Download Race and Ethnic Relations

Race and Ethnic Relations
Sociology Chapter 10
10.1 Race, Ethnicity and Social Structure
Questions to think about:
 How do sociologists determine the terms
race, ethnicity, and minority group?
 What characteristics distinguish minority
groups from one another?
Race as Myth and Reality
Race as a Myth
– Many people think that humankind can be sorted into
biologically distinct groups (share inherited physical
characteristics) called races. This idea suggests that
there are “pure” examples of different races and that
any person can belong to only one race.
– Biologists, geneticists, and social scientists reject this
view of race.
– All people belong to the human species.
– There are greater differences within racial groups than
between racial groups.
Race
 Historically scholars have placed people into
three groups:
1. Caucasoids-fair skin and straight or wavy hair
(whites)
2. Mongoloids-yellowish or brownish skin with
distinctive folds on the eyelids (Asians)
3. Negroids-dark skin and tightly curled hair
(blacks)
However, this well known classification system
has difficulty describing the complexity of
race.
 It is difficult to classify people into clear-cut
categories because people often possess the traits
of more than one race.
Examples:
 Southern India-Caucasoid facial features and dark
skin, and straight hair.
 Australia-Aborigines-dark skin and blond tightly
curled hair.
 There are no biologically “pure” races.
Ethnicity
 Ethnicity-set of cultural characteristics that
distinguishes one group from another.
 Ethnic Group-people who share a common
cultural background and a common sense of
identity.
 Ethnicity is generally based on cultural
characteristics such as national origin, religion,
language, custom, and values.
Ethnic Group Survival
 If an ethnic group is to survive over time, its
cultural beliefs and practices must be passed
down from generation to generation.
Examples:
 Asian and Hispanic Americans tend to have
strong ethnic roots.
 Unlike German Americans who are raised in the
US who no longer feel deep ties to their
homeland.
What’s the difference between race and ethnicity?
 Ethnicity is based on cultural considerations
 Race is based on physical considerations
 Many
African American share a common
ethnic heritage that includes particular foods,
types of music, forms of speech, and other
cultural traits.
Minority Groups
 No particular skin color, physical feature, or ethnic
background is superior or inferior by nature.
 Those who hold power in society may place an
arbitrary value on specific characteristics.
(speaking the language most common in a society is
one position of power held by the dominate group)
 By establishing values and norms of society,
dominant-group members consciously and
unconsciously create a social structure that acts in
their favor.
Minority Groups – Conflict Theory
 Many sociologists have concluded that a
dominant group’s position of power allows
them to enjoy privileges, such as better
housing, better schools, and higher incomes.
 The privileged position of the dominant group
is often gained at the expense of the minority
groups within society.
Minority Group defined:
 Minority group is identified as a group of
people who –because of their physical
characteristics or cultural practices-are singled
out and unequally treated.
 Does not have to do with group SIZE.
 Ex: South Africa whites (15%) dominated the
lives of the other racial groups in the country.
Characteristics that distinguish minority
groups from other groups in society:
 Identifiable physical or cultural characteristics
that differ from the dominant group.
 Group members are victims of unequal treatment
at the hands of the dominant group.
 Membership in the group is ascribed.
 Members share strong sense of group loyalty.
 Members practice endogamy-marriage within
the group.
Patterns of Intergroup
Relations (Ch 10.2)
1. How do prejudice and discrimination
differ?
2. What are patterns of minority group
treatment?
Discrimination and Prejudice
 Words are commonly used mistakenly
interchangeably.
 Discrimination-the denial of equal treatment to
individuals based on group membership.
 Refers to BEHAVIORS
 Prejudice-an unsupported generalization about
a group of people.
 Refers to ATTITUDES
Discrimination
 Found at the individual or societal level
 Range from name-calling and rudeness to acts of
violence.
 Most extreme form can lead to physical harm or
even death.
 Between 1882 and 1970 more than 1,170
African Americans were lynched by white mobs.
Societal Discrimination:
Legal and Institutionalized
 Legal discrimination-upheld by the law.
 Apartheid
system in South Africa-system of
elaborate laws that defined the rights of
whites and non-whites.
 Voting rights women in US
 Jim Crow laws in the US
 Plessy v. Ferguson
 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
 Institutionalized discrimination-is an outgrowth of
the structure of society.
 Over
time, unequal access to resources pushes
some minority groups into less powerful
positions.
 Can occur even after legal steps have been taken
to end discrimination
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyL5EcAwB9c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOS3BBmUxvs&feature=rela
ted
Example-Institutionalized Discrimination
1. Minority group denied access to jobs and
housing.
2. Over time group members become concentrated
in one area.
3. Community schools are poorly funded, members
do not acquire the skills to compete in the labor
market.
4. Without being able to qualify for higher paying
jobs, their children will have few opportunities
for advancement, and the cycle of inequality is
maintained.
Prejudice
 Often includes stereotypes Stereotypes-oversimplified,
exaggerated, or
unfavorable generalization about a group of
people.
 EX-All Irish are hot tempered.
 If people are told often and long enough that
other people are socially, mentally or physically
inferior, they come to believe it.
Prejudice cont.
 Self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton) a prediction that
results in behavior that makes the prediction come
true.
 If members of a minority group are considered
incapable of understanding technical
information, they will not be given technical
training.
Racism
 Prejudice often serves as justification for
discriminatory actions.
 Individuals come to believe negative claims
against a minority group, which makes it easier
for them to discriminate.
 Racism-the belief that one’s race or ethnic group
is naturally superior to other races or ethnic
groups.
Case Study: A Class Divided
In 1968 third-grade teacher Jane Elliot divided her students
into groups of brown-eyed and blue-eyed children. She told
the class that the brown-eyed children were superior to the
blue-eyed children, and that they would receive special
treatment. The two groups of children internalized these
rules, and the blue-eyed children appeared to be miserable
and defeated. This experiment was one way to help
children understand the effects of discrimination.
Jane Elliot’s Experiment
“A Class Divided”
CLIP on Jane Elliot’s class:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hqp6GnYqIjQ
Clip 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QyqxkM_Z94&featu
re=related
Clip 2 Wednesday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7JneNPZltU&featur
e=related
Clip 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no1FAMTnGg&feature=related
3 Sources of Discrimination and Prejudice
Sociological Explanations
 Focus on the social environment
 Socialization-process by which norms are
internalized (learned)
 Prejudices are embedded in social norms
(describe ways in which members are
“expected” to behave towards certain
out-groups)
 People become prejudice to maintain group
membership-through identification with a
reference group who support the behavior.
3 Sources of Discrimination and Prejudice
Psychological Explanations
 Focus the behavior of individuals
 People are prejudice because of particular
personality
 Theodore Adorno found that prejudice people
shared an authoritarian personality trait
 Exhibit anger and likely to blame others for
their problems.
 Scapegoating-placing the blame for one’s
trouble on an innocent individual
(or minority group)
Why do minority groups become
scapegoats?
1. Easy to recognize because of their physical
features, language, style of dress, or religious
practices.
2. Lack of power in society and may be unlikely to fight
back.
3. Concentrated in one geographic area – easily
accessible.
4. Been the target of scapegoating in the past.
5. Often represent something – idea, attitude, or way
of life that the scapegoater does not like.
Sources of Discrimination and Prejudice
Economic Explanations
 Discrimination and prejudice arise out of competition for
scarce resources.
 EX-Chinese in the 1800 were welcomed for cheap
labor building railroads, but were later viewed as
competition to whites for jobs. Violence erupted
 Laws restricted immigration of Chinese
(Exclusion Act)
 The dominant group, in order to protect their position,
puts minorities against one another in competition for
resources, which causes minority groups to fear, distrust
and hate one another.
Patterns of Minority Group Treatment
Cultural Pluralism
 Allows each group within society to keep its
unique identity.
 Practiced in Switzerland
 Three official languages: French, German and
Italian (3 major ethnic groups)
 None of the groups has taken a dominant role
in Swiss society.
Patterns of Minority Group Treatment
Assimilation
 The blending of culturally distinct features into a
single group with a common culture and identity.
 Was practiced in U.S. for many years –
“melting pot.”
 Racial and ethnic minorities attempt to hold onto
their cultural features.
 Some assimilation occurs naturally overtime
through daily interaction.
 Forcing assimilation often leads to conflict.
 Forbidding people to practice their religion,
language, and culture.
Patterns of Minority Group Treatment
Legal Protection
 Countries take legal steps (make laws) to
ensure that the rights of minority groups are
protected.
 Civil Rights Act 1964 and Voting Rights
Act 1965 in the US.
 Affirmative action programs in the USdesigned to correct past imbalances in the
educational and employment opportunities
given to minority groups.
Patterns of Minority Group Treatment
Segregation
 Policies that physically separate the minority
group from the dominant group.
 Jews in Europe during the Middle Ages
were forced to live in walled-off
communities called ghettos.
 Practiced in the US until the 1960s
Patterns of Minority Group Treatment
Subjugation
 Maintaining of control over a group by force.
 Slavery-the ownership of one person by
another (most extreme form)
 EX=South Africa’s apartheid system:
 Apartheid literally means “apartness”
 Called for segregation of all groups in
society
 Political and economic power rested
solely in the hands of the white few and
rigidly maintained by force.
Patterns of Minority Group Treatment
Population transfer
 Dominant group separates itself from the minority
group by transferring the minority population to a
new territory.
 Indirect transfer-the dominant group makes life
so miserable for the minority that they leave.
 Direct transfer-involves the use of force.
 Resettlement of Native Americans on
reservations during the 1800s
Patterns of Minority Group Treatment
Extermination
 Genocide-the intentional destruction of an entire targeted
population
 Attempted (and sometimes achieved) many times
throughout history
 Jews in Russia in the 1800s
 Jews in Europe during WW II-the Holocaust
 1.5 Armenians by Turks and the mutual slaughter of
Muslims and Hindus in the first half of the 1900s
 Genocides also in Rwanda and Cambodia
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__kf7TljgGs
Ethnic Cleansing
 Combined population transfer and extermination.
 Involves removing group from a protected area
through terror, expulsion, and mass murder.

1998 the Serbian government began a campaign
that sought to drive out or kill about 1.7 ethnic
Albanians.


In one year 1.5 million had been expelled from their
homes and 10,000 killed.
NATO stopped the Serbs of achieving their goal using
armed intervention.
Minority Groups in the United States
Institutionalized Discrimination – unfair practices that
grow out of common behaviors and attitudes that are a
part of the structure of society.
Discrimination in the United States has caused some
ethnic and racial groups to lag behind the white
majority in jobs, income, and education.
Progress is being made, but gains remain fragile.
African Americans
 13 Percent of Population
 Experiences historically shaped by slavery,
discrimination, and segregation.
 Civil Rights Movement brought significant
gains towards equality.
 Statics still show members are behind in
education, employment, income and
becoming politically active.
African American Statistics
 High School graduation rates
Whites 85 % to African Americans 68%
 Of those earning a college degree
White 66% to African American 13%
Average Incomes
Whites - $57,009
African American - $33,321
Hispanic Americans
Largest minority group
(17%)
• Trace their heritage to
Spain or Spanish-speaking
Latin American countries.
• Hispanics in the United
States are mostly from
Mexico, Cuba, Puerto
Rico, Central and South
America.
• Came to the United States
to seek political freedom
and economic opportunity.
• Estimate in 2012 of more
than 11.2 million illegal
immigrants in the United
States; vast majority are
Hispanic.
• Poverty rate is double that
of white Americans.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru1F29vuV
KI&feature=related
ABC What would you do? Latino Hate Crime
Episode
• Policies encouraged
Native Americans
assimilation into white
5.2 Million Individuals (2%)
culture.
• Original inhabitants of the • Today 55 percent on
United States.
reservations.
• Disease, warfare, and
destruction of traditional
ways of life reduced
numbers dramatically.
• U.S. government took
traditional lands and forced
Native Americans onto
reservations.
• Pan-Indianism: a social and
political movement that
united culturally distinct
Native American nations to
work together on issues that
affect all Native Americans.
Asian Americans
5 Percent of Population
• Immigrants from Asian
countries including the
Philippines, Vietnam,
Cambodia, Laos, Pakistan,
Chinese, and Japanese.
• Have used education to
move up economic ladder.
• Median income is higher for
Asian Americans than for
other groups ($66,000)
• Some call Asian Americans
“the model minority”
because of their quick
assimilation.
• Asian Americans face
higher rates of stress,
depression, mental illness,
and suicide attempts
Other Minorities
Jewish Americans
• Faced anti-Semitism, discrimination and prejudice
against Jews
Arab Americans (1%)
• 3.5 million Arab Americans
• Arab Americans have faced new discrimination after
the Arab-led terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
Current Research in Sociology
Being Arab American after the 9-11 Attacks
Within hours of the terrorist attacks on September 11, Arab
American communities and individuals were faced with
violent attacks and other discrimination. These acts
revealed that non-Arab Americans knew very little about
Arab Americans.
• Researchers completed • Fifteen percent had
face-to-face interviews
experienced discrimination,
with 1,016 Arab
verbal insults being most
Americans and Iraqi
common.
Christians and 508
• Three percent reported acts
members of the general of violence against them or
population.
their family.