A Response to Hier and Walby's Article: Competing Analytical Paradigms in the Sociological Study of Racism in Canada

Hier and Walby's 2006 article Competing Analytical Paradigms, published in the last issue of this journal (vol. 38, no. 1), presents a provocative analysis in which two different paradigms used in the study of racism in Canada are identified. I feel compelled to respond to this piece, as I was the first author cited as an example of the paradigm of cultural recognition, which privileges the subjective experiences of human beings. On the whole, the article is interesting and brings attention to what is indeed an important issue in the study of racism in Canada. However, as some important points relevant to the analysis are missing, I feel it is an incomplete examination of this admittedly complex subject. In the first instance, I do not dispute the existence of the two paradigms identified by Hier and Walby, but I would draw some different conclusions based on the research that defines them. These paradigms, which follow the work of Fraser (2003), are the folk paradigms of cultural recognition that identify patterns of inequality as a function of culture and patterns of representation. This differs from the redistribution paradigm, which focusses on the unequal social redistribution of the resources of society. When applied to the study of racism, Hier and Walby suggest that the redistribution model measures the influence of skin colour or other markers of ethno-racial categorization in relation to other social indicators on degrees of social integration ... (90). Whereas ethnicity/race is only one of a variety of variables that influence integration, the cultural recognition model identifies them as the dominant, or primary, influence. It should be noted that these paradigms are themselves integrally related to a much older divide in the social sciences in general, and in sociology in particular. While the subject matter of the Hier and Walby article is the role that these paradigmatic differences play in the study of racism in Canadian society, these distinctions in fact reflect the long standing and contested problem of objectivity and subjectivity, which is at the basis of the more profound issue of value-free science. Related to these basic philosophical or epistemological themes in social science is the question of appropriate methodologies to be used in the study of human social behaviour. I do not think the ideas of value-free science nor the questions surrounding objectivity in research need to be re-visited here; we should all be familiar with them. But I must emphasize that these concerns are often raised in the study of racism, especially by critics who dismiss the so-called soft or largely qualitative research methods that rely on subjective experience. These criticisms are especially crucial in racism studies, because they give rise to the ubiquitous response to what my colleague and I have called the Discourse of Denial (Henry and Tator 2006; Tator and Henry 2006). They lead to the dismissal or minimization of the existence of racism in our society. Such critics often raise the demand for quantification (as in show me the numbers), a strategy that unfortunately guides so much of public policy. This has serious and often negative consequences for enacting appropriate legislation and other public policies designed to increase societal equality and social justice. Thus it is not surprising that many of the studies cited by Hier and Walby as examples of the cultural recognition paradigm largely, but not exclusively, rely on qualitative narrative methodologies and the subjective testimonials of people who are aggrieved, hurt, and disadvantaged by racism. Even such cited studies as that of Ruck and Wortley (2002), who use fairly large numerical samples, still rely on the subjective answers given by their respondents. On the other hand, those identified with the category of social redistribution rely primarily on census or census type data. What then is the message to sociologists and other social scientists when the analysis of census-type data concludes that racial minorities, especially in the second generation, do not experience more disadvantage than others? …

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