Sociology is the study of society, and the ways in which humans interact with it and one another to create, and remake social structure. Through an understanding of culture, social institutions and structures, and social interactions, we can begin to make sense of humans in a greater societal context. Sociology grew out of a desire to understand human phenomena scientifically. While the discipline has morphed over the years to understand that the human requires a different type of study than inanimate objects such as a leaf, it still battles with a desire to be seen as a science, and to acknowledge that an objective/value free study of the human as a rational creature has its limitations. One of the first U.S. schools to highlight this point was a Historically Black College and University (HBCU), the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory at Atlanta University, whose most noted Sociologist was W.E.B. DuBois.The Atlanta Sociological Laboratory (ASL) is the first American school of sociology and the first to acknowledge limitations to value free study in its publication. Despite this, most professional sociologists know little about ASL. Instead, the Chicago School became credited as the first American sociological school. Albion Small, who was a founding sociologist at the Chicago School, failed to mention ASL in his seminal 1916 article describing the rise of American sociology over the previous 50 years. He made no mention of W.E.B. Dubois or his contribution to the discipline.ASL was completely ignored, as was Dubois until 1951 in American Sociology: The Story of Sociology in the United States through 1950 by Howard Odum, who credits the work of Dubois as contributing to the areas of “race/ethnic/group/folk” but fails to describe the work he did in many other areas of sociology (Odum, 1951).
An argument can be made that work done at ASL ought to be taught in introductory courses, however it is generally not.In 2012, Sociologist Earl Wright made recommendations on how to add this content into an Introduction to Sociology course, and highlighted the missed opportunity of standard introductory textbooks to include this information. Wright’s work examined the 5 most commonly assigned introductory texts and found only cursory mention of Dubois and almost no mention of ASL. The author suggests areas where the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory can be infused into specific chapters and sections of introductory courses, including the history of the discipline, research methods, religion, and race/ethnicity. The article includes appendices that provide resources to further students learning about ASL including readings and assignments to incorporate into introductory coursework (Wright, 2012).
Sadly, despite the work of Wright and others, Sociology and white supremacy are bound through elitism, power and racism. Sociology is neither objective nor value free in that the researcher is always implicated in their work. White scholarship practices erasure and it’s methods and practices are considered the mainstream while Black sociology is seen in contrast.Sociology reproduces the culture at large through its positioning white thinkers as noted experts, both the peer review and publishing practices, and creating a hierarchy of thought. In order to bring sociology into a place where it is more inclusive to all scholars, research and writings by sociologists of color must be incorporated better into the discipline’s recognized body of work (Shotwell, 2019).
There is a rising call to action to address the issue of white supremacy and racism inherent in Sociology. The epistemological framework of sociology is steeped in racism, just like all other fields, but this understanding has long been acknowledged in the field and many sociologists have spoken out in attempts to address this for over 100 years. An attempt to end the “possessive investment in white sociology,” which “continues to plague the discipline and its potential,” (Brunsma & Padilla Wyse, 2019)is a moral imperative, and ending this inequity will also make the discipline more relevant to 21st century students. In the field of Sociology,like the rest of society, whites benefit from the privilege of being the normative cultural definers, while others are seen in relation to whiteness. According to C. Wright Mills, “Whether signatories of this deal or not, all whites benefit from this” (Mills, 1959). It is important to understand the parallel development of the field in white institutions and HBCUs and just how differently each is received. The birth of both schools, the Sociology department at the University of Chicago (1892) and the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory (1895) both created a great deal to the field and deserve an equal place in the history books.
By conceptualizing Black sociology, hegemonic white sociology became visible. Black Sociology was seen as the sociology of liberation and adopted a culturally relative approach. White Sociology’s belief in objective knowledge via positivism did not consider the Eurocentric worldview that defined their reality. “Scholars explain that the racialized segregation of knowledge as structured by white supremacy reproduces a ‘white ignorance,’ which is ‘not confined to only white people’” (Brunsma & Padilla Wyse, 2019). Despite the discipline being organized around an understanding of humanity, many of the contributions of Black sociologists are not in the standard required elements of a sociology curriculum, whether at the undergraduate or graduate level, which limits the relevance of the field. More often than not,students of color do not see themselves reflected in the work.
We are not graduating sociologists of color, who then go on to teach at the rate we could be, and this is a symptom of this investment we have made in white sociology. Our organizing body (ASA) is a part of the problem as well. The structure and the ways in which one obtains a seat at the table is historically bound in the peer review process, and in a style of writing that is required to become published. When whiteness is normalized into institutional and disciplinary fabric, instances of micro affirmations, micro recognitions, micro validations, micro transformations, and micro protections become commonplace (Brunsma & Padilla Wyse, 2019).
A sociology of knowledge approach is needed to make clear the ways in which the investment in white sociology has shaped the discipline, and it also offers a way forward. By empowering our understanding of the discipline’s racialized history, we also empower the decolonization of our sociological imaginations.
