1. The Social Meaning of Race and Ethnicity
Race – a socially constructed category composed of people who share biologically transmitted traits that members of a society consider important.
Ethnicity – a shared cultural heritage.
Race involves highlighting biological traits.
Ethnicity involves highlighting cultural traits.

2. Minorities
A minority – any category of people, distinguished by physical or cultural difference, that a society sets apart and subordinates.
Minorities have two major characteristics:
(1) They share a distinctive identity.
(2) Subordination.

3. Prejudice
Prejudice – a rigid and irrational generalization about an entire category of people.
Prejudgments that are positive or negative.
They lead us to characterize all members of an entire group, most of whom we’ve never met.

4. Stereotypes and Racism
Stereotypes – an exaggerated description applied to every person in some category.
Both the majority group and minorities hold stereotypical beliefs.
Racism – the belief that one racial category is innately superior or inferior to another.
Racial difference in mental abilities result from environment rather than biology.

5. Theories of Prejudice
Scapegoat Theory – prejudice springs from frustration among people who are themselves disadvantaged.
A scapegoat – a person with little power whom people unfairly blame for their own troubles.
Authoritarian Personality Theory – extreme prejudice is a personality trait in certain individuals.
These personalities are common among those with little education and broken homes.

6. Theories of Prejudice
Culture Theory – extreme prejudice may be embedded in culture.
Bogardus believed everyone in the United States expresses some bigotry because we live in a culture of prejudice.
Conflict Theory – powerful people use prejudice to justify oppressing others.
Steele contends that minorities themselves cultivate a climate of race consciousness in order to win greater power.

7. Discrimination
Discrimination – treating various categories of people unequally.
This can be wither negative or positive.
Prejudice and discrimination often occur together.
Robert Merton classified four types.

8. Majority and Minority: Patterns of Interaction
Pluralism – a state in which racial and ethnic minorities are distinct but have social parity.
The United States promises equal standing under the law.
Assimilation – the process by which minorities gradually adopt patterns of the dominant category.
Segregation – the physical and social separation of categories of people.
This has declined during recent decades.
Genocide – the systematic killing of one category of people by another.

9. Race and Ethnicity in the United States Native Americans
When the Europeans arrived in the fifteenth century, the Native Americans numbered in the millions.
By 1900, they numbered a mere 250,000.
Christopher Columbus first called them “Indians” because he thought he landed in India.
Not until 1924 were Native Americans entitled to citizenship.

10. Race and Ethnicity in the United States White Anglo-Saxon Protestants
WASPs were not the first to inhabit the United States, but they came to dominate this nation.
Historically, WASP immigrants were highly skilled and motivated to achieve the Protestant work ethic.
WASPs were never one single group.
English remains the dominant language today, and Protestantism is the majority religion.

11. Race and Ethnicity in the United States African Americans
Most accounts mark the beginning of black history in the United States as 1619.
A Dutch trading ship brought twenty Africans to Jamestown, Virginia.
Slavery was the foundation of the southern colonies’ plantation system.
In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery.
In the 1950s and 60s, the civil rights movement grew.

12. Race and Ethnicity in the United States Asian Americans
Enormous cultural diversity characterizes this category of people.
In 2000, the total number of Asian Americans exceeded 10 million.
The largest category of Asian Americans is people of Chinese ancestry.
More than one-third of Asian Americans live in California.

13. Race and Ethnicity in the United States Hispanic Americans
In 2000, Hispanic Americans numbered more than 35 million.
Few people in this category describe themselves as “Hispanic” or “Latino.”
Hispanics are really a cluster of distinct populations, each of which identifies with a particular ancestral nation.
Most of the Hispanic population lives in the Southwest.

14. Race and Ethnicity: Looking Ahead.
The United States has been and will remain a land of immigrants.
Immigration has generated striking cultural diversity.
Many new arrivals face much the same prejudice as those who came before them.