>>> Miles Jackson
Chris Doss wrote:
> I suppose the argument could be made that the
> structural disadvantage is one that accrues to people
> from poor families. Thus people with black skin would
> tend to be at a greater disadvantage than those with
> white skin, given that they are more likely to come
> from poor families for obvious historical reasons.
> However, it would be racist only in an accidental
> sense ("accidental" in the Aristotelian sense of the
> term).
That's the point: structural/institutional racism is "accidental". It
is independent of the psychological characteristics of any individual in our society. Thought experiment: eliminate all the personal bigotry/prejudice in our society. If we did that, structural/institutional racism would not be affected one iota.
As Durkheim pointed out all those years ago, psychological characteristics cannot explain social facts. Nowhere is this more true
than in the analysis of racial stratification.
Miles
^^^^^^^ CB: Yes, and it's both: structural/ unconscious and conscious/purposeful. Some of the racism existing today is on purpose, not accidental. There is both de facto ( objective unconscious) and de jure ( subjective intentional) racism. The conscious racism is substantially abated ( a la ""90%") from earlier periods of American history.