Rethinking Racial Progress: Racism as a Fundamental Cause

• In Event: 520 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Paper Session. Toward a Sociological Critical Race Theory

Abstract

Recent debates on racial progress between Wimmer (2015) and Winant (2015) suffer from an under-theorization of the notion of progress. In this article, we draw on a well-known theory from medical sociology to argue that racism is a “fundamental cause” (Link and Phelan 1995; Phelan and Link 2015) of social inequality. The proximate causes of racial inequality have historically changed, but basic relations of sub- and superordination have been remarkably stable. Seeing racism as a fundamental cause allows theorists to explain both continuity and change in racial inequality better than theories that rely on an implicitly linear notion of racial progress.

Authors

• Victor E. Ray, The University of Tennessee--Knoxville

• Louise Seamster, University of Tennessee-Knoxville