Prejudice as Group Position: Microfoundations of a Sociological Approach to Racism and Race Relations

Journal of Social Issues, Fall, 1999 by Lawrence D. Bobo

This normative character to the sense of group position immediately separates it from a purely instrumental basis. The normative dimension is also part of why prejudice is an active, adaptive social force. It is infused with a moral imperative.

Secondly, Blumer explicitly argued that the sense of group position functioned along two important axes. One axis involved the more obvious dimension of domination and oppression, of hierarchical ordering and positioning. A second critical axis, however, involved a dimension of exclusion and inclusion, of socioemotional embrace or recoil. The exclusion and inclusion dimension, again, invokes an affective or emotional basis to the sense of group position. Blumer spoke directly, although briefly, to this point in the original essay. He drew attention to aspects of the sense of proprietary claim that included "certain areas of intimacy and privacy" (Blumer, 1958a, p. 4). He also expressly held that "on the social psychological side [the sense of group position] cannot be equated to a sense of social status as ordinarily conceived, for it refers not merely to vertical positioning but to many other lines of position independent of the vertical dimension" (Blumer, 1958a, p.5). Even Blumer's discussion of perceptio ns of threat identified an emotional component. He explained the nature of feelings of threat in the following way:

Race prejudice is a defensive reaction to such challenging of the sense of group position. It consists of the disturbed feelings, usually of marked hostility, that are thereby aroused. As such, race prejudice is a protective device. It functions, however, shortsightedly, to preserve the integrity and the position of the dominant group. (Blumer, 1958a p. 5)

Blumer thus expressly recognizes a concern with group integrity, not merely positional status. Challenges to this conception of where the dominant group should stand relative to the subordinate group are experienced as emotionally involving and upsetting.

Part of the point is that restrictions imposed on a subordinate group reach beyond the conventional status dimensions defined by position within the economic and political order. Blumer made this point most forcefully in his discussion of "The Future of the Color Line" (1965b). In this essay he spoke directly to the exclusion-inclusion dimension of the sense of group position and applied it to an understanding of the substantial but delimited successes of the Black civil rights movement. In large part, his message was that even profound change in some aspects or dimensions of a racial order, and the sense of group position surrounding it, may not erode other core aspects of the sense of group position. Blumer defined the color line in a fashion that identified the American Black- White divide as an important instance of the functioning of the sense of group position. Blumer suggested that the color line

is a line which separates Whites from Negroes, assigning to each a different position in the social order and attaching to each position a differential set of rights, privileges, and arenas of action. It defines the approach of each racial group to the other, it limits the degree of access to each other, and it outlines respective modes of conduct toward each other. The color line stems from a collective sense held by Whites that Negroes as a racial group do not qualify for equal status, and that because of their racial difference Negroes have no claim to being accepted socially. Thus, the color line expresses and sustains the social position of the two groups along two fundamental dimensions--an axis of dominance and subordination, and an axis of inclusion and exclusion. (Blumer, 1965b, p. 322)