10
RACIAL AND ETHNIC
INEQUALITY
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Chapter Outline
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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:
Global Immigration
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Minority, Racial, and Ethnic
Groups
Minority 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.
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Minority, Racial, and Ethnic
Groups
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
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Minority, Racial, and Ethnic
Groups
Race
•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.
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Minority, Racial, and Ethnic
Groups
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.
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Minority, Racial, and Ethnic
Groups
Race
•Stereotypes
--A stereotype is an unreliable generalization
about all members of a group that do not
recognize individual differences within the
group.
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Minority, Racial, and Ethnic
Groups
Ethnicity
•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
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Prejudice and Discrimination
Prejudice
•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.
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Prejudice and Discrimination
Discriminatory Behavior
•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.
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Prejudice and Discrimination
Institutional Discrimination
•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.
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Prejudice and Discrimination
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
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Prejudice and Discrimination
Institutional Discrimination
Affirmative Action: Positive efforts to recruit
minority members or women for jobs, promotions,
and educational opportunities.
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Studying Race and Ethnicity
Functionalist Perspective
•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
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Studying Race and Ethnicity
Conflict 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.
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Studying Race and Ethnicity
Interactionist Perspective
•Contact Hypothesis
--Interracial contact between people of equal
status in cooperative circumstances will
cause them to become less prejudiced.
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Patterns of Intergroup Behaviors
Extreme 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.
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Patterns of Intergroup Relations
Amalgamation
•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.
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Patterns of Intergroup Relations
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.
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Patterns of Intergroup Relations
Segregation
•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
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Patterns of Intergroup Relations
Pluralism
•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.
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Patterns of Intergroup Relations
EXPLUSION
EXTERMINATION
or genocide
SEGREGATION
SUCCESSION
or partitioning
ASSIMILATION
FUSION
PLURALISM
or amalgamation or multiculturalism
or melting pot
Intergroup Relations Continuum
Source: Richard T. Schaefer. 2000. Racial and Ethnic Groups. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: PrenticeHall, Figure 1.4 on p. 25.
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Race and Ethnicity in the United
States
Racial Groups
•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.
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Race and Ethnicity in the United
States
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.
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Race and Ethnicity in the United
States
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.
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Race and Ethnicity in the United
States
Ethnic 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
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Race and Ethnicity in the United
States
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.
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Race and Ethnicity in the United
States
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.
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Race and Ethnicity in the United
States
Table 10.1: Relative Economic Positions of Various Racial and Ethnic
Groups, 2000
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Social Policy and Race and
Ethnicity
Global Immigration
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?
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Social Policy and Race and
Ethnicity
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.
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Social Policy and Race and
Ethnicity
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…
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Social Policy and Race and
Ethnicity
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.
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Social Policy and Race and
Ethnicity
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.
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