Why We Need More Marxism in the Sociology of Race

Abstract

This essay focuses on contemporary sociology-of-race scholarship. Most sociological race scholarship is assimilationist in that it focuses on removing structural barriers to full incorporation of racial minorities, especially black people, into mainstream institutions. A second perspective (the racial formation) perspective highlights the role of racism (discriminatory beliefs and behaviors) in thwarting racial equality. Both overlook aspects of capitalism—predicted by Marx and borne out by observed trends such as the greater concentration of wealth—that suggest that it may be a system that fundamentally limits a society's ability to attain racial equality.

Keywords:

• capitalism
• Marxism
• political discourse
• public policy
• racial inequality
• sociology of race

Notes

Julianne Malveaux, “The State of the Black Union,” Marketplace interview, February 1, 2011. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/02/01/pm-the-state-of-the-black-union.

Organizing for America, “Economy: The Current Situation,” BarackObama.com. www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/index.php?source=BOnav (accessed January 31, 2011).

Joe R. Feagin, Racist America: Roots, Current Realities and Future Reparations, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2010).

Ideally, policy prescriptions derived from social scientific race on race would be both pragmatic and effective. But I am questioning whether the potentially achievable policy changes that are not logically likely to end racial inequality can be reasonably considered pragmatic.

Mary Pattillo, Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); William Julius Wilson, More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (New York: Norton, 2009); Prudence Carter, Keepin' It Real: School Success Beyond Black and White (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Mario Small, Unanticipated Gains: What the Experience of Mothers in Daycares Reveals About Networks, Inequality and Well-Being (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Patricia Cohen, “‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback,” New York Times, October 10, 2010.

In general, this essay focuses on black and Latino populations as those most clearly affected by racial disadvantage. However, it is important to note that while Asian Americans collectively tend to face lower levels of racial disadvantage, significant differences in experiences exist by nation of origin among Asian Americans. Further, on the whole Asian Americans receive lower returns on human-capital investments than do whites. As a result, what looks like Asian American inclusion actually hides the degree to which Asian Americans are disadvantaged relative to whites.

Elijah Anderson, “Against the Wall: Poor, Young, Black, and Male,” in Against the Wall: Poor, Young, Black, and Male, ed. Elijah Anderson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

Elijah Anderson, Streetwise: Race, Class and Change in an Urban Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 241.

Ibid., 253–254.

Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 220.

Scott N. Brooks, “Fighting Like a Ballplayer: Basketball as a Strategy Against Social Disorganization,” in Anderson, Against the Wall.

William Julius Wilson, “Why Both Social Structure and Culture Matter in a Holistic Analysis of Inner-City Poverty,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (2010), 214.

Steven Greenhouse, The Big Squeeze, Tough Times for the American Worker (New York: Knopf, 2008); Jill Andresky Fraser, White Collar Sweatshop: The Deterioration of Work and Its Rewards in Corporate America (New York: Norton, 2001); Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (New York: Norton, 1998).

Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986).

Ibid. viii.

Ibid.

Wilson, “Why Both Social Structure and Culture Matter.”

Dennis Gilbert, The American Class Structure in the Age of Growing Inequality, 8th ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2002).

Annegret Staiger, “Whiteness as Giftedness: Racial Formation at an Urban High School,” Social Problems 51, no. 2 (2004): 161–181.

Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence Bobo, and Maria Krysan, Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997); Lawrence Bobo and Camille L. Zubrinsky, “Attitudes on Residential Integration: Perceived Status Differences, Mere In-group Preferences, or Racial Prejudice?” Social Forces 74 (1996): 883–909; Lawrence Bobo and Vincent L. Hutchings, “Perceptions of Racial Group Competition: Extending Blumer's Theory of Group Position to a Multiracial Social Context,” American Sociological Review 61 (1996): 951–972.

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism & Racial Inequality in Contemporary America, 3rd ed. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010).

Ibid.; Leslie Houts Picca and Joe R. Feagin, Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage (New York: Routledge, 2007).

Ibid.

Devah Pager, Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

I want to be explicit that my critique of the racial formation school is not that their solutions are too idealistic, as many critiques of reparations might argue. The reality is that most attempts at significant change are idealistic, even those that eventually succeed. The real problem with the solutions suggested by scholars in the racial formation school is that even if they were achieved, they would not provide an adequate solution to racial inequality. That is, for example, even seemingly radical suggestions such as reparations would only allow African Americans a one-time chance to raise their economic standing, and most of those reparations would likely end up back in the hands of the small, overwhelmingly white economic elite.

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, White Supremacy & Racism in the Post Civil Rights Era (London: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 198.

Ibid., 199.

Feagin, Racist America, 306.

Orlando Patterson, “A Poverty of the Mind,” New York Times, March 26, 2006; Brooks, “Fighting Like a Ballplayer”; Pattillo, Black on the Block; William Julius Wilson, “The Moynihan Report and Research on the Black Community,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 621 (2009): 34–46; Douglas S. Massey and Robert J. Sampson, “Moynihan Redux: Legacies and Lessons,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 621 (2009): 6–27; Anderson, Against the Wall.

John H. McWhorter, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (New York: Free Press, 2000), x.

Ibid.

Two signs that focusing too much on the discourse and symbolism around race is dangerous are (1) that some of the greatest gains in the material circumstances of black Americans occurred during the Nixon administration and (2) that we saw an erosion of minority well-being under Clinton, who remains heralded as a healer of racial divides and has high esteem in much of the black community, even though he advocated and signed welfare-reform legislation and other attacks on the social safety net that undermined economic gains among black and Latino communities.

Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 31.

Massey and Denton, American Apartheid, 155.

Adolph L. Reed, ed., Without Justice for All: The New Liberalism and Our Retreat from Racial Equality (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999).

W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935); Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); Manning Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 1993).

This point was influenced by the fact that many of today's neoconservatives were individuals who turned to this ideology once they became disillusioned with the civil rights movements of the 1960s.