Public and Academic Questions on Race: The Problem with Racial Controversies |
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Authors: | Jeffrey Dowd |
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Affiliation: | Department of Sociology, Davison Hall, , New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903 |
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Abstract: | This essay offers an in‐depth look at how some national discussions of race serve to heighten divisions and to distort Americans' understandings of racism. First, I contend that these controversies produce questions that create racial and partisan divisions. In other words, they focus on who or which group is guilty of racism. Second, I argue that such questions about racism depart from the kinds of questions that sociologists seek to answer. As such, racial controversies move the public away from applying a sociological imagination to the problem of racism. |
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Keywords: | blogs discourse prejudice race racism sociological imagination |
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