Reference no: EM132476724 , Length: 5 Pages

Assignment - Exam Paper

"It seems to indicate something that I don't think is quite true, which is that we have erased racism from the country, or the world. Racism will disappear when it's, (A), no longer profitable and no longer psychologically useful. When that happens, it'll be gone. But at the moment, people make a lot of money off of it - pro and con. And also it protects people from a certain kind of pain. If you take racism away from certain people - I mean vitriolic racists as well as the sort of social racist - if you take that away, they might have to face something really terrible: misery, self-misery, and deep pain about who they are. It's just easier to say, 'That one over there is the cause of all my problems." - Toni Morrison, 2008.

In this quote, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning author and social critic Toni Morrison responds to the concept of "post-racialism" during an NPR interview. In it, she rejects the idea that the United States, or the world, has moved past racism and offers a compelling explanation for its existence. Your midterm assignment is to employ a set of theories that we learned in class to engage Morrison's statement from a sociological perspective. Your task for this assignment is to use the course materials to unpack Morrison's quote, and to assert your own argument in response.

Questions you may want to probe are: What is "race"? What is "racism"? Is it real? If so, is it a choice? If not, how do you contend with Morrison's assertion that race would "be gone" if it were no longer economically or psychologically profitable? What are some of the economic and psychological profits of racism to which she refers? How do policy, history, public opinion, media representations, ideas, or social relations factor into your assessment? If racism is, as Morrison claims, "protects [some] people from a certain kind of pain", what is its function and how has it sustained itself for centuries? Further, do you buy her argument?

Note - The paper should be 5 pages (excluding bibliography).