Understanding Racism. Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl

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      Preface

      As a young student, when I heard the word theory, I thought of grand, incomprehensible language and faced an impending headache from trying to see the connection between theory and real life. I often resorted to the idea that theorists should not be lauded because they don’t put into practice what they put into words. Such thoughts scared me away from theory and made me believe I would never seriously engage with it. These ideas faded, however, when both my scholarship and my activism progressed, until I realized the truism of “theory plus praxis, praxis plus theory,” or, in other words, theory and action need each other. Theory provides the guidance and the conceptual framework for understanding social facts. Thus, theory is necessary for scholarship and activism to progress. This point is particularly true when addressing the nature of oppression, or, in the case of this book specifically, racism. This revelation led to an appreciation for and a grappling with theory and eventually the writing of this book on major theories of racism.

      In this book, I have three general aims: (1) to make theory accessible, (2) to summarize major bodies of work by important scholars of racism and communicate them as theories, and (3) to further our conversations on racism. To the first point, I do not primarily identify as a theorist, although my research on multiracialism, contemporary racism, and pedagogy heavily engages with theory. But not being a theory specialist has led me to discover ways to distill theory in a manner that is widely accessible. Particularly in the classroom, I have learned to communicate theories in ways that “non-theorists” can understand, appreciate, and utilize. I have likewise endeavored to do the same in this book.

      The second aim is to provide a guide to theories of racism. As it currently stands, if one wants a grasp of various means of understanding contemporary racism, the options are somewhat limited: read numerous books and articles, read blogs that are somewhat inadequate, or take a class. This book offers another option through providing overviews of major theories on racism.

      The third aim is to further our conversations on racism. In the recent decade, there has been both a rise in overt racism and new discussions on how covert racism operates. In order to confront this racism, we need to understand it, and it is my hope that this book is useful not only for undergraduates and graduate students but also for policy makers, social workers, community organizations, and individuals who are yearning to learn more. Each theory’s summary is succinct and purposeful in its inclusion of multiple quotes by the theorist and supplemented with Reflect and Discuss questions, Key Terms, Diagrams, Key People biographies, and Further Reading. This book is both a tool to learn and a call to action, as theory and praxis must coexist.

      Understanding Theory

      Studying theory is a difficult endeavor, particularly because there is not one unambiguous, distinct definition of what constitutes theory—or what does not constitute theory. This point may seem remarkable, considering the breadth and depth of classes and books devoted to discussing theory, as though the definition of it is a given and understood. In reality, sociology and other social science disciplines have multiple research traditions that lead to different utilizations and definitions of theory.¹ Gabriel Abend interrogates “the meaning of theory” and suggests that there are seven main ways sociologists use theory, including a proposition between variables, an explanation of a social phenomenon, or an overall perspective that provides “conceptual equipment.”² Thus, sociologists, and specifically theorists, often use theory in different, and sometimes contrasting, manners. In a move to provide a basic conceptualization, the noted social theorist Jeffrey Alexander states that “theory is a generalization separated from particulars, an abstraction separated from a concrete case,”³ and similarly Hans Joas and Wolfgang Knöbl in their book Social Theory note that “theories should be understood as generalizations.”⁴ In this sense, any analysis that goes from the specifics of one case to making a claim about how conditions might operate generally can be construed as (moving toward) theory.

      We are constantly engaging with theory. On a daily basis, we interpret our social worlds and make generalizations about them in order to understand those social worlds. For example, you might have a theory that car salespeople are dishonest, so you visit multiple car lots to ensure that the best price is attained. Or you have a theory that you pick up good habits from friends, so you make a point to socialize with people who work hard. Joas and Knöbl remark that “theory is as necessary as unavoidable. Without it, it would be impossible to learn or to act in a consistent fashion; without generalizations and abstractions, the world would exist for us only as a chaotic patchwork of discrete, disconnected experiences and sensory impressions.”⁵