Premium
A Challenge to Critical Understandings of Race
Author(s) -
ANTHONY ROBERT M
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal for the theory of social behaviour
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.615
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1468-5914
pISSN - 0021-8308
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5914.2012.00489.x
Subject(s) - ingroups and outgroups , social psychology , situated , sociology , social identity theory , diversity (politics) , identity (music) , race (biology) , epistemology , strengths and weaknesses , multiculturalism , social group , psychology , gender studies , aesthetics , pedagogy , philosophy , artificial intelligence , computer science , anthropology
In this article, I demonstrate fundamental weaknesses in the ability of critical understandings of race to produce reliable knowledge of how social actors use social comparisons as a way to align self with ingroup. I trace these weaknesses to two sources: The first is relying on social status as an explanation for race‐based assessments, ingroup motivations, and social constructions of otherness. This is opposed to leaning on assessments grounded in social psychological research that links properties of human cognition to the development and maintenance of social identities. The second weakness is an open support for activist research that is often situated in radical multiculturalism. Because critical race scholars openly side with racial minorities’ interests, they tend to establish incomplete assessments of social behaviors and social constructs linked to racial identities in order to maintain their stated political allegiances. To demonstrate these and other weaknesses, I draw upon the theoretical insights of social identity theory which is used to reassess Bell and Hartmann's (2007) critical race analysis of diversity dialogue in American society.