The Vibe of Racialized Social Structures

• In Event: 3104 - Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) Research Session: Issues in Race/Ethnicity, Identity, and Group Experiences

Abstract

Sociologists have used indicators such incarceration rates, employment data, health statistics, and other mainstream indicators to understand the structural positioning of black Americans. Through ethnography this research suggests that these dominant institutionalized ways of understanding only highlight a piece of a racialized experience. My ethnographic narratives suggest that rural black Americans have repositioned the importance of these mainstream indicators and created black centered ways in which to understand structural positioning. The term ‘vibe’ is developed as a methodological and theoretical tool to view when a black-centered worldview is centered how institutions and people are understood partly through aesthetic and cultural sensibilities. Vibe as a theoretical tool allows us to see how rural black Americans grow to understand blackness through the affective nature of their interactions within social structures. While vibe gives us a black-centered way in which to discuss how we feel race, I suggest that the black experience is not defined by a homogeneous experience but a shared structural positioning.

Author

• Corey Javon Miles, Virginia Tech