Sociological Perspectives In Graham’s World

 Functionalism maintains that all social phenomena have constructive roles in society. Looking at the whole of society, functionalists focus on social solidarity, division of labor, religion, and anomie. Functionalism explains the situation that Lawrence Graham outlines in his essay “The Underside of Paradise”. In the 1980s, American society was highly industrialized, operating through organic solidarity. However, in matters of race, some pockets of America still operated according to material society, accepting, or rejecting members based upon appearance. Princeton had a history of rejecting African Americans up until the 1970s and the 1980’s generation of white students embraced racism still.

Black students wanted only wanted hip “militants” (Graham 210), not those who were roommates with whites. Although some did not fit in, both groups served the function of heightening collective conscience for their accepted members. Those on the outside like Graham, a “middle-of-the-road suburban black” (Graham 210), were deviants. They adapted either by ritualism or rebellion against the accepted segregation of Princeton. A conflict theorist looks at society and sees a battlefield of class struggle driven by economic structure.

When considering the events Graham discussed in his essay, the theory of dialectical materialism, specifically the Third Postulate is helpful. Graham pays meticulous detail to symbols of status striving and cultural consumption: “different music, different clothes, different slang, different heroes” that defined and separated the African American and white classes of students (Graham, 209). These classes had a history of conflict in Princeton. Princeton admitted its first black students in 1945 but “its admission practices were not to change fundamentally until the early 1970’s, and its treatment of blacks on campus was to remain substandard well into my [Graham’s] tenure” (Graham 194).

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Conflict theory explains this behavior when the reader considers the fact that an education at Princeton was (and is) an elite status symbol, a valued object. Whites at Princeton did their best to discourage African American inclusion as equal students to elite white campus groups because they did not want to cheapen the status of their education by allowing the formerly lower class to have equal access. African Americans at Princeton wanted to fight the inequality they felt by showing mutual hostility toward the white students. Classes in Princeton drew their battle lines over status striving. The Cultural Perspective defines all culture, which may be material or ideal, as a “means of expression” for society, as a platform for the display of “social passions”. Cultural Perspective theory analyses cultural consumption and cultural activity for the light they shed on cultural classes, practices, and values. In Princeton, even though Hal invited Graham to join the Cottage, Graham was the dependent party in the interaction. Hal offered a favor Graham never would have dared to chase on his own. On the other hand, the Cottage’s feature of all African American waiters suggests a deeper meaning: an air of white dependence on race comparisons to keep their elitism and self-esteem. Among the African Americans on campus, cultural consumption of clothes especially highlighted the rebellion of African Americans against the norms of Princeton. Army surplus with a hand-drawn fist and the word ‘FIGHT’ (Graham 201) in the middle of a preppy campus called for independence and social change. As for himself, Graham viewed cultural consumption as cultural capital and worked to cultivate a “non-threatening integrated black-male, middle-class, suburban persona” (Graham 207). The conflict of his essay is the failure of both whites and blacks to let him increase his cultural capital. The Network Perspective focuses on individual relationships and defines society to be the network that these ties form. A person’s outcome or position in life is primarily determined by who he knows and the resources he can draw from his network, otherwise known as his social capital. Graham formed weak ties with individuals in the separate black and white network clusters and sought to cultivate strong ties with white students because he knew that such ties were “pipes” that carried resources for his career. Black students could not offer as much social capital, but Graham found that ties with them were “pressures” that through which black students pushed engagement with blacks and separation from whites. Looking at the background of these blacks, some from all or semi-black communities, it is no wonder that some ‘didn’t like white people and were frustrated by ‘integrated black people’ (Graham, 198). Their former social ties were “prisms” that colored most whites as having racist motives. On the other hand, many whites preferred homophily to the point of racism and left Graham an outlying figure. Homophily left Graham a loner between two dense network clusters. The Interactionist Perspective views all social interactions as an information game in which participants reveal or withhold information to craft a particular image or definition of the situation and themselves. This perspective defines two types of impressions: those “given”, which are intentionally cultivated to control the reaction of and treatment from the observer, and those “given off”, which consist of signals unintentionally broadcasted which reveal information about the situation. Lawrence Graham “gave” two different impressions to two different audiences. Among blacks, he feigned ignorance of roommate choices and lied about his lack of interaction in the Third World Center to keep from appearing a ‘black sellout’ (Graham, 189). Among white students, he dressed carefully, lied about liking steak, and bragged about his parents’ cars to promote an image of middle-class, suburban black. His dramatist act broke down when he could not keep his audiences separated. Blacks observed how he acted around white friends and white students witnessed his activism of black causes. Both rejected his definitions of himself and some labeled him a liar. Much of Graham’s problem with making friends at Princeton stemmed from his “schizophrenic game of ‘crowd pleasing’” that, for a time, he felt he had to play (Graham, 217). Out of these five perspectives, this paper holds the Network Perspective to be the most helpful in understanding the struggles Graham faced. The Functionalist Perspective gives some explanation for why there were different racially defined groups on campus, but it does not explain the conflict between them. The Conflict Perspective leaves the possibility for economic class conflict open, but Graham did not feel that important enough to mention much. According to the, Cultural Perspective cites the source of conflict as coming from class differences in consumption but does not explain why a black man consuming white culture was shunned by whites. There is more to racial relations than conspicuous consumption. The Interactionist Perspective explains how the gaps between the impressions Graham “gave” and “gave off” kept him isolated but fails to explain why there were separate black and white audiences. The Network Perspective explains how whites and blacks formed two different network clusters due to homophilic tendency and how, in the absence of intervention, former community ties had acted as “prisms” and painted integration in negative colors. It explains Graham’s when black students used their ties as segregationist “pressures” and white students withheld “pipes”, their strong ties from him. According to the Network Perspective, Graham needed strong ties but could only make weak ties between homophilic clusters of white and black students.