Racial Divide
1. What do we mean when we say that ‘race’ is an illusion but it is also very real? What ‘makes’ race? Sociologist Melvin Oliver answers this early in the video. How does this definition relate to sociology? 2. Explain how the understanding of ‘race’ has changed over time. How has this related to immigration? Do you hear similar claims in the news and public discourse (discussion) today? How would a Conflict Theorist see these ideas? (Recall their discussion of ideology.) 3. Explain how the legal system has ‘made race’ over time. Discuss the cases of Ozawa and Thind. How did the two findings contradict each other? What were the repercussions of these rulings? Explain what Historian James Horton means when he refers to race as a ‘social political construction’. 4. How did government programs like Social Security and the FHA reinforced the racial divide. How did the National Appraisal System and the practice of ‘Redlining’ solidify the racial wealth divide? Explain what Legal Scholar John A. Powell means when he says this program was ‘constructing whiteness’, and that geography now does the work of Jim Crowe laws? 5. What does Powell mean when he says that whites are getting the spoils of a racist system, even if they’re not personally racist? Why is the racial wealth gap widening over 50 years after the Fair Housing Act was put in place? Why won’t color-blindness end racial inequality?
