Section 1 Flashcards
What is “the problem” as defined by C. Wright Mills?
Feeling trapped or like a spectator in your won life
Most important decisions are made by the power elite
What is Sociological Imagination?
Understanding that the lives of individuals and history influence each other reciprocally
Being able to shift between these perspectives
Troubles vs Issues as defined by C. Wright Mills
Individual or personal problems vs matters that transcend the local environment (affect humanity and society as a whole)
Social structures
The arrangement of institutions where people interact and live together within a society
Institutions
Established patterns of beliefs, behaviors, rules, and relationships that organize social life
What are some examples of social structures?
Race, Class, Gender, Nations/Nationality, Family, Government
Race
Social construct that categorizes people based off of certain traits
Racism
Ideology that says one group is superior to another
Racial Discrimination
The action or unequal treatment that results from racist ideology
Racial Inequality
Unequal outcomes on the basis of race
Institutional Racism
Inequality that results from the systems, structures, policies, and practices that are already in place and often taken-for-granted
How does K.Y Taylor talk about Institutional Racism?
Policies or programs that result in increased rates of poverty, criminalization, illness, etc. in African Americans
How did the ideology of racism come to be? Why did this work, according to Fields & Fields?
In order to make chattel slavery justifiable while trying to fight for American independence on the basis of liberty and equality, they has to make the slaves less than human (so they don’t see like hypocrites)
“It’s easier to see someone as inferior when they’re already oppressed”
What happened to the ideology of race after slavery was abolished?
It continued on in the form of segregation, voting restrictions, and redlining (the era known as Jim Crow)
What happened to race after the Jim Crow system fell apart?
It took on the form of police brutality, mass incarceration, and a growing divide between Black upper and lower classes
So, in summary, what does the history of race in America tell us about ideologies?
They take on new forms via new systems of control (reinvented and re-ritualised)
They persist because they are, in some way, still useful to us
We continue to perpetuate or verify them in our day-to-day lives (repetition)
What is an ideology, as defined by Fields & Fields?
The ways in which people make rough sense (consciously and subconsciously) of their day-to-day lives and social realities
What is Racecraft?
When people see the world through the ideology of race
It doesn’t have to make sense to outsiders, nor does it have to be accurate
What are the 3 assumptions of racial ideology?
That race mainly refers to the difference between Europeans and Africans
Everything that Black people do or say has to be racial in nature
Any situation involved Black and white people is categorized as a “race relation”
What is the economy? Politics?
The system of exchange and production by which the money of a region is made and used
Who controls things and says what the rules are (who has the power)
What is the political economy?
The economy is the result of political processes (ie influenced by the government) and vice versa
How did the political economy of the south influence slavery and the creation of race as an ideology?
Needed to be wealthy to gain independence from England = needing cotton = needing cheap labor = slavery = racism
How did the political economy influence things after slavery ended?
Needed laws to keep former slaves on plantations = Jim Crow + KKK + Mass Incarceration
So, how did the political economy influence the end of Jim Crow (according to Piven and Cloward)?
Economic modernization in the South + industrial expansion in the north = The Great Migration (Black people moving from the South to the north) + emergence of Black occupational sector = less need for a racial caste system in the South
