mcgraw-hill © 2004 the mcgraw-hill companies, inc. all rights reserved. 10 racial and ethnic...

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

10RACIAL AND ETHNIC INEQUALITYRACIAL AND ETHNIC INEQUALITY


Chapter Outline

• Minority, Racial, and Ethnic Groups• Prejudice and Discrimination• Studying Race and Ethnicity• Patterns of Intergroup Relations• Race and Ethnicity in the United States• Social Policy and Race and Ethnicity: Gl

obal Immigration


Minority, Racial, and Ethnic Groups

•Racial Groups

--This term indicates a group that is set apart from others because of obvious physical differences.

•Ethnic Groups

--This term indicates a group that is set apart from others primarily because of its national origin or distinctive cultural patterns.

Minority Groups



•A subordinate group whose members have significantly less control or power than members of the dominant or majority group.•Properties of a minority group include:

unequal treatment

distinguishing cultural characteristics

involuntary membership

solidarity

in-group marriage

Minority Groups



•Racial Group

--The term racial group refers to those minorities set apart from others by obvious physical differences.

•Biological Significance of Race

--There are no “pure races.”

--Migration, exploration, and invasion have led to intermingling of races.

Race



•Social Construction of Race

--This term refers to the process whereby people define a group as a race in part on physical characteristics and in part on historical, cultural, and economic factors.

--The one drop rule: if a person had a single drop of “Black blood,” they were viewed as nonwhite.

Race



•Stereotypes

--A stereotype is an unreliable generalization about all members of a group that do not recognize individual differences within the group.

Race



•An ethnic group is set apart from others based on national origin or distinctive cultural patterns.•Ethnic groups in the United States include:

Hispanic Americans

Jewish Americans

Irish Americans

Italian Americans

Ethnicity


Prejudice and Discrimination

•Prejudice

--Prejudice is a negative attitude toward an entire category of people, often an ethnic or racial minority.

•Ethnocentrism

--Ethnocentrism is the tendency to assume that one’s culture and way of life are superior to all others.

Prejudice



•Discrimination

--Discrimination is the denial of opportunities and equal rights to individuals and groups based on some type of arbitrary bias.

--Discrimination persists even for educated and qualified minority members.

--The glass ceiling is the invisible barrier blocking promotion of qualified individuals in a work environment because of gender, race, or ethnicity.

Discriminatory Behavior



•The denial of opportunities and equal rights that results from the normal operations of a society.

•Institutional discrimination affects some racial and ethnic groups more than others.

Institutional Discrimination



•Institutional discrimination refers to the denial of opportunities and equal rights to individuals and groups that results from normal societal operations.

•Some examples are:

requiring English only to be spoken at work

preferential admissions policies by colleges

restrictive employment-leave policies




Affirmative Action: Positive efforts to recruit minority members or women for jobs, promotions, and educational opportunities.



Studying Race and Ethnicity

•Three functions of racial prejudice for the dominant group include:

--Justification for maintaining an unequal society

--Discouraging of subordinate groups from questioning their status

--Encouraging support for the existing order

Functionalist Perspective



•Exploitation Theory

--Racism keeps minorities in low-paying jobs and supplies the dominant group with a supply of cheap labor.

--By forcing minorities to accept low wages, capitalists can restrict wages of all workers.

--Workers from the dominant group wanting higher wages can be replaced by minorities who must accept lower wages.

Conflict Perspective



•Contact Hypothesis

--Interracial contact between people of equal status in cooperative circumstances will cause them to become less prejudiced.

Interactionist Perspective


Patterns of Intergroup Behaviors

•Genocide:The deliberate, systematic killing of an entire people or nation.•Expulsion: The forced removal of a people from a region or country.•Ethnic Cleansing: Term originating with Serbian forces in 1991 in the newly independent states of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This forced expulsion of Croats and Muslims from the former Yugoslavia had elements of expulsion, torture, sexual abuse, and genocide.

Extreme Behaviors


Patterns of Intergroup Relations

•Amalgamation occurs when a majority group and a minority group combine to form a new group.

•The melting pot belief became compelling in the early twentieth century; however, many people were not willing to have certain groups as part of the melting pot. The melting pot analogy, therefore, does not adequately describe dominant-subordinate relations existing in the United States.

Amalgamation



•Assimilation describes the process by which a person forsakes his or her own cultural tradition to become part of a different culture. In general, a minority group member wants to conform to the standards of the dominant group.

•As persons become more assimilated, they retain fewer of their original cultural characteristics.

Amalgamation



•This term refers to the physical separation of two groups of people in terms of residence. •Generally, a dominant group imposes segregation on a minority group.•Examples include:

apartheid in South Africa

housing practices in parts of the United States

Segregation



•Pluralism is based on mutual respect among various groups in a society for one another’s cultures.•Pluralism allows a minority group to express its own culture and participate without prejudice in the larger society.•Switzerland exemplifies a modern pluralistic state.

Pluralism



EXTERMINATIONor genocide

EXPLUSION

SUCCESSIONor partitioning

FUSIONor amalgamation

or melting pot

SEGREGATION ASSIMILATION

PLURALISMor multiculturalism

Intergroup Relations Continuum

Source: Richard T. Schaefer. 2000. Racial and Ethnic Groups. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Figure 1.4 on p. 25.


Race and Ethnicity in the United States

•African Americans

--African Americans are currently the largest minority group in the United States.

--Contemporary prejudice and discrimination patterns against African Americans are rooted in our history of slavery.

Racial Groups



•Native Americans

--Native Americans represent a diverse array of cultures.

--Native Americans have a teen suicide rate four times the national average.

--An increasing number of Americans are claiming identity as Native American.

Racial Groups



•Asian Americans

--Asian Americans comprise one of the fastest growing segments of the United States population.--Asian Americans include:

Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean Americans

--Asian Americans are often held up as a model or ideal minority group.

Racial Groups



•Hispanics

--Hispanics are the largest ethnic minority in the United States.

--Hispanics share Spanish language and culture, which can be problematic for assimilation in the U.S.

--Hispanic Americans include:Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans,

Cuban Americans

Ethnic Groups



•Jewish Americans

--Jewish Americans constitute 3 percent of the population.

--Jewish Americans have high levels of education and professional training.

--Jewish Americans, like other groups, face the problem of maintaining cultural heritage and the problem of assimilation.

Ethnic Groups



•White Ethnics

--White ethnics are people whose ancestors came from Europe in the last 100 years.

--Predominant White ethnic groups include:

German Americans, Irish Americans, Italian

Americans, and Polish Americans.

Ethnic Groups



Table 10.1: Relative Economic Positions of Various Racial and Ethnic Groups, 2000


Social Policy and Race and Ethnicity

The Issue

--Worldwide immigration is at an all time high.

--The constantly increasing number of immigrants puts pressure on the job markets and welfare systems of the countries they enter.

--Who should be allowed in?

--At what point should immigration be curtailed?

Global Immigration



The Setting

--The immigration of people is not uniform across time or space.

--However, more and more migrants who cannot make adequate livings in their home nations are making permanent moves to developed nations.

--Fear and resentment of this growing racial and ethnic diversity is a key factor in opposition to immigration.

Global Immigration



Sociological Insights

--Immigration provides many valuable functions.

--Receiving nations, it alleviates labor shortages such as in the areas of health care and technology in the United States.

--For the sending nation, migration can relieve economies unable to support large numbers of people.

Continued…

Global Immigration



Sociological Insights

--Conflict theorists note how much of the debate over immigration is phrased in economic terms.

--But this debate intensifies when the arrivals are of different racial and ethnic backgrounds from the host population.

Global Immigration



Policy Initiatives

--The entire world feels the overwhelming impact of economic globalization on immigration patterns.

--The intense debate over immigration reflects deep value conflicts in the culture of many nations.

--Hostility to potential immigrants and refugees reflects not only racial, ethnic, and religious prejudice, but also a desire to maintain the dominant culture of the in-group by keeping out those viewed as outsiders.

Global Immigration

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