Transcript Chapter 8 Racial-Ethnic Relations

Pgs. 225 - 259
 Prejudice and discrimination exist around the world
 Prejudice is an attitude, a pre-judging of some sort
 Usually negative but can be positive
 Discrimination is an action that treats someone or
some group unfairly
 People who are discriminated against because they
belong to a particular group are called a minority
group.
 Does not necessarily mean numerical minority
 Those who discriminate are the dominant group
 Has more power, privileges, and higher social status
 Minorities come into existence when people who have
different customs, languages, values, or physical
characteristics come under control of the same
political system.
 Discrimination is based on differences.
 Membership comes through birth
 It is an ascribed status.
 The dominant group holds the
minority’s physical or cultural traits in
low esteem. (prejudice)
 The dominant group treats members to
the minority group unequally.
(discrimination)
 Minority members tend to marry within
their group (endogamy)
 Minority members tend to feel a
common identity because of their
physical or cultural traits, and the
disadvantages that these traits bring.
 Assimilation: wanting to be treated as
individuals, not as members of a separate
group, the minority group adopts the
culture of the dominant group and is
absorbed into the larger society
 Pluralism: the minority group wants to
live peacefully with the dominant group,
yet maintain the differences that set it
apart and are important to its identity
 Secession: wanting cultural and political
independence, the minority group seeks
to separate itself and form a separate
union
 Militancy: convinced of its own
superiority the minority wants to reverse
the status and dominate society
Native Americans
 Assimilation: an attempt to eliminate
the minority by absorbing it into the
mainstream culture
 Forced assimilation – the dominant
group bans the minority’s religion,
language, and other distinctive
customs
 Permissible assimilation – permits the
minority to adopt the dominant
customs at its own pace
 Pluralism: when a dominant group
permits or encourages cultural
differences
 Segregation: an attempt by the
dominant group to keep a minority
subservient and exploitable
 Internal colonialism: a dominant group
exploiting a minority group’s labor
 Population transfer
 Direct population transfer – the dominant
group forces the minority to leave
 Indirect population transfer – the dominant
group makes life so miserable for a
minority that its members “choose” to
leave
 Genocide: policy of extermination
motivated by hatred, fear, or greed
South African Apartheid History and Laws
"Miracle Rising" - South African Apartheid
Rwandan Genocide
 Race – the inherited physical characteristics
that identify a group of people
 people in history have used race to distinguish
the superior from the inferior
 Eugenics – attempts to improve the human
“race” through selective breeding
 Approved by many professionals in the 1930s
 Today biologists have found that human
characteristics flow endlessly into one another
 There is no pure race
 The term used is racial-ethnic group which
refers to people who identify with one another
on the basis of their ancestry and cultural
heritage
 The many racial-ethnic groups that make up the United
States have distinct histories, customs, and identities.
 See pg. 231 – Figure 8.2
 Throughout U.S. history, immigrants have confronted
Anglo-conformity
 They were expected to speak the English language
and adopt other Anglo-Saxon ways of life
 Melting pot – “melt” European immigrants into a
new cultural and biological blend
 Most European immigrants lost their specific
ethnic identities and merged into mainstream
culture
 Some who want to get “melted” have found that their
appearance evokes stereotypes that make such
melting difficult
 Stereotypes – generalizations about what people
are like
The Changing State of U.S. Immigration
 Social problems arise when people get upset because
prejudice and discrimination deprive minorities of the
rights to which citizenship entitles them and the
equality guaranteed by the constitution.
 Effects of Discrimination
 People who are discriminated against can
internalize the views of the dominant group
 Minority can begin to believe they are less capable,
less worth, and less human
 Economic Consequences
 Family income of African Americas, Latinos, and
Native Americans run about 40% less than that of
white families
 African America babies are more and twice as likely to
die than are white babies
 Individual discrimination – one
person treating another badly on the
basis of race-ethnicity
 Institutional discrimination –
discrimination built into the social
system that oppresses whole groups
 ex. Whites denied African
American the right to vote
 Ex. South African Apartheid
 No one is born prejudiced
 We learn values, beliefs, and ways to perceive
the world from the families and racial-ethnic
groups we are born into
 The labels that we apply to racial-ethnic
groups create selective perception
 As we generalize members of groups based
on labels and stereotypes we only see
certain things
 Labels may help people commit acts that
otherwise would challenge their moral sense
 Ex: by labeling Native Americans as
“savages” the U.S. cavalry and settlers
perceive them as less then humans
 This made it easier to kill off whole tribes
 The discrimination woven into U.S. history
benefited the dominant group and it continues to
do so
 Racial-ethnic stratification, the unequal
distribution of a society’s resources based on raceethnicity, helps get society’s dirty work done
 Dirty work – physically dirty or dangerous,
temporary, dead-end and underpaid, undignified
and menial jobs
 When minorities are prevented from higher-
paying, prestigious jobs, they take dirty jobs
 Ethnocentrism – a type of prejudice; “my group’s
ways are right, and your group’s ways are wrong”
 Helps dominant group justify its higher social
position and greater share of the resources
 The dominant group pits racial-ethnic
groups against one another in order to
exploit workers and increase profit.
People Like Us - PBS
 You will spit up into 4 groups of 4 or 5.
 Each group will be assigned a minority group: Latinos, African Americans,
Asian Americans, or Native Americans.
 Over the next few days, using your textbook and outside research, you will
put together a brief PowerPoint answering the above question about your
particular group.
 We are working with pages 242-255 in the textbook.
 You will be presenting your PowerPoint to the class and all students will be
responsible for knowing about each minority group for the next test.
 Your PowerPoint/presentation will be a project grade for the 4th quarter.