Herbert Blumer

Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position

In this paper I am proposing an approach to the study of race prejudice different from that which dominates contemporary scholarly thought on this topic. My thesis is that race prejudice exists basically in a sense of group position rather than in a set of feelings which members of one racial group have toward the members of another racial group. This different way of viewing race prejudice shifts study and analysis from a preoccupation with feelings as lodged in individuals to a concern with the relationship of racial groups. It also shifts scholarly treatment away from individual lines of experience and focuses interest on the collective process by which a racial group comes to define and redefine another racial group. Such shifts, I believe, will yield a more realistic and penetrating understanding of race prejudice.

Social Problems as Collective Behavior

Sociologists have erred in locating social problems in objective conditions. Instead, social problems have their being in a process of collective definition. This process determines whether social problems will arise, whether they become legitimated, how they are shaped in discussion, how they come to be addressed in official policy, and how they, are reconstituted in putting planned action into effect. Sociological theory and study must respect this process.

Science Without Concepts

The constant presence of concepts in science, in face of a recurrent skepticism of their value, sets the problem as to the role of the scientific concept. Psychologically, the concepts functions to circumvent obstacles in the field of perception and so release activity along new lines. In this way the scientific concept makes possible the solution of problems in the field of science. The scientific concept enables the isolation and identification of an abstracted content in experience with may become the subject of a separate study. Functionally, the scientific concept (1) introduces a new orientation or point of view, (2) serves as an instrument of handling ones environment, and (3) makes possible deductive reasoning and so the anticipation of new experience. Improper usage of the concept arises when it is accepted as an ultimate and kept apart from the realm of perception.

Social Disorganization and Individual Disorganization

The psychiatric contributions seem to present the following composite position: (1) social disorganization is an extension of individual disorganization; (2) it is unconsciously motivated; (3) it is a product of unfortunate childhood experiences; and (4) its elimination requires an effective sheme of childhood education. Much social disorganization cannot be thought of as arising out of individual disorder. Individual disorded seems to gain its opportunity for expression where social disorganization prevails. The problem as to how social disorganization emanates in individual disorder is uncharted. Its solution depends upon fuller knowledge of the psychology of shared values and of semi-unwitting social rhythms.

Social Science and the Desegregation Process

T HIS paper undertakes to analyze segregation as a social process. Subsequently, consideration is given to the problem of desegregation and to the general lines along which programs of desegregation must move. Our concern is primarily with racial desegregation. Segregation is continuously at work in all human societies as a natural, unguided, and unwitting process. It takes the form of a diverse and chiefly undesigned operation which sets apart groups of people inside of a larger, embracing society. This setting apart may result from practices of exclusion employed by one group against others, or by voluntary withdrawal on the part of given groups, or by the operation of natural forces which place individuals in different localities or different social

Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method

This is a collection of articles dealing with the point of view of symbolic interactionism and with the topic of methodology in the discipline of sociology. It is written by the leading figure in the school of symbolic interactionism, and presents what might be regarded as the most authoritative statement of its point of view, outlining its fundamental premises and sketching their implications for sociological study. Blumer states that symbolic interactionism rests on three premises: that human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings of things have for them; that the meaning of such things derives from the social interaction one has with ones fellows; and that these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretive process.