How Social Structures Are More Than Collections of Individuals: Residential Segregation, Structural Racism, and Sociology’s Contribution to Catholic Social Thought

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Winter 2024

Publisher

Philosophy Documentation Center

Source Publication

Journal of Catholic Social Thought

Source ISSN

1548-0712

Original Item ID

Doi: 10.5840/jcathsoc20242115

Abstract

The problem of race has typically been treated as a problem of individual or institutional prejudice. However, more attention needs to be paid to structural racism, which shows how racialized opportunity structures sustain racial injustice even when actors are not prejudiced. Because Catholic social thought treats social structures as mere aggregates of individual behavior, however, it is unable to explain how opportunity structures constrain human agency, how social positions condition the behaviors of people who occupy them, and how harms may occur without intent. A critical realist approach to understanding social structure corrects the reductive tendencies of dominant perspectives on race, such as colorblindness and antiracism, and helps explain how nonracists can perpetuate racial injustice. An analysis of the case of residential segregation shows how the pursuit of individual goods in racialized opportunity structures like the housing market simultaneously hinders the common good.

Comments

Journal of Catholic Social Thought, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Winter 2024): 81-106. DOI.

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