Download I. Race and Ethnicity A. The Social Significance of Race and

I.
Race and Ethnicity
A. The Social Significance of Race and Ethnicity
1. Race: A category composed of men and women who share biologically
transmitted traits that members of a society deem socially significant
a. Sociologists regard race as a social construction in the sense that
biological traits are endowed with social meaning.
• A race is a group of people who have been singled out on the basis
of real or alleged physical characteristics
b. There are no biologically pure races
c. Race is a significant concept only because most people consider it to
be
2. Ethnicity: A shared cultural heritage
a. This concept refers to people who have common cultural
characteristics and an ethnic identity.
b. Races may also be analyzed as ethnic categories in many cases
c. Because they share a common culture and a common identity,
members of an ethnic group are drawn toward one another and feel a
sense of "oneness," unity, and shared fate.
3. A minority is a category of people, distinguished by physical or cultural
traits, who are socially disadvantaged
4. Dominant Group. When we speak of minority groups, which we will in
just a moment, the concept is always in contrast to the society's dominant
group.
a. Those who control the central institutional spheres, including the
power to define standards of beauty and social worth.
• Keep in mind that the dominant group does not have to be a
numerical majority (e.g. South Africa), but mainly deals with
actual power and perception of power in society.
• In the U.S. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) are the
dominant group, but they comprise only a fraction of the
population.
5. Minority. A minority is a group that has less power than the dominant
group, and therefore is usually poorer than the majority, has less prestige,
and suffers from discrimination. The sociological meaning of minority
does not refer to the numerical size of a group.
a. Minority Group Status involves four major elements:
• A visible ascribed trait by which a person can be clearly
recognized.
• Differential (unequal) treatment on the basis of this trait.
• Organization of one's own self-image around this identity.
• Awareness of a shared identity with similar others.
b. Minorities have two major characteristics:
• They share a distinctive identity
• They occupy a subordinate status
c. Within the next century, a numerical majority of the US population is
expected to be made up of people who are currently classified as
minorities
6. Prejudice and Discrimination
a. Prejudice is an attitude, which predisposes an individual to prejudge
entire categories of people unfairly. This attitude is rigid, emotionally
loaded, and resistant to change.
• It assumes that a certain group has a single set of favorable or
unfavorable characteristics.
• Prejudice is an attitude involving a rigid and irrational
generalization about an entire category of people
• It may be positive or negative
b. Discrimination is a behavior, or and the unfair and harmful treatment
of people based on their group membership.
• It is an action that involves treating various categories of people
unequally
• It may be positive of negative
• It focuses on the practice of treating people unequally.
c. Racism is the belief that race determines human ability and as a result,
certain races deserve to be treated as inferior while other races deserve
to treated as superior. If people are socialized into a culture, which
promotes racism, then in all likelihood they will be prejudiced and
freely discriminate.
• Racism refers to the belief that one racial category is innately
superior or inferior to another
• Institutionalized Racism: Systematic Discrimination of a racial or
ethnic group that is built into social structures.
• Institutional racism. This form of racism exists when racist
practices often become an integral part of the social practices and
institutions of a society. Institutional racism is so deeply
entrenched in everyday life that people often fail to notice it
d. Institutional prejudice and discrimination
• Bias in attitude or action inherent in the operation of a society's
institutions
e. Stereotypes. This is a rigid and inaccurate image that summarizes a
belief. Because stereotypes reflect beliefs rather than facts, they are
illogical and self-serving.
• A stereotype is a set of prejudices concerning some category of
people
• Stereotypes persist in the culture because:
• stereotyping elevates the status of the group, which engages in
it
• stereotyping reduces the need to think and reduces guilt; and
• ignorance.
7. Theories of Prejudice
a. Scapegoat theory argues that prejudice results from frustrations
among the disadvantaged
• A scapegoat is a person or category of people, typically with little
power, whom people unfairly blame for their own troubles
• Occurs when someone else is blamed for one's own misfortune (ex.
Jews in Germany, or Immigrants taking jobs away here in the U.S.)
b. Authoritarian personality theory views prejudice as a personalitylevel trait
c. The cultural theory of prejudice notes that prejudice may be
embedded in popular cultural values
• Symbolic Racism. This is a complex type of behavior that
involves the belief in equal rights coupled with the belief that
certain racial and ethnic groups have achieved an unfair advantage
over whites (ex. affirmative action).
• Thus you believe in core American values like equality of
opportunity, individualism, and hard work, but opposing any
means to making it a reality.
• There is a two-tier process:
• Values are endorsed at an abstract level, but opposed at
a concrete level.
d. Conflict theory views prejudice as a product of social struggles
e. Prejudice and discrimination form a vicious cycle based on the
Thomas Theorem
B. Majority and Minority: Patterns of Interaction
1. Assimilation. This refers to the blending of the culture and structure of
one racial or ethnic group with the culture and structure of another group.
• It is the process by which minorities gradually adopt patterns of the
larger culture
• A related concept is miscegenation: the biological process of
interbreeding among racial categories
• Assimilation is not unilinear, instead, several outcomes are possible.
a. One outcome is that the majority group remains the same while the
minority changes and becomes like the majority group.
• In the United States, this outcome is called Anglo conformity or
Americanization.
b. Both the minority and the majority might change and a new, blended
grouping then emerge which combines some features of both groups,
or melting pot assimilation.
• Melting Pot model of integration: Assumes that immigrants will
lose their ethnic uniqueness through exposure to the dominant
American culture.
c. Cultural assimilation refers to the assimilation along the various
dimensions of culture, such as language and dress.
d. Structural assimilation refers to assimilation along the various
dimensions of social structure, such as marriage, and employment.
2. Pluralism. This situation prevails when separate racial and ethnic groups
maintain their distinctiveness even though they might have approximately
equal social standing.
a. This is a state in which racial and ethnic minorities are distinct, but
have social equivalence
b. Pluralism implies that ethnic diversity is a desirable social goal and
that group distinctiveness is voluntary rather than forced upon any
group by another group.
c. Pluralism is common worldwide and the United States, with at least
106 ethnic and racial groups, is especially pluralistic.
3. Segregation: Isolating a minority from contact with other members of the
society.
a. Refers to the physical and social separation of categories of people
• It may be voluntary but it is usually imposed
b. Hypersegregation id the formation of socially isolated minority
ghettoes
c. De Jure Segregation: Created by laws (ex. Jews in Eastern Europe)
d. De Facto Segregation: Not necessarily supported by laws, but does in
fact occur (ex. White and black segregation in housing, etc. now)
4. Internal Colonialism: Practice of treating native populations as if they
were colonies (separate entities to be subjugated).
5. Expulsion and annihilation. Racial and ethnic prejudice can proceed
along several lines.
a. Expulsion can occur when one group possesses enough political and
military power to force the other group to leave.
b. Annihilation occurs when one group exterminates the other group.
Although annihilation is an extreme reaction, it has been fairly
common throughout history.
• Genocide is the systematic annihilation of one category of people
by another
6. Multiculturalism. Brings together people representing many traditions,
religions, and racial types.
C. Race and Ethnicity in the US
1. White Americans. In the United States, whites are both a numerical
majority and the dominant group.
a. White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant (WASP's). This is the most powerful
group in the United States. Strictly speaking, WASP's are whites of
English descent, but more loosely the category also includes whites of
Canadian, Scottish, Australian, and Northern European descent.
Sociologists usually use the term in this broader sense.
• WASPs originally comprised the majority of free immigrants to
the United States, and not until the nineteenth century did
substantial numbers of non-WASPs begin arriving.
• The arrival of immigrants from Eastern Europe and Asia led to the
adoption of an immigration policy based the quotas.
• These quotas were written into the 1924 act law and were a
thinly disguised way to exclude African Americans, Hispanics,
Asians, and Eastern Europeans.
• The 1965 immigration law replaced racial-ethnic quotas with a
system based on occupation and other qualifications.
D. Sociological Analysis of Racial and Ethnic Inequality
1. The functionalist perspective. Functionalists believe that undesirable
jobs are assigned to racial and ethnic minorities because those groups lack
the power to compete for more desirable positions.
a. Functionalists argue that because many racial and ethnic minorities
typically possess few job skills and little education, menial jobs are the
best that they can realistically hope to find.
b. As racial and ethnic minorities gain, however, they will secure better
jobs and will rise in the social structure.
c. The experiences of many white ethnic groups seems to support the
functionalist view, but the history of Native, African, and Hispanic
Americans suggest that there is more at work than functionalists
recognize.
2. The conflict perspective. Conflict theorists believe that ethnic and racial
inequality result from the endless competition among groups for power,
wealth, status, and other valuable social resources.
a. The group that wins the competition installs itself, as the dominant
groups while the losers become the subordinate groups.
b. Conflict theorists point out that different racial or ethnic groups clash
with each other, a situation that benefits the dominant group.
3. The symbolic interactionist perspective. Symbolic interactionists point
out that in order for an ethnic or racial group to exist, its members must
develop a "consciousness of kind," or feelings of being like one another
and different from outsiders.
a. Consciousness of kind results from the interaction between racial and
ethnic groups and the rest of society.
b. People who are continually placed into a single group tend to develop
a consciousness of kind and to identify as a particular group.
E. Race and Ethnicity: Looking Ahead
1. Relations
a. Gunnar Myrdal suggested the principle of cumulation to ethnic
relations:
• discrimination by the majority keeps the minority in an inferior
status,
• the minority's inferior status then is cited as "proof" that the
minority does not deserve better treatment
• The principle of cumulation can work in the reverse direction: a
reduction in discrimination will enable a racial or ethnic minority
to gain better jobs, better housing, and better education and, thus
will lead to a decrease in discrimination by the majority.
2. Immigration has generated striking cultural diversity
3. Many arrivals experience much the same prejudice and discrimination as
those who came before them did