Race & Ethnic Stratification

Is it a question of color?

Race

If you walk down any street, you’ll find people with different hairstyles,

fashion sense, age, body types and yes, skin color.

• Because society feels it’s necessary to separate groups of people, race then, refers to the divisions of people based on certain physical characteristics.

• The most prominent of these characteristics is skin color.

• Examples of racial categories include:

1. White2. Black3. Asian

Ethnicity

• Ethnicity is a little more complex than race because it usually involves grouping people who share a common cultural, linguistic, or ancestral heritage.

• Examples of several ethnic groups in the US include:

1. Arab2. German3. Italian4. Jewish5. Hispanic

Majority & Minority Groups

• Non-Hispanic whites make up about two out of every three Americans.

• This makes them a majority group that not only has a greater numerical representation in society, but also holds a significant power and privilege.

• A minority group refers to any group that holds less power than the majority group.

• Louis Wirth assigns minority group status to people who are singled out for unequal treatment.

• Minorities also have a collective sense of being discriminated against.

• In some societies, having a numeric majority isn’t necessarily required to wield power or practice discrimination.

• Sociologists refer to those who are more powerful as the dominant group because even if they may not have greater numbers, they have greater power.

• Apartheid, the five-decade long system of oppression in South Africa, showed how a group’s numbers don’t necessarily reflect a group’s politics and economic power.

• The idea of a minority group ruling over a majority population, especially in periphery nations is almost always the direct result of colonialism, in which more powerful countries impose their will on weaker nations.

Racism

• The simplest definition of racism is that it refers to discrimination based on a person’s race.

• However, there is more to racism than just discrimination.

• To truly understand racism, you must recognize that it involves a complex calculus of intergroup privilege, power and oppression.

Earl Graves’s Findings

• According to Graves, racism in the US has relied on three assumptions that often go unchallenged:

1. Races exist2. Each race has distinct genetic

differences3. Racial inequality is due to those

differences

Graves provides five pillars of racist thought that run rampant in the US:

1. Biological races exist in the human species

2. Races have genetic differences that determine their intelligence.

3. Races have genetically determined differences that produce unique diseases and cause them to die at different rates.

4. Races have genetically determined sexual appetites and reproductive capacities.

5. Races have genetically determined differences in athletic and musical ability.

Genocide

• An extreme example of racism is the use of genocide, the attempt to destroy or exterminate a people based on their race or ethnicity.

• The most well-known example is the Holocaust during World War II.

• The history of the US is stained by similarly horrible acts, including the Trail of Tears, Japanese internment camps, slavery, lynching, segregation and Jim Crow Laws.

Hate Groups

• Such brutal behavior has a long history and still continues today.

• The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks hate groups in the US.

• These groups are organizations that promote hostility or violence toward others based on race and other factors.

Hate Groups in NJ

http://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/03/19/hate-groups-new-jersey-splc/

• They include white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other groups that advocate hate against immigrants, gays, and other minorities.

• The SPLC notes that within the US, there were 888 organized hate groups in 2008, a 48% increase since the year 2000.

• Hate and racist groups do not always seek to exterminate those they do not like.

• Sometimes, they purge their society of these people by forcing minority groups to move, while abusing them in the process.

Patterns of Interaction

• As we’ve discussed in reference to genocide and ethnic cleansing, interracial conflict is as old as history itself.

• But how did it all start? To better think like sociologists, we need to understand the origins of racial and ethnic stratification.

Conquest

• Racial and ethnic tension is rooted in a number of factors.

• The first is conquest.• When one group uses its superior

military to dominate another, it comes in contact with people who have a different culture and often a different physical appearance.

Annexation

• During the 16th and 17th centuries, European powers used their superior technology and military strength to colonize Africa and the Americas.

• Annexation is the incorporation of one territory into another.

• Under this system, members of ethnic and racial groups are forced to become members of a new society.

• This annexation brought ethnic tensions as whites moved into the territories and sought ways to control land.

Voluntary Immigration

• Another pattern that can create racial and ethnic tension is immigration, whether it is voluntary or involuntary.

• Voluntary immigration refers to the willing movement of people from one society to another.

Involuntary Immigration

• Involuntary immigration refers to the forced movement of people from one society to another.

• Bringing millions of Africans as enslaved people against their will, forcing Native Americans onto reservations, and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans in detention camps are all examples of involuntary immigration in US history.

Superordination

• Regardless of whether the migration is voluntary or involuntary, some predictable patterns of interaction can occur when people come into contact with unfamiliar groups.

• Often people become involved in migrant superordination, which occurs when a more powerful group enters an area and conquers the native population.

• The opposite of this is indigenous superordination.

• When arriving immigrants enter the US today, they are expected to learn English (but are they really?) and subordinate their old ways to their new country.

• These two patterns of interaction are often justified through ethnocentric thinking.

• Remember, ethnocentrism is thinking about or defining another culture on the basis of your own.

• Generally, the greater the differences, the more negatively groups tend to view each other.

Minorities• When minority groups face

superordination, there are a number of ways they can choose to react.

1. Pluralistic minorities seek to maintain their own culture but want to integrate

2. Assimilationist minorities seed to shed their old ways and integrate

3. Secessionist minorities do not seek assimilation or cultural unification but view the dominant group with disdain believing it will corrupt their belief systems.

4. Militant minorities overthrow existing system they see as unjust

Acceptance—Multiculturalism & Assimilation

• Research suggests that racial and ethnic identity is related to four key factors:

1. Relative size2. Power3. Appearance4. Discrimination• These factors also tend to encourage a

sense of solidarity among members of a single racial or ethnic group.

• In a sense, being different from the dominant group holds people together.

• Furthermore, the shared values of similar people make adjustment easier.

• Finally, their social capital increases their chances of success.

• On the other hand, belonging to a group that looks like the dominant group rarely leads to discrimination.

• This lack of privilege to belong to the dominant group is the reason many minority groups often bond together.

Prejudice vs. Discrimination

• To truly understand the complexity of race relations, it is vital to understand the difference between prejudice and discrimination.

• Prejudice usually refers to negative attitudes about an entire category of people.

• These prejudices often reinforce stereotypes - simplified perceptions people have of an entire group, usually based on a false assumption.

• These attitudes, if left unchecked, may lead to discrimination, or the unfair treatment of people based on a prejudice.

• Essentially, prejudice is an attitude, while discrimination is an action that stems from that attitude.

• Many of these prejudices and stereotypes are so prevalent, it’s difficult to trace exactly where they come from.

• Generally, sociologists agree that while we aren’t born with prejudiced attitudes, we often learn prejudice from those around us.

• We can even learn a prejudice against a group to which we belong.

• This self-loathing occurs when we internalize the values of the dominant group.

Institutional Discrimination in the United States

• While personal biases often cause individuals to view others negatively, those attitudes can carry over into the structures of society and often go unnoticed by others who don’t even hold those views.

• When this happens, social institutions end up supporting racial and ethnic inequality.

• This institutional discrimination maintains the advantage for the dominant group while providing the appearance of fairness to others.

Causes for Prejudice & Discrimination

• So why does any kind of discrimination happen at all?

• John Dollard suggests that frustration leads to prejudice.

• Often we don’t have the ability to attack the real sources of our irritation, and so we scapegoat or unfairly accuse, another group as the cause of our problem.

• Usually a racial or ethnic minority becomes the target for a common societal problem in wide-spread poverty.

• Researchers often suggest the importance of education and intelligence in predicting a discriminatory type of personality.

• Generally studies support the notion that people who are less educated and of lower intelligence are more likely to be prejudiced.

Segregation

• People who are discriminated against are often separated from the dominant group in terms of housing, workplace, and social settings.

• This enforced separation is called segregation when factors such as race, gender, or ethnicity are involved.

• Although these forms of separation are no longer legal, issues such as unofficial segregation continue to this day.

Racial Stratification in the US

• Now that you have a context in which to look at race and ethnicity, let’s turn our attention to how race stratifies our society.

Racial-Ethnic Groups ComparedRacial-Ethnic Group

Median Household Income

% Living at or Below Poverty

% w/o Health Insurance

Home Ownership

% of Children w/computer

Life Expectancy at Birth

White $55,530 8.6% 14.4% 74.9% 76.9% Male 76.5Female 81.3

Hispanic or Latino

$37,913 23.2% 31.4% 48.5% 40.6% Male 78.4 Female 83.7

Black/African American

$34,218 24.7% 19.3% 47.7% 41.0% Male 70.2Female 77.2

Asian $65,637 11.8% 17.2% 58.6% 75.7% Male 76.3Female 81.1

American Indian

$35,343 25.3% 30.7% ** (included in Asian)

54.1% Male 76.6 Female 81.5

Income

• In the United States, minorities tend to be overrepresented in poverty statistics, particularly African Americans and Hispanics.

• This is caused in part by the cycle of poverty, which makes it difficult for people to break into the middle class if their parents were poor.

Education

• One of the most important factors in determining income is education.

• Without access to quality education, it’s difficult to get a well-paying job and advance in the workplace.

• Schools continue to be unofficially segregated.

• Poorly funded schools tend to be those in which the minority of children are black or Latino.

• This imbalance further adds to the income disparity between whites and other races.

• The lack of proper education forces people into low-paying jobs, or worse, the cycle of poverty continues.

What is the difference between race & ethnicity?

• Race is the division of people based on certain physical characteristics, but ethnicity is the classification of people who share a common cultural, linguistic, or ancestral heritage.

What causes racist attitudes, and how do these attitudes affect people?

• Color-blind racismColor-blind racism, racial stereotypes, belief that segregation is a personal choice, belief that racism is a thing of the past, which denies its impact on minorities; these lead to a feeling of double consciousness for minorities.

Functionalist Theory

• Racism has both intended (manifest) and unintended (latent) consequences.

• Slavery in the South functioned to build wealth and agriculture, but it came at the expense of people being treated like animals.

Conflict Theory

• Racism is a result of power conflicts among different groups

• The group with more power oppresses the weaker groups, a result of which can cause racism to occur.

Symbolic Interactionism

• By changing what is acceptable in society, we change reality

• Racial slurs that were acceptable 100 years ago are highly discouraged today.

• Acceptable terms leads to what is said and thought in society.