Ethnicity and Race

2. Ethnicity and Race • Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity • Race and Ethnicity • The Social Construction of Race • Ethnic Groups, Nations, and Nationalities • Ethnic Tolerance and Accommodation • Roots of Ethnic Conflict

3. Ethnicity and Race • What is social status, and how does it relate to ethnicity? • How are race and ethnicity socially constructed in various societies? • What are the positive and negative aspects of ethnicity?

4. Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity • Ethnic group: a gatheringwhose members share certain beliefs, values, habits, customs, and norms because of their common background • Ethnicity: identification with, and feeling part of, a particular ethnic group and exclusion from certain other groups because of this affiliation

5. Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity • Ethnic feelings and their associated behavior vary in intensity within ethnic groups and countries over time. • Cultural differences may be associated with ethnicity, class, region, or religion.

6. Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity • Status: any position that determines where someone fits in society • Ascribed status: little or no choice about occupying the status given • Achieved status: gained through choices, actions, efforts, talents, or accomplishments

7. Table 15.1: Race/Ethnic Identification in the United States, 2007

8. Figure 15.1: Social Statuses

9. Status Shifting • Some statuses are contextual. • Minority groups: have an ascribed status that is associated with their position in the sociopolitical hierarchy • Inferior power and less secure access to resources than majority groups • Some statuses, particularly ascribed ones, are mutually exclusive.

10. Table 15.2: American Hispanics and Latinos, 2007

11. Race • Racism: discrimination against an ethnic group assumed to have a biological basis • Race: an ethnic group assumed to have a biological basis

12. Race and Ethnicity • It is not possible to define human races biologically. • U.S. culture does not draw a very clear line between ethnicity and race. • “Hispanic”: ethnic category that cuts across racial contrasts like “black” and “white” • Better to use ethnic group than race • Race is a cultural category rather than a biological reality.

13. Hypodescent: Race in the United States • Rule of Descent: assigns social identity on the basis of ancestry • Hypodescent: automatically places the children of a union or mating between members of different groups into a minority group • Divides U.S. society into groups unequal in their access to wealth, power, and prestige • In U.S. culture, one acquires one’s racial identity at birth.

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

15. Race in the Census • “persons, other than Aboriginal peoples [a.k.a. the First Nation in Canada, Native Americans in the United States], who are non-Caucasian in race or nonwhite in colour” • Canada’s visible minority population has been increasing steadily. • Canadian census asks about “visible minorities”

16. Figure 15.2: The Questions on Race and Hispanic Origin, from U.S. Census 2000

17. Table 15.3: The Visible Minority Population of Canada, from the 2006 Census

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

19. Not Us: Race in Japan • Most Japanese define themselves by their opposition to others—anyone not us. • Burakumin are perceived as standing apart from the majority of Japanese. • Like blacks in the U.S., Japan’s burakumin are stratified: class structured, with differences in wealth, prestige, and power

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

21. Phenotype and Fluidity: Race in Brazil • An individual’s racial classification may change due to his or her achieved status, developmental biological changes, and other irregular factors. • No hypodescent rule ever developed in Brazil to ensure that whites and blacks remained separate. • Brazil: “race” more flexible than in U.S.

22. Ethnic Groups, Nations, and Nationalities • State: a stratified society with a formal, centralized government • Nation-State: an autonomous political entity; a country • Migration, conquest, and colonialism led most nation-states not to be ethnically homogeneous. • Nation: a society sharing a common language, religion, history, territory, ancestry, and kinship

23. Nationalities and Imagined Communities • Imagined communities – Language and print played a crucial role in various European national consciousnesses. –Colonialism (the long-term foreign domination of a territory and its people) often erected boundaries that corresponded poorly with pre-existing cultural divisions. • Nationalities: groups that now have, • or wish to have or regain, their autonomous political status

24. Assimilation • Incorporates the dominant culture to the point where it no longer exists as a separate cultural unit • Assimilation: when a minority adopts the patterns and norms of the host culture

25. The Plural Society • Barth: Ethnic boundaries are the most stable and enduring when groups occupy different ecological niches. • Shifted focus from specific cultural practices and values to relations between ethnic groups • Plural society: a culture combining ethnic contrasts, ecological specialization, and economic interdependence

26. Multiculturalism and Ethnic Identity • Of growing importance in U.S. and Canada • Multiculturalism seeks ways for people to understand and interact with a respect for their differences. • Multiculturalism: The view of cultural diversity as valuable and worth maintaining in its own right

27. Figure 15.3: Ethnic Composition of the United States

28. Roots of Ethnic Conflict • Stereotypes: fixed ideas about what the members of a group are like • Prejudice: the devaluing of a group because of its assumed behavior, values, capabilities, or attributes

29. Roots of Ethnic Conflict De facto: practiced but not legally sanctioned De jure: part of the law • Discrimination: policies and practices that harm a group and its members

30. Roots of Ethnic Conflict • Ethnic competition and conflict are evident in North America. • New arrivals versus long-established ethnic groups • Chips in the Mosaic

31. Roots of Ethnic Conflict • Genocide: deliberate elimination of a group • Ethnocide: an attempt to destroy the cultures of certain ethnic groups • Forced assimilation: when the dominant group forces an ethnic group to adopt the dominant culture • Aftermaths of oppression

32. Roots of Ethnic Conflict (Continued) • Ethnic expulsion: removing groups who are culturally different from a country • Refugees: people who are forced or who have chosen to flee a country • Cultural colonialism: internal domination by one group and its culture or ideology over others • Aftermaths of oppression

33. Recap 15.1: Types of Ethnic Interaction