Sociology of race and ethnic relations

The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with Western culture and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. You may improve this article, discuss the issue on the talk page, or create a new article, as appropriate. (October 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Part of a series on
Sociology
History Outline Index
Key themes Society Globalization Human behavior Human environmental impact Identity Industrial revolutions 5 Social complexity Social construct Social environment Social equality Social equity Social power Social stratification Social structure
Perspectives Conflict theory Critical theory Structural functionalism Positivism Social constructionism Symbolic interactionism
Branches Aging Architecture Art Astrosociology Body Criminology Consciousness Culture Death Demography Deviance Disaster Economic Education Emotion (Jealousy) Environmental Family Feminist Fiscal Food Gender Generations Health Historical Immigration Industrial Internet Jewry Knowledge Language Law Leisure Literature Marxist Mathematic Medical Military Music Peace, war, and social conflict Philosophy Political Public Punishment Race and ethnicity Religion Rural Science (History of science) Social movements Social psychology Sociocybernetics Sociology Space Sport Technology Terrorism Urban Utopian Victimology Visual
Methods Quantitative Qualitative Comparative Computational Ethnographic Conversation analysis Historical Interview Mathematical Network analysis Social experiment Survey
Sociologists 1700s: Comte · Sieyès 1800s: Du Bois · Marcuse 1900s: Fromm · Adorno · Merton · Mills · Goffman · Bauman · Foucault · Habermas · Baudrillard · Bourdieu · Giddens
Lists Bibliography Terminology Journals Organizations People Timeline By country
Society portal
v t e

The sociology of race and ethnic relations is the study of

The sociological analysis of race and ethnicity frequently interacts with

Max Weber laid the foundations for a micro-sociology of ethnic relations beginning in 1906. Weber argued that biological traits could not be the basis for group foundation unless they were conceived as shared characteristics. It was this shared perception and common customs that create and distinguish one ethnicity from another. This differs from the views of many of his contemporaries who believed that an ethnic group was formed from biological similarities alone apart from social perception of membership in a group.^[5]

Modern theorists

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva is currently a professor of sociology at Duke University and is the 2018 president of the American Sociological Association.^[6] He received his PhD in 1993 from University of Wisconsin–Madison, which is where he met his mentor, Charles Camic, of which he said "Camic believed in me and told me, just before graduation, that I should stay in the states as I would contribute greatly to American sociology." Bonilla-Silva did not start off his work as a "race scholar," but originally was trained in class analysis, political sociology, and sociology of development (globalization).^[7] It was not until the late 1980s when he joined a student movement calling for racial justice at the University of Wisconsin that he began his work in race.^[8] In his book, Racism without Racists, Bonilla-Silva discusses less overt racism, which he refers to as "new racism," which disguises itself "under the cloak of legality" in order to accomplish the same things. He also discusses "color-blind racism," which is essentially when people go off the basis that we have achieved equality and deny past and present discriminations.^[9]

Patricia Hill Collins

Patricia Hill Collins is currently a Distinguished University Professor Emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received her PhD in sociology in 1984 from Brandeis University. Collins was the president-elect for the American Sociological Association, where she was the 100th president and the first African-American woman to be president of the organization. Collins is a social theorist whose work and research primarily focuses on race, social class, sexuality, and gender. She has written a number of books and articles on said topics.^[10] Collins work focuses on Intersectionality, by looking at issues through the lens of women of color. In her work, she writes "First, we need new visions of what oppression is, new categories of analysis that are inclusive of race, class, and gender as distinctive yet interlocking structures of oppression".^[11]

Denise Ferreira da Silva

Denise Ferreira da Silva is a trained sociologist and critical philosopher of race. She is a professor and director of The Social Justice Institute (the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice) at the University of British Columbia. Before joining UBC, she was an associate professor of ethnic studies, at the University of California, San Diego. Da Silva's major monograph, Toward a Global Idea of Race, traces the history of modern philosophical thought from Descartes to Herder in order to reconstruct the emergence of the racial as an historical and scientific concept. This sociology of race relations for Da Silva locates the mind as  the principle site of the development of the racial and cultural which emerge as the global (exterior-spatial) in the contemporary context.^[12]

Discipline development by country

United States

In the

United Kingdom

In the

As with the UK establishments of media and cultural studies, 'ethnic relations' is often taught as a loosely distinct discipline either within sociology departments or other schools of humanities.

Major British theorists include Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, Richard Jenkins, John Rex, Michael Banton and Tariq Modood.

Social psychology

One of the most important social psychological findings concerning race relations is that members of stereotyped groups internalize those stereotypes and thus suffer a wide range of harmful consequences. For example, in a phenomenon called

Another important line of research on race takes the form of

References

Further reading

Wikiquote has quotations related to Sociology of race and ethnic relations.

• Banton, M. 1987. Racial Theories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Ellis, J. 2011. Race Relations | Culture and Ethnicity. USARiseUp
• Feagin, J. 2003. Racial and Ethnic Relations. Prentice Hall (8th edition)
• Gibson, Robert. 1978. Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois: The Problem of Negro Leadership. Yale
• Jenkins, R. 2008. Rethinking Ethnicity. London: Sage (2nd edition).
• Malesevic, S. 2004. The Sociology of Ethnicity. London: Sage.
• Omi, M. & Winant, H. 1986. Racial Formation in the United States. New York: Routledge
• Thomas, C. 2022. The Racialized Consequences of Jail Incarceration on Local Labor Markets, Race and Justice.
• Vera, H; Feagin, J. 2007. Handbook of the Sociology of Racial and Ethnic Relations. Springer
• Wilson, H. 2006. The Sociology of Racial and Ethnic Relations. Bryant
• Zuckermann, Ghil'ad et al. (2015), ENGAGING - A Guide to Interacting Respectfully and Reciprocally with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, and their Arts Practices and Intellectual Property, Australian Government: Indigenous Culture Support.