3.2 Theories of Racial and Ethnic Inequality

Explaining Inequality

Biological Inferiority

As discussed in Chapter 1, one long-standing (racist) explanation is that Blacks and other people of color are biologically inferior: They are naturally less intelligent and have other innate flaws that keep them from getting a good education and otherwise doing what needs to be done to achieve the American Dream. As discussed earlier, this racist view is no longer common today. However, whites historically used this belief to justify slavery, lynchings, the harsh treatment of Native Americans in the 1800s, and lesser forms of discrimination. In 1994, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray revived this view in their controversial book, The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994), in which they argued that the low IQ scores of African Americans, and of poor people more generally, reflect their genetic inferiority in the area of intelligence. African Americans’ low innate intelligence, they said, accounts for their poverty and other problems. Although the news media gave much attention to their book, few scholars agreed with its views, and many condemned the book’s argument as a racist way of “blaming the victim” (Gould, 1994).

Cultural Deficiencies

Another explanation of racial and ethnic inequality focuses on supposed cultural deficiencies of African Americans and other people of color (Murray, 1984). These deficiencies include a failure to value hard work and, for African Americans, a lack of strong family ties, and are said to account for the poverty and other problems facing these minorities. As we saw earlier, more than half of non-Latino whites think that Blacks’ poverty is due to their lack of motivation and willpower. Ironically some scholars find support for this cultural deficiency view in the experience of many Asian Americans, whose success is often attributed to their culture’s emphasis on hard work, educational attainment, and strong family ties (Min, 2005). If that is true, these scholars say, then the lack of success of other people of color stems from the failure of their own cultures to value these attributes.

How accurate is the cultural deficiency argument? Whether people of color have “deficient” cultures remains hotly debated (Bonilla-Silva, 2009). Many social scientists find little or no evidence of cultural problems in minority communities and say the belief in cultural deficiencies is an example of symbolic racism that blames the victim. Citing survey evidence, they say that poor people of color value work and education for themselves and their children at least as much as wealthier white people do (Holland, 2011; Muhammad, 2007).

Yet other social scientists, including those sympathetic to the structural problems facing people of color, believe that certain cultural problems do exist, but they are careful to say that these cultural problems arise out of the structural problems. For example, Elijah Anderson (1999) wrote that a “street culture” or “oppositional culture” exists among African Americans in urban areas that contributes to high levels of violent behavior, but he emphasized that this type of culture stems from the segregation, extreme poverty, and other difficulties these citizens face in their daily lives and helps them deal with these difficulties. Thus even if cultural problems do exist, they should not obscure the fact that structural problems are responsible for the cultural ones.

Structural Problems

A third explanation for US racial and ethnic inequality is based in conflict theory and reflects the blaming-the-system approach. This view attributes racial and ethnic inequality to structural problems, including institutional and individual discrimination, a lack of opportunity in education and other spheres of life, and the absence of jobs that pay an adequate wage (Feagin, 2006). Segregated housing, for example, prevents African Americans from escaping the inner city and from moving to areas with greater employment opportunities. Employment discrimination keeps the salaries of people of color much lower than they would be otherwise. The schools that many children of color attend every day are typically overcrowded and underfunded. As these problems continue from one generation to the next, it becomes very difficult for people already at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder to climb up it because of their race and ethnicity.

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Types of Racism

A general definition of racism is provided in this text.  Yet, in reality, sociologists have identified multiple types of racism, which are defined and described below. The analysis of these different types of racism provides more depth and complexity which can help to better diagnose, critically analyze, and potentially remedy racism.

Thinking Sociologically

Color-blind racism is defined as the use of race-neutral principles to defend the racially unequal status quo. While a mainstream definition of color-blindness suggests that race or racial classification does not affect a person's life chances or opportunities, sociologists such as Bonilla-Silva argues that this more subtle form of racism ignores race and structural racism and is the dominant ideology in the U.S. Yet, as shown below structural racism permeates every aspect of our lives, and color blind racism ignores the structural inequalities that disproportionately affect people of color. 

• Example: "We are all equal" and "race doesn't matter" are phrases uttered and may sound but, but in reality these phrases ignore structural problems such as the prison industrial complex, poverty, the wealth gap, and educational inequalities - all of which hamper the life chances of people of color which means we do not all have equal chances.  

Environmental racism: Structurally analogous to environmental sexism, environmental racism involves a conceptual association between people of color and nature that marks their dual subordination (Bullard, 1983). Environmental racism is seen in the deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste disposal and the siting of polluting industries (Ibid). It is racial discrimination in the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in communities of color (Ibid). And, it is racial discrimination in the history of excluding people of color from the mainstream environmental groups, decision-making boards, commissions, and regulatory bodies (Ibid).

• Example: Government-sanctioned lead-contaminated drinking water in Flint, Michigan, disproportionately impacting the African-American population.

Ideological racism: An ideology that considers a groups’ unchangeable physical characteristics to be linked in a direct, causal way to psychological or intellectual characteristics and that, on this basis, distinguishes between superior and inferior groups (Feagin & Feagin, 1998).

• Example: The justification of slavery as “saving” Africans from their homeland’s “primitive culture;” Manifest Destiny that purported Euro-Americans God-given rights to the lands in the eastern United States at the expense of Native Americans who were symbolized as “savages;” former President Trump’s statements on the campaign trail linking Mexicans to rapists and criminals.

Internalized racism: Members of the target group are emotionally, physically, and spiritually battered to the point that they begin to actually believe that their oppression is deserved, is their lot in life, is natural and right, and that it doesn’t even exist (Yamato, 2004).

• Example: A person of color who hates their skin color and wishes to marry out of their race-ethnic group so their children will be of lighter complexion.  Another example: the root of the alcohol problem in Indigenous communities can be traced to the effects of colonization, internalizing the colonizer’s message (i.e. American Indians are inferior or "savage").

Inter-group or inter-personal racism:  This is the racism that occurs between individuals or groups; it is the holding of negative attitudes towards a different race or culture (Safe Places for the Advancement of Community and Equity).  Interpersonal racism often follows a victim/perpetrator model (Ibid). Within poor communities, ignorance and suspicion of groups or individuals of a different race-ethnic background may result in tension between various race-ethnic groups.

• Example: In urban spaces such as Los Angeles, Long Beach, Chicago, New York City, poor Latinx, Asian, and African American gangs fight each other rather than the capitalist system that perpetuates class inequalities.

Intra-group racism: Racist attitudes and behaviors against people of your “same racial group.” Colorism is a type of intra-group racism which is the ranking or judgment of individuals based on skin tone (Schaefer, 2019). 

• Example: A light-skinned person of color who evaluates a dark-skinned person of color as inferior; a wealthy person of any particular "race" who speaks pejoratively of less financially wealthy individuals in their "race."

Modern racism: White beliefs that serious anti-Black (or anti-Mexican, anti-Arab, anti-Asian, etc.) discrimination does not exist today and that African Americans (or other communities of color) are making illegitimate demands for social changes. (Feagin & Feagin, 1998). This type of racism may be understood as color-blind racism. 

• Example: One white male (David C.) in the film, The Color of Fear, was sure he was not racist at all and sure that racism is a thing of the past and only a figment in the imagination of the minds of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, etc.

Structural racism/Systemic racism: A shorthand term for the many systemic factors that work to produce and maintain racial inequities in America today. These are aspects of our history and culture that allow the privileges associated with “whiteness” and the disadvantages associated with “color” to remain deeply embedded within the political economy. Public policies, institutional practices and cultural representations contribute to structural racism by reproducing outcomes that are racially inequitable. (The Aspen Institute)

• Example: The criminal justice system contributes to systemic racism through over-policing of communities of color, disproportionate police brutality experienced by people of color, and disproportionate mass incarceration of Black men. 

Subtle, covert racism: Hidden, camouflaged, pernicious racism.

• Example: Merriam-Webster's Dictionary definitions of racially-coded labels such as Black, minority, and savage all contain derogatory meanings.