Race, Racism, and Black Women: Theory and Social Justice

The Black/White Binary and Perceived Racial Discrimination

The Black/White binary has been central to the discussion of race because of perceived racial discrimination (PRD). This is especially true for Black women. There has been a notable decline in overt racial discriminatory conduct — such as segregation and the denial of voting rights — alongside a rapid rise in subtle racial discriminatory behavior. At the center of these issues for Black women is a struggle over nationality, power, and control that revolves not only around race but also around gender.

The Black/White binary has also been central to the discussion of race because indirect racial discrimination has been theorized as racial microaggressions. Racial microaggressions are defined as everyday exchanges that send demeaning messages to individuals of color because they belong to a racial minority group. All of these conceptualizations highlight the subtle nature of this new form of racism, which is rooted in ambivalent attitudes toward ethnic minorities.

Constructionist vs. Structural Approaches to Race

Racial constructivism refers to the argument that, even if biological race is not real, races have come into being and persist through "human culture and human decisions." Race constructivists accept the skeptics' rejection of biological race but argue that the term still meaningfully refers to the broad categorization of persons into specific groups by society — often by the very members assigned to those racial categories. In the context of the source article, this applies to the gendered experiences of Black women.

Structural approaches describe a condition in which one category of people is assigned an inferior status relative to other groups. In the article, this applies to the experiences of Black women as a gendered racial minority. Both constructionist and structural approaches share an emphasis on minority groups and the negative ways in which they are perceived and treated. For example, both perspectives recognize that gender, along with other sociodemographic variables, may affect the degree to which perceived racial discrimination impacts the psychological well-being of Black women.

What distinguishes the two approaches is that racial constructivism focuses on cultural and ideological processes — including the historical doctrine that cast Black people as inherently inferior to white people, with Black women positioned even lower than Black men in this hierarchy. Structural approaches, by contrast, focus specifically on the inequalities that are systemically embedded in the normal operations of dominant social institutions.

Six Theories from Constructionist and Structural Perspectives

Several theories can be drawn from the constructionist perspective. Social Development Theory argues that social interaction drives development, and that awareness and thought are products of social behavior and socialization. Bandura's Social Learning Theory suggests that individuals learn from one another through imitation, observation, and modeling. Behaviorism is considered a worldview operating on a principle of stimulus and response. It holds that all behavior is produced by external stimuli — a concept also known as operant conditioning.

From the structural perspective, the Social Conflict Theory views society as a system of unequal groups that continuously generate conflict and change. Feminist Theory is frequently misunderstood as coming from a group of angry women seeking to control men; however, understood correctly, feminism is a perspective that views society as systematically unequal between men and women and strives for fairness across the sexes. Finally, the Theory of Social Action incorporates the concept of voluntarism, which implies a conscious mind capable of making decisions — the idea that individuals voluntarily choose to conform to social norms.

Institutional racism is a pattern within social organizations — such as governmental agencies, schools, courts of law, and banks — that contributes to the negative treatment of a group of individuals based on their race. It can exist in the workplace in various forms, including decisions about job promotions. A supervisor, for example, may choose to promote one employee over another on the basis of race.

Institutional Racism in the Workforce

Institutional racism also involves disparate treatment, meaning that a manager treats one employee differently from others who are in the same circumstances. Such treatment can be illegal depending on the conditions. Consider this example: two coworkers — Marla, an African American woman, and Jackie, who is white — attend a lunch meeting together. They lose track of time. The boss, who has been waiting, is angry. He fires Marla but not Jackie. This scenario illustrates how race can covertly influence workplace decisions.

In the article "Coping with Racism: What Works and What Doesn't Work for Black Women," participants answered 18 items across two time frames — the past year and over a lifetime — to measure the frequency of perceived racial discrimination. One example item from the article reads: "How many times have you been treated unfairly in school or the workplace by teachers and professors because you are Black?"