sociology chapter 9 outline

7/31/2019 Sociology Chapter 9 Outline

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Chapter 9 Outline

The Myth of Race

Race can be defined as a group of people who share a set of characteristicsusually physicalonesand are said to share a common bloodline.

Racism is the belief that members of separate races possess different and unequal humantraits.

Race is a social construct that changes over time and across different contexts. To be white inAmerica, for example, changed from being a somewhat inclusive category in the late

eighteenth century to being much more narrowly defined in the mid-to-late nineteenth century

and then shifted back to a broader definition in the mid-twentieth century. All these changes

were in response to social realities.

The Concept of Race from the Ancients to Alleles

In ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, the idea of race did not exist as we know it today. Peoplerecognized broad physical differences between groups of people, but they did not discriminate

based on those differences.

As Europeans came into contact with different peoples and cultures during the Age ofExploration, racism was used to justify the conquest and colonization of foreign lands.

In the nineteenth century there were a number of scientists and thinkers researching andattempting to explain racial differences. Many of their efforts were biased due to

ethnocentrism(the judgment of other groups by ones own standards and values), so they

were actually explaining white superiority.

Social Darwinism, another nineteenth-century theory, was the notion that some groups orraces had evolved more than others and were better fit to survive and even rule other races.

Backers ofeugenics (the science of genetic lines and the inheritable traits they pass on fromgeneration to generation) claimed that traits could be traced through bloodlines and bred into

(for positive traits) or out of (for negative traits) populations. This thinking influenced

immigration policy in the early twentieth century, when undesirable populations were kept out

of the country so they wouldnt pollute the native (i.e., white) population.

The one-drop rule, which evolved from U.S. laws forbidding miscegenation, was the beliefthat one drop of black blood makes a person black. Application of this rule kept the white

population pure and lumped anyone with black blood into one category.

Today DNA testing is used to determine peoples racial makeup, and while this process may bemore accurate, on some level, than nineteenth-century racial measures, it still supports the

notion of biological racial differences.

Racial Realities

Racialization is the formation of a new racial identity in which new ideological boundaries ofdifference are drawn around a formerly unnoticed group of people. A recent example of

racialization is the anti-Muslim backlash in America since 9/11. Being Muslim is linked in the

mind of Americans to being Arab, so anyone who looks Arab (for men its often linked to skin

color and facial hair and perhaps clothing, and for women its often linked to the use of a head

scarf) is thought to be Muslim and therefore anti-American.


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Race versus Ethnicity

Race is imposed, usually based on physical differenceshierarchical, exclusive, and unequal;ethnicity is voluntary, self-defined, nonhierarchical, fluid, cultural, and not so closely linked

with power differences. An ethnic identity becomes racialized when it is subsumed under a

forced label, racial marker, or otherness. Symbolic ethnicity is ethnicity that is individualistic in nature and without real social cost for

the individual. Whites who explore and express an affinity for their European roots can be said

to be adopting a symbolic ethnicity. It makes them feel good about their heritage and its

something they can focus on and express when they choose to; it isnt an identity that they

must assume all the time.

Ethnic Groups in the United States

European colonizers decimated Native American populations through war and theintroduction of new diseases as well as through the practice of forced assimilation, whereby

Native American children were put in government-run schools and taught to reject their

culture and embrace Anglo culture. Today Native Americans are on the bottom of the

socioeconomic ladder.

The black community in America is marked by high rates of poverty, crime, unemployment,incarceration, and health problems. The community is also expanding as new immigrants from

Africa and even old immigrants from the Caribbean resist being lumped together with African

Americans.

The Latino population in American is very diverse, though one common trait is that mostLatino immigrants have come to the United States voluntarily in search of economic

opportunity. Latinos have a somewhat ambiguous racial identitysometimes they are grouped

with whites and sometimes not.

The first wave ofAsian immigrants to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century wasmade up mostly of unskilled laborers. The current, second wave consists primarily of well-

educated and highly skilled people from all over Asia. Asians are unique among U.S. minorities

in that they generally achieve a high economic status.

The Importance of Being White

White people are not identified, first and foremost, by their attachment to a specific race, sothey have more flexibility and power to choose how they want to be identified. Being the

dominant race, they dont have to think about race much at all.

The development ofwhiteness studies is important because it shows that being whitesomething that has been held up as a standard of normality or neutralityis as much a social

construction as any other racial category.

MinorityMajority Group Relations

Robert Parks 1920 straight-line assimilation model involved four stagescontact,competition, accommodation, and assimilation; in 1964, Milton Gordon offered up a variation

on Parks model, one that involved seven stages that immigrants could pass through or

become stuck in. Gordon did not assume that full assimilation was always the outcome.


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Ethnic identification can persist even after a group has become fairly well assimilated. Oneexplanation for this phenomenon is primordialism (the ethnic ties are fixed in a deeply felt

connection to ones homeland culture); another is that it is in peoples interests to maintain a

strong ethnic identificationit serves as a type of interest group to promote and protect its

members.

Pluralism, in the context of race and ethnicity, refers to the presence and engagedcoexistence of numerous distinct groups in one society, with no one group in the majority.

Segregation is the legal or social practice of separating people on the basis of their race orethnicity. Segregation was official policy in the United States, particularly in the South, until

the 1960s, but despite being illegal for over 40 years, there is still ample evidence of

segregation in American society today, particularly in schools, housing, and prisons.

The most contentious form of minoritymajority group relations is, of course, outright conflict.Genocide is the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or

cultural group.

Group Responses to Domination

Four ways that groups respond to oppression are withdrawal, passing, acceptance,and resistance. Acceptance and resistance can be closely linked, as members of an

oppressed group might appear to accept their subordinate position while internally they feel

enormous resentment. Overt collective resistance can take the form of revolution, nonviolent

protest, or riots.

Prejudice, Discrimination, and the New Racism

Prejudice is negative thoughts and feelings about an ethnic or racial group; discriminationis harmful or negative acts against people deemed inferior on the basis of their racial

category.

While overt racism is, for the most part, considered unacceptable in America today, a newkind of racism is on the rise in America and elsewhere, which focuses on cultural and

national differences rather than racial ones.

How Race Matters: The Case of Wealth

A wealth gap exists between whites and minority groups in America that has historical rootsand cannot be overcome simply through income equality. Public policies formulated to address

whitenonwhite disparities have not paid enough attention to this particular legacy of racism.

The Future of Race

The 2000 U.S. Census created separate categories for race and ethnicity and, for the firsttime, allowed people to check off more than one box for racial identity. These changes have

given us a better idea of the diversity of the American population.

It is predicted that by 2050 whites will no longer be a majority in the United States. Thischange could bring about a narrowing of the definition of white, similar to what happened in

the nineteenth century, as whites try to demarcate boundaries around their group in relation

to the growing minorities.


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Many of the court decisions that were instrumental in implementing desegregation in Americahave been struck down or restricted in the past few years, leading to significant levels of

resegregation in public schools. This does not bode well for minority students as research has

shown that they benefit from being in racially mixed schools.

sociology chapter 9 outline

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