Rethinking racial progress: A response to Wimmer

Abstract

Recent debates on racial progress in the pages of Ethnic and Racial Studies suffer from an under-theorization of the notion of progress. In this article, we draw on a well-known theory from medical sociology to argue that racism is a 'fundamental cause' of social inequality. The proximate causes of racial inequality have historically changed, but basic relations of sub- and superordination have been remarkably stable. Seeing racism as a fundamental cause allows theorists to explain both continuity and change in racial inequality better than theories that rely on an implicitly linear notion of racial progress.