Group Position Theory

The Theory

In 1958, the sociologist Herbert Blumer published a short essay urging researchers to move beyond a focus on individual feelings, such as antipathy and hatred, as an explanation for racial prejudice. At the time of its publication, the literature emphasized that these individual feelings derived from innate dispositions, such as having an authoritarian personality, and direct social experience. Blumer proposed that scholars should instead examine the positioning of racial groups in a given society and how dominant racial groups come to define and redefine subordinate racial groups.

Race prejudice begins with racial identification: People identify themselves and others as belonging to distinct racial groups. Beyond mere identification, groups form images of themselves and other groups. In a racialized social order, characterizing one's own racial group defines the characteristics of the other group. This ongoing process of definition and redefinition places the racial group in position vis-à-vis the other. For example, in the United States one cannot characterize Blacks without evoking, at least implicitly, a comparison with Whites.

A sense of group position is first set by the initial contact between the groups and later molded by ongoing relations. Factors such as power, skill sets, and opportunity play a role in this process. This arrangement reflects more than a vertical arrangement of groups based on social status—it reflects at least two distinct axes, one marked by domination and the other marked by exclusion. The structural relations of the groups need not reflect objective reality, but instead a subjective sense of where racial groups belong. The sense of group position is common to all who identify with the ingroup and provides a framework for members, acting as a powerful norm that guides its members and provides an orientation of what ought to be. Group position theory argues that it is when this orientation (i.e., the perception of where one's group stands in the social order) is threatened that race prejudice is manifested.

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