The image above illustrates the importance of discussing race.[1] This includes talking about whiteness and about the experience of being white. For white people, it’s easy to forget that “non-Hispanic white” is a racial category—in fact, the largest and most powerful American racial group of all.

As noted in Chapter 1, intersectionality means we all experience ourselves in terms of multiple social identities. Why is talking about contrasting lived experiences based on a particular type of identity—such as race—important? Why should we learn about the overlapping yet differing experiences of various American groups? Why are many white people reluctant, hesitant, and even fearful to talk about race or whiteness? What do such feelings reveal about the ongoing significance of race in American society?

Chapter 3 Learning Objectives

3.1 Race and Ethnicity

• Differentiate between race and ethnicity
• Understand how racial classification can differ between the U.S. and Latin America

3.2 The Sociology of Race

• Differentiate between individuals and groups
• Explain why natural and social scientists distinguish between individuals and groups
• Explain key concepts central to the sociology of race

3.3 The Politics of Hyphenated Identity

• Define identity politics

3.4 Self-Care: Studying Injustice

• Describe strong emotions experienced in studying diversity and learning about injustice
• Describe self-care strategies
• Define antisemitism

Chapter 3 Key Terms (in order of appearance in chapter)

race: human categorization by shared physical traits like skin color

ethnicity: human categorization by shared language, culture, and history

racial classification: a commonsense system for racializing individuals as members of various racial groups. Racial commonsense is formalized in official bureaucratic and demographic categories (e.g., U.S. Census). Racial commonsense works differently in the U.S. than in Latin American nations such as Brazil.

stereotype: a harmful generalization about individuals based on claimed group characteristics

republican: pertaining to a republic, a political community in which the people is sovereign

democratic: pertaining to a democracy, a political community in which the people is sovereign

identity politics: political conflict over public policy relevant to social identity (e.g., race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, religion, age, etc.)

genocide: the attempted killing of an entire people (e.g., the Holocaust)

antisemitism: prejudice and violence against Jews

the African Diaspora: European dispersal to New World slavery of millions of Africans

the Destruction of the Indies: the catastrophic depopulation of the Americas’ native peoples through conquest and disease, one of largest demographic declines in world history

self-care strategies: practical ways of managing strong emotions through self-awareness

3.1 Race and Ethnicity

We’ve seen that although race has no important biological meaning, its social meaning is both real and consequential (Telles 2004:21). Even though there are no biologically distinct “races,” American society continues to treat race as an important marker of identity, community, and inequality. This importance (meaning, significance) is a purely social convention, not grounded in natural group differences. “Race” categorizes people by one set of physical features (skin color, hair type, eyelid shape) rather than another possible set (height, weight, head shape, eye color, ear size). As a phenomenon of the social world, not the natural world, race is a social construction reflecting differences of power among social groups. Racial categories and hierarchies are results (and causes) of political, legal, and other social processes. As politics and laws change, such racial phenomena themselves can change (Gómez 2018:xiii). Chapter 7 explains social constructionism in more detail.

“Race” is an old word in English (and Spanish: “la raza”) that meant “type,” “breed,” or “family group.” The scientific consensus of biologists and anthropologists since the mid-twentieth century is that so-called “racial” groups display more intra-group genetic variation than inter-group variation (Graves 2013:40; see also Gould 1996; Kevles 1995). Biological science doesn’t support commonsensical notions of “race,” a fact that often confuses students of biology and medicine. For instance, many biomedical students assume that sickle cell anemia is a “black” (rather than “white” or “Asian”) disease. But the sickle cell anemia allele is not caused by race, but rather shows high frequency in malarial zones because it offers resistance to malaria. Populations in coastal Kenya, a place where malarial mosquitoes live, show higher frequency of the sickle cell allele than populations in high-altitude Kenya, where the mosquitoes are absent. Kenyans’ black “race” is the same in both regions (Graves 2013:43).

For centuries, white supremacists argued that some races (whites) are better than others in terms of criteria of human excellence: intelligence, morality, leadership, health, caring/empathy, courage, perseverance, strength/athleticism, creativity, etc. By contrast, by the mid-1900s evolutionary biologists were agreeing with anti-racists that there is no biological foundation of “racial” differences in excellence within the human species. The “black” and “white” groups vary more within themselves (for example, on intelligence) than they vary between each other. Likewise, the “Native American” (or “Asian” or “Hispanic”) group varies more within itself than it does with any of the other groups. Racial group differences—in wealth, education, crime, achievement—are outcomes of social and historical processes, not natural and biological ones.

Sociologists distinguish between “race” and “ethnicity.” Race means sorting humans into categories based on physical traits—whereas ethnicity refers to differences of language, culture, and history.[2] For instance, black Americans comprise a racial group—and this group, in turn, includes various ethnic groups such as African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, immigrants from African countries, and Afro-Latinos (Gómez 2018:2). Likewise, white Americans are a racial group composed of various ethnic groups, including European Americans (non-Jewish Poles, Czechs, Italians, Germans, English, etc.), Jewish Americans, and Hispanic whites.

Racial classification in the U.S. and Latin America. Racial classification is a commonsense system of racialization that people use to categorize each other as members of various racial groups. Such classification often works differently in North America versus Latin America, a fact illustrating the social construction of race. Consider the following two examples: “Black” race and “Hispanic” ethnicity.

(1) Blackness. Racial classification as black can differ across world regions (as can white). For instance, blackness is understood differently in the U.S. than in Brazil. Someone seen as black in the U.S. may not be considered black in Brazil (Telles 2004:79). Racial mixing (interracial sex, mestizaje, miscegenation) in Brazil has historically been perceived as “whitening” the nation, whereas in the U.S. it has been described as “blackening” or “browning” the nation. Brazilians who understand themselves as white may have nonwhite ancestors. This can be difficult to understand for North Americans, who tend to assume that whiteness requires having virtually no nonwhite ancestry (ibid:91; cf. APAN:II:887).

Figure 3.1.[3] Can adding milk to coffee make it white? In Brazilian racial commonsense, adding more and more white ancestry over the generations to a black or brown family can make it white. In U.S. racial commonsense, a black or brown family can never become white, no matter how much white ancestry is added.

(2) Hispanic. Another way racial classification differs between North America and Latin America is the U.S. “Hispanic” ethnic category. This term was introduced by Congress in 1976, forming a single demographic category for a population with many differences of nationality, social class, race, legal status, and generation in the U.S. (Gómez & López 2013:xi). Although arguably useful and important for U.S. demographic, bureaucratic, and political purposes, the term is not used in Latin America and has little meaning outside of the U.S.

“Hispanic” is usually thought of as an ethnic rather than racial category, since it primarily refers to shared culture and language rather than to physical traits. However, although the distinction between race and ethnicity is important, it can also be conceptually murky and politically contested. For example, legal historian Laura Gómez argues that Mexican Americans should be seen as a distinct race of long standing in American society, rather than a newly arrived ethnicity (Gómez 2018:17; cf. Telles & Ortiz 2008:12).

In these ways, the U.S. categories “Hispanic” and “Asian” resemble each other. Both comprise many nationalities and ethnicities, speaking many languages (Loveman 2014). In Latin America, these languages include Spanish, Portuguese, and Caribbean Creoles (Chamoiseau 1999). Moreover, millions of Latin Americans speak only or mainly indigenous languages (Warman 2003). Similarly, Asian Americans often have family backgrounds from East Asia: China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Laos, etc. However, Asia is the world’s largest continent. Which census box would you tick if your family came from India (South Asia), a country culturally and demographically very different from East Asia? How about Iraq or Israel, both located in southwest Asia?

Further insight into the Hispanic ethnic category can come from learning about Latin American societies. For example, Mexico’s population is mostly comprised of the following “racial” groups:

(1) mestizo (mixed indigenous and European ancestry, sometimes including African or Asian ancestry);

(2) white (European ancestry);

(3) indigenous (Native American ancestry);

(4) Asian (especially Chinese ancestry).

Since the 1920s, Mexican politics has voiced the self-understandings and political ideologies of mestizos in particular, by far the largest Mexican racial group (Guzmán 1928; Preston & Dillon 2004; Vasconcelos 1925). Nevertheless, whites (blancos) and lighter-skinned mestizos have continued to hold social, political, and economic power greatly disproportionate to their population numbers (Velázquez 2010).

3.2 The Sociology of Race

Below, we first look at the relationship between individuals and groups. Second, we explore major concepts in the sociology of race.

Scientists basically study either nature or society. Natural scientists—chemists, geologists, botanists, physicists, biologists—study processes and phenomena in the natural (material) world. Social scientists—sociologists, economists, political scientists, anthropologists, linguists—study processes and phenomena in the social world.

(1) Natural science. The ocean is real. You can touch the ocean with your finger, and you can measure its salinity with a chemical instrument. Likewise, the Earth’s electromagnetic field is real. We can’t see it, but physicists measure its properties with the right kind of instrument.

(2) Social science. Greetings (people saying hi) are real. You can hear people greeting you. Conversation analysts study their properties by making video-recordings of people talking. Likewise, democracy in Ohio is real. We can’t see it. It’s a social institution embodied in what Ohioans do and believe. Political scientists measure its strength with instruments such as voting surveys.

Statistics is an important language of science. In both natural and social science, mathematical statistics and probability allow us to draw conclusions about the world, findings that support or fail to support aspects of scientific theories. Unlike mathematics theorems, scientific theories are never “proved” once and for all (Hacking 1983). What’s important is that scientific consensus is reached about the theory that best explains relevant facts, evidence, and observations—not that every last shred of doubt is eliminated about the theory. Extremely robust evidence exists for theories such as the Earth revolving around the Sun, biological evolution from simpler life forms, and the expanding universe: hence, scientific consensus. Consensus means that everyday scientific research and theorizing builds on the relevant claim (e.g., “the universe is expanding”), not that every single scientist agrees (there are always skeptics).

Accordingly, science distinguishes between groups and individuals. There are always outliers (like scientists who deny climate change); we need to focus on the overall pattern. For example, poverty is a crucial social problem, and there are more white Americans who are poor than poor African Americans, in absolute numbers. However, the big picture is that the proportion of poor whites to whites overall is much smaller than poor blacks to blacks overall. In recent decades, African Americans have been much more likely to be poor than have European Americans. By the early 1990s, nearly 50% of black children were living in poverty (APAN:II:852). According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 25.7% of African Americans and 25.4% of Hispanic Americans lived below the federal poverty line, in contrast to under 10% of European (white) Americans.[4] That is, one of every four blacks was poor, as compared to one in ten whites. These statistics all indicate that, overall, the white group is far wealthier than the black group. A social media post that simply contrasts an individual poor white family with an individual middle-class black family is misleading: it conceals the overall racialized pattern of poverty.

What’s true of groups is not necessarily true of the member individuals (Pettigrew 1980). Facts about rural, white Ohio women’s average number of years (or level) of formal education may or may not be true of any particular woman in this group. That number (one person’s education) may be an outlier from the distribution of group educations. The number may be much lower or higher than the group mean (average). We can’t draw inferences (logical conclusions) about the group, if all we know is information about that individual. In science, that sort of reasoning would be fallacious (logically invalid); in everyday life, it would be a stereotype (a pernicious simplification of group characteristics).

All of us are unique individuals. Diversity learning involves keeping a dual focus: both on individual uniqueness and on facts about the social groups of which we are members. Despite the fact that many white individuals are disprivileged by socio-economic class, gender, and/or education, it’s also a fact that whites as a racial group have always been advantaged as compared to other racial groups. Moreover, as noted in Chapter 1, people belong to many social categories (e.g., race, class, gender); the same person may be advantaged with respect to members of some groups and disadvantaged in comparison to people in other groups (Wingfield 2013:21). Such advantage or privilege tends to increase with higher class position, meaning that middle- to upper-class whites tend to continue to occupy the most advantageous social positions in U.S. society (Klinkner & Smith 1999:8).

The sociology of race. Having seen the importance of the individual-group distinction, we turn to major concepts in the sociology of race. The scientific study of race is based on the following four conclusions, derived from many empirical observations. Later chapters, by adding historical and present-day detail, will build our understanding of (1) race as biological illusion and sociological reality, (2) racial privilege, (3) varying racial-ethic terminology, and (4) universality of culture.

(1) Race is a biological illusion, yet socially real. As noted earlier, the bodily “racial” differences we see around us are illusions from a biological standpoint. However, sociologically speaking, race is quite real and important. This is because race, like gender and social class, continues in the twenty-first century to be one of the major ways in which social power is distributed. It’s impossible to understand American society (or any other society) without grasping this fundamental point: power is distributed unequally in society. The unequal access to power is social inequality (Wright & Rogers 2011). The social reality of race is the relationship among more versus less powerful racialized groups (Garcia 2013:79). The very meaning of race words—like “black,” “brown,” or “white”—depends on their relationship to other race words. “White” means not black or brown (Desmond & Emirbayer 2010). In this sense, there would be no white people if there were no black or brown people (and vice versa).

(2) Racial privilege. Given the history of European global colonization (see Chapter 4), the type of racial advantage that sociologists continue to observe in many world regions is white privilege (see Chapter 7). This is generally the case, for example, in both North America and Latin America. As we’ve seen, “privilege” means structural advantage of one social group over others (Bonilla-Silva 1997, 2018). White privilege involves the internalization by whites during primary socialization (childhood) of racial identity schemas: cognitive frameworks for interpreting race (Helms & Mereish 2013:157). Whereas whiteness is often invisible to white people themselves, it tends to be obvious to nonwhites, having important consequences for nonwhites in many social situations in everyday life (see Chapter 10).

(3) Variation in racial and ethnic terminology. We saw earlier that racial and ethnic categories vary across time and place (Telles 2004:21-23). Terms that make sense in the U.S. don’t necessarily make sense elsewhere. Likewise, offensive terms in the U.S. aren’t necessarily offensive elsewhere. This textbook tends to use current U.S. census categories such as Non-Hispanic White, Hispanic or Latina/o, African American or Black, Asian American, Native American, Pacific Islander, etc.

(4) Universality of culture. Though varying greatly in time and place, all human groups have culture (are enculturated). Although culture can be defined in many ways, perhaps the broadest definition is a group’s way of doing things. Such “things” range from ordinary activities such as eating (e.g., using chopsticks or a fork) and talking (e.g., speaking Hindi or English), to special activities such as religious ceremonies (e.g., praying to Allah or to God) and national celebrations (e.g., celebrating the Fourth of July—U.S. Independence Day—or the Sixteenth of September—Mexico Independence Day).

However, racial-ethnic culture may be difficult for group members to see and recognize, due to unfamiliarity with other ways of doing things. This is characteristic of some socially powerful groups such as American non-Hispanic whites, who often describe themselves as lacking a culture. Part of being powerful is the luxury of seeing everything around you as “normal.” Like fish unaware of the water in which they swim, whites are often unaware of white culture and how it may differ from nonwhite ways of doing things (Brown et al. 2003). Studying diversity can help you (no matter what your race-ethnicity) develop reflexive self-awareness, enabling you to appreciate how culture shapes your identity, actions, and relationships.

3.3 The Politics of Hyphenated Identity

Diversity has much to do with politics and history. Today, we are familiar with America’s current two-party system of Democrats and Republicans. We know that modern parties organize partisan sentiment against a background of commitment to the nation. Americans with relatively “conservative” ideas and sympathies tend to support the Republican Party; those with relatively “liberal” views tend to support the Democratic Party. Despite such differences, partisans on either side tend to see their primary allegiance or sympathy to the nation, as coming before party loyalty.

To understand later chapters’ historical discussion, it’s important to know that political parties had different names and stood for different issues in the past. In the first generation after American Independence (1783), there was widespread suspicion about political parties (“factions”) as being harmful to national unity. President Washington did not belong to or campaign for any political party. However, factionalism developed early, first around Congressional debates over the Constitution (1787-89) between Federalists and Antifederalists (APAN:I:184-85). Second, intense disagreements among President Washington’s advisors led to political groupings calling themselves Federalists (led by Hamilton) versus Republicans (led by Jefferson and Madison). This was the first U.S. party system (ibid:191). Starting with Jefferson’s presidency (1800-1808), the Republicans (aka Democratic-Republicans) long dominated U.S. politics.

By the 1830s-40s and starting with Jackson’s presidency (1830-38), a second party system had emerged: Democrats (e.g., Jackson) versus Whigs (e.g., Harrison). The later 1840s and 1850s featured the increasing inability of Democrats and Whigs to compromise, and the increasing geographic sectionalism of politics (North, South, West). Absent compromise, the era saw the emergence of third parties like the Free-Soil Party (1848). Likewise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) was the catalyst for the rapid rise of the Republican Party, which featured a coalition of former Whigs, Free-Soilers, as well as the nativist Know Nothing Party (see Chapter 6). Ever since the Civil War (1861-65), a number of third parties have come and gone but the two-party system of “Republicans” and “Democrats” has endured. The names have stayed the same, but the issues and principles these parties have stood for have changed greatly with the changing times. Important eras of change in the two parties’ ideologies and political coalitions were post-Reconstruction (post-1877), the New Deal (1932-1941), and the Civil Rights era (1954-1968).

The word “republican” literally refers to features of a republic (literally “res publica”: “the people’s thing”), a political community in which the people is sovereign. The word “democratic” refers to democracy (literally “rule by the people”), a form of government in which, again, the people is sovereign. Although there are some historical differences,[5] in U.S. history these words are synonyms. Because of the strong political overtones of these words today, the textbook alternates between describing the U.S. system of government as “democratic” or “republican.” It’s important to remember that, despite intense partisanship today, most Americans, whether Republican or Democrat, describe themselves as fundamentally committed to basic American values and principles: the rule of law, democracy, equality, fairness, prosperity, and efficiency (Wright & Rogers 2011; see Chapter 1). Likewise, many other countries are democratic republics and claim the same values.

Identity politics. In recent decades, controversy over multiculturalism and diversity has often taken the form of identity politics. This term means struggle for control over public policy relevant to personal identity (race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, religion, age, etc.). Today we are familiar with hyphenated self-descriptions such as Chinese American or Nigerian American. (Contemporary practice often omits the hyphen formerly used in such compound identities: e.g., “Chinese-American”).

American identity politics is not new but rather originated in colonial times. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an era of mass immigration from southern and eastern Europe, the use of hyphens—“Irish-American,” “Polish-American,” “Negro-American”—in racial-ethnic identity words became especially prominent and politicized (Du Bois 1903; Riis 1890). The political implications of hyphenated identity challenged the “melting pot” metaphor prominent at the time, which stressed immigrant European and Native American absorption into a homogeneous “American-ness.” The melting-pot emphasized undifferentiated unity, conceiving diversity as necessarily politically divisive. By contrast, hyphenation insisted on American identity in terms of a “mosaic” metaphor, in which national identity consists of complementary, distinctive, and irreducible racial-ethnic identities. Since the 1960s-70s, hyphenated identity based on mosaic (or salad bowl) metaphors has increasingly become the way Americans understand national identity (Gates & McKay 1997). In recent decades, even whites are increasingly likely to describe their identity in hyphenated terms, as European American (Gest 2016).

Opponents of hyphenated identity, past and present, have promoted undifferentiated Americanization. They’ve tended to oppose diversity as a social value, as defended in this textbook (see Chapter 1). For instance, during a 1919 speaking tour Democratic president Woodrow Wilson (1912-20) reacted to heckling by Irish Americans and German Americans in the audience: “Any man who carries a hyphen about him carries a dagger which he is ready to plunge into the vitals of the Republic” (quoted in APAN:II:613). Lashing out in anticommunist Red Scare terms, Wilson was attacking hyphenated identity as a feature of mass European immigration between 1880 and 1920. Immigrants often desired both to retain aspects of their “old country” culture, and to become genuine Americans, which resulted in hyphenated identities such as German-American, Italian-American, or Hungarian-American (ibid:504). By contrast, Wilson insinuated that hyphenated identity was, by its very nature, subversive: treasonous and marked by dual loyalties.

Today, these old fears of Catholic, Slavic, or Jewish immigrant identity seem quaint. Yet the same type of fear and suspicion of “dual loyalties” remains, today attached to newer immigrant groups from the Islamic world and Latin America. Accordingly, it’s crucial to understand historical connections between newer immigrant identities—e.g., Muslim American—and older ones—e.g., Catholic American. There is nothing inherently “un-American” about being Catholic; and the same goes for being Muslim (see Figure 1.1). All too often, such fears are based in circumscribed experience—socially dominant group members lacking familiarity with a targeted group.

3.4 Self-Care: Studying Injustice

Many people prefer to avoid talking about past and present injustice. Wouldn’t things be better if we simply “let bygones be bygones” and forgot such history? Past or present, why talk about race?

There is a key saying about the Holocaust (aka the Shoah), in which Germany between 1933-1945 systematically murdered 6 million Jews across eastern, central, and western Europe: Never forget. Each new generation faces its own challenges and concerns. Yet it’s essential the world never cease to remember German genocide (attempted killing of an entire people) and the antisemitism (prejudice and violence against Jews) that caused it. A prominent theme of European Jewish history is centuries of Christian cruelty and exclusion, expressed in residential segregation (e.g., the Venetian Ghetto), mass deportations and expulsions (e.g., 1492 from Spain: Downey 2014), and recurrent massacres (pogroms) throughout the medieval and modern periods (Bauman 1989). This history culminated in the Holocaust: the industrial-style mass deportation, concentration, and murder of millions of European Jews (Browning 1998; Crowe 2004; Snyder 2011; Wiesel 2006). Additional targeted groups were the Romani people, the mentally and physically disabled, political dissidents such as Communists, and others.

For my sociology Ph.D. dissertation, I read a lot about the Holocaust. In addition to being at times emotionally draining, a danger of this kind of study is that it can normalize injustice—making extreme antisemitism seem familiar, ordinary, and unremarkable—and even provoke sympathy for Nazi perpetrators (Hoess 1996). Holocaust scholars are always on guard against this tendency (Cesarani 2004). We can make a similar point about two older historical processes forming the background of U.S. diversity topics: (1) the African Diaspora (European dispersal to New World slavery of millions of Africans: Davis 2006) and (2) the Destruction of the Indies. This was the catastrophic depopulation of the Americas’ native peoples through conquest and disease, one of largest demographic declines in world history, especially in the sixteenth century (Fuentes 1992:158-68; Las Casas 2005; Stannard 1992; Todorov 2009).

Like historians, diversity students and teachers need to be on guard against similar tendencies toward normalization. Regarding the African diaspora, there is nothing normal, routine, or unremarkable about the enslavement and dehumanization of 12.5 million women, men, and children trafficked to the New World during centuries of trans-Atlantic slave trading, the largest forced migration in world history (APAN:I:94). Simply by growing up in the U.S., a former slave society, we all—no matter what our racial-ethnic identity—absorb an antiblack “common sense” about race derived from white supremacy. This common sense is what race sociologist Joe Feagin (2020) terms the “white racial frame.” Although true for everyone, it is especially so for members of powerful social groups such as (1) non-Hispanic white, (2) heterosexual (3) men. (That’s three groups.)

Figure 3.2.[6] European antisemitism caused the Holocaust (1933-1945).

In studying diversity, you may experience strong feelings. Some may be positive: inspiration, human connection (solidarity), self-understanding, commitment. Others may be negative: guilt, depression, fear, frustration, outrage. This subject makes demands on your sense of what ordinary life is like, what America is like, and what we are like as human beings. This may be so especially if you are white and have not previously thought much about race (DiAngelo 2018). Diversity learning involves sustained exposure to some of the most notorious cruelties and injustices of history and today’s world, as well as some of their most noble and altruistic quests for justice.

Self-care strategies are practical ways of managing strong emotions through self-awareness. When feeling strongly, try taking a step back to observe the feeling. Ask yourself, “Why do I feel this way? Is there anything to learn from this feeling? How can I relax, take a break, and return to this later?” Be kind to yourself. Talk to a family member or friend. Take a walk or do exercise. Do something you enjoy. It is totally normal to feel strongly about diversity, and there’s nothing wrong with strong feelings. It’s just that, when feelings start to overwhelm us, we need strategies for taking care of ourselves.

Colonization, slavery, indigenous depopulation, Holocaust—all this happened a long time ago. None of us were alive then. For some Americans today, our ancestors were dehumanized and brutalized by generations of enslavement. For other Americans, our ancestors directly organized, benefited from, or collaborated with slavery—as slave ship merchants or sailors, slave-pen guards or auctioneers, plantation owners or overseers or lawyers. For still other Americans, none of our ancestors were directly involved. In Germany today, what attitude should teens and younger adults take towards the Holocaust? Just as racial injustice lives on in America, so it does in Germany today, hitting old targets such as Jews and newer ones like Turkish immigrants.

How might we choose to take responsibility for how history impacts the future, by acting in the present (Harvey 2007:171; Klinkner & Smith 1999:9; Sartre 2001)? We weren’t there in the past; but centuries of slavery left a legacy we’ve already inherited in our own minds and bodies, simply by growing up in a former slave society. We’d like to “end” or “solve” or “fix” this legacy once and for all; Europe would like to do the same for centuries of antisemitism. But, despite much important progress, these histories will never simply be resolved. They happened, and now form an ineradicable part of the human story. The tragic part of our story must never be forgotten. Each new generation, no matter of what racial identity, can take responsibility for learning from tragedy to address injustices today (Kozol 1991:179-180).

We can’t change the past, but action in the present impacts the future. A first step towards action is educating yourself, which is what you’re doing now.

Chapter 3 and Unit I Summary

Chapter 3 introduced the importance of discussing race. Section 3.1 defined race and ethnicity, distinguishing between these concepts. Racial classification can significantly differ across world regions such as North America and Latin America.

Section 3.2 discussed the sociology of race, an important area of sociological research. Like all scientists, race sociologists distinguish between individuals and groups. The section explained why both natural and social scientists make this distinction. It also explained key concepts in the sociology of race.

Section 3.3 introduced identity politics: struggles for control over public policy relevant to personal identity. The section also explained why, in U.S. history, “democracy” and “republic” are synonymous.

Section 3.4 presented self-care as self-awareness of one’s experience of strong emotions in studying diversity. Antisemitism and the Holocaust were used as examples of how studying injustice can arouse strong feelings, both positive and negative. Through concrete strategies, we can constructively channel our energies and keep from being overwhelmed.

Overall, Unit 1 introduced racial-ethnic diversity as a key topic of sociological research and discussion. Social criticism features importantly in such discussion, which requires talking about race and social injustice.

[1] Image credit: Creative Commons license (“Let’s Talk About Race” by gdsteam is licensed under CC BY 2.0)