Structural Racism and Its Contribution to Racial Inequality (Social Sciences Essay)
Instructions:
1) What are interpersonal racism, institutional racism, and structural racism? How might these each and in combination be useful for understanding the perpetuation of racial inequality in America? Be sure to provide examples.
2)Discuss the relationship between, gender, work and the family, as three interrelated social institutions. What is the role that these play in producing gender inequality?
Please use sociology terms and a good choice of formal language when writing these two essays.
Each essay should be 3-4 pages, double-spaced. Include numbers at the bottom of the page. Both essays should be on the same document, not as separate documents.
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Indicate at the top of the page which question you are responding to.
Properly attribute all direct quotes in the text, and avoid using block quotes. You can use APA, ASA or MLA style. The specific citation format is not important, as you should spend more time constructing a quality essay.
A work cited section at the end is not required if only using course materials and does not count toward page length. If referencing a scholarly article not assigned in class please do include the citation.
If referencing something the authors in the textbook have written, you can put the chapter and section in parentheses since there are no page numbers in the e-book. If not using direct quotes from the textbook you might, for example, just write something like, “In Chapter 2 of the textbook the author states that…..”
IMPORTANT: include your name and section on a separate page at the end of the full document. Do not include your name or any other identifying information at the front of your exam or in the name of your document.
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Please note that successful responses will include the following:
An introduction that includes a clear thesis statement and a preview of your points.
Body paragraphs where each paragraph contains one main idea with a topic sentence, and supporting evidence from the readings and other materials.
A short conclusion.
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Essay 1
Structural Racism and Its Contribution to Racial Inequality
Introduction
Racism is not evident in the static or singular form. As politically and historically determined domination structures, it marginalizes, excludes, and certain inferior groups based on intended cultural, physical, and symbolic differences. It operates as a bigger racialization structure where ethnic or racial collectivities get constituted and provided status, meaning, and value in a certain order of a race. Modern societies, especially in America, are dominated by racial thinking; this represents racial states and formations where categorization and ideas of race are primary in their regulation and organization.
Although an invocation of ethnicity or race is not a racist manifestation, although it does reflect on racial thinking, such invocations are essential in providing a way through which racial inequalities are enshrined and enacted. Racism is present not only where race is invoked but also where race reproduces systems of domination based on essentialist racial categories. Racism is an ideology that links physical differences to social and cultural differences, thus allowing societies to be grounded in a scale of hierarchy allowing subordination of the inferior. The essay will therefore look address the following aspects understanding the concept of structural racism in American and how it leads to racial inequality and how institutional racism contributes to racial disparities in America. Further, the essays will seek to establish how interpersonal racism contributes racial inequality in America.
Since the colonial period in America, private and public institutions have continued to reinforce one another, maintaining the race's hierarchies that allowed the white in America across every generation to consolidate more and earn more than the non-whites and maintain dominance in the political sector. This structural racism has played a significant role in shaping, for instance, the distribution of determinants of social health and the health profile of America, including increased health inequality in America.
Discriminatory incarceration, for instance, is an excellent reference to structural racism in America. The United States justice system includes court systems, correctional agencies, police departments, probation departments, and sentencing boards that have established practices and policies. However, the policies criminalize people of color through, for example, stop and frisk in places like Chicago and incarcerate black women, children, and men disproportionately. With such discriminatory alignment, the blacks or the non-white remain disadvantaged in economic progress leading to racial inequality in the country (Bailey 1460).
Residential segregation also reflects upon the reinforcement of institutional and structural racism, where most Americans have continued to live in neighborhoods that are racialized and segregated economically by the system. The high concentration of dilapidated housing in the various neighborhoods where blacks live includes a substandard social environment, toxins and pollutants, and the limited chance of quality education and healthcare. These adverse effects lead to increased risk of chronic illness, homicide cases, and other outcomes that outweigh the benefits of political power to black Americans. Therefore, structural racism continues to contribute to racial inequality in America.
Institutional Racism and Its Contribution to Racial Inequality
Institutional racism relates to the systematic resource distribution, opportunity, and power in society to benefit the whites and exclude blacks. Modern racism was developed on a history of racial ideas and resource distribution that describe how we view others and ourselves. It is a system of hierarchy that includes a broad range of institutions and policies that maintains it. In America, institutional racism has contributed to segregation and slavery. Because of institutional racism, disparities in employment, housing, healthcare, and government have occurred. Institutional racism exists only in institutions where enforcing power, practices, and policies to perpetuate are all vested in the whites (Tate 145). Housing contracts like restrictive covenants, policies of lending such as redlining are all examples of institutional racism. Other similar references include police racial profiling and racial stereotypes by various institutions, including barriers to professional advancement and employment based on race.
Institutional racism contributed to racial inequality because it increases the gap between the poor and the rich. For instance, medium incomes between the white almost double the people of color in America. It also leads to food insecurity among people of color, which affects health inequalities. Youth incarceration contributes to institutional racism as it leads to an increased number of promising young people of color in juveniles.
The Impact of Interpersonal Racism
Interpersonal racism relates to actions directed to harm or sideline individuals based on their race. Interpersonal racism has increasingly become a significant cause contributing to racial inequality in America. The continuing "Black Lives Matter Movements" have all been because of cases of interpersonal racism. However, in the case of George Floyd, for instance, as a result of racial profiling by the police, how the police manhandled him can be labeled as a form of interpersonal racism. Mass murder by white individuals targeting the blacks demonstrated just how much interpersonal discrimination had taken ground in the American system.
It is important to note that interpersonal racism presents an attack on the community rather than an individual. The distinguishing element of racial harassment does not only involve individuals of different ethnic groups instead, but it is also the action that is motivated racially. Therefore, racially motivated behaviors do not include an attack aimed at an individual purely as intended to harm the person but harassment of a particular group (Nazroo 268). Interpersonal racism, therefore, is a reflection of racial orders, historical legacies, and domination. Thus, psychological impacts are for reinforcing a lack of security and disempowerment of the racialized identities. Interpersonal racism has been accredited with the resulting health effects of mental illness among the people of color compared to the whites. People who have experienced racial abuse have prevalence psychotic effects than those who have not experienced such racial abuse.
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