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Chapter 3:
Race and Immigration
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Defining Race and Ethnicity

Race
• The division of people based on certain physical
characteristics

Ethnicity
• The classification of people who share a common
cultural, linguistic, or ancestral heritage


U.S. Census Bureau outlines six different racial
categories
With immigration, population growth, and
intermarriage, physical traits may no longer be
relied upon to determine identity
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Majority and Minority Groups

Majority Group
• Not only has greater numerical representation in society
but also holds significant power and privilege

Minority Group
• Refers to any group that holds less power than the
majority group
 Often experience unequal treatment compared to
dominant group, giving them collective sense of
discrimination
 With aid of migration patterns, minority groups
gaining greater representation within U.S. population
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Armenian Genocide

Genocide
• Attempt to destroy or exterminate a people based on
their race or ethnicity

Armenian American protesters received
recognition during the 2008 election campaign
• Barack Obama pledged to officially recognize the
genocide if elected
• Remembrance Day, came and went without official U.S.
recognition of the genocide
• Obama delivered statement which spoke of the meds
yeghem (“great calamity”) of the Armenian people
 He did not use the word genocide, which would be
offensive to Turkish government
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Racism

Racism
• Prejudice that asserts members of one race are inferior
to another
 Makes them less worthy of fair treatment
• In US, racism long used to justify mistreatment of
certain groups of people
 From Native Americans to African Americans to
immigrant laborers

Hate groups
• Organizations that promote hostility or violence toward
others based on race and other factors, perpetuate
racism
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Prejudice vs. Discrimination

Prejudice
• Usually refers to rigid generalizations, often
negative, about an entire category of people
 Minority groups often face prejudice from
dominant group

Stereotypes
• Simplified and extreme perceptions people
have of an entire group
 Usually based on false assumptions and
reinforces prejudice
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Continued

Discrimination
• Deliberate and unfair treatment of people
based on a prejudice
• 2006 film Glory Road
 Perfect example of how prejudiced attitudes
can lead to discrimination
 Portrayal of prejudice and discrimination
based on overly simplistic stereotypes
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Institutional Discrimination in the US

Institutional Discrimination
• Maintains advantage for dominant group while
providing appearance of fairness to others
• Personal biases carry over into structures of
society and often go unnoticed by others who
don’t even hold those views
• Evidenced by the Jim Crow laws of the early to
mid-1900s
 Caused disparities in institutions such as
education and housing
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Causes for Prejudice and Discrimination

John Dollard
• Suggests that frustration leads to prejudice
• In situations in which we feel powerless:
 Scapegoat
• Unfairly accuse another group as being the cause
of our problem

Studies support the notion prejudice is
learned
• Assuming prejudice is a learned behavior, it
can be unlearned
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Minority Success


Many minorities, despite suffering from
prejudice and discrimination, become
successful
Beverly Tatum
• Assimilation Blues: Black Families in a White
Community
 Investigates what it means to be black and
middle class in a mostly white neighborhood
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Continued

W.E.B. DuBois
• Families experience Double Consciousness
 Must live in a white and black world and be
able to keep these worlds separate
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Continued

Ellis Cose
• The Rage of the Privileged Class
• Issues that even the most successful African Americans
must confront
 Inability to fit in
 Lack of respect
 Low expectations
 Faint praise
 Identity troubles
 Self-censorship and silence
 Collective guilt
 Exclusion from the club
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Racial Stratification in the United States

We live in a free society that claims to be equal
• There are still significant disparities between racial
groups

Some minorities tend to be overrepresented in
poverty statistics
• African Americans, American Indians, and Hispanics
• Cycle of Poverty
 Makes it difficult for people to break into the middle
class if their parents were poor
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Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued

One of the most important factors in
determining income is education
• Minorities made up only 15 percent of faculty
members in U.S. colleges and universities in
2003
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Immigration


Immigration is one issue that can create
racial and ethnic tension
Voluntary Immigration
• Refers to the willing movement of people from
one society to another

Involuntary Immigration
• Refers to the forced movement of people from
one society to another
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Who Migrates and Why?

Labor immigrants—legal and undocumented
• Migrate because they are seeking work

Professional Immigrants
• Doctors and engineers
 Possess some skill or profession needed in the United
States
• Drawback is the “brain drain”: best and brightest of
poorer nations leave their countries to live in the
United States

Entrepreneurial Immigrants
• Seek to own their own businesses

Refugees
• People seeking safety and freedom
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Is Immigration a Social Problem?



Each major wave of new immigrants
experiences a backlash from the dominant
group in society
Anti-immigrant sentiment in US evidenced
by number of anti-immigration groups
currently active
Immigration always been a source of
conflict
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Ethnocentrism



Thinking about or defining another culture
on the basis of your own
Most of us in some way are ethnocentric
View world from our point of view and see
groups with greater differences from us
more negatively
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Ethnic Enclaves


Discrimination encourages sense of solidarity
among members of single racial or ethnic group
Ethnic Enclaves
• Neighborhoods where people from similar cultures live
together
• 3 main reasons
 Differences from dominant group often lead to
discrimination
 Shared values of similar people make adjustment
easier
 Social capital increases their chances of success
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Continued

Living in an enclave
• Person who enters a new country with very little money,
few resources, and limited knowledge of new culture can
increase chances of success


Belonging to a group that looks like dominant
group tends to decrease discrimination
Many groups now considered “white” initially
suffered discrimination
• Let go of their ethnic heritage because their appearance
makes it easier to assimilate into the dominant culture
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Symbolic Interactionism: Color-blind Racism


Symbolic interactionists stress importance of
symbolism and language in creation of society
Color-blind Racism
• Idea that racism still exists in more subtle ways

Many people of color in the United States remain
in disadvantaged positions
• poorer, achieve lower educational outcomes, live shorter
lives, attend underfunded schools, experience problems
with assimilation, and generally believe that police and
other social institutions work to increase their
disadvantage
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Continued

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
• Suggests color-blind racism occurs when
whites use a series of excuses to justify status
quo and keep races separate

Color-blind racism excuses racist
tendencies under the guise that we are
color blind
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Continued

Four key factors:
• Whites hold onto ideals such as equality,
individualism, and choice in effort to explain
why racial groups are disadvantaged
• White people often use cultural stereotypes to
rationalize racial inequality
• False belief that segregation is a personal
choice
• Many whites in US believe racism is a thing of
the past and deny it has any impact on
minorities’ lives today
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Continued

Laissez-faire Racism
• Notion that blacks are responsible for their
own problems, particularly economic ones and
no longer deserve government help and
support
• Despite obvious structural problems of the
poor and minorities

Choices people make occur within a social
context
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Functionalism:
The Interaction of Culture and Structure

Sociologist William J. Wilson
• Overt racism has declined in US
• Forms of institutional racism continue to affect schools,
jobs, health care, and other aspects of the lives of poor
and minority members
• Inner-city youths develop cultural values
counterproductive to achieving success

Cannot ignore reality of structural racism
• Yet out of these structures spring cultures that can lead
the individual to poor choices and negative outcomes
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Continued

Elijah Anderson
• Code of the Street: Decency, Violence and the Moral Life
of the Inner City
• Inner-city youths often adopt this code
 Alternative to pro-social paths to success
 Focuses:
• Appearing tough
• Having the “right” look
• Talking in the “right” way
• Inner-city youths frequently develop negative attitudes
toward authority, police, and education
 Attitudes hinder ability to assimilate into larger
culture
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Continued

Social structures of poverty, crime, and
joblessness help create “code of the street”
culture
• This culture supports preexisting stereotypes that allow
poverty in the first place

Racism is rooted in the structures of society
• Change in those structures required to attack it
• Election of a “black” president may go a long way
toward combating negative stereotypes
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Conflict Theory

Accusations of racial prejudice common in many
areas of society
• American Idol

W.E.B. DuBois
• African Americans will always be faced with a dominant
majority that wants to exploit them
• To survive
 They develop a double consciousness
 Make a distinction between two worlds: one white
and one black
 Minorities may unconsciously adopt racist attitudes
held by dominant group
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Continued


DuBois’s classical ideas also apply to study
of other minority groups
Sociologists find that members of
dominant group do not think much about
race
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Social Problems and Racial Segregation

People who are discriminated against often
separated from dominant group
• Housing, workplace, and social settings

Enforced separation called Segregation
• When factors of race, gender, or ethnicity involved

Massey and Denton
• Blacks of various income levels experience similar
segregation from whites
• Racial segregation linked to a number of factors,
including personal choice
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Immigration Control and Immigration Issues


Current issue facing United States is illegal
immigration
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
• Tasked with securing nation’s borders between
Canada, Mexico, and other coastal areas
• Responsible for safely processing international
travelers through U.S. Customs
• 2008
 Welcomed more than 400 million people into
US
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Multiculturalism and Assimilation

Multiculturalism
• Concept that supports inherent value of
different cultures within society
• Proponents think that immigrants should
maintain links to original culture while
integrating into new culture
• Opponents worry that this practice keeps
groups from adapting to dominant culture
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Continued

Assimilation
• Process by which minority groups adopt patterns of
dominant culture
 Can be voluntary but can be enforced by social
policies
• “English Only” laws

Rapid Assimilation
• Occurs when minority group completely abandons its
previous culture in favor of new one
 Native American children
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Continued

Segmented Assimilation
• There is more than one way to adapt to a new
land and become economically and socially
successful
• Alejandro Portes
 Cultural elements to which immigrants are
exposed are of particular importance
 Successful assimilation depends on being
exposed to the right elements of a new
culture, not just any elements of a new
culture
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.