What's the Difference Between Prejudice and Racism?
A Sociologist Responds
Recently I had a
conversation with a white man in his fifties who took issue with the n-word
being considered unspeakable, sparked by this post on Racism Review.
His problem with the strong reaction many black people have to this word,
especially when directed at them as an insult by white people, is rooted in his
belief that the n-word is an insult like any other. He suggested that using it
is no different than calling someone a “dumb blond,” and that people need to
“move on” from believing that race and racism are issues that deserve attention in
today’s world. This conversation alerted me to the importance of clearly
delineating the differences between prejudice and racism.
From a
sociological standpoint, the dumb blond stereotype, and the jokes that
celebrate and reproduce it, can be considered a form of prejudice. The Oxford
English dictionary defines prejudice as a “preconceived opinion that is not
based on reason or actual experience,” and this resonates with how sociologists
understand the term. Quite simply, it is a pre-judgement that one levies of
another that is not based in reality.
The man I had
this conversation with argued that as a blond person of German heritage, he had
experienced pain in his life due to this form of prejudice aimed at blond
people. While that may be true, it is not true that calling someone the n-word
is equivalent to, and no more harmful or noteworthy, than calling someone a
dumb blond. Sociology can help us understand why.
While calling
someone a dumb blond might result in feelings of frustration, irritation,
discomfort, or even anger for the person targeted by the insult, that’s about
where the negative implications of this prejudice end. There is no research to
support the hypothesis that hair color might influence one’s access to rights
and resources in society, like college admission, ability to buy a home in a
particular neighborhood, access to employment, or likelihood that one will be
stopped by the police. This form of prejudice, most often manifested in bad
jokes, is not consequential from a sociological standpoint.
By contrast, the
n-word, a term popularized by white Americans during the era of African
enslavement, encapsulates a wide swath of disturbing racial prejudices, like
the idea that black people are savage, dangerous brutes prone to criminality;
that they lack morals and are compulsively hyper-sexual; and that they are
stupid and lazy. The wide-sweeping and deeply detrimental implications of this
term, and the prejudices it reflects and reproduces, make it vastly different
from insulting a blond for being dumb. The n-word was used historically, and
still used today, to cast black people as second class citizens who do not
deserve, or who have not earned, the same rights and privileges enjoyed by
others in American society. This makes it racist, and not simply prejudiced, as
defined by sociologists.
Race scholars
Howard Winant and Michael Omi define racism
as a way of representing or describing race that “creates or reproduces
structures of domination based on essentialist categories of race.” Racism
begets a structure of domination based on race. Because of this, the n-word is
not simply a prejudice, like the suggestion that blonds are dumb, but is racist, as it suggests
that black people are inferior to white people, and in the minds of many, to
people of other races too. The term reflects and reproduces a hierarchy of
racial categories and peoples, and black people are placed at the bottom of
this hierarchy.
Use of the n-word
and the still widespread belief--though perhaps subconscious or
semi-conscious--that black people are dangerous, sexual predators and sluts,
and pathologically lazy and deceitful, both fuel and justify structural
inequalities of race that plague society. The racial prejudices encapsulated in
the n-word are manifested in the disproportionate
policing, arrest, and incarceration of black men and boys (and
increasingly black women); in racial
discrimination in hiring practices; in the lack of media and police
attention devoted to crimes against black people as compared with
those committed against white women and girls; and, in the lack of economic investment in
predominantly black neighborhoods and cities, among many other
problems that result from systemic racism.
While many forms
of prejudice are troubling, not all forms of prejudice are equally
consequential. Those that beget structural inequalities, like prejudices based
in gender, sexuality, race, nationality, and religion, for example, are far
more troubling and worthy of critical address by sociologists.
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