Making Taken For Granted Racism Visible

Members of the Sociology Department explain how the history and current structures of racial oppression and racialization in the US explains the deep divisions in US society today. A history of oppression and inequality becomes sedimented in social structures and interactional expectations such that the everyday practices all people in the US use to achieve normal ordinary objects, identities, meanings, and events – the “social facts” of the current society – are shaped in significant ways by that history. Unless we understand how this process works and learn to locate the structures of racism and inequality in our daily lives, we can do very little about it. Indeed, we will become confused about what the problem actually is.