The Sociology of Race & Racism: Key Concepts, Contributions & Debates

ABSTRACT

In this paper we highlight key conceptual, empirical, and theoretical contributions of the sociology of race and racism, particularly those relevant to education scholars. We suggest that educational researchers could benefit from incorporating some of the insights of sociological research on race and racism into their scholarship as such engagement would help to refine and deepen understandings of what race is and is not, how racial dynamics shape what happens in schools, and how schools matter for society. Similarly, studies of school processes, practices, politics, and outcomes can help us to understand more about the construction, negotiation, and transformation of racial knowledge, racial boundaries, and racial hierarchies. We thus advocate for more robust interdisciplinary exchange and believe that the potential benefits are substantial not only to academic fields but also to efforts to advance racial justice more generally. How we conceptualize race informs how we measure it and how we make sense of the pervasive racial inequity that defines our society and pervades educational institutions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. As Gramsci (1971) discussed at length in The Prison Notebooks, the existence of ideologies that help those at the top and bottom of social hierarchies make sense of such hierarchies is partly what distinguishes societies ruled by coercion from those ruled by consent.

2. As Nolan Cabrera (2018) recently noted in a thoughtful review of deployment of CRT in research on higher education this work has great potential and important gaps.

3. Thanks to the anonymous reviewers for helping to refine these points.

4. See, for example, Emirbayer and Desmond’s The Racial Order (2015) and the forum discussing its merits in Ethnic & Racial Studies (2016) 39:13.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amanda E. Lewis

Amanda E. Lewis is the Director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy and Professor of African American Studies and Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research focuses on how race shapes educational opportunities and on how our ideas about race get negotiated in everyday life.

Margaret A. Hagerman

Margaret A. Hagerman is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Mississippi State University and is a Faculty Affiliate in both the African American Studies and Gender Studies programs. Her qualitative research focuses on the study of racial socialization, or how kids learn about race, racism, inequality, and privilege.

Tyrone A. Forman

Tyrone A. Forman is a Professor of African American Studies and Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a nationally recognized voice on intergroup prejudice, discrimination, comparative race and ethnic relations, and survey methods. He has conducted innovative studies of the way that discrimination and constrained opportunity shape the life experiences of racial and ethnic minorities as well as the sociocultural factors that influence intergroup relations and attitudes among youth and adults