Decolonizing a Discipline: Rethinking Sociology in a Changing World

Abstract

Introduction

In the past decade, we have witnessed increasing reports of institutional and interpersonal violence against bodies of color across the nation. There have been many suggestions on why this has continued to occur. Some have argued that fear of change—where immigrant and minority populations supposedly overwhelm the inhabitants of average, “nice” communities—has increased anxieties that contribute to volatile race relations. Another popular narrative uses significant political milestones—like the election of a black president—to argue that racism is over (or overplayed) and that overly sensitive people actually are contributing to racism by talking about its presumably fake existence. In other versions of this color-blind racist ideology, accidental or mere coincidences unrelated to race (“this could have been avoided if they were just more polite”) or a call for us to rally together as a nation (“Put that far-way past behind you and choose to live in the present”).

There are so many flavors of color-blind racism that it is sometimes hard to distinguish its tastes as overt racial inequities like when police violence or traumatic scenes of discrimination are circulated in throughout the media. These inequalities, which are made visceral as we watch Brown and black bodies be murdered and again as many of their murderers are set free with excuses that make little to no sense, are vibrant, distressing, and gripping. Yet, even in these moments, those using pseudoscience or individualistic arguments continue to claim that racialized inequality does not exist in ways that should be thought of as significant, systemic, or even newsworthy.

As a discipline, sociology offers scholars and public policy-makers a vast array of empirical data that—contrary to those who would suggest that we are in a postracial society—demonstrates the existence of major racial and ethnic disparities within the United States. For example, residential segregation continues to be extremely high especially with respect to high levels of residential differences between blacks and whites. Demographers use the dissimilarity index as a measure of residential segregation. Ranging from 0 (no segregation) to 100 (complete segregation), the index represents the percentage of members of one racial or ethnic group (e.g., whites) that would have to move to other census tracts to have a similar distribution as a comparative racial or ethnic group (e.g., blacks). Data from John Logan’s website at Brown University show the following patterns on residential segregation over time (Diversity and Disparities 2018):

The average dissimilarity index between whites and blacks across 384 metropolitan regions in 2010 is 45.4. Meaning: This means that 45.4 percent of one group would have to move to have the same residential distribution as the other group.

Approximately two of the five metropolitan regions have white–black dissimilarity indices of 50.0 or higher.

The six most segregated metropolitan regions involving whites and blacks with dissimilarity indices above 75 include Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, Michigan (dissimilarity index: 79.6), Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, Wisconsin (79.6), New York-White Plains-Wayne, New York-New Jersey, Newark-Union, New Jersey-Pennsylvania (78.0), Gary, Indiana (76.8), and Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, Illinois.

Latinos experience substantial residential segregation from whites, albeit at less drastic levels compared than those of black populations.

Moreover, by Kozol (2005) and Orfield et al. (2016) illustrate that we have recently seen a significant resegregation of public schools worse than what was occurring before the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision. Facilitated by the reversal of court mandates involving school desegregation, research indicates that black and Latino students increasingly attend intensely segregated schools, where whites account for 0 to 10 percent of students. But, school segregation doesn’t stop there. Orfield et al.’s (2016) study illustrates that:

The share of such intensely segregated schools with few white students across all schools tripled from 5.7 percent in 1988 to 18.4 percent in 2013.

Over half of black students attend intensely segregated schools in three states: New York (65.8 percent), Illinois (59.6 percent), and Maryland (53.7 percent).

Over half of Latino students attend intensely segregated schools in New York (56.8 percent), California (56.5 percent), and Texas (53.7 percent).

Yet, black and Latino low-income students are particularly likely to attend schools with low-income students of color.

Put simply, according to Kozol and other scholars, black and Latino students are concentrated in poorly funded schools with much more limited educational resources than those where whites attend. Yet, as the table below illustrates, more inequities exist.

We use socioeconomic data from the 2016 American Community Survey to assess racial and ethnic disparities. White householders (71.3 percent) are significantly more likely than black (41.1 percent), Latino (45.6 percent), and Native American (55.3 percent) to be homeowners and the value of these homes are greater among whites (Table 1). In addition, Native American, black, and Latino households are less likely to have Internet access or a computer than white households (Table 1). Moreover, Native Americans and Latinos are approximately three times more likely than whites to not have any health insurance coverage and white workers are more likely to receive insurance coverage from their employer than Latino, Native American, and Latino workers. Furthermore, while more than one third of whites 25 and older have at least a bachelor’s degree, only 21 percent of blacks and 15 percent of Latinos and Native Americans have such level of education. Finally, persons of color are more than twice as likely as whites to be in poverty, while families of color earn approximately 60 cents for every $1 that white families earn.

Table 1.

Selected Socioeconomic Indicators by Selected Race/Ethnic Group, 2016.

Selected Socioeconomic Indicators	Non-Hispanic			Latino
Selected Socioeconomic Indicators	White	Black	Native American	Latino
Percentage household who are homeowners	71.3	41.1	55.3	45.6
Median housing value	$210,000	$150,000	$110,000	$185,000
Percentage households without internet service	16.1	27.3	34.2	22.7
Percentage households without a computer	19.1	36.0	40.2	32.5
Percentage without any health insurance coverage	5.9	10.6	20.3	18.3
Percentage of workers with insurance through work	74.1	66.4	57.1	53.9
Percentage of persons 25 and older college graduates	35.0	20.9	14.9	15.4
Percentage of persons in poverty	10.1	23.8	27.4	21.1
Median family income	$74,562	$44,334	$43,326	$46,349

Source: 2016 American Community Survey Public Use File (Ruggles et al. 2017).

People of color are regularly racialized and dehumanized in a variety of ways; and though grim in nature, sociological data are integral to tracking and analyzing these trends. For example, Sáenz (2014) has highlighted the fact that many unarmed African Americans are killed by police with little impunity and even by self-appointed vigilantes such as George Zimmerman who was found innocent of killing Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager. Swaine et al. (2015) have noted that black males 15–34 years of age were five times more likely than white men to be killed at the hands of police officers in 2015. Moreover, while black men between the ages of 15 and 34 represent only 2 percent of the nation’s population, they accounted for 15 percent of all persons killed by police officers in 2015. In addition, Mexican—and by extension, Latino—immigrants have been criminalized and racialized with the Trump deportation machinery detaining and deporting countless Latino immigrants.

These are just a few statistics that demonstrate the disparities that are prevalent in the United States in the midst of plenty. Other scholars have also outlined key areas of racialized stratification through intersectional lenses. For example, sociologist Enobong Branch’s 2011 book offers a nuanced look at the historical disenfranchisement faced by black women laborers. However, these inequities are not simply objects of study—they also occur within and help reproduce the overall structure of the academy. While sociology has historically placed a major emphasis on studying inequality, it is not exempt from the social conditions from which it emerges.

Disparities in the “Ivory Tower”

There are many areas where stratification—that is, unequal outcomes related to social categories like race, gender, and class—can be identified in the academy and within sociology.

Leading Sociology Programs and the Recreation of Inequality in the Discipline

We can see how inequality is reproduced when we shed some light on the leading sociology graduate programs in the country. In particular, we focus here on the top 26 programs ranked by the 2017 U.S. News and World Report. We examined the Web pages of the leading 26 programs to conduct this part of the analysis. Across the 26 programs, there are 705 tenured and tenure-track faculty with an estimated 86 being persons from underrepresented groups of color (African Americans, Latina/os, and Native Americans), accounting for approximately 12 percent of sociologists at these leading programs. While some programs (Penn, Princeton, Northwestern, and Maryland) do fairly well in having faculty members from underrepresented groups, others—principally Wisconsin, Yale, Penn State, Cornell, and New York University—have a dearth of these scholars. The leading sociology programs largely have student bodies that are not diverse, with none being a Historically Black College or University and only two (University of Arizona and University of California, Irvine) being a Hispanic-Serving Institution, although the number of Latina/o sociologists in these two programs can be counted on one hand.

Furthermore, the leading 26 sociology programs largely have faculty who received their PhDs from within this set of doctoral programs. Of the 705 sociology faculty across the 26 leading programs, 598 received their PhDs from one of these programs, accounting for 85 percent of all faculty in the 26 programs. All sociology faculty at Penn and the University of Arizona received their PhDs from a top 26 sociology program.

Lest we think that upward mobility occurred among the 108 sociologists in these institutions who did not receive their degrees from one of the 26 leading programs, 24 received their degrees from prestigious universities outside of the United States located in Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. In addition, six other relatively prestigious programs, albeit ranked below 26, have produced the most additional (38) PhD sociologists in the 26 leading sociology programs: Johns Hopkins (ranked 27th), 10; State University of New York at Albany (ranked 36th), 7; University of California, Santa Barbara (ranked 40th), 6; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (unranked), 5; University of California, San Diego (ranked 36th), 5; and University of Southern California (ranked 40th), 5.

In fact, the leading 26 sociology programs are even more selective than seen at first glance. Of the 705 tenured and tenure-track faculty in the 26 leading sociology programs, 418 received their degrees from a top-10 sociology program, accounting for 59 percent of all faculty members in the leading programs. More than three fourths of sociologists in six of the leading 26 sociology programs earned their PhDs from a top-10 sociology program: UC Berkeley, 92.9 percent; Michigan, 84.4 percent; Penn, 81.5 percent; Northwestern, 80.8 percent; Brown, 76.2 percent; and Cornell, 76.0 percent.

Thus, sociology, a discipline that prides itself in understanding the mechanisms of inequality, is not exempt from recreating inequality. The probability of graduate students landing in a top sociology graduate program is directly proportional to the ranking of the graduate program from which they graduate. Those in the most prestigious programs are much more likely to find employment in a top sociology program than their counterparts toiling at less prestigious occupations. Individuals with the wrong pedigree are likely to get, at best, a cursory review of their applications when they apply for a job at a leading sociology program. They are also likely to be at a disadvantage in attaining prestigious positions in the discipline. As keepers of the standards and prestige of the discipline, we cannot depend on colleagues in leading programs to topple the structures of inequality.

The many faces of this stratification and structural inequality were outlined at a special session within Association for Humanist Sociology’s (AHS) 2017 meeting in Havana, Cuba. In her opening statement, Manisha Desai urged scholars to consider how epistemic violence occurs within the academy. Noting that knowledge production is not merely emergent from siloed locales, Desai outlined how citations often represent specific epistemological and ideological perspectives that (re)marginalize nonwestern scholarship or help to reproduce U.S. or Eurocentric lens onto transnational contexts. Johnny Williams, linking questions of epistemic violence to praxis, suggested that reenvisioning what the meaning of “scholar” and “theory” can change not merely empirical and theoretical approaches but also what is included in syllabi.

Laube et al.’s (2007) piece, “The Impact of Gender on the Evaluation of Teaching: What We Know and What We Can Do,” explores the way gender bias may play a role in student evaluation of teaching (SET). In the report, the authors identify several trends in student evaluations. First, the authors recognize that the existence of gender and gender ideologies in the world shape everyone—including student evaluators. Primary considerations elaborate on how students’ understandings of hegemonic iterations of gender and gender performance influence a range of student conceptions—and thus, the critiques found within end of year evaluations. Citing a prior work by Sprague and Massoni (2005), the authors suggests that when faculty members violate or transgress normative gender ideologies, they are punished through informal and formal sanctions. Additionally, when these faculty members are challenged—both by men and women—the worst ratings were reserved for female faculty. They write the following:

In remembering their worst men teachers, students used words like arrogant, disengaged, and pretentious. They saved their harshest critiques, however, for their worst women teachers, who were chastised for having been unfair, cold, mean and either too intelligent or not intelligent enough. Perhaps, most disturbingly, worst women teachers were sometimes seemingly indicted for being bad women, through the use of female-specific derogatory phrases such as “bitch” and “witch.” (Laube et al. 2007: 94)

With this frame, one can see the salience of gendered standards and social desirability even in the classroom. As other research has indicated, when faculty members transgress these invisible boundaries, there are real repercussions. For female faculty members, these informal sanctions may manifest in comments referring to their bodies, insinuations of incompetency, and assumptions of bias connected to the performance and embodiment of gender. Additionally, classroom atmospheres and social interactions become mediated by these (at times, failed) expectations of gender (Biernat & Kobrynowicz 1997). However, the informal nature of these reactions begins to have more consequences as they bleed into SET scores, which are often used in the tenure process for new faculty members (Laube et al. 2007:95).

Yet systems of inequality do not neatly unpack themselves and biases in higher education are not exempt from this standard. In acknowledging the multiple social locations that women of color faculty straddle, new research works to elucidate important and repeating narratives. As Essed (2010) suggests, faculty of color must learn to navigate a system designed for certain types of epistemological and embodied positions while often exerting extra time on incorporating social justice and diversity initiatives. These “contradictory demands of scholarship and justice work” facilitate precarious standings as professors and mentors of color with pressure on all sides (Essed 2010:890). Similarly, Huston (2005) contends that female minority faculty members receive lower course evaluations than white faculty of both genders and male minority instructors. Repeatedly, the implications of embodying racialized, sexed, and “othered” categories show themselves through student evaluations of teaching—in which faculty of color, especially women of color rank lowest scores as a population (Kardia and Wright 2004; Reid 2010; Smith and Hawkins 2011). However, negative and possibly biased feedback from students does not exist in a vacuum. Often, the use of SET scores has disastrous effects for faculty and graduate students of color (Hendrix 1998; Huston 2006; Waring 2014).

The impact of student evaluations can quickly move beyond the classroom as the tenure process begins. As some research states, although these evaluations assume a universal measure of quality of teaching, these measures often not much more than students’ enjoyment of the course (Nast 1999). Beyond SET scores, interpersonal traumas remain a constant in the lives of faculty of color, especially women of color. This is reinforced by lack of mentoring and structural representation. Various literatures articulate the impact of difference in the academy. As Waring (2014) remarks, examining these narratives “reveal how they navigate this domain on a daily basis, which more often than not feels like a racial minefield, riddled with symbolic triggers, explosions and the inevitable aftermath of frustration, hurt, anger and at times, devastation” (p. 9).

McKinley’s (2014) autoethnographic work details the struggles of being a black, female “professors-in-training.” As a woman of color not yet certified as “professor,” McKinley writes navigating the field as “expert” or displaying too little aptitude on subjects presents additional challenges to this dilemma. Like Carty (1992) and other researchers, McKinley (2014) recognizes the racialized and gendered implications that follow—such as student evaluations that reiterate stereotypes of black women such as being labeled aggressive or incompetent (p. 34). However, what McKinley and other researchers seek to bring into the forefront is the influence of positionality, particularly that of graduate students of color who must navigate academic terrain. Bordoloi (2014), in On Being Brown and Foreign: The Racialization of an International Student within Academia, extrapolates on the challenges racialization imposed on his graduate study. The homogenization of international students as a category, coupled with being racialized as a nonwhite other in predominantly white academic settings, left him socially and professionally isolated. As the only graduate student of color in the department, he reported on increased feelings of alienation and lack of support from other graduate students, experiences that took more than intellectual and emotional energy but also monetary resources (Bordoloi 2014: 54). Bordoloi’s (2014) status as “foreign” also played a role in interactions with professors who would fetishize or overcompensate cultural knowledges at times. In these instances, he was assumed to know “all things India” or “praised” for speaking “such good English” (p. 60). Similarly, Diaz (2014) suggests that while bodies of color are often celebrated for bringing diversity and alternative narratives to the classroom, they also represent an “anxiety amongst students” who view “brown skin as a barrier; and at times influencing how they respond to course material” (p. 5). These insults are then worsened by administrators who cannot or wish not to address the pervasive racism within classroom walls. Due to the interlocking nature of identity, faculty and graduate students of color must straddle racial and gendered stereotypes in the struggle for authority and respect while dodging identity-based microaggressions (Gutierrez y Muhs et al. 2012; Huston 2006; Johnson-Bailey & Lee 2005; Vargas 2002; Rubin 1998).

A Discipline of Praxis

As violence—whether epistemological, institutional, or sociopolitical—takes place across the country, what will the future work of sociology as practice and discipline look like? While this is not a new question, it remains relevant as many of us wonder whether sociologists and other social scientists have an obligation to be a part of the change we write about, or even whether our respective academic disciplines will allow us the opportunity (and reward us) for doing so.

In his 2004 American Sociological Association (ASA) Presidential Address, Michael Burawoy reclaimed that sociology is, and—for humanity’s sake—must be, more than a realm of theory. Note: we choose to use the word “reclaim” in this instance to recognize the countless voices of scholars of color who currently and historically have taken such position, that the work of sociologists, and the discipline, ought to be woven into the streets and communities from which such theories emerge.

Du Bois, founding father of American sociology, was an advocate for the practical applications of sociological teaching and research. In “My Evolving Program for Negro Freedom,” Du Bois made clear his view on the potential of sociology and the need for both research and action. After regarding his interest in the discipline as part of a “quest for basic knowledge with which to help guide the American Negro” (p. 34), he states:

I realized that evidently the social scientist could not sit apart and study in vacuo; neither on the other hand, could he work fast and furiously simply by intuition and emotion, without seeking in the midst of action, the ordered knowledge which research and tireless observation might give him. I tried therefore in my new work, not to pause when remedy was needed; on the other hand I sought to make each incident and item in my program of social uplift, part of a wider and vaster structure of real scientific knowledge of the race problem in America.

Since Du Bois, other scholars have appealed to the need for more active engagement within struggles for freedom. Referenced by Francesca Cancian’s 1993 article in The American Sociologist, ASA President-Elect Mary Romero also spoke at length about the influence and importance of social engagement within her work. The project outlined in that article, like her recent ASA presentation (a similar symposium talk is available here) about racialized injustices carried out during former sheriff Joe Arpaio’s term, is both a model of dynamic sociological research and how sociologists can reorient themselves to grapple with struggles for justice. This approach was made explicit in her ASA candidate statement in which she wrote:

We cannot shield ourselves with false notions of “objectivity,” but, as previous presidents have emphasized, ASA actively embraces public engagement and scholar activism. ASA must be prepared to effectively challenge attacks on tenure and academic freedom in higher education. To be relevant and serve our members, ASA must continue to emphasize social justice in sociological inquiry.

Outside of sociology, activist scholar Angela Davis has extensively called for academics, especially social scientists to participate in struggles for freedom. Her most recent book ends with a charge that “[w]e will have to go to great lengths. We cannot go on as usual. We cannot pivot the center. We cannot be moderate. We will have to be willing to stand up and say no with our combined spirits, our collective intellects, and our many bodies.” Black intellectual and sociologist, Dr. Roderick Bush focused much of his work on racial inequality and social transformation. His 2011 article, “Africana Studies and the Decolonization of the U.S. Empire in the 21st Century,” offers a critical approach to productions of knowledge and the potential of scholarly production:

I argue here that the central task of Africana Studies in the 21st century is to engage its faculty, its students, and its various publics in the intellectual and political task of decolonizing the nationalism of empire within the United States, and thus moving toward solidarity with the billions of oppressed people in the world system whose lives are constrained by the overarching power of the U.S. hegemon.

This position, which expanded well-beyond Africana Studies to the academy more broadly, is echoed throughout his works. In a forthcoming work entitled “Everyday Conversations with Dr. Rod Bush: The Radical Potentials of Mentorship, Intimacy, and Practice,” Sneed uses autoethnographic methods to contextualize memories and experiences spanning across four years of interaction at St. John’s University. In doing this, the author suggests that three themes have emerged in Rod’s work—intergenerational mentorship, radical intimacy, and a commitment to praxis—and ends by highlighting how Rod’s embodied formulations of these phenomena have contributed to the field of sociology and social justice pedagogy. Thus, Bush’s (2003) work can be seen as an extension of his own commitments, outlined time, and time again within his scholarship. In “African Americans, Social Justice, and the Aftermath of September 11, 2001,” he writes the following:

And our task, brothers and sisters, is to become partners in the world struggle against international social injustice. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. demanded of us, we should be about bringing it down and helping to create a more just, egalitarian, and democratic world. (P. 12).

In order for us to take up such a task, we—as scholars and institutions—must commit to decolonizing sociology and the wider academy in which it operates.

The Sociological Imagination, Revisions in Progress

To decolonize a discipline means that we ought to look upon the violence(s) that currently exist and not just hide them under white[ned] liberal tears. The thing that ties many of the scholars we previously mentioned together is that they all recognized that the production of knowledge and research is fraught with the same inequalities as the social world it seeks to examine. They challenge us to do better sociological work with better questions, better critical analysis, and more connected (and perhaps—if we are committed—less exploitative) engagement with the communities that help produce it. Yet it goes beyond a call for more critical/empathic institutional review boards. And, as Samuel and Wane (2005:84) suggest, the inclusion of minority faculty in academia through hiring and promotion would help to correct some systemic inequities. However, these acts must not be symbolic or tokenizing, instead they should be focused on the process of justice and decentralization of patriarchal and Eurocentric ideals in the academy. This means actually citing scholars of color or those from outside of western paradigms, reading transnationally, and allowing for new ways of thinking to take space in sociological atmospheres. It means centering structural inequality not merely within our research, but our departmental discussions, our hiring committees, our treatment of graduate students and other minoritized identities, and professional activities. For, as Johnny Williams stated at the 2017 AHS annual meeting, “All Sociologists should be on the front lines for social transformation,” through their scholarship, theory, and praxis.

Footnotes

Appendix

Table A1.

The 25 Top-ranked Sociology PhD Programs According to U.S. News and World Report (2017).

Rank	University
1	Harvard University
1	Princeton University
1	University of California, Berkeley
1	University of Michigan
5	Stanford University
6	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
6	University of Wisconsin
8	University of California, Los Angeles
8	University of Chicago
10	Northwestern University
11	Columbia University
11	New York University
11	University of Pennsylvania
11	University of Texas at Austin
15	Duke University
15	Indiana University
17	Cornell University
17	Ohio State University
17	Pennsylvania State University
17	University of Minnesota
17	University of Washington
22	Yale University
23	University of California, Irvine
24	Brown University
24	University of Arizona
24	University of Maryland

Source: U.S. News and World Report (2018).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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