Summary Of More Than Just Race By William Julius Wilson

In More than Just Race, William Julius Wilson challenges social scientists to rethink the ways in which “complex and interrelated factors…continue to contribute to racial inequality in the United States” (p. 3). Wilson (2009) identifies two important factors associated with racial inequality: social structure and culture. Structure is comprised of two specific categories of behavior: social acts and social processes. Social acts refer to the behavior of individuals who occupy positions of power in society and they include stereotyping, stigmatization, discrimination in job hiring, job promotions, admission to educational institutions and exclusion from unions, clubs and associations. In terms of social processes, Wilson describes the “machinery
of society” that includes the direct and indirect political and economic forces that contribute to racial group outcomes (Wilson, 2009, p. 5). Direct social processes, or racial structural forces, that contribute to racial inequality include institutional social processes like racial profiling, racial tracking in schools, Jim Crow laws of segregation and bank redlining that results in the exclusion of African Americans from home ownership (Wilson, 2009, p. 5). Wilson identifies two types of cultural forces that contribute to or reinforce racial inequality. The first cultural force is national views and beliefs on race. The second type of cultural force that contributes to racial inequality is cultural traits, which includes intra-group beliefs, habits, modes of behaviors, linguistic patterns and values. Wilson argues that individuals or groups develop ideas, or in-group meaning making, about the ways in which the world works, shared group constructions of reality, and make decisions based on their experiences and perceptions. This leads to observable group characteristics and group-specific cultural traits (Wilson, 2009).