Race and Ethnicity

1
Chapter 12

• Race and Ethnicity

2
Chapter Outline

• Race and Ethnicity
• Racial Stereotypes
• Prejudice, Discrimination, and Racism
• Theories of Prejudice and Racism
• Diverse Groups, Diverse Histories
• Patterns of Racial and Ethnic Relations
• Attaining Racial Equality The Challenge 

3
Race and Ethnicity

• Race is primarily a socially constructed category
  based on physical criteria.
• An ethnic group is a social category of people
  who share a common culture.

4
Ethnic Minority Characteristics

1. Possesses characteristics regarded as different
   from the dominant group (race, ethnicity, sexual
   preference, age, religion.)
2. Suffers prejudice and discrimination by the
   dominant group.
3. Membership is ascribed rather than achieved.
4. Members feel a sense of group solidarity.

5
Stereotypes

• Reinforce prejudices and cause them to persist in
  society.
• Racial and gender stereotypes receive ongoing
  support in the media.
• Justify the oppression of groups based on race,
  ethnicity and gender.

6
Prejudice, Discrimination and Racism

• Prejudice is an attitude involving prejudgment on
  the basis of race or ethnicity.
• Discrimination is actual behavior involving
  unequal treatment.
• Racism involves both attitude and behavior.

7
Prejudice and Socialization

• Media stereotypes began to improve as a result of
  civil rights activity in the 1960s.
• Positive interactions between Blacks and Whites
  have been 5 or less of total interactions on
  television programs.

8
Scapegoat Theory

• Members of the dominant group have harbored
  frustrations in their desire to achieve success.
• As a result of frustration, they vent their anger
  in the form of aggression.
• The aggression is directed toward members of
  minority groups who serve as scapegoats.

9
Authoritarian Personality

• Characteristics of authoritarianpersonalities
  make them likely to be prejudiced
• Tendency to categorize other people
• Rigidly conform
• Intolerance of ambiguity
• Inclined to superstition

10
Functionalist Theory

• For race and ethnic relations to be functional to
  society, minorities must assimilate.
• First step in assimilation is for minorities to
  adopt the culture of the dominant society.

11
Symbolic Interaction Theory

• Addresses two issues
• Role of social interaction in reducing racial and
  ethnic hostility.
• How race and ethnicity are socially constructed.

12
 Contact Theory

• Interaction between whites and minorities will
  reduce prejudice if 3 conditions are met
• Contact is between individuals of equal status.
• Contact is sustained.
• Participants agree upon social norms favoring
  equality.

13
Conflict Theory

• Class-based conflict is an inherent and
  fundamental part of social interaction.
• Class inequality must be reduced to lessen racial
  and ethnic conflict in society.
• Gender and race are intertwined but neither is
  separable from the effects of class.

14
 Native Americans

• Population in north America in 1492 was from 1 to
  10 million.
• Conquest, disease, and expulsion from their lands
  resulted in a population of 300,000 by 1850.

15
 Native Americans

• 55 of all Native Americans live on or near a
  reservation.
• Highest poverty rate of all minorities and suffer
  massive unemployment (50 among males).
• Entrepreneurship has increased in recent years,
  through casinos and other enterprises.

16
 African Americans

• Between 20 and 100 million Africans were
  transported to the Americas.
• The majority went to Brazil and the Caribbean
  and 6 went to the U.S.
• Slavery evolved as a rigid caste system, also
  involving the domination of men over women.

17
 African Americans

• After the civil war, the system of sharecropping
  emerged as a new exploitative system.
• The migration of Blacks to the urban north from
  the 1900s through the 1920s encouraged the
  development of political, social, and cultural
  action.

18
Latinos

• Includes Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans,
  Cubans, and other Latin American immigrants.
• Includes Latin Americans who were early settlers
  in the U.S.
• The terms Hispanic and Latino/a mask the great
  diversity among the groups.

19
Latinos

• Entries into U.S. Society
• Mexican Americans through military conquest
  (1846-1848).
• Puerto Ricans through war with Spain (1898).
• Cubans as political refugees fleeing from a
  political regime (1959).

20
Chinese

• During 1865-1868, thousands of Chinese laborers
  worked for the Central Pacific railroad.
• In 1882, the Chinese exclusion act banned
  immigration of laborers and intermarriage.
• Hostility and exclusion resulted in the creation
  of Chinatowns.

21
Japanese

• Immigration of the first generation (Issei) took
  place mainly between 1890 and 1924.
• In 1924, passage of the Japanese immigration act
  forbade further immigration.
• The second generation (Nisei) became better
  educated and assimilated.

22
Japanese

• Members of the third generation (Sansei) still
  met with prejudice and discrimination.
• During WWII, virtually all Japanese Americans
  were forced into relocation camps.
• In 1987, legislation awarding 20,000 to each
  relocated person and offering an apology was
  passed.

23
 Middle Easterners

• Immigrants from Middle Eastern countries such as
  Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Iran began arriving in
  the mid-1970s.
• Like other immigrants, many experienced downward
  mobility and formed their own ethnic enclaves.

24
 White Ethnic Groups

• Immigration dates to the WASP immigrants from
  England, Scotland, and Wales.
• 40 of the worlds Jewish population lives in the
  U.S.
• In 1924, the National Origins Quota Act, the most
  discriminatory act in U.S. immigration history,
  was passed.

25
Domestic Colonialism Model

• Four elements
• Forced and involuntary entry.
• Control of the groups affairs by the colonizers.
• Racism is used to justify the colonizers
  domination.
• The minority is prevented from expressing its
  culture and values.

26
 Civil Rights Movement

• Encouraged resistance to segregation through
  nonviolent techniques.
• Civil rights bill in 1964 laid the legal
  framework for anti-discrimination policies.
• Voting rights act of 1965.
• Fair housing act of 1968.