Racism In America

Words: 416
Pages: 2

The merits, honor, prestige or recognition that an individual obtains is referred to as symbolic capital and it serves as a value that holds within a culture. Once an individual has acquired symbolic capital, they can obtain symbolic power. The dominant class, because of their social position as the owners of the mode of production, often time have recognized authority (symbolic capital), which they use to impose symbolic power over the dominated individuals. They create law, regulations and norms that individuals abide for, and if not, they face repercussion. Thus, the dominant class have the power to construct reality (H29,1). It is “the power to constitute the given by stating it, to create appearances and beliefs, to confirm or transform …show more content…
In the Unites States, many Americans think of racism as being overplayed after the election of America’s first black president. However, race is a hierarchical system and as such, it never dies, just evolves. In the book The New Jim Crow, the author, Michelle Alexander, claims that racial division is not a precondition of slavery, if not a consequence of it. Once slavery was instituted it became detached from its initial function and acquired a social potency all its own (Alexander 26). In the early period of European imperialism, the dominant class were able to rationalize social control in the United States by appropriating land and increasing the labor process needed to maintain the lands and crops through the process of slavery. The plantation owners (mostly European imperialists) of the time, the white supremacy who wrote the constitution of the nation and other bureaucratic officeholder had enough symbolic power and symbolic capital to construct the lives of many African Americans today. Even though slavery is not legal in the United States, many laws and regulation have been created and instituted in society to preserve the racial hierarchy that was in