The Social Construction of Race and Its Maintenance via Social Institutions
This essay was written in 2023, during my senior year of college, for my “Race, Class and Gender” course.
The Social Construction of Race
The social construction of race refers to the process through which racial groups are formed and evolve through human interaction. This process is defined by Tracy Ore’s “social construction theory,” which suggests that the categories of difference we perceive as real are actually “the result of human interaction” and have material effects on different populations (Ore p. 6). This theory is in contrast to the harmful and ever-lingering belief that race and other categories of difference are pre-determined by unchangeable factors such as biology and genetics – a body of thought which Ore refers to as “essentialism” (Ore p. 5). The harmful implication of this contrast is that essentialist racism has historically and contemporarily been used to enforce and maintain a global racial hierarchy, in which black people are at the bottom and white at the top. In her essay “Constructing Differences,” Ore relies on previous scholarship to assert a multi-stage process that clearly defines the mechanism of social construction of reality and closes the door on essentialism and its implications.
The process of social construction consists of three general stages: externalization, objectivation and internalization. The stage of externalization is defined by the creation of cultural products through social interaction (Ore p. 6). A specific example of externalization is the process of racial formation, which is how racial categories are ascribed meaning and importance based on the contemporary social, political or economic conditions (Ore p. 7). Since the foundational conditions of racial formation have shifted throughout American history, outputs of racial formation have shifted over time as well. As I will discuss in a later paragraph, the shifts in conditions that drive racial formation ultimately produce the historical evidence of racial categories existing merely as social constructs.
With the next stage, objectivation, the products that were created during externalization are given a meaning on their own, “independent of those who created them” (Ore p. 7). Ore says this happens, ““when we forget our part in the social construction of race or fail to recognize the social forces that operate to construct race categories and the meanings associated with them” (Ore p. 7). This step is crucial in solidifying categories of difference in society, as the category need not be recreated, but simply learned.
The next and final stage of the social construction is internalization. Internalization is the process of individuals learning “supposedly objective facts” about the “ cultural products,” or categories of difference, that have been produced via the previous two stages (Ore p. 7). It is in this stage that stereotypes, and other socially constructed myths that are meant to isolate and/or divide certain populations (i.e., poor people are just lazy) are learned and accepted as truths, rather than intentional, socially constructed lies that serve existing hierarchies (Ore p. 8). This stage is heavily influenced by the way in which our social institutions reinforce categories of difference, most notably the media.
As mentioned before, the best proof of racial categories existing as a social construct lies in the various outputs that the driving conditions of racial formation have produced over time. A great example of this is the ambiguity of Blackness. Before the year 2000, the government did not allow multiracial individuals to identify as such in the U.S. Census (Ore p. 1). This is because the nation’s policies adhered to the rule of “hypodescent,” which considers anyone with a Black ancestor, Black, no matter how far removed the ancestor is (Ore p. 2, Omi p. 21). Therefore, mixed people were forced to only identify as Black. This, however, changed in the year 2000, the first year that U.S. citizens could identify as “multiracial” on their census. As we discussed in class, this shift did not happen because mixed people began to exist in the year 2000. The shift happened because the economic, social and political conditions that drove the government to maintain incredibly distinct racial categories on the basis of Blackness have just changed since the era of slavery, when the rule of hypodescent originated. The ambiguity in the definition(s) of separate racial categories is a clear signal of their social construction.
The second example of race existing as a social construct is the generation of the “model minority myth” in regard to Asian-Americans. They were celebrated as the “model minority” due to American media’s presentation of their “rags to riches, no help needed” story in contrast to other minority journeys in America (Zhou p. 376). However, as we discussed in class, America did not always hold this perspective of them. In the 19th century, people of Asian descent were often negatively characterized, and deemed “uncivilized” (Richardson 2023). This example shows that not only are the categories shifting over time, the characteristics (positive or negative) which society associates with a certain population can also shift over time. The lack of stability and continuity in definitions and characterizations of different racial groups demonstrates the social nature of the categories we ascribe to one another.
Although many people today agree that race is a social construct, the global racial hierarchy and its material harm on people of color still exists today. In order to discuss the material effects of racial categorization, it is necessary to interrogate the social institutions that materially maintain these categories of difference. I will use the housing institution to demonstrate how social institutions have been used to reinforce racial difference and maintain racial hierarchy.
The Housing Institution & Residential Segregation
According to our definition from class, a social institution is “a set of organized beliefs, rules, relationships and practices” that govern how we meet our basic needs and interact with people within that journey (Richardson 2023). Not only has housing been an essential structural component of society since before the American revolution, it is one of the most stark contemporary mechanisms of social interaction, control and inequality today. Some of the most historically significant examples of housing fulfilling these roles as a social institution are 1) how housing affects the racial wealth gap in the economy and 2) how housing affects the racial achievement gap in schools . Both of these phenomena have historical bases that have unfortunately permeated into modern day practice.
The issue of obtaining land for lodging and livelihood has been present on American soil since European settlers came to modern-day America in the 17th century. Upon arrival, they had contrasting views with Native Americans on land: Natives saw land as something to be worshiped, while the mayonnaise monsters saw it as something to “generate private profit” (Liu p. 101). Over the next 200 years, the American government committed a series of physical and legislative assaults against the Native community in attempts to overtake land. The 1862 Homestead Act was a process of transferring Native land to white settlers. This was followed by the Dawes Act of 1887, an attempt to break up Native tribes and force them into western-style farms and ultimately transferring millions of acres, again, to White settlers (Liu p. 102). Both of these legislative disasters were accompanied by mass violence at the hands of the U.S. government (Liu p. 102). By 1953, most tribal governments remaining had completely lost their land to the U.S. government or were reduced to poverty and eventually split (Liu p. 102). Even today, Native American reservations are under “complex legal framework” that ultimately inhibits economic growth, such as fractioned land ownership or strict energy regulations (Forbes). These facts provide crucial context to the material condition of Native Americans today. For instance, at the brink of the 21st century, Native American poverty rates were at 26% (compared to 8% for the white population) (Liu p. 101). One in every four Native Americans living in poverty is a crisis that must ultimately be linked to America’s racist land-expungement tactics against them.
Similar to the racial wealth gap, housing policies new and old have prominent effects on the racial achievement gap in schools. Housing policy and school policy greatly overlap, so much so that school segregation primarily reflects neighborhood segregation (Rothstein p. 223). In order to dissect this issue, it is imperative to investigate the racist laws from the late 19th century to modernity that have been instilled to segregate Black and white people in order to enforce and maintain racial hierarchy. Multiple racist policies instituted de jure segregation. New Deal policies such as “neighborhood composition rule” which prohibited race mixing in public housing, the FHA creating racialized property deeds prohibiting sales to Black people (and guaranteeing home loans for white people), or government-sanctioned “redlining” which refused loans to Black families trying to live anywhere outside of their racial group and further destroyed and ghettoized communities, were all a fraction of the United States attempts to enforce their White supremacist agenda (Rothstein p. 226). While there are other policies (both before and after) that leave lingering effects on residential segregation today, these laws strongly codified it’s existence.
There are multiple ways in which residential segregation factors into the maintenance of racial hierarchy in education. The most inequitable direct consequence of the overlap between housing policy and education policy is that a large portion of school funding is sourced by district property taxes. Because segregated schools often reflect local segregated neighborhoods, under-funded school districts are prominent within segregated communities, largely due to the difference in locally generated property taxes (Kahlenberg p. 293). On average, affluent school districts spend roughly $1300 more than high-poverty districts per-student education as well (p. 293). Not only does having less money to spend per-pupil negatively affect student achievement, there are multiple other facets of education that residential segregation impacts: for instance, inadequate housing and/or less access to quality, routine health care could increase absenteeism and difficulties studying, or completing work (Rothstein p. 222). In short, residential segregation reinforces the segregation of schools, ultimately hindering student achievement due to the environmental consequences of such neighborhood schools. This is a prime example of how social institutions can perpetuate inequalities due to historical, codified racism.
Bibliography
Kahlenberg, Richard D. 2015. “The Return of ‘Separate but Equal’”. Pp. 290 – 296 in The Social Construction of Difference and Inequality: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality, 6th ed., edited by T.E. Ore. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lui, Meizhu. 2008. “Doubly Divided: The Racial Wealth Gap”, Pp. 44 - 51 in The Wealth Inequality Reader, 2nd ed., edited by Chuck Collins et al. The Economic Affairs Bureau, Inc.
Omi, Michael and Howard Winant “Racial Formations” pp. 19 – 26 in The Social Construction of Difference and Inequality: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality. 7 th Ed. Edited by T.Ore. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ore, Tracey E. 2019. “Constructing Differences” pp. 1 – 2, 5 – 9, 14 – 15 in The Social Construction of Difference and Inequality: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality. 7 th Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Richardson, Liana. “Housing Revisited... and Its Link to Education.” AAS2500-003: Race, Class and Gender. Mar. 2023, University of Virginia, University of Virginia.
Richardson, Liana. “How Social Institutions Influence Inequality .” AAS2500-003: Race, Class and Gender. Mar. 2023, University of Virginia, University of Virginia.
Rothstein, Richard. 2019. “The Racial Achievement Gap…” pp. 222 – 234 in The Social Construction of Difference and Inequality: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality. 7 th Ed. Edited by T. Ore. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zhou, Min. 2020. “Are Asians Becoming ‘White’?” Pp. 374 – 379 in in Race, Class, & Gender: Intersections & Inequalities. 10th Ed. Edited by M. Anderson & P.H. Collins. Boston: Cengage.
