Chapter 12, Race And Ethnic Relations

1. Chapter 12, Race And Ethnic Relations • 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 

2. Race and Ethnicity • Race is a social construction based on physical criteria. • An ethnic group is a culturally distinct group. • A group is minority or dominant on the basis of which group occupies lower average social status.

3. Stereotypes • Reinforce racial and ethnic prejudices and cause them to persist in society. • Both racial and gender stereotypes receive ongoing support in the media. • Serve to justify and make legitimate the oppression of groups based on race, ethnicity and gender.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. Social Psychological Theories: Scapegoat • 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.

7. Social Psychological Theories: Authoritarian Personality Characteristics of authoritarian personalities make them likely to be prejudiced: • Tendency to categorize other people • Rigidly conform • Intolerance of ambiguity • Inclined to superstition

8. 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.

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

10.  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.

11. 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.

12.  Native Americans • The indigenous population in north America in 1492 has been estimated from 1 to 10 million. • Conquest, disease, and expulsion from their lands resulted in a decline in population to 300,000 by 1850.

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

14.  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.

15.  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.

16. 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.

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

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

19. 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.

20. 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.

21.  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.

22.  White Ethnic Groups • Immigration dates to the WASP immigrants from England, Scotland, and Wales. • 40% of the world’s 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.

23. Domestic Colonialism Model Four elements: • Forced and involuntary entry. • Control of the group’s affairs by the colonizers. • Racism is used to justify the colonizer’s domination. • The minority is prevented from expressing its culture and values.

24.  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.