While the article below is about sociology, it is essential that people understand the concepts in this article before reparations can be made real. All too often white people, especially those with good intentions, are motivated to understand in order to make lives better but often negate the fully lived experience of individuals and communities. And it is far too easy for white intellectuals to pathologize the lives of Black people (and other people of color). Other stumbling blocks are the ulterior motives, sometimes, often, not known fully even by the do-gooders themselves, whether it be for recognition, academic achievement, or the ever-present white savior persona.

Excerpt from the article…

A t the heart of US sociology are two interlocking fixations: method and race. Together they prop up a liberal fantasy of discovering Black pain – of somehow measuring it and then documenting it in great detail, again and again. Black identities and lived experiences are endlessly layered and diverse, but this is a problem for methodologies that require (or presume) fixed categories to produce research that is generalisable, verifiable, and replicable – the hallmarks of social scientific enquiry. …

Sociologists end up weirdly reifying the status quo rather than critiquing or unpacking it. In Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (2003), Roderick Ferguson traces how the founding impulses of US sociology themselves sprang from a concern with how well Black communities reflected or were incorporated into traditional social institutions that regulate and discipline human behaviour, such as work and family. From this vantage point, Black and brown people are forever playing catch-up to their white counterparts who always seem to have more of everything and live happier lives. …

In the end, sociology’s race problem is bigger than the faulty lens that transforms some of us into social others, or social problems. There’s a larger issue about the ongoing default status of whiteness as the standard used to define social difference and what is considered solid academic work in the first place.

TAGS:  [2020’s] [Black Lives Matter] [Social Justice] [Economics] [Policing] [Justice System] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Assumptions]