Gatekeepers and Homeseekers: Institutional Patterns in Racial Steering

“Gatekeepers and Homeseekers: Institutional Patterns in Racial Steering';, is an informative article that touches upon many of the key points gone over in class. This article deals with the difference in the way blacks and whites were and are treated, past and present, by real estate agents when shopping for a new home. In the study, one can see that blacks were not treated as fairly as white people in the real estate market were. Many times the potential black homebuyers were discouraged from purchasing homes in the same areas that the agent would readily show a white homebuyer. The real estate agent played a very peculiar role in doing this. They were, in essence, the racist gatekeepers of a seemingly non-racist neighborhood. The study further goes into this issue by giving explanations and interpretation of this behavior that is seen all over the United States. From thorough examination of the article, one can come to the conclusion that the author, Diana M. Pearce, is following the “interactionist'; perspective to sociology.

In sociology, the interactionist perspective tends to use the “micro'; approach, where smaller groups of individuals are studied. The interactionist perspective views society as countless encounters between human beings and everyday social activity. The fact that an interactionist would make a study based on everyday, example by example cases separates them from the other perspectives, which tend to look at the larger scheme of things. Using the above approach to the study, there are three particular questions that this article answers. First, why do individuals do the things they do? Second, do people always mean what they say? Finally, how is society experienced (what was the difference between black and white experience while shopping for a home?) The following will show how the article answers the previous three questions.

Individuals do the things they do for a number of reasons. According to the interactionist approach to sociology, the population of people are greatly affected by the past and the things they see in everyday life. In the United States, sad but true, most whites are racist whether one likes to say it or not. Even though the people living in a particular neighborhood may not have a preference as to who lives near them or around them, the real estate agent already assumes that it is...

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...te to the “mean what you say idea. Demographics and charts have also shown statistically that white people are generally shown more and higher priced houses.(table 2) This table is a useful tool to show this point because it is raw data, not interpretation. The whites, as said earlier, got choice pick generally and found no trouble getting into particular neighborhoods. To answer the question generally, society is experienced through daily activities, which in turn lead to attitudes and perceptions that lead to possibly racism.

One can see that through studying the article , the interactionist approach to sociology is clearly used. The above questions are sufficiently answered to show how this approach relates to the article. The subject of the article is a little touchy though. What that means, is, racism by far eclipses the idea of sociology as a science. The average reader sees prejudice and not sociological issues in general. Other than that there is more than enough information in the study to get an understanding of the prevalent questions. Sociology, to me, seems to touch many important aspects of everyday life, including some ugly ones, like those in the article.