Example Sociology Essay

Racism

Racism involves rejection, discrimination and the "setting apart" of others based on the colour of their skin or membership of an ethnic group. The discrimination that comes with racism maintains power, material, economic, political and structural inequalities between the groups involved.

Rattansi (1995) found that many negative perceptions of coloured people originated from the fact that white Europeans regarded those that were different as "alien" and "wild".

"Black" colour symbolism stemming from the Christian beliefs of many whites also helped intensify these negative beliefs. The slave trade and the wealth produced from it further reinforced the supposed superiority and power of white people over black people. Miles (1989) reckoned that it was a process of making sense of or representing the "other" that was central to the concept of racism.

After the historical development of the sense of "otherness" (as highlighted by Rattansi), there was an emergence of a biology of race: obvious differences in appearance, such as skin colour, were seen as indicators of biological and genetic differences between groups of people – this influenced whether a race was regarded as more or less advanced. This view of genetic differences between races has since been discredited.

One initial approach that focused on an individualistic, "human nature" tendency towards racism is that of sociobiology. Several sociobiologists (e.g. Hamilton, 1975; Reynolds, 1986) have postulated that humans have an in-built, universal feature that makes us hostile towards others seen as different (known as ethnocentrism), which results from natural selection.

This means that people, in wanting their own genes to survive, will favour those who are related and hold genes in common.

Reynolds has suggested that this tendency still underlies our actions today, and that this would explain why in multicultural situations people favour their own ethnic group and are hostile towards members of other groups.

However, it is difficult to carry this notion over from the small kin groups mentioned in the original theory to large modern ethnic groups. It is also thought that this theory is not adequate in explaining the variability of racism and the various forms it can take.

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