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Exploring Race & Ethnicity: Sociological Perspectives

Dive into the sociological imagination to uncover racial profiling, segregation, and ethnic dynamics through historical comparisons and thought-provoking inquiries.

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Exploring Race & Ethnicity: Sociological Perspectives

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  1. Sociology 646 The Sociological Imagination and Race and Ethnicity

  2. C. Wright Mills and the Sociological Imagination • Understanding our own lives involves understanding the history and current status of the society in which we live. • Perspectives (Conflict/Consensus) • Tools (ethnography, statistics) • Challenge conventional wisdom: the common understanding of a situation.

  3. Example: Racial Profiling • Blacks, Hispanics • Orlando, 1992: Road with 5% black drivers and 70% of stopped drivers black -- Maryland, 1998: Road with 20% black drivers and 70% of stopped drivers black -- Illinois, 1999: 8% of state’s residents were Hispanic, while 25% of individuals stopped by drug interdiction units were Hispanic

  4. What are some possible explanations of these statistics? • Negative • Prejudice and discrimination • Poor training • Bad policing • Positive • Higher rates of illegal activities

  5. Racial Profiling of Muslims and Arabs • Targeting 5,000 young men from Muslim countries for questioning after 9/11, 2001. • FBI: talk to everyone who might have information • Muslim leaders: racial profiling • What do you think: was this good or bad?

  6. What sociological questions can we pose? • How are racial and ethnic relations structured? • How do racial and ethnic relations compare to the past and other countries? • What does the past and current state of racial and ethnic relations suggest about our “human nature”?

  7. Applied to racial profiling • What is the structure, extent, nature, and form of racial profiling? • How does racial and ethnic profiling here compare to other countries and the past? • What does racial profiling reveal about our human nature? • Racial divide • We have not resolved all of our issues

  8. Applied to Segregation on College Campuses • Definition • Nature and Structure? (Examples) • Compared to the past? • What does this tell us about ourselves?

  9. Applied to UNC situation • Facts: Freshmen reading assignment; book about the Koran; led to legal attempts to stop (separation of church and state) • Nature and Structure? • Compared to the past? • What does this tell us about ourselves?

  10. Some classic examples • An American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal (1944) • The Declining Significance of Race by William Julius Wilson (1978) • Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation by Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut (2001)

  11. Mitchell Duneier: Sidewalk • Slim’s Table • Ethnography: Participant Observation • Class, race, and gender issues

  12. Mary Waters: Ethnic Options • Motivated by own ethnicity (really Irish) • Qualitative interviews • Significance of European ethnic identities and difference from racial identities

  13. Schuman, Steeh, Bobo, Krysan: Racial Attitudes • Based on statistical analyses of survey data • Encyclopedic: lots of information and analysis • Bottom line: endorse equality, differ over means

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