Context and Nuance, Part 4

We have reviewed the labels sociologists use for various socially constructed categories. I have not yet mentioned gender, which is obviously at least equally important, but I want to keep the number of moving parts manageable for now.Racial categories can vary from time to time and place to place, but because the theory of race is that it ' s inherited they are generally pretty rigid -- you ' re stuck in the category you were born into -- and they can also be more or less coextensive with caste. For example, people imported from Africa and their descendants were categorized both by race and caste throughout much of the nation ' s history. However, the nature of the coextensive  caste category did vary. Africans were slaves in the antebellum South but they were emancipated before the Civil War in the northern states and, while they faced discrimination and disadvantage, did have the status of citizens. The status of former slaves and their descendants remained a strictly defined inferior caste status in the South after the Civil War until the rebellion of the 1950s-60s and now the caste distinctions in the South are much attenuated, but the legacy of disadvantage and discrimination continues to leave most African Americans in a lowerclass position.A further complication is that people can be of mixed ancestry, which means that the physical markers of race and caste may be ambiguous. Although the theory of the Southern racial caste system was that any amount of African he...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs