Chapter 10: Race and Ethnicity

Race: Biology or Society?

• Race: Biologically speaking, an arbitrary classification assigned on the basis of genetic characteristics.

• From a sociological perspective, however, race is socially constructed. Its meaning in society is a cultural process.

• If members of stigmatized racial groups behave differently from those in the majority or occupy lower social positions, it is not their innate worth that is implicated but, rather, social structures and culture.

Race: Biology or Society? (cont.)

• Before the 19th century, the concept of race was used to refer to descendants of common ancestors. Its meaning was similar to that ascribed to the concept of ethnicity today.

• Ethnicity: Group distinctiveness based on common territory, history, and tradition.

The Racial Fallacy

• Racism: Behavior based on the belief that a group is inferior because of inherited physical differences that are inherently connected with behavioral differences.

• When inequality is attributed not to social causes but to innate incapacities in intelligence and character, the element of human responsibility is eliminated and moral judgment becomes difficult.

Figure 10.1 Discrimination in Hiring Practices

Racism and Genocide

• Genocide: The systematic mass murder of a group of people.

• Example: The Nazis’ mass murder of Jews during World War II

• Race and ethnicity have been the basis of genocide, such as in Rwanda in the 1990s.

Ethnicity• Ethnicity: Emphasizes common territory

and origins, and is based on the notion that these supposedly “unmeltable” social factors define an unwavering solidarity that makes an ordinary group into a “people.”

Ethnocentrism

• Ethnocentrism: An attitude based on a belief in the cultural superiority of one’s own ethnic group above all others. People are ethnocentric if they tend to naturalize their own cultural practices while looking down on the cultural practices of others.

Nativism & Immigrants

• Immigrants: Individuals who have relocated from their native country to another country.

• Nativism: The ethnocentric attitude of a native-born population toward immigrants.

• Nativists insisted that immigrants who came to America from other regions would undermine American life.

Nativism in America

• In 1924 the government put tight controls upon immigration, virtually ending the influx for the next 40 years.

• In 1965 the Hart-Celler Act abolished the national origins system favoring groups from Northern and Western Europe, resulting in a “new,” more diverse immigration pattern.

Figure 10.2 World Region of Birth for U.S. Population by Year of Entry

Minority Group Theory• Minority group theory highlights status

inequality, especially the noneconomic and nonpolitical dimensions of race and ethnicity.

• Minority group: As defined by Louis Wirth, a group of people within society who are subordinated on the basis of their physical or cultural characteristics.

Minority Group Theory (cont.)• Prejudice: A negative attitude toward members

of an ethnic or racial minority group. Prejudices are often based on the premature or faulty generalization of a small number of observations.

• Stereotypes: A neutral term referring to fixed, cognitive preconceptions that are necessary for understanding modem society. Eventually, stereotypes came to carry a negative connotation. Based on stigmatized beliefs, they facilitate and maintain a majority’s domination of the minority.

Minority Group Theory (cont.)• Discrimination: Behaviors based on cultural beliefs that

stigmatize members of a minority group, harmfully impact them, and reinforce their lower status in relation to the majority group. Discrimination can be individual or institutional, conscious or unintended.

• Discrimination varies along two axes:– Scope refers to whether discrimination is individual or

institutional in origin.– Intentionality refers to whether it is conscious or

unintended.

The Racial Underclass

• Racial underclass: Collectively, the large number of African-Americans who are impoverished and much more likely than mainstream groups to be out of work, to be sick, to have dropped out of high school, to live in single-parent households, and to have been incarcerated.

The Racial Underclass (cont.)• William Julius Wilson argues that the racial

underclass has come about as the result of a combination of external (exogenous) and internal (endogenous) factors.

• An exogenous factor might be a political process such as affirmative action that increases the physical and social separation from the poor, between black working and middle classes.

• An endogenous factor might be a demographic variable such as urban migration, limited access to societal institutions, or lack of neighborhood resources.

Reverse Migration

• Reverse migration: A recent trend whereby black Americans are moving back to the South in high numbers (having originally fled the South after the Civil War).

• Some sociologists argue that reverse migration is a result of the availability of job opportunities in the South.

• Others argue that it is evidence of voluntary segregation—the desire to be the dominant racial minority in a region rather than one of many ethnic minorities.

Multiculturalism

• Multiculturalism: A value based on the principle that many cultures can, and should, coexist in a particular region. Quite often, multiculturalism is in conflict with the push for assimilation of many cultures into one dominant culture.

• This conflict is illustrated by the tension between the concepts of melting pot and mosaic.

Figure 10.3 Interracial Marriage Trends, 1980 to 2008

Figure 10.4 Percent of Newlyweds in 2008 who Married Someone of a Different Race/Ethnicity

Study Questions

• Why is race a social rather than a biological categorization?

• Define racism. What is the difference between a racial and a sociological explanation of inequality?

• Is racial classification universally based on skin color?

• Explain the difference between race and ethnicity. What is ethnocentrism?

Study Questions (cont.)

• What is nativism? Describe the role that nativism played in American history. What did American nativists perceive as a threat? To what extent did nativism influence American politics?

• What effect did the Hart-Celler Act have on American immigration patterns?

Study Questions (cont.)

• Describe Louis Wirth’s concept of the minority group. What is prejudice, and how is it different from other cultural attitudes?

• What is the original meaning of the word stereotype? How was this concept first used to explain race and ethnic relations?

Study Questions (cont.)

• What is discrimination, and how does it differ from prejudice? Describe the two axes of discrimination.

• Describe the exogenous and endogenous factors in William Julius Wilson’s theoretical framework on the origins of the racial underclass in the United States. What is the relationship between these factors, and what outcomes do they produce?