Race relations

In the United States[edit]

Robert E. Park of the University of Chicago formulated a theory known as "race relations cycle," which is currently discredited. He believed race relations have a universal pattern: when races come into contact, at first they are hostile, but thaw over time.^[5] However, Park only conducted minimal studies related to it and didn't examine its validity across ethnic groups to ensure it's accuracy in representing reality.


The cycle was postulated to be driven by subjective attitudes that members of races feel toward other races.^[6] The steps in Park's cycle were contact, competition, accommodation, and assimilation. Park's students tested his ideas by studying communities of Chinese and Japanese origin living in the United States and found that, contrary to Park's theory, adopting white culture did not lead to acceptance by white Americans. However, Park did not discard his theory in spite of the failures to verify it.^[7]


In 1919, white residents of Chicago instigated the mass murder of black residents, an event known as the Chicago race riot of 1919. After this violent event, city authorities established the Chicago Commission on Race Relations. This was composed entirely of men, six African-Americans and six European-Americans.^[8][9]


Sociologist Everett Hughes published a collection of Park's articles in 1950, seven years after Park's death. The beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s caused interest in the study of race, and Park's work became a founding text in the emerging field named "race relations."^[2]


Because race relations model imagined steady progress of whites, it failed to predict the radical upheavals of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Everett Hughes delivered an address at the American Sociological Association (of which he was president) titled Race Relations and the Sociological Imagination in which Hughes confessed the failure of prediction: "Why did social scientists — and sociologists in particular — not foresee the explosion of collective action of Negro Americans demanding immediate full integration into American society?"^[2] African-American scholars had little more than token representation in this field. Race relations model was considered by them as a failure of white social science.


The Kerner Report, commissioned by the US government in 1967 to study the causes of 1960s race riots, said that the Watts riots of 1965 "shocked all who had been confident that race relations were improving in the North."^[10] The report clarified that the major cause of the riots was white racism, and recommended job creation measures and police reform. President Lyndon B. Johnson discarded the report's recommendations.^[11]


In the 1970s, some sociologists in America sought to replace the term race relations with racial oppression, because that was the better notion of what race meant in that period. For example, the 1972 book Racial Oppression in America by Bob Blauner challenged the race relations paradigm on negative effects, he explained that the source of the problem between races is not because of some naturally inherent racial animosity but is deeply rooted in the way societal systems are or the society is organized and structured.^[2]


In 2020, the world witnessed the murder of George Floyd, an African American man, by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, in a live-streamed video. This event triggered a significant shift in the U.S. and around the world, leading to a new awareness and consciousness about race relations.^[12] The dominant culture started engaging in discussions about racial justice and anti-racist practices, as well as seeking ways to understand and address racial issues.^[13] The need to reduce negative race relations practices and promote racial justice became more apparent after the George Floyd incident. Efforts were reinforced to ensure equality, dismantle systemic racism, and address historical and present-day discrimination that affects marginalized racial and ethnic groups.^[13] To rectify the impacts of past and ongoing racial disparities, specific policies and practices like affirmative action gained importance.^[14] Affirmative action is not considered as a solution to negative race relations, but it is seen as one of the steps to counteract the effects of past discrimination and create a more level playing field where dominant racist social structures are present. This allows underrepresented groups to have access to the same opportunities, presence, and benefits as others. The goal is to correct the imbalances caused by historical discrimination, to interrupt the cycle of culturally reproduced discrimination, and foster greater inclusion and diversity in society.^[14]