Chapter 12, Race And Ethnic Relations

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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 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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 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.

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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 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.

23
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.

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.