Race and Ethnicity Dynamics in Society
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Presentation Transcript
CHAPTER 10 RACIAL AND ETHNIC RELATIONS
Section 1: Race, Ethnicity, and The Social Structure • One of the best known classification systems sort people into three racial groups: • Caucasoids: fair skin, straight or wavy hair • Mongoloids: yellowish or brownish skin, distinct folds on the eyelids • Negroids: dark skin, woolly hair • This classification system is no longer used because there are no biologically “pure” races.
Race deals with physical characteristics • Ethnicity deals with cultural characteristics
Five characteristics that distinguish minority groups from other groups in society : • Identifiable physical characteristics that differ from the dominate group • Victims of unequal treatment at the hands of the dominant group • Membership is an ascribed status • Share a strong bond and a sense of group loyalty • Tend to practice endogamy
Section 2: Discrimination and Prejudice • Discrimination involves behaviors • Range from name calling to acts of violence on an individual level • Legal discrimination and institutionalized discrimination on a societal level • Prejudice involves attitudes • Sociologist generally focus on the negative forms of prejudice such as racism
Robert K. Merton’s Patterns of Discrimination and Prejudice • Active Bigot: is prejudice, does discriminate • Timid Bigot: is prejudice, afraid to discriminate • Fair-weather Liberal: is not prejudice, does discriminate • All-weather Liberal: is not prejudice, does not discriminate
SOURCES OF DISCRIMINATION AND PREJUDICE • STEREOTYPING • SCAPEGOATING • SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT
Patterns of Minority Group Treatment: • Assimilation • Cultural Pluralism • Legal Protection • Population Transfer • Subjugation • Extermination
Section 3: Minority Groups in the United States • The American Dilemma • Americans have not always practiced what they preached: • Preach- equality, freedom, individual and inalienable rights… • Practiced- segregation, population transfer of Indians to reservations, and the internment of Japanese during WWII • Standard by which minority groups were measured… how closely they adapted to the WASP (white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant)
African Americans • Second largest minority group as of the 2000 census. • First brought to the U.S. as slaves • Civil Rights Act helped them gain more power and status • Election of 2008: First African American President of the U.S.
Hispanic Americans • Largest and fastest growing minority group in the U.S. as of the 2000 census • Have gained increasing political power in recent years. • Still lag behind non-Hispanic Americans in areas as education and employment