1. Chapter 4: Social Structure and Inequality in Race, Ethnicity, and Class
Objectives:
Define social structure and related concepts (status, role, inequality)
Understand race, ethnicity, class, and caste
Explain how race, ethnicity, class, and caste structure inequality
Appreciate practical ways Christians can be involved in addressing inequality

2. Areas of Inequality
Power
Wealth
Prestige

3. Social Structure and Inequality
Social Structure The ways people coordinate their lives in relation to one another at the level of society Social Inequality Differential access to valuable resources

4. Social Structure and Inequality
Status
Any position a person must occupy in the social structure
Types:
achieved
ascribed

5. Social Structure and Inequality
Role Expected or required behaviors for those who occupy a particular status

6. Race
A cultural category that divides the human race into subspecies on the basis of supposed biological differences

7. Race The Creation of Racial Categories:
European settlers kept those of African descent under control by creating racial difference.
Scientists encoded race into the neutral and objective language of science.
Racial categories vary according to cultural context.

8. Race Race and Inequality:
Race is used to “explain” (or justify) social inequality and other phenomena.
Today race correlates with social problems such as poverty, unemployment, violence, and imprisonment.
Some racial groups have developed their own cultural traditions because of historic segregation.

9. Ethnicity
A category based on sense of group affiliation derived from a distinct heritage or worldview as a “people”

10. Ethnicity Ethnicity and Inequality
Some see ethnicity as fairly unimportant for social organization; others find it very important.
New ethnic categories may emerge for political or social reasons.
Ethnicity can be used to exclude some people from social or political life.

11. Class and Caste
Class A cultural category describing how people are grouped according to their positions within the economy Caste A system in which group membership is assigned at birth and mobility is more strictly limited

12. Culture and Class Karl Marx Class identity Class mobility
Made class the foundation of his social theory
Class identity
May be less about having money than about having the opportunity to learn the “class culture”
Class mobility
Not necessarily related to class inequality and income disparities

13. Christians, Inequality, and Reconciliation
I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: “Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother.” In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: “Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern.” And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.
-Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

14. Christians, Inequality, and Reconciliation
What would Jesus have the church do in the face of widespread inequality, economic injustice, or racism?