Race is a primary way for humans to categorize based on physical characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, nose shape, etc. However, no biological evidence supports the idea that races are distinct from each other. In fact, the current scientific consensus is that race is nothing more than a social construct. Nevertheless, the reality is that race matters. It affects how people are treated, what opportunities they’re given, and whether they’ll live long enough to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Even though race is a social construct, people still use it to define themselves and others. People learn to see themselves as members of particular groups and cultures. A person’s racial identity is defined by his or her perceptions of one’s self, by what others think about him or her, and by the cultural norms that surround them. According to a Pew Research poll,
A majority of non-Hispanic Black Americans (78%) say being Black is very or extremely important to how they think about themselves. (Source: pewresearch.org)
Understanding how the notion of race shapes our identities and experiences is essential to understanding racism and discrimination. No single model explains how we develop our racial identities, but here I will focus on two models: Intergroup Contact Theory and Self-Categorization Theory.
EARLY BLACK SOCIOLOGISTS
Intergroup contact theory suggests that contact with members of another ethnic/racial group leads to positive changes in attitudes towards outgroups. Pioneering Black sociologists sought to understand how African Americans fit into the larger fabric of American life. Emerging in the post-Reconstructions period, these pioneers were motivated by the desire to assess the impact of the rapid changes they experienced during the period of post-Civil War Reconstruction (1865–77). In the early tradition of African-Americans’ sociological thought, African Americans were outside the norm in reference to social science research. Rather, the standards for evaluating their cultural and social organization capacities were in comparison to white society. Black sociologists were largely trapped within that paradigm.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868–1963) was an American historian, sociologist, civil rights activist, and writer who played a major role in the advancement of African Americans. As founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colore People, Du Bois gave rise to an unprecedented movement for African American equality. He focused largely on the issues of class and education as a means to gain racial equality and civil rights for the African American community. His sociological writings on race relations and civil rights became influential throughout the discipline. In his best-known work, The Souls of Black folk, he wrote extensively about the problems facing black Americans in the post-slavery era. Yet he opens his essay by framing his “otherness” in American society.
Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? … I answer seldom a word.And yet, being a problem is a strange experience… (Remond 2021)
Another prominent social thinker, Anna Julia Cooper was an American educator, writer, and activist who promoted Black women’s education in the United States. She wrote about the history of African Americans and their contributions to society. Much like Du Bois, she stressed inclusion as a pathway to prosperity.
The increasingly more complex industrial order in American society, she argued, would reach its fullest potential only by including African-American men and women into the citizenry and allowing them to participate fully in social, political, and economic realms of life. (Young 449)
Intergroup Contact Theory was important in framing a way forward after emancipation. However, it left sociologists to consider the Black experience narrowly and solely focused on achieving parity with white America. Consequently, many early sociologists framed Black culture as underdeveloped and needing social reform. Their narrow focus left little room for exploring the creative capacities of the Black community both culturally and socially.
RE-FRAMING BLACK IDENTITY FROM THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE AND BEYOND
Self-Categorization Theory states that i A significant turning point came in the 1920s and 1930s, when Harlem became a thriving cultural hub, largely due to the arrival of thousands of Black Americans fleeing racial oppression in the Deep South.
The influx of Black migration into New York City began in earnest in 1917. By 1924, nearly half a million Blacks had left the South for northern cities. Harlem, a neighborhood once home to wealthy white residents, became a haven for Black artists, writers, musicians, and dancers. For Black residents, Harlem was an opportunity to experience art and thought centered on the Black experience for the first time. It represented the opportunity to uphold the Black experience through the eyes of Black people themselves as complex figures with real lives. With it came the concept of the “New Negro” and “that the modern African American could free himself from the negative stereotypes to assert his own identity and that African American culture could be defined through the arts.” (Hart 1973)
One of the major figures asserting this new identity was Langston Hughes. Born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902, he moved to New York City in 1918. In his essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountian,” he boldly proclaimed,
So I am ashamed for the black poet who says, “I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet,” as though his own racial world were not as interesting as any other world. I am ashamed, too, for the colored artist who runs from the painting of Negro faces to the painting of sunsets after the manner of the academicians because he fears the strange un-whiteness of his own features. An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose. (Walser 56)
Later, the 1960s constituted a linchpin moment in the history of Black activism in the United States. In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, many Blacks began to redefine and recreate what it meant to be called Black. They did so by demanding dignity and human respect for themselves and others. Being Black was about the right of self-naming, being able to define oneself without having to rely on others to do so. The term “being Black” became synonymous with being proud, strong, powerful, and dignified. As Civil Rights activist Jesse Jackson asserted before a crowd in 1963,
I may be poor,
But I am Somebody.
I may be on welfare,
But I am Somebody.
I may be in jail,
But I am Somebody.
I may be uneducated,
But I am Somebody.
I am Black, beautiful,
I must be respected.
I must be protected.
I am Somebody.
Right on!(Source: “”I am somebody!” – Historical footage of Rev. Jesse Jackson leading a crowd in a chant of solidarity”)
CONCLUSION
The early tradition of Black sociologists based their assumptions largely upon the notion that whites were the norm and Blacks were the deviant. The central focus was on gaining equality with whites such that Blacks were accepted into the norm. Later frameworks of African American culture attempted to better understand how Black people resist oppression and how they reconstitute their lives after suffering from oppression. The suppression of this idea left Black sociological studies narrowly focused on making them equal to white Americans.
SOURCES
Hart, Robert C. “Black-White Literary Relations in the Harlem Renaissance.” American Literature, vol. 44, no. 4, 1973, pp. 612–28. JSTOR.
“‘I am somebody!’ – Historical footage of Rev. Jesse Jackson leading a crowd in a chant of solidarity.” YouTube, 19 February 2018, https://youtu.be/sn5hCdHuZzw.
“Race Is Central to Identity for Black Americans and Affects How They Connect With Each Other.” Pew Research Center, 14 April 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/race-ethnicity/2022/04/14/race-is-central-to-identity-for-black-americans-and-affects-how-they-connect-with-each-other/.
Remond, Nell. “The Souls of Black Folk.” Standard Ebooks, 30 September 2021, https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/w-e-b-du-bois/the-souls-of-black-folk/text/single-page.
Walser, Robert. Keeping Time : Readings in Jazz History. Edited by Robert Walser, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Young, Alford A., and Donald R. Deskins. “Early Traditions of African-American Sociological Thought.” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 27, 2001, pp. 445–77. JSTOR.
