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Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity. Modern variants of racism are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples. These views can take the form of social actions, practices or beliefs, or political systems in which different races are ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities. There have been attempts to legitimize racist beliefs through scientific means, such as scientific racism, which have been overwhelmingly shown to be unfounded. In terms of political systems that support the expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices or laws, racist ideology may include associated social aspects such as nativism, xenophobia, otherness, segregation, hierarchical ranking, and supremacism.
Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their skin color, race or ethnic origin. Individuals can discriminate by refusing to do business with, socialize with, or share resources with people of a certain group. Governments can discriminate in a de facto fashion or explicitly in law, for example through policies of racial segregation, disparate enforcement of laws, or disproportionate allocation of resources. Some jurisdictions have anti-discrimination laws which prohibit the government or individuals from discriminating based on race in various circumstances. Some institutions and laws use affirmative action to attempt to overcome or compensate for the effects of racial discrimination. In some cases, this is simply enhanced recruitment of members of underrepresented groups; in other cases, there are firm racial quotas. Opponents of strong remedies like quotas characterize them as reverse discrimination, where members of a dominant or majority group are discriminated against.
Color blindness is a term that has been used by justices of the United States Supreme Court in several opinions relating to racial equality and social equity, particularly in public education. The term metaphorically references the medical phenomenon of color blindness.
Discrimination based on skin color, also known as colorism, or shadeism, is a form of prejudice and discrimination in which people who share similar ethnic traits and people who are perceived as belonging to a darker skinned race are treated differently based on the social implications that come with the cultural meanings that are attached to their darker skin color.
In political science, a principle-policy puzzle, also known as a principle-policy gap or a principle-policy paradox is a disconnect between support for a principle and support for a policy supporting that principle.
In the United States, the relationship between race and crime has been a topic of public controversy and scholarly debate for more than a century. Crime rates vary significantly between racial groups. Academic research indicates that the over-representation of some racial minorities in the criminal justice system can in part be explained by socioeconomic factors, such as poverty, exposure to poor neighborhoods, poor access to public and early education, and exposure to harmful chemicals and pollution. Racial housing segregation has also been linked to racial disparities in crime rates, as Blacks have historically and to the present been prevented from moving into prosperous low-crime areas through actions of the government and private actors. Various explanations within criminology have been proposed for racial disparities in crime rates, including conflict theory, strain theory, general strain theory, social disorganization theory, macrostructural opportunity theory, social control theory, and subcultural theory.
White Americans are Americans who identify as white people. This group constitutes the majority of the people in the United States. According to the 2020 census, 71%, or 235,411,507 people, were white, and 61.6%, or 204,277,273 people, were white alone. This represented a national white demographic decline from a 72.4% white alone share of the U.S. population in 2010.
In sociology, racialization or ethnicization is a political process of ascribing ethnic or racial identities to a relationship, social practice, or group that did not identify itself as such for the purpose of domination and social exclusion. Racialization or ethnicization often arises out of the interaction of a group with a group that it dominates or wants to dominate, and the group that wants to dominate ascribes a racial identity to the other group for the purpose of reproducing or continuing their ways of domination, and for reinforcing their social exclusion practices. It is a dehumanization process that evolved from racism, distinguishing dominant group's identity as comparatively different and superior from the non-dominant group for the purpose of oppression. Over time, the racialized and ethnicized group develop the society enforced construct that races are real, different and unequal in ways that matter to economic, political and social life, an unhealthy norm that strips them from their dignity of a full humanity. This systemic tool used for oppression and to induce trauma have been commonly used in varying flexibility throughout the history of imperialism, nationalism, racial and ethnic hierarchies.
Reverse racism, sometimes referred to as reverse discrimination, is a concept that affirmative action and similar color-conscious programs for redressing racial inequality are a form of anti-white racism. The concept is often associated with conservative social movements and reflects a belief that social and economic gains by black people cause social and economic disadvantages for white people.
Aversive racism is a theory proposed by Samuel L. Gaertner & John F. Dovidio (1986), according to which negative evaluations of racial/ethnic minorities are realized by a persistent avoidance of interaction with other racial and ethnic groups. As opposed to traditional, overt racism, which is characterized by overt hatred for and discrimination against racial/ethnic minorities, aversive racism is characterized by more complex, ambivalent expressions and attitudes nonetheless with prejudicial views towards other races. Aversive racism arises from unconscious personal beliefs taught during childhood. Subtle racist behaviors are usually targeted towards African Americans. Workplace discrimination is one of the best examples of aversive racism. Biased beliefs on how minorities act and think affect how individuals interact with minority members.
Race in the United States criminal justice system refers to the unique experiences and disparities in the United States in regard to the policing and prosecuting of various races. There have been different outcomes for different racial groups in convicting and sentencing felons in the United States criminal justice system. Experts and analysts have debated the relative importance of different factors that have led to these disparities.
Laissez-faire racism is closely related to color blindness and covert racism, and is theorised to encompass an ideology that blames minorities for their poorer economic situations, viewing it as the result of cultural inferiority. The term is used largely by scholars of whiteness studies, who argue that laissez-faire racism has tangible consequences even though few would openly claim to be, or even believe they are, laissez-faire racists.
Symbolic racism is a coherent belief system that reflects an underlying one-dimensional prejudice towards a racialized ethnicity. These beliefs include the stereotype that black people are morally inferior to white people, and that black people violate traditional White American values such as hard work and independence. However, symbolic racism is more of a general term than it is one specifically related to prejudice towards black people. These beliefs may cause the subject to discriminate against black people and to justify this discrimination. Some people do not view symbolic racism as prejudice since it is not linked directly to race but is indirectly linked through social and political issues.
African Americans, and African American males in particular, have an ethnic stereotype in which they are portrayed as dangerous criminals. This stereotype is associated with the fact that African Americans are proportionally over-represented in the numbers of those that are arrested and convicted for committing crimes. It has appeared frequently in American popular culture, reinforcing the negative consequences of systemic racism.
The racial achievement gap in the United States refers to disparities in educational achievement between differing ethnic/racial groups. It manifests itself in a variety of ways: African-American and Hispanic students are more likely to receive lower grades, score lower on standardized tests, drop out of high school, and they are less likely to enter and complete college than whites, while whites score lower than Asian Americans.
Racial biases are a form of implicit bias, which refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect an individual's understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. These biases, which encompass unfavorable assessments, are often activated involuntarily and without the awareness or intentional control of the individual. Residing deep in the subconscious, these biases are different from known biases that individuals may choose to conceal for the purposes of social and/or political correctness. Police officers have implicit bias, regardless of their ethnicity. Racial bias in criminal news reporting in the United States is a manifestation of this bias.
The racial resentment scale is a measure of symbolic racism created by Donald Kinder and Lynn M. Sanders for the American National Election Studies in the 1980s. It has been considered the dominant measure of symbolic racism since its inception.
The politics of resentment, sometimes called grievance politics, is a form of politics which is based on resentment of some other group of people.
White Americans, as the largest racial group in the United States, have historically had better health outcomes than other oppressed racial groups in America. However, in recent years, the scholarly discourse has switched from recognition of the immense positive health outcomes of white Americans towards understanding the growing persistence of negative outcomes unique to this racial group. Scholars have discussed the effects of racial prejudice and its negative effect on health outcomes to not only those being oppressed but also those being given privileges. In addition to the effects of living in a racialized society, white Americans have the highest rate of suicide and lifetime psychiatric disorders of any other ethnicity or racial category. In conjunction with these psychiatric issues, the population presents higher rates of alcohol usage alongside lower levels of psychological flourishing. Given this information, the health status of white Americans has gained increasing importance due to the differences in health outcomes between white Americans and white people from other parts of the world.
In social psychology, the two axes of subordination is a racial position model that categorizes the four most common racial groups in the United States into four different quadrants. The model was first proposed by Linda X. Zou and Sapna Cheryan in the year 2017, and suggests that U.S. racial groups are categorized based on two dimensions: perceived inferiority and perceived cultural foreignness. Support for the model comes from both a target and perceivers perspective in which Whites are seen as superior and American, African Americans as inferior and American, Asian Americans as superior and foreign, and Latinos as inferior and foreign.
References
- ↑ Sears, David O. (2008). "Race-Conscious Policies". International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Retrieved 18 May 2017.
- ↑ Boston, Thomas D. (2002). A Different Vision: African American Economic Thought. Routledge. p. 85. ISBN 9781134798605.
- ↑ Edwards, John (20 January 2009). "Group Rights v. Individual Rights: The Case of Race-Conscious Policies". Journal of Social Policy. 23 (1): 55–70. doi:10.1017/S0047279400021322. S2CID 145066826.
- ↑ Ancheta, Angelo (1 July 2002). "Constitutional Law and Race-Conscious Policies in K-12 Education". ERIC Digest. Retrieved 19 May 2017.
- ↑ Bleich, Erik (1 May 2001). "Race Policy in France". Brookings Institution. Retrieved 19 May 2017.
- ↑ Bleich, Erik (November 2002). "Integrating Ideas into Policy-Making Analysis". Comparative Political Studies. 35 (9): 1054–1076. doi:10.1177/001041402237506. S2CID 153698101.
- ↑ Lopez, Linda; Pantoja, Adrian D. (December 2004). "Beyond Black and White: General Support for Race-Conscious Policies Among African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Whites". Political Research Quarterly. 57 (4): 633–642. doi:10.1177/106591290405700411. S2CID 144221840.
- ↑ Feldman, Stanley; Huddy, Leonie (January 2005). "Racial Resentment and White Opposition to Race-Conscious Programs: Principles or Prejudice?". American Journal of Political Science. 49 (1): 168–183. doi:10.1111/j.0092-5853.2005.00117.x.