Race Policy, Race Dynamics and Change (3/17)

1
Race Policy, Race Dynamics and Change (3/17)

• Complete 4 Myths from Feagin
• The Army-Navy Game
• Myrdal Dynamics and Change
• War and Change.

2
(Review) Feagin, Racist America

• FeaginsBasic idea is that racism is not a
  psychological characteristic of individuals, but
  a social structural dynamic of the social system
• his thought experiment, Starship Earth argued
  that disproportions of income, power, housing,
  etc. are always wasteful and divisive if they are
  too large,
• But he further argues that this set of problems
  is much more serious if the disproportions are
  tied to an ascriptive trait, such as race.
• Those kinds of inequalities are particularly
  divisive.

3
A sketch of the number of deaths in mass race
violence in the US
10,000
1,000
100
10
1
1850 60 70 80 90 1900 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Why?
4
The 4 Myths

• Racist America (2001) criticizes 4 myths
• American is a non-racist society?
• There is a vanishing residue of prejudice ?.
• Affirmative action goes too far and privileges
  minorities.
• Nothing can be done. Change must be slow.

5
The pattern of change in attitudes in the US
6
Interpretation

• Attitudes sometimes change quite quickly.
• There has been a sharp decline of views such as
  There should be laws against intermarriage,
  (though 10 to 20 of the white pop. still agrees
  with such items.)
• But most of the change was completed by 1968, and
  there has also been a decline in support for
  reducing existing inequalities.
• They seem to have responded to policy rather than
  driven policy.
• For example the Civil Rights movement and the
  urban rebellions of the 1960s seems to have
  driven a good deal of change, which stopped when
  that did.

7
The dynamic of race today

• Table 21.4 (p.406) details four centuries of
  legal progress and setbacks.
• different people conceive of that dynamic in
  different ways.
• The above pattern of urban race violence suggests
  that every period of war in US history has been a
  period of race violence,
• And every period of mass race violence has been a
  period of war.
• Why

8
Possible explanations

• Impossibility of maintaining coercion (like
  removing the top of pressure cooker)
• Relative deprivation
• Legitimation of violence
• American values become an issue if people are
  being asked to die for them.
• But for some purposes it does not matter what the
  explanation is. Race relations is a powder keg
  which is often ignited.

9
What is the dynamic of race relations in Myrdal

• Myrdals argument was that racism and racial
  inequality reinforce each other.

Racism
Racial Inequality
Violation of the American Creed
-

• This is sometimes wrongly interpreted to mean
  that racism is the individual sentiment that
  produces discriminatory behavior.

10
The relation between prejudice and racial
inequality

• The text correctly stresses that it is complex
• Feagin criticizes Myrdal as proposing a model
• Prejudice Discrimination Racism
• Feagin, as the theorist of institutionalized
  discrimination, argues that the relations go
  Racism Discrimination Prejudice

11
Where do race inequality and racism come from?

• Feagin believes that a model that suggests that
  bad ideas drop out of the sky is defective.
• It is the social structure and dynamics of
  inequality and segregation that are important.
• And a model that says that the value system is
  anti-racist is problematical.
• It takes struggle to make it anti-racist

12
3 Myth that affirmative action goes too far.

• Feagin argues that the playing field still
  privileges white males.
• It was partly leveled by affirmative action.
• But in housing, employment, schooling and other
  areas, the reality is still one of a non-level
  playing field that privileges white males.
• He suggests that white males usually overlook
  immense structures of privilege (such as feeder
  schools and legacy admissions in education) to
  attack any counterbalancing policies.

13
Institutional discrimination and systemic racism

• Feagin suggests that over American history,
  racism, as a pervasive institutional system
  maintains itself as a structure of inequality and
  privilege.
• Racism is not a matter of prejudice.
• It is often maintained by relatively little
  individually prejudiced action .
• The role of prejudice and stereotypes is often to
  resist policies to reduce race inequality or
  inequality of opportunity.

14
Individual, Institutional and Cultural racism in
SMMM

• Individual racism is individual prejudice or
  discrimination
• Institutional racism are institutionalized
  structures that disadvantage a group, and which
  are often maintained for reasons having little to
  do with prejudice.
• Cultural racism is an institutionalized belief in
  the superiority of European culture.

15
Institutional racism

• An individual may practice and support
  discriminatory policies for non-prejudiced
  motives.
• E.g. a Southern landowner wants to pay his
  tenants as little as possible.
• Or a feeder school or a legacies admission may be
  discriminatory in effect, but supported for
  non-racial reasons.
• Feagin argues that what makes policies racist
  or anti-racist is their consequences, not their
  motivation.

16
How much racial inequality is there?

• Feagin Racism directly or indirectly costs the
  average black American about 10 of their life
  span 40 of their income and 90 of their
  wealth.
• Sociology, Micro, Macro and Mega 1990
• White Black Hispanic
• 4 yrs col. 22 11 9
• in poverty 11 32 28
• Median inc. 36,915 21,423 23,431

17
Is there race inequality of opportunity

• Is the playing field level.
• Some people believe it is more than level.
• The text (e.g. p. 440 Top dog or Underdog)
  suggests this is mistaken.
• Feagin argues that discriminatory treatment and
  stereotyping is pervasive in the US today,
• As measured by thousands of matched pair
  applications for housing, employment, etc.

18
4 The Myth that nothing can be done

• There are not only huge shifts in attitudes,
• But also large differences and relatively rapid
  changes in different institutions.
• The army went from largely vertically segregated
  to the most integrated large institution in the
  US in decades.
• The process was similar to that pictured in
  Remember the Titans

19
The problem in the army and other armed forces

• The problem was that vertical segregation was
  divisive, dysfunctional and unjust.
• Incoming candidates differed in test scores, so
  that if those scores to determined placement
  vertical segregation was assured.
• Are the test score differences innate or due to
  differences in schools, etc.?
• The army argued that there was evidence of the
  latter, and if so it is unjust as well as
  inefficient to accommodate to it.

20
Nature of army programs

• A set of four main compensatory programs.
• None insures one a position, only a chance.
• They are not aimed to replace the educational
  system, but to remedy the cumulative racial
  inequality.

21
The army and the navy, again.

• Feagin does not believe that the army is any more
  utopian than the navy.
• Nor were the average sentiments of either most
  people or most officers different.
• The main difference was a commitment by the
  leadership to a sufficient set of policies
  directed at both inequality and prejudice.

22
Are race relations and race inequality stable or
unstable?

• Call a structure stable if it changes a little
  if a small force is placed on it, and it changes
  a lot of a large force is applied.
• Structures without feedbacks are often stable.
• Call a structure unstable if it changes a lot
  even when only a small force is applied.
• Positive feedback structures are often unstable
• Call a structure hyper-stable if, even after it
  has been changed, it tends to change back.
• Negative feedback structures are often
  hyper-stable.

23
The three marbles, again
stable
unstable
Hyper-stable
24
Myrdal believed that race relations were unstable.

• They have lots of positive feedbacks.
• A decrease in prejudice should create an
  avalanche of further changes unraveling the
  racist structure.
• Just as an increase in racial inequality should
  create an avalanche of further changes increasing
  racism.
• (Note that both happened in the 1970s)
• Changes in the South were undermining some
  aspects of Jim Crow.
• Changes in the country were making Southern
  regionalism less viable.
• Changes in the world were making US failure to
  live up to its ideals less viable.

25
Implications of his analysis of racial inequality
as positive feedbacks

• The structure looks inert because and only
  because it is so pervasive.
• But policy interventions can be very powerful
  because change is amplified.
• However they must be broad spectrum (I.e. health,
  education, political power, income, wealth,
  social participation, etc.