Chapter 8: Sociological Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity

• Race and Ethnicity• Prejudice and Discrimination• Racial and Ethnic Interactions•Sociological Analysis of Ethnic/Racial Inequality

Sociological Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity

•Race – A group of people identified as having certain physical characteristics

•Endowed with social meaning

Sociological Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity• Ethnicity – People who share

common cultural characteristics and ethnic identity

• Share a sense of “oneness” based on:– Religion– National origin– Cultural heritage

Minority Group

•A social group systematically denied access to power and resources available to the dominant groups of society

• Not necessarily fewer in number than dominant group.

Racism

A set of beliefs about thesuperiority of one racial orethnic group

– Justifies inequality–Assumes genetic differences

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Prejudice and DiscriminationPrejudice (an attitude):

–Idea about characteristics of a group

–Applied to all members of group

–Unlikely to change regardless of evidence

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Prejudice and Discrimination

•Discrimination (an action):–Unequal treatment of individuals because of their social group

Types of Discrimination

•Individual discrimination

•Carried out by one person against another

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Types of Discrimination

•Institutional discrimination •Systematic discrimination by social institutions:

•Political•Economic•Educational

Examples: Institutional Discrimination •Last-hired-first-fired

practices

• Identifying job applicants through referrals from existing workers

• Interviewer’s ease of communication with people of the same race/gender/ethnicity/class

Examples: Institutional Discrimination

•Classroom: Instructor uses slang or examples

•unknown to students from certain socioeconomic or cultural backgrounds

Examples: Institutional Discrimination

•Office hours, or significant learning opportunities,

•During times commonly used for work-study jobs or athletic practices

Prejudice:Social classSexSexual orientationAgePolitical affiliationRaceEthnicity

Prejudice

•A rigid and unfair generalization about an entire category of people

•Prejudices are prejudgments –Positive or negative–Part of culture so everyone has some prejudice

Stereotypes

• An exaggerated description applied to every person in some category

• Examples?

• Especially harmful to minorities in the workplace

Measuring Prejudice: The Social Distance Scale

• SOCIAL DISTANCE

–How closely people are willing to interact with members of some category

–Emory Bogardus•People felt more social distance from some categories than others

Bogardus Social Distance Scale

• http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/bogardus02.htm

Racism

• Belief that one racial category is innately superior or inferior to another

• Powerful and harmful form of prejudice

• Existed throughout world history

• Widespread throughout the history of the U.S.

Theories of Prejudice

• 1. SCAPEGOAT THEORY– Frustration among people who are

themselves disadvantaged

• SCAPEGOAT– Person or category of people, typically with

little power, whom other people unfairly blame for their own troubles

– Minorities often used as scapegoats

2. AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY THEORY

• Extreme prejudice is personality trait

• Strong prejudice toward one minority--intolerant of all minorities

• Authoritarian Personalities– Rigidly conforms to cultural

values

– Moral issues as clear-cut matters of right and wrong

Opposite pattern

•People who express tolerance toward one minority

•Likely to be accepting of all minorities

3. CULTURE THEORY

•Some prejudice is found in everyone– “culture of prejudice”

• Learn categories of people as “better” or “worse” than others– Socialization process

4. CONFLICT THEORY•Prejudice used by powerful

to oppress others•Example: Unemployed people

blame immigrants for taking their jobs or for low wages

•Powerful people are really to blame—lower wages=more profit

•Four models1. Pluralism2. Assimilation3. Segregation4. Genocide

Pluralism

•People of all races & ethnicities–Distinct–Equal social standing

Assimilation

Minorities gradually adopt patterns of the dominant culture

Segregation

•Physical & social separation of categories of people

•de jure segregation (by law)

•de facto segregation (in fact)

Genocide• Systematic killing of one

category of people by another category of people

•Common throughout history

• Native Americans by Europeans

• Jews by Nazis• Armenians by Turks• Muslims by Serbs in Bosnia

Genocide in Rwanda

• 1994 - 800,000 Deaths • Beginning on April 6, 1994• For the next hundred days• Up to 800,000 Tutsis were killed by Hutu militia • Used clubs & machetes• As many as 10,000 killed each day.

Genocide in Rwanda

• Rwanda--Central Africa• Two main ethnic groups, the Hutu

and the Tutsi • Hutus 90% of population• In the past, the Tutsi minority was

considered the aristocracy of Rwanda • Dominated Hutu peasants for

decades

Race Ethnicity in the United StatesRace Ethnicity in the United States• Give me your tired, poor,• Your huddled masses yearning

to breathe free,• The wretched refuse of your

teeming shore,• Send these, the homeless,

tempest-tossed to me:• I lift my lamp beside the golden

door.

– Emma Lazarus (Base of Statue of Liberty)