1. The Sociological Imagination and Race and Ethnicity
Sociology 134
The Sociological Imagination and Race and Ethnicity

2. C. Wright Mills and the Sociological Imagination
Understanding our own lives involves understanding the history and current status of the society in which we live.
Perspectives (Conflict/Consensus)
Tools (ethnography, statistics)
Challenge conventional wisdom: the common understanding of a situation.

3. Example: Racial Profiling
Blacks, Hispanics
Orlando, 1992: Road with 5% black drivers
and 70% of stopped drivers black
-- Maryland, 1998: Road with 20% black drivers and 70% of stopped drivers black
-- Illinois, 1999: 8% of state’s residents were Hispanic, while 25% of individuals stopped by drug interdiction units were Hispanic

4. What are some possible explanations of these statistics?
Negative
Prejudice and discrimination
Poor training
Bad policing
Positive
Higher rates of illegal activities

5. Racial Profiling of Muslims and Arabs
Targeting 5,000 young men from Muslim countries for questioning after 9/11, 2001.
FBI: talk to everyone who might have information
Muslim leaders: racial profiling
What do you think: was this good or bad?

6. What sociological questions can we pose?(C. Wright Mills)
How are racial and ethnic relations structured?
How do racial and ethnic relations compare to the past and other countries?
What does the past and current state of racial and ethnic relations suggest about our “human nature”?

7. Applied to racial profiling
What is the structure, extent, nature, and form of racial profiling?
How does racial and ethnic profiling here compare to other countries and the past?
What does racial profiling reveal about our human nature?
Racial divide
We have not resolved all of our issues

8. Some classic examples An American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal (1944)
The Declining Significance of Race by William Julius Wilson (1978)
Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation by Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut (2001)

9. Code of the Street Ethnographic
Explores the structure and culture of life in the inner city

10. The Ecological Indian
Were Indians the original environmentalists?

11. Latinos: A Biography of the People
Allowing people to tell their own histories and stories
Looking at different Latino groups separately