The Meaning of Racism

• In Event: 1284 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 14. Meanings and Measures of Racism

Abstract

Racism is one of the most important words in the lexicon of contemporary sociology. Constructing a precise theory of racism is difficult because it is a concept that is both inflated and deflated. On one hand, racism is a widely used, morally charged vernacular concept with multiple, contested meanings. On the other hand, racism is also primarily discussed in terms of attitudes, a tendency that limits its utility for fully representing the organization of social life along racial lines. This paper explores the multiple meanings of racism across various texts in the sociology of race and ethnicity, and teases out the explicit and implicit meanings of racism posited by their authors. First, we present a selective review of sociological research, published primarily in book monographs, which exemplify different meanings of racism. In brief, we suggest that sociologists use “racism” to refer to one or more of four constructs: individual attitudes, cultural schema, pre-existing consequential inequalities, and/or processes that create or maintain racial dominance. Second, we connect our review to a content analysis of the abstracts of 1,037 sociology journal articles published from 1995 to 2015 whose titles, keywords, or abstracts included the words “racism” or “racist,” and we use a citation analysis of those references to identify the dominant meanings of racism over this period. Lastly, we address the question of what racism ought to mean by identifying key theoretical problems and the empirical research that might resolve them. (The present working paper includes the review of research, but the full draft will include the content and citation analysis and the conclusion.)

Authors

• Jiannbin Lee Shiao, University of Oregon

• Ashley Woody, University of Oregon