Ethnicity and Race

1. Ethnicity and Race • Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity • Race • The Social Construction of Race • Stratification and “Intelligence” • Ethnic Groups, Nations, and Nationalities • Peaceful Coexistence • Roots of Ethnic Conflict

2. Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity • Ethnic group – members share certain beliefs, values, habits, customs, and norms because of their common background • Ethnicity revealed when people claim a certain ethnic identity for themselves and are defined by others as having that identity

3. Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity • American culture doesn’t draw a very clear line between ethnicity and race. • Ethnicity – identification with, and feeling part of, an ethnic group and exclusion from certain other groups because of this affiliation • Race is ethnic group assumed to have a biological basis

4. Race/Ethnic Identification in the United States, 2002

5. Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity • Status – various positions that people occupy in society • Ascribed status – little or no choice about occupying status • People are born members of a certain group and remain so all their lives • Achieved status – gained through choices, actions, efforts, talents, or accomplishments • May be positive or negative

6. Social Statuses

7. Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity • Some statuses, particularly ascribed ones, mutually exclusive • Some statuses are contextual • Minority Groups – ascribed status associated with a position in the social-political hierarchy • Inferior power and less secure access to resources than majority groups • Status Shifting

8. Race • Not possible to define human races biologically • Better to use term “ethnic group” instead of “race” to describe any social group • Cultural category rather than a biological reality

9. The Social Construction of Race • Ethnic groups assumed to have biological basis but actually defined in a culturally arbitrary, rather than scientific, manner • Race is socially constructed • Social Races

10. Hypodescent: Race in the United States • Rule of Descent – assigns social identity on basis of ancestry • Hypodescent – automatically places children of a union or mating between members of different groups in the minority group • Helps divide American society into groups that have been unequal in access to wealth, power, and prestige • In American culture, one acquires his or her racial identity at birth

11. Race in the Census • Constitution specified that a slave counted as three-fifths of a white person, and Indians not taxed • Attempt by social scientists and interested citizens to add a “multiracial” category to the census category opposed by NAACP and National Council of La Raza • U.S. Census Bureau gathering data by race since 1790

12. Reproduction of Questions on Race and Hispanic Origin from Census 2000 • Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 questionnaire

13. Americans Reporting They Belonged to Just One Race

14. Not Us: Race in Japan • American culture ignores considerable diversity as it socially constructs race within U.S. • Also overlooks diversity in Japan • Scholars estimate 10% of Japan’s population minorities of various sorts • Intrinsic racism – belief that perceived racial difference is a sufficient reason to value one person less than another

15. Not Us: Race in Japan • Valued group in Japan is majority (“pure”) Japanese, who are believed to share “the same blood” • Children of mixed marriages between majority Japanese and others may not get the same “racial” label as the minority parent, but still stigmatized for non-Japanese ancestry

16. Not Us: Race in Japan • Japanese culture regards certain ethnic groups as having a biological basis, when there is no evidence • Burakumin – descendants of a low-status social class; genetically indistinguishable from the dominant population; treated as a different race • Discrimination against burakumin strikingly similar to discrimination that blacks faced in U.S. • Majority Japanese define themselves by opposition to others

17. Phenotype and Fluidity: Race in Brazil • The Brazilian construction of race is attuned to relatively slight phenotypic differences • Phenotype – organism’s evident traits, its physiology and anatomy, including skin color, hair form, facial features, and eye color • More than 500 distinct racial labels reported

18. Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity • Individual’s racial classification may change due to achieved status, developmental biological changes, and other irregular factors • No hypodescent rule ever developed in Brazil to ensure whites and blacks remained separate • Brazilian “race” far more flexible

19. Stratification and “Intelligence” • Evidence that within any stratified society differences in performance between economic, social, and ethnic groups reflect different experiences and opportunities • Differences not genetic • Contemporary human populations seem to have comparable learning abilities • Dominant groups declare minorities to be biologically inferior

20. Ethnic Groups, Nations, and Nationalities • Nation now means a state – independent, centrally organized political unit • Migration, conquest, and colonialism led most nation-states to become ethnically heterogeneous. • Nation once synonymous with “tribe” or “ethnic group”

21. Nationalities and Imagined Communities • Nationalities are imagined communities • Diasporas – dispersed populations spread out from a common center or homeland • Nationalities – groups that now have, or wish to have or regain autonomous political status

22. Assimilation • “Melting pot” model • Incorporates into the dominant culture to point where it no longer exists as a separate cultural unit • When minority adopts the patterns and norms of a host culture

23. The Plural Society • Barth believed ethnic boundaries are most stable and enduring when groups occupy different ecological niches • Barth shifted analytic focus from specific cultural practices and values to relations between ethnic groups (interdependence and exchange) • A society combining ethnic contrasts, ecological specialization, and economic interdependence

24. Multiculturalism and Ethnic Identity • Number and size of minority ethnic groups grew dramatically in recent years • Multiculturalism seeks ways for people to understand and interact with a respect for differences • Multiculturalism – socializes individuals into the dominant (“national”) culture and into a minority (“ethnic”) culture (salad/mosaic model)

25. Ethnic Composition of the United States

26. Roots of Ethnic Conflict • Prejudice – devaluing a group because of its assume behavior, values, capabilities or attributes • Discrimination – policies and practices that harm a group and its members • De facto – practiced but not legally sanctioned • De jure – part of the law • Prejudice and Discrimination

27. Roots of Ethnic Conflict • Ethnic competition and conflict evident in North America • New arrivals versus long-established ethnic groups • Aftermaths of oppression • Genocide • Forced assimilation • Ethnocide • Cultural colonialism • Chips in the Mosaic

28. Roots of Ethnic Conflict • Colonialism – political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power for an extended time • Refugees – people who have been forced or who have chosen to flee a country to escape persecution or war • Cultural colonialism