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The Importance of Black Sociology (& Sociologists)
11 Plays5 days ago
In this episode, listeners will learn what sociology is and how it can be used to better understand Black people and the conditions they live in. The episode will also discuss a few notable Black sociologists who have influenced the host's understanding of what it means to be Black living in the US. Listeners will also examine the connections between the erasure of Black history and genocide.
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Transcript
Episode Introduction
00:00:05
Toya Thomas
So welcome back to Books, Barbecue and Black History. This is now episode two.
Meet Toya: Social Scientist and Educator
00:00:11
Toya Thomas
Today we're going to talk about the importance of Black Sociology And what comes with that? So again, i am Toya, a North Carolina based so social scientist, educator and organizer with an abolitionist praxis More specifically, I'm going to talk a little bit more today about how I am actually a sociologist and criminologist and what that means.
Key Topics Overview
00:00:36
Toya Thomas
Today we'll actually be discussing what is sociology, what is a sociologist versus what is a criminologist, why it's important for Black people to understand sociology, a few notable figures I've come along within the sociological world, and of course an interesting fact I learned as a sociologist. One thing I do want to do is I would like to start before we get into what we're really going to be talking about today.
00:01:04
Toya Thomas
I would like to share an excerpt from my Book of the Day and I will share the actual name of the book with you by the end of the episode. So here is the excerpt.
00:01:14
Toya Thomas
"We petition in the first instance because we are compelled to speak by the unending slaughter of Negroes. The fact of our ethnic origin, of which we are proud, our ancestors were building the world's first civilizations 3,000 years before our oppressors emerged from barbarism in the forests of Western Europe, is daily made the signal for segregation and murder.
00:01:35
Toya Thomas
There is infinite variety in the cruelty we will catalog, but each case has the common denominator of racism. This opening statement is not the place to present our evidence in detail.
00:01:46
Toya Thomas
Still in this summary of what is to be proved, we believe it necessary to show something of the crux of our case, something of the pattern of genocidal murder, the technique of incitement to genocide, and the methods of mass terror." So we will check in a little bit later about that excerpt and why it was included in this episode, along with the name of the actual book.
00:02:08
Toya Thomas
But the first thing I want to start with is what sociology actually
What is Sociology?
00:02:13
Toya Thomas
is. So like I said before, I am not a historian. I am a social scientist, specifically a sociologist and criminologist.
00:02:23
Toya Thomas
A lot of people may not know what sociology is, but I can pretty much guarantee that most people are familiar with some of the things that we talk about within sociology. So sociology is defined, according to the American Sociological Association, as a scientific study of social life, social change, and the social causes and consequences of human behavior. Sociologists essentially investigate the structure of groups, organizations, and societies and how people interact within these contexts.
00:02:56
Toya Thomas
And this is considered a science because we use the scientific method and empirical evidence in our analyses. Sociology is also an interdisciplinary field, meaning that we draw a lot of information from a lot of fields like biology, psychology, gender studies, history, to help us build analysis and understanding. So again, when I say that I study society, I mean that I do research within like a lot of different fields to learn about the how and why things happen. I like to explain that sociology is a systems level thinking sort of field, so I don't necessarily look at individual actions of people even though they are interesting. I'm more interested in how systems kind of produce the actions that people are engaging in. So I think about things, um I think some people call it the bigger picture sort of thing. So I might look at an individual behavior and then trace it to how the systems essentially impact that.
Criminology vs. Criminal Justice: What's the Difference?
00:04:01
Toya Thomas
I am also a criminologist, and so criminology is a subset of sociology where there is actually a scientific study of crime and criminal behavior. So criminology is different from criminal justice, and a lot of people will conflate them together, but they are different because criminology studies crime as a social phenomenon, in the sense of we're looking at who decides what crime is, who defines what a criminal is. We look at social inequality related to different sorts of crimes, social control, deviance, those sorts of things. Whereas if within criminal justice, there's more concern about the technical aspects of policing the courts and corrections. So criminology tends to look at society and the not just the criminal justice system, but deviant behaviors as well.
00:04:55
Toya Thomas
And by deviant i mean socially unacceptable behaviors, but it looks at these behaviors to see why people are engaging in them to look at who is defining what those behaviors are and again this is very much a systems level sort of thinking. So I am interested in those sorts of things because I am a problem solver. I like knowing why things happen and offering solutions, but I also understand that if you want to offer solutions to things, you have to understand how
How Does Sociology Describe Oppression?
00:05:28
Toya Thomas
they work. And so because I recognize that society is very unequal, produces a lot of inequitable outcomes, I thought it was really important to go learn how things work and
00:05:46
Toya Thomas
I did. I'll say that. I really learned how they work. And now that I know, I really feel the need to share these things. So that kind of leads me into the point of why it's important for Black folks to actually understand sociology. Everybody in general, but specifically Black people.
00:06:06
Toya Thomas
One of the first things is that sociology helps you to learn language to describe your experience in society. And that one was really important to me, especially as a Black woman.
00:06:18
Toya Thomas
I learned so much language about experiences that I have had, that I have seen other people have. And to actually be able to name something that is happening to you is really, really powerful. It makes it more real. And it also allows you to organize against it to figure out why the things are happening to actually do something about it. So learning language to describe my own experiences has been really helpful in understanding really what's going on in the world and why certain experiences happen, not just to me, but just Black people in general.
00:06:53
Toya Thomas
Also important for Black folks to understand sociology because it teaches you about systems of oppression. And I think that we... we inherently as Black people know what oppression is because we experience it on a regular basis, but do we know how to describe what it is so that we can understand how to essentially push back against it? And when I'm using the concept oppression, oppression is talking about when a person or a group in a position of power exercises authority or otherwise controls the less powerful in burdensome, cruel, unjust, or unfair ways. So
00:07:33
Toya Thomas
When we say systems of oppression, we're really talking about systems that kind of produce these unequal outcomes for people who are more marginalized within society. So a few examples of systems of oppression, and we are going to explore a lot of these throughout this season, throughout this series.
00:07:51
Toya Thomas
But the ones that I am for sure going to talk about are white supremacy, which is really racial oppression, capitalism, which is class oppression,
00:08:02
Toya Thomas
Cisheteropatriarchy, which is oppression by gender and sexuality, and imperialism and colonialism, which are global oppressions. These are, again, pieces of language we can use to help understand what is actually happening, because once you understand how the system works, then you can actually push back against it.
00:08:23
Toya Thomas
Also important for Black folks to understand sociology because there are lots of concepts that we can be learning to kind of understand how our how we are being treated in society and why we are being treated that
Ethnocentrism vs. Cultural Relativism
00:08:38
Toya Thomas
way. And also teaching us how to interact with other people.
00:08:41
Toya Thomas
Because I do think it's important to point out that even though I'm talking about, you know, a lot of Black people, talking about race, you can be marginalized in a lot of different ways within society by your gender, by your sexual orientation, by your ability, your class, nationality, your age, your body type, many, many, many different things. So all of those things are important in the conversation about understanding those systems of oppression. And so,
00:09:10
Toya Thomas
when we are using language, again, to help us understand what is going on, one of the concepts I really, really, really like to introduce people to is the idea of ethnocentrism. So ethnocentrism is the belief that your culture is essentially the standard by which other people should live. And so you use your culture as the basis to judge other people. So basically your culture is the baseline. And then you expect other people to essentially engage in the same sorts of behaviors, the same sorts of beliefs that you do. And ethnocentrism is also known as cultural ignorance. My culture is better than yours. The most extreme version of ethnocentrism is actually cultural genocide. And so when people hear genocide, a lot of the time they just think about the physical extermination of people. But cultural genocide really points out that it's not just the physical extermination, it's also the erasure of people's culture. So their language, their history, their their spiritual practices, their understandings of gender, all of those would be a part of cultural genocide. And the reason why I talk about ethnocentrism and I lift up this concept so much is because ethnocentrism is really at the heart of pretty much every genocide. The idea that my culture is better than yours. And it really just starts with a thought. You don't just get to the systematic extermination of people,
00:10:43
Toya Thomas
just off of, you know, a feeling. There are lots of steps that you actually have to go through. And understanding where it starts at also means that you can disrupt it. So if you understand where it starts, you can also stop it before it gets to a point where you can't.
00:11:00
Toya Thomas
We also have cultural relativism because everyone is not necessarily ethnocentric. You also have the opposite cultural relativism, which means examining a culture from its own context to understand that actual culture instead of using yours as judgment.
00:11:16
Toya Thomas
And the way that I tend to explain this to people is I actually like to use food as an example to demonstrate how easy it is to be ethnocentric. So what I'll generally do is I will show a picture of, it's called cuy it is actually a guinea pig. I will show a picture of cuy to people and ask them, you know, what did they think it is? And then I will at some point reveal to them that it's a guinea pig. And generally people are are very, you know, disgusted for lack of a better word, when they hear that there are people who eat guinea pigs. And so I just start asking questions because the whole point is, you know, let's get to ethnocentrism. So what I generally do is I will ask people, you know, well, how do we experience guinea pigs in the United States? And most people are going to tell you, well, we we see them in pet stores.
00:12:10
Toya Thomas
I have yet to find anyone who can show me a guinea pig running in the wild in the United States. So our experience with guinea pigs are as pets. So when people see other people from other cultures eating guinea pigs, the standard that you're using is that of the United States seeing them as pets, but guinea pigs aren't pets in other places in the world. So the example that I show them with the Cuy is actually in Peru. And so in Peru, guinea pigs run wild. They are like livestock.
00:12:41
Toya Thomas
They are hunted you know by the the people within the society. They are also an indigenous food. So they have been eating guinea pigs for centuries. And so how does this help to explain ethnocentrism? Well, if you look at the guinea pigs and you're using the American lens of guinea pigs are pets, then of course you're gonna see them eating it in Peru as wrong, but that's not how guinea pigs show up within their society. So cultural relativism would ask you to learn something about another culture before you start making judgments on it. Because if you understand that guinea pigs are not pets in Peru, they are wild animals, they have been eaten for centuries by indigenous people, then you wouldn't really be surprised to see that people are eating them. And I use that as an example when I am teaching people about ethnocentrism, especially because I'm talking about genocide, because I try to soften it a little bit.
00:13:41
Toya Thomas
But I essentially point out that if it's hard for you to be accepting of the food that people are eating, then what happens when you start getting to their religious beliefs? And how they parent their children and how they start, you know, how they see gender. Because like I said, if if we start with food and food is hard for you, then when get to those more, you know, complex sorts of conversations, then those are going to be very difficult too. So in that sense, that's why I make a very big point when we are talking about sociological concepts Ethnocentrism is one of those I really make a big deal about because even in the midst of, you know, I'm telling you this story about, you know, the, about Peru, but this can also be applied to Black people because a lot of people are very ethnocentric towards Black people and see anything associated with Black culture as inferior. But a lot of that is because people are not taking the time to like actually get to know
00:14:39
Toya Thomas
what the meaning is behind a lot of Black culture. They're not learning, again, the Black history. And so it makes it easier for people to engage in that ethnocentric behavior. So again, these are some of the reasons why it is pretty important for Black people to have some sociological knowledge, just have some sort of understanding of society because it will really help you to understand, again, your position within
Influential Figures in Sociology
00:15:08
Toya Thomas
it.
00:15:08
Toya Thomas
Also want to point out a few of the notable figures that I've come across within sociology. All of these that I'm about to talk about people people who have influenced my knowledge, my understanding of the world, my understanding as a Black person, and they will each get their own special episode. Please hear that.
00:15:30
Toya Thomas
But I do want to at least introduce you to some of these Black thinkers that some people probably do not know. So I'm just going to introduce them to you so you have some awareness of them.
00:15:41
Toya Thomas
So the first one, her name is Anna Julia Cooper, and she is actually a part of Black North Carolina history. Sad to say that I did not learn about Anna Julia Cooper until I was out of graduate school, even though she is...
00:15:57
Toya Thomas
a very critical part of sociology. She is a very critical part of Black feminist theory, her ideas. So who is she? So Anna Julia Cooper was actually born enslaved in Raleigh, North Carolina.
00:16:12
Toya Thomas
And she provided the what we have as the earliest articulation of intersectionality, which examines how social identities like race, gender, class, et cetera, produced unique impacts on individuals. And her articulation of this information was really to explain the dual marginalized oppressed identities of Black women because Black women are oppressed at minimum by their race and gender. And so in her research, which i want to say dates back to the 1800s, she was already making the connection between how Black women's oppression was something that was very, very unique within society because of those intersecting identity.
00:16:57
Toya Thomas
She also talked about the value of educating women and other marginalized genders. And again, it's really important to note that she is a part of Black North Carolina history.
00:17:07
Toya Thomas
I can't believe I didn't know about her, even though I live in North Carolina, have gone to schools here, went to a sociology program, and she still was not introduced. But Anna Julia Cooper is definitely someone to know. And like I said, she'll get her own special episode. But just introducing her.
00:17:25
Toya Thomas
Beth Ritchie is also another notable figure within sociology and she is probably one of the most important academic figures I would say I've come across in my work as a sociologist. Beth Ritchie is a Black criminologist, a black Black sociologist who wrote a book called Arrested Justice that I read in graduate school and What she did for me is she was the first person that I read or first Black woman I read who exposed me to language that articulated my experience as a Black woman.
00:18:07
Toya Thomas
The concept is called the trap of loyalty and it's basically... So that concept is talking about the emotional and cultural exploitation of Black women. And it inspired a majority of the research that I do now.
00:18:21
Toya Thomas
It really stems from this idea of who is missing from the story and why. So any research that I do today, that is at the heart of it. Who is missing from the story and why. And that really started with my introduction to this information that I learned in her book. And of course, given what I'm telling you, she will definitely get Her flowers because like I said, she has inspired my master's thesis. I still use her. There isn't anything that I have written to this day that I do not include her in because her ideas have been so pivotal to me and the work that I do so I for sure have to talk about Beth Ritchie. Another notable figure would be Siobhan Brooks and
00:19:06
Toya Thomas
Siobhan is interesting because she is actually a sociologist whose analysis around desire industries, which would be places like strip clubs, shifted a lot of what I thought I knew about race, gender, sexuality, and class. I really love her because Siobhan speaks very openly about her background as a former dancer, as a lot of the time the Black knowledge I've been exposed to came from academia.
00:19:35
Toya Thomas
And of course, you know, Siobhan is a academic. But what I also understand is that a lot of people who are writing the research within academia that I find the most respect for, they are coming from a place of something that happened to them, something that they see. It's just a very, very unique perspective because again, Siobhan saw, you know, how strippers were being treated in strip clubs and she didn't, you know, say that, oh, they deserve that. She actually went to learn why they're being treated the way that they are. And I mean, nothing that she really said was that surprising because she talked about, you know, the gender politics. She talked about, you know, colorism. She talked about class. She talked about race, all of those sorts of things playing into how people are treated within that particular field. And so I really love
00:20:28
Toya Thomas
you know, learning from her because, again, it's really kind of exposing that like you don't have to come from like a specific sort of background to offer knowledge within the field. And I love that she has a sex worker background or I'm sorry, just someone who worked within the desire industries, because that provides a really, really unique perspective that a lot of people don't actually access.
00:20:51
Toya Thomas
So the last notable figure I want to talk about is W.E.B. Du Bois. And he is for sure up there with one of my top influences within sociology. I actually knew who he was before I started studying to become a sociologist. I knew him as a civil rights figure. I knew that he was a founding member of the NAACP. But what I didn't know was that he was also a sociologist whose impact within the field, I really cannot understate like how important his work has been within sociology.
00:21:32
Toya Thomas
he And his work is so important, they don't even like talking about him that much. And that's how you know that his work is important his ideas around race are still seen as too controversial to talk about I would actually say his work would fall under the anti diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives that people are talking about and i'll give you an example of something that he introduced. So there is actually a concept called double consciousness and this is a concept specific to black people where du Bois describes
00:22:03
Toya Thomas
but the experiences that African Americans have as they experience the world kind of as a two-ness because there's an understanding that even though to be a Black person is not the same thing as being an American.
00:22:17
Toya Thomas
It is a clear difference in what that actually means and this, he explained, was because of this understanding of Black people's racialized oppression and the way that they are devalued in a white-dominated society. And so, again, there's just this recognition that race is really, really important. Probably one of the most important things to talk about within society and people essentially you know kind of brush it under the rug or consider race a secondary thing. Whereas Du Bois actually points out that it's actually the the line that goes through pretty much every single social problem within our society. And I would say, you know we can look at current events. Any time. And I don't even know when you're going to be listening to this, but I'm sure that there's some current event where Black people are being oppressed today. And the fact that I can say that and I don't even know what day you're going listen to it says something about that.
00:23:15
Toya Thomas
And also want to lift up Du Bois well because he is connected to the book that I'll be sharing in a moment. And it's related to what the interesting fact I learned as a sociologist.
The Genocide of Black History
00:23:31
Toya Thomas
So the interesting fact i' learned I'll share with you that I've learned as a sociologist about Black people is that Black people are survivors of genocide.
00:23:41
Toya Thomas
And whenever I talk about genocide, I always ask people like, who who do they think of when they hear the term genocide? And generally people are gonna start talking about the Holocaust.
00:23:53
Toya Thomas
But Black people are actually survivors of genocide. And the way that I learned that was actually about research I did, or just in general learning about Wilmington, North Carolina. So we will unpack that in a later episode. But yes, we can actually connect an event that happened in Wilmington, North Carolina to the Holocaust. So when I'm talking about Black people as survivors of genocide,
00:24:18
Toya Thomas
Me learning about this, of course, like I said, comes from our research about society, learning about genocide. I came across the UN definition of the United Nations definition of genocide. I've looked into the 10 stages of genocide that tell us about how you lead up to that systematic extermination. And the most interesting thing I learned within that is that the 10th stage of genocide is denial.
00:24:43
Toya Thomas
So denying that the event even happened. And i find that interesting because the erasure of Black history would literally be the 10th step, the final step of genocide. And so we are survivors of genocide. And part of surviving genocide is also people wanting to deny that it actually happened. And so a large part of the reason why people don't learn Black history is because learning Black history would,
00:25:13
Toya Thomas
would actually expose all of the horrific things that have been done to Black people systematically by the government for since, you know, the United States was first, you know, conquered or colonized by the English. And so when we are talking about understanding Black people as survivors of genocide, if you understand yourself as a survivor of genocide within a society that is, you know, engaging in that genocide, then it's also going to help you understand that the things that you are experiencing are not your fault.
00:25:49
Toya Thomas
is literally built to disenfranchise you. And so part of the keeping people ignorant, specifically Black people of that history, is so that disenfranchisement can still happen. I would just say that there is literally nothing happening today that has not happened in the past. And I am oftentimes guilty of being right too soon. I hate being right too soon. And I hate that I can see things that you know are essentially happening.
00:26:19
Toya Thomas
I've been telling people about the stuff that's happening today for a really, really long time. And the reason I understand it is because I understand how society functions. And so in that understanding, again, I find it important to share this information because when I see that you know there's a pushback against learning anything about Black history or Black people within schools, I find that to be a problem because I understand what that structurally means. So for me, again, even being in this space is really to share this information so that people are aware of what is actually happening so that they can actually do something about it. So.
00:26:58
Toya Thomas
That leads me to the book that I will be recommending today and what I actually read an excerpt from. So the excerpt that I read you earlier comes from the book, We Charge Genocide, The Crime of Government Against the Negro People, by William or rather edited by William L. Patterson. This is actually a primary source that documents the U.S. being accused of genocide against Black people. And when I say primary source, I mean this is the actual petition that was taken to the United Nations that documented the violence that was experienced by Black people.
00:27:36
Toya Thomas
And W.E.B. Du Bois, a Black sociologist, was part of this petition accusing the U.S. government of genocide against Black people. So again, I would note that sociologists are really, really important because they also can point out and, you know, name these systems that are essentially doing these things. And you and I consider it a way of like using the the power of academia, the power of science to essentially expose the hypocrisy in the oppressive systems that we are actually living in.
00:28:12
Toya Thomas
This book is also really important because if you don't and If you are a Black person and you don't understand that you are a survivor of genocide, like I said, it makes it easy to blame the social inequality on individuals instead of recognizing that you live in a society that was literally built to disenfranchise Black people.
00:28:32
Toya Thomas
This is a book that would very much probably be banned from being taught in schools, but I would argue it's probably one of the most important things that you could expose Black people to, to again understand the actual conditions that you are living under.
00:28:50
Toya Thomas
um a really big part of political education is knowing who your enemy is. And the people that are engaged in genocide against you are the enemy.
00:29:02
Toya Thomas
I really got to be clear about that. But you if you don't know that you are surviving this, then you can't really point that out. So again, very important to read and, you know, expose yourself to these sorts of things. You cannot challenge a system that you do not know how that it exists or how it actually works.
Podcast's Mission and Eve Ewing's Insight
00:29:22
Toya Thomas
And so with that, I will actually leave you with my quote for today. So the quote that I'm leaving for you today is actually from Eve Ewing, the writer of Original Sins, The Miseducation of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism.
00:29:39
Toya Thomas
And the quote reads, "for white supremacy to thrive, for America to attain its ideal of progress, the complete eradication of Black and Native ways of knowing is required."
00:29:51
Toya Thomas
And I chose this as an inspirational quote, even though it may not sound very inspirational, because this quote is like a really great reason why this podcast exists, because there is a very concerted effort to make sure or attempt, I don't wanna say make sure, but an attempt to make sure that our Black ancestral and cultural knowledge is erased. And for me, this space is created to push back against that, to make sure that it is not forgotten, that it is actually not erased.
00:30:27
Toya Thomas
It's really and important to me to uplift those, to uplift Black people in a time when there is so much dehumanizing of Black folks. Just not caring about the conditions that they are living through, have been living through, that some other people are now experiencing. But this has been the condition of Black people forever, and a lot of people just have not cared. And I just recognized, again, through reading really, really great books, talking with really wonderful people, meeting people in the community, that we've always had amazing people and ideas within our own community. We just have to find them and make the connections. Like, yes, things are
00:31:14
Toya Thomas
things are bad and they have been bad for a really really long time but there are lots of people who already have solutions to these problems Our you know ancestors have been talking about these things for a long time and all we have to do is essentially learn the things that they are trying to hide from us and then use those to create the world that we would like to see. So i really hope that you have at least learned a little bit about what the importance of sociology actually is. And I hope you have enjoyed learning with me because i look forward to continuing to learn with you.