Deviance and Race

Research Approaches

Although the study of deviance in sociology is wide-ranging and divergent, two predominant, yet opposing, perspectives to deviance can be distinguished: posi-tivist (e.g., anomie-strain, social learning, and social disorganization theories) and constructionist (e.g., labeling, feminist, phenomenology, and conflict theories). The positive approach is most closely associated with the objectivist position that deviant behavior is obvious or deterministic, suggesting that certain consistencies within society regarding some behaviors violate the social order. Positivistic lines of inquiry, with respect to deviance and race, seek to explain why some racial groups engage in certain deviant behaviors. In contrast, constructionists approach deviant behavior as a socially constructed phenomenon that arises out of the judgment, condemnation, or stigmatization of actions by various audiences in society. Rather than viewing actors as inherently deviant, constructionists argue that definitions of deviance are externally imposed by audiences.

Most sociologists adopt the constructionist approach and often view deviance through the lens of power relationships. Thus, they may examine how certain groups or moral entrepreneurs influence the definition of deviance to exert social control or to encourage conformity. As such, a constructionist approach to race and deviance might seek to explain who gets to define what is deviant along racial lines and examine what groups adopt certain definitions of racial deviance while others do not. Those who study deviance with respect to any social phenomena such as race often examine deviant associations, deviant identities, and deviant careers.

Racial Distinctions

The linkages of deviance and race in U.S. society are rooted in early attempts to classify people along racial lines for the purposes of constructing otherness. Historically, in the United States, racial distinctions in terms of physical and biological characteristics became socially important as a rationale for the existence of slavery and as justification for the negative treatment of people of African ancestry. In this context, racial classification was defined and enforced along rigid color lines of Black versus White, with anything other than whiteness constructed as a deviant.

Thus, race became arranged along hierarchical lines, with whiteness associated with positive categories such as purity and goodness, therefore being superior, whereas blackness became associated with negative connotations such as dark, predatory, evil, and abnormality, and thus, it was inferior and other. To be sure, the social construction of deviance and race extends far beyond distinctions of Black and White to other racial and ethnic minorities such as Asians, Latinos, and Native Americans. These racial constructions play out in both criminal and social deviance.

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