered on people of color, unlike most theories, which are based on whites or the black-white binary, meaning that it is more inclusive of the multiracial reality of life in the US.

Likewise, another theoretical paradigm for analyzing race relations, Social Identity Theory, has its strengths and weaknesses. It posits that people derive self-esteem from membership in a group, one’s in-group. Members of an in-group prefer the company of others in their group, their social identity. Individuals are motivated to seek a positive social identity through the value and emotional significance attached to membership in that group or identity. One’s driving force in life is a solid identity biologically driven based on being a member of a group that looks like alike. The theory also states that members of the same group will and should develop their social identity with each other rather than integrate otherwise suffer the consequences of confusion and lack of a clear social identity to derive self-esteem and a positive self-identity. This obviously leaves biracial and multiracial individuals out of the picture, since their multiple identities and physical bodies do not fit Social Identity Theory. Similarly, transgender individuals and other ambiguous or non-conforming members of established social identities are excluded.

The advantages of this theory include predictability, since theoretically everyone can be categorized or put into a box and separated from each other. It also justifies the status quo in terms of segregated neighborhoods and schools, which this theory would argue exists from human nature and the desire of each racial group to develop their own positive social identity. Proponents of the theory could even state that the theory does allow integration to take place, once individuals develop a positive social identity before interacting with members of out-groups. Unfortunately, it does endorse a separate but equal segregationist society that clearly was anything but separate and equal in American society. The numerous weaknesses include, besides the aforementioned exclusion of multiracial and transgender identities and the segregationist tone that precludes any possibility of interracial relationships or desegregated schools for young children, a reductionist framework that postulates a narrow worldview thriving on clarity. Any examination of human societies will reveal the multiple, converging identities each individual has, and people cannot be divided or defined in terms of membership in a single identity or in-group. Furthermore, the long history and existence of multiracial people and cosmopolitan societies is irrefutable evidence of thriving multiracial societies. Social Identity theory also assumes static cultures, when every culture changes over time, is dynamic, and interacts with others.

There are several limitations to understanding race relations. A major limitation is the ambiguous, constant flux of changing racial identities. Race, as a social construct, changes meaning over time and location, meaning that definitions of race and racial groups will evolve and shift. This is seen in certain white groups in the US, such as Jews or Irish Americans, who were a racialized “Other” in the past but now enjoy the privileges of whiteness since the definition of white expanded to include them. In addition to the shifting definitions of whiteness and other racial identities, race in the US is primarily discussed as a dichotomy of Black and white rather than encompassing the entirety of the population. Asian Americans are an increasingly larger part of the US population and Latinos have already eclipsed Blacks as the largest minority, thereby demanding a shift in the study of race relations to reflect the ethnic composition of the US. The colorblind ideology and post-racial racism of the present era also contributes to misunderstandings of race relations, especially in regards to mass incarceration of African Americans and Latinos, affirmative action, and discussing race openly.

In order to better understand race relations in the US, it will be necessary to study race as it intersects with other identities, particularly class, gender, sexuality, immigration status, religion, and political climate. Studying race relations or relations between people of color will require an intersectional paradigm to avoid homogenizing racial groups as well as catching the complexities of race with LGBT, environmental, class, and religious issues and conflicts. With this intersectional framework for conducting studies, it could be possible to avoid broad generalizations about entire groups of people solely due to their race. Another suggestion would be to look for trends on how people of color identify with each other, which could be seen by studying political support for Obama or people of color elected officials. Latino voters provide a good example, since they are not homogenous voters at all, as the Latino population of Florida indicates. The competition over resources in Miami and southern Florida and it’s impact on Haitians, Latinos, and other immigrant groups also provides an exemplary instance of studying relations between Blacks and Latinos.