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Race & Ethnicity
Around the world the pattern of inequality and
conflict based on color and culture is even more
striking. Since the fall of former Soviet Union,
Ukranian, Moldavians, Azerbeijanis and a host
of other ethnic peoples in Eastern Europe have
struggled to recover their cultural identity. In the
Middle East, Arabs and Jews are trying to
overcome deep-rooted tensions, as are
Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. In
dozens of the world’s nations, color and culture
often burn up in violent confrontation.
Ethnicity refers to the common culture shared by a social
group, such as language, religion and belief. It is an
ascribed status means that it is confered at birth.
Members of any ethnic group see themselves as
culturally different from other groups in a society. They
are accepted as different by others also. Ethnicity like
race, gender, and age is not something the individual
chooses. It is an enduring identity which deeply
embedded within one’s personality. Ethnicity itself
continues to exist from generation to generation. It is not
a matter of biological inheritance, but of social definition.
Minority Group
is a group which shares a cultural identity which is different
from that of the majority population of a society. They live
as a form of social organization or in network. As one
element of pluralistic society, ethnic community is a
product of social interaction rather than formal
organizations. Ethnic minorities may have social or
geographical boundries. Socially members of minority
groups are disadvantaged as compared with the mojority
population and have some ‘sense of group solidarity’.
This indicates the importance of ethnic minorities from
sociological point of view. They have distinctive identity
(socially or physically) and they face subordination. They
are not always minority in terms of numbers like in South
African Republic.
Ethnic and racial minorities
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Catholics in Northern Ireland,
Igbo in Nigeria,
Scots in Canada,
Italians in Australia,
Basques of Spain are ethnic groups.
Despite there are few similarities among
them. They all exist in pluralistic societies
within a single social, economic and
political system.
An example
An Italian in Australia may remain an
Italian even if he or she does not enjoy
spaghetti or speak no Italian. But a Pole
who speaks Italian and love spaghetti
cannot be regarded as Italian.
Features of Minorities
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They maintain their ethnicity through day-to-day interaction with others of the same group.
Ethnic group is also a subculture.
They have unique historical experience that shaping each individual world-view.
Minorities face some disadvantages and poorer life chances that majority of population do not
encounter.
They mostly are member of working class. Therefore they face the problems encountered by all
working class people, regardless of their ethnic origin.
These people are less likely than majority people to get secure job.
They are under represented in professional jobs and in parliament.
They mostly perform manual works, work long hours. They are less likely to get employed when
competing with majority of population.
They earn less or at least lower than avarage.
Ethnic minority working class women are the most disadvantaged social group of all. Think about
migrant women in Germany.
They tend to live in inferior housing, rented houses rather than their own property. They generally
live in the areas poorer than and different from where mojority of people live.
There are also additional racial discrimination and prejudice.
Since they are socially isolated relatively, there is few intermarriages between different ethnic
groups and minorities and majority of population.
Race
refers to the divisions of humans according to physical characteristics (like skin
colour, facial features and hair texture or body shape.
• Physical diversity appeared among human ancestors as the results of living
in different regions of the world.
• Race has no value in explaining human culture socilogically. Because
human behaviour is largely results of socialization and cannot be explained
by biological characteristics.
• However these physical differences cause social discrimination so those
physical differences are socially significant.
• Race is not a social group but an arbitrary social category based on
physical characteristics.
• A population may display a number of inherited physical features that tend
to be less typical of other populations, but these features are derived from a
great pool of genes that is the common inheritance of all mankind.
• For example a Vietnamese orphan adopted in infancy by Canadian family
may be wholly Canadian in respect to social relationship, but may be still
identified by other as Asian.
Racial or Ethnic Prejudice
is a set of assumptions about a racial or
ethnic group which people are reluctant to
change even when they receive
information which undermines those
assumptions.
• It refers to opinions or attitudes of a group
of people towards another.
• Prejudices are based on common sense
rather than direct evidence.
Racial or Ethnic Discrimination
is when people’s racial prejudices cause them to act
unfairly against a racial/ethnic group.
For example, a racially prejudiced police officer might use
his/her power to pick on black or Asian people more than
white people, perhaps by stopping them on the street
and asking what they are up to.
Discrimination is actual behaviour (i.e. not giving a job to
ethnic minority member).
The connection between prejudice and discrimination is
complex. A prejudiced person may not always act in a
discrimiantory way, and there is little evidence that
discriminatory behaviour is caused by prejudiced
attitudes.
Discrimination
Dominant groups frequently control and restrict the
economic, social and political participation of
minorities by means of discrimination.
Sometimes minorities may face expulsion, the
forcible removal of an ethnic minority from its
homeland.
They may face systematic and institutionalized
discrimination.
Segragation is a form of social control whereby
physical distance from groups with whom
contact is not wanted (i.e. Apartheid)
Racism
is an ideology or the believing or acting as though an individual or
group is superior or inferior on the ground of racial or ethnic origins.
• Racism suggests that groups defined as inferior have lower
intelligenence and abilities.
• Racism involves both racial prejudice and racial discrimination, and
encourages hostile feelings towards groups defined as inferior.
Sometimes they are called as visible minorities. For example in Canada
Africa, East Asian, Southeast Asian, West Asian and sometimes
South or Central American people face discrimination because of
their physical characteristics etc.
“Equal but separated” is a form of racism in institutionalized way.
Institutionalized racism implied by police, school.
New racism: Instead of using biological differences making cultural
discrimination to exclude certain groups.
Explaining Racism and Ethnic
Discrimination
I. Pcyshological Interpretation:
• Stereotyping is generalized and simplified idea of the some social groups.
Stereotyping may provide a rationalization for unequal treatment. This
process is linked to the pcyshological mechanism of displacement.
• Displacement is a feeling of hostility or anger are directed against objects
that are not the real origin of those feelings. Disadvantaged, powerless
people can be easily target of hostile practices. Ethnic minorities are
vulnarable sexually, economicaly and socially.
• Scapegoating: Scapegoats are individuals or groups blamed for something
which is not their fault. In history there are some examples of it such as
Jews, Catholics, Irish, Gypsies...When unemployment, poverty and crime
rise it is easy to find some explanations by scapegoating.
• Authoritarian Personality as a concept or types of personality defined by
Theodor Adorno (1950). These people, according to his study, tend to be
conformist, submissive to their superior and dismissive toward inferiors.
Authoritarian people are rigidly conformist they have conservative in their
religious and sexual attitudes.
Ask yourself?
Are you coming from any ethnic background discriminative ethnically?
Do you think your country is racist?
How much prejudice we have against ethnic minorities?
Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?
-people should only marry within their own ethnic group/class.
-people of different races should keep to themselves.
-I would hapilly have people of a different race living next door to me.
-Immigration has made the variety of life better in our country.
-White people are more intelligent than black people.
Explaining Racism and Ethnic
Discrimination
• History: White European people have dominated
African and Asian people for centuries as
colonies. This experience encouraged the idea
of white’s superiority.
• Cultural Differences : Cultural differences
between groups in one culture such as religion,
food, dress and way of life etc. There might be
conflict between minority and mojority. Culturally
rooted prejudices for more than 40 years creates
social distance between groups.
Sociological Interpretation:
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Ethnocentrism: It is a way of evaluating other people in terms of our culture.
Ethnocentric world view percepts others as outsiders, aliens, barbarians or morally or
intellectually inferior.
• Group Closure: is a kind of agreement among members of a group maintaining
boundaries separating themselves from the other. China town, Italian neigbourhood.
• Resource allocation is instituting inequalities in the distribution of wealth and material
goods. Wealth, power and social status are scarce resources. Those who have them
try to keep this priviledges in their hands against those who do not.
Conflict Theory
• Powerful people use prejudices to justify oppressing others. Anglos look down on
Latino immigrants in USA. Minorities themselves cultivate a climate of race
counciousness.
• This theory bonds between racism and prejudice, power and inequality. Some Marxist
thinkers say that racism is a product of capitalist system. Slavery, racism and
colonizations are tools of dominant group to exploite other’s labour.
• Later neo-Marxists states that racism is not product of only economic forces but also
because of historical and political influences.
Ethnic Integration
• Today there are multiethnic countries as a result of international
migration. There are three model referring to relations between
minority and majority.
• Assimilation is the acceptance of a minority group by a majority
population; in which the group takes on the values and norms of the
dominant culture.In this model, immigrants forget their original
customs and practices among majority.
• Melting Pot is the idea that ethnic differences can be combined to
create new patterns of behaviour drawing on diverse cultural
sources. It‘s a blended cultural form that makes a new cultural
pattern.
• Cultural Pluralism is the co-existence of several subcultures within
a given society on equal terms. In this model each minority is an
equal stakeholders of society they are distinct but equal.
Ethnic Conflict
Ethnic Conflict occurs because of antagonism
among different ethnic or racial group in one
particular society. Sometimes internal or
sometimes external reasons can be influent on
ethnic conflict. Ethnic conflict could turn into
ethnic cleasing which aiming to create ethnically
homogenous areas. This also involves Genocide
systematic elimination of one ethnic group by the
other. Ethnic conflicts sometimes attract
international attention and intervention like what
International War Crimes Tribunals did in Bosnia
and Rwanda in the 1990s.