Download SOCI 100-ch12

SOCI 100: INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
Spring 2013
Deniz Yükseker
 What
is ethnicity, what is race?
 What
is racialization?
 What
are prejudice and discrimination?
 How
does sociology explain prejudice and
discrimination?
Ethnicity: shared cultural heritage
Cultural heritage may include language, religion,
common historic background, common ancestry,
common customs and traditions  distinct social
identity of a group
Ethnicity is NOT a biological category. It is related
to culture. 
One person can possibly belong to more than one
ethnic group.
Or, a person can somewhat modify her ethnicity
over her life course.
What is race?
A group whose inherited physical
characteristics distinguish it from other
groups
 The reality of race
Myths about race:

the myth of pure races
 the myth of a fixed number of races

the
myth of racial superiority
“Biological” differences between racial groups are
superficial.
All human beings belong to a single biological
species: the human race
Many genetic characteristics are shared by people
belonging to different racial groups
READ:
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/0
7/19/skin-tone-and-the-arbitrariness-ofrace/
If so, where does the term race come from,
and why has it been so persistent?
The term race came into use between the late
18th and mid-19th centuries.
It gained predominance during the European
expansion to Asia, Africa and the Americas.
Even though race is not a scientific
category, race is still important in
contemporary society.
Racialization: the process of ranking people
on the basis of their presumed race.
Racialization creates a system of inequality
and social exclusion
Examples: US society during slavery and
segregation, South African apartheid, Nazi
Germany
How does racialization work?
Marriage rules, definition of races, inheritance
rules, segregation in education, employment,
housing, etc.
An ethnic or racial minority is a category of
people distinguished by physical or
cultural traits, and who are often socially
disadvantaged.
 They share a distinctive identity
 they are likely to be subordinated by the
mainstream society (e.g. less income,
lower education, discrimination, etc.)
What are the officially recognized
minorities in Turkey?
Are there other minorities?
Prejudice: a rigid and irrational generalization
about an entire category of people, with
little regard for the facts. Prejudice is an
attitude. It can be positive or negative.
There may be prejudices about ethnic and
racial groups, people of a certain social
class, people of certain sexual orientations,
women, the elderly, etc.
A stereotype is a prejudicial, exaggerated
description of some category of people.
Stereotypes are exaggerated images of a
group of people fostered by hate and
fear (towards out-groups), or love and
loyalty (towards members of the in-group)
Any action that involves treating various
categories of people unequally.
Discrimination is about behavior. It can
be positive or negative.
Discrimination is often related to power
relations.
Institutional discrimination
Racism is a powerful and destructive form of
prejudice.
Racism is the belief that one racial category is
superior or inferior to another one.
Institutional racism: collective failure of an
organization to provide an appropriate an
professional service to people because of their
culture, color or ethnic origin. It includes
discrimination, prejudice and racist
stereotyping.
Scapegoat theory: prejudice stems from
frustration
A scapegoat: a person or category of people
whom others unfairly blame for their own
troubles.
Note: in the textbook, disregard the
authoritarian personality theory
Functionalism: prejudice and discrimination
might be «functional» for the rulers to
«unite» a nation
Prejudice against the «Other» might be
functional for strengthening in-groups
Conflict theory:
Powerful groups (often ruling groups) in a society use
prejudice to economically exploit an ethnic or racial group
Why?
How?
Pluralism, assimilation, segregation, genocide
A state in which racial and ethnic minorities
are distinct but have social parity.
 Living together, but maintaining cultural
differences
West European and North American societies
are pluralistic in some respects, but not so
pluralistic in other ways.
Assimilation: the process by which minorities
gradually adopt patterns of the dominant
culture
The American “melting pot”
Segregation is the physical and social separation of
categories of people.
Sometimes, majority ethnic or racial groups
segregate minorities in terms of occupations,
housing, schools, healthcare, transportation,
etc.
De Jure (by law) segregation: “Jim Crow”
segregation in the southern United States until
the early 1960s, apartheid South Africa
De facto (in fact) segregation: contemporary
United States (in terms of schooling and housing,
especially in Northeastern urban areas)
Note: segregation is not only about ethnic and
racial groups. There can also be gender
segregation
Genocide is the systematic annihilation of one
category of people by another
Recently also called “ethnic cleansing”
Historical examples: decimation of native peoples
in North and South America by the Portuguese,
Spanish, French and the British from 16th
century onwards
20th century examples: the Nazi Holocaust; Serbian
ethnic cleansing of Bosnians
Hutu genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 during
civil war; chemical bombing of Halabja and the
killing of thousands of Kurds by the Iraqi regime
in 1988