Bio: (1938–) American sociologist. Joseph (Joe) Feagin received his PhD from Harvard University. He was a professor at the University of California at Riverside, the University of Texas, Austin, and the University of Florida, and currently teaches at Texas A&M University. He also served as the president of the American Sociological Association.

In his textbook Social Problems: A Critical Power-Conflict Perspective (1982), Feagin uses a neo-Marxist perspective to explain social problems. Feagin mostly explores subjects related to racism in the US, such as discrimination, police brutality, gender racism, housing segregation, educational discrimination, and urban revolts. He has conducted dozens of field research studies using in-depth interviews, focus groups, and diaries. 

In Systemic Racism (2006), Feagin states that the system of racial oppression in the US is not incidental, but the deliberate and intentional product of decisions white Americans made through all of they history. He argues that “Systemic racism encompasses a broad range of racialized dimensions of this society: the racist framing, racist ideology, stereotyped attitudes, racist emotions, discriminatory habits and actions, and extesive racist institutions developed over centuries by whites....this white-generated and white maintained oppresion is far more than a matter of individual bigotry, for it has been from the beginning a material, social, and ideological reality “ (2006, Xii-Xiii). The dialectic reality of systemic racism is that from the start, black resistance had a major impact on the whole society, through both individual and collective forms, and through peaceful and aggressive resistance.  

Main works

Ghetto Revolts: The Politics of Violence in American Cities (1973);

Discrimination American Style (1978);

Racial and Ethnic Relations (1978);

Social Problems: A Critical Power-Conflict Perspective (1982);

Urban Real Estate Game (1983); 

Modern Sexism (1986);

The Capitalist City: Global Restructuring and Community Politics (1987);

Living with Racism (1994); 

White Racism: The Basics (1995);

The Agony of Education (1996);

The Global Color Line: Racial and Ethnic Inequality and Struggle from a Global Perspective (1999);

Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations (2000);

Liberation Sociology (2001);

The First R: How Children Learn Race and Racism (2001);

White Men on Race (2003);

The Many Costs of Racism (2003);

Black in Blue: African-American Police Officers and Racism (2004);

Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression (2006);

How the United States Racializes Latinos: White Hegemony and its Consequences (2009);

Yes We Can: White Racial Framing and the Obama Presidency (2010);

The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing (2010);

White Party, White Government: Race, Class, and U.S. Politics (2012);

Latinos Facing Racism: Discrimination, Resistance, and Endurance (2014);

How Blacks Built America (2015);

Jim Crow’s Legacy: The Lasting Impact of Segregation (2015);

Racial Theories in Social Science (2016);

Elite White Men Ruling: Who, What, Where, and How (2017);

Rethinking Diversity Issues in Higher Education (2019);

Latino Peoples in the New America: Racialization and Resistance (2019).