1. Chapter 3 Racial and Ethnic Inequality

2. Race and Ethnicity Race:
a socially constructed category of people who share biologically transmitted traits that a society defines as important
Sociologists view racial categories at best as crude and misleading and at worst as a harmful way to divide humanity
Ethnicity refers to a shared cultural heritage

3. Race and Ethnicity
While race and ethnicity are different, the two may go together when groups share not only certain physical traits but ethnic traits as well
examples: Korean Americans and Native Americans

4. Race and Ethnicity
The racial and ethnic diversity in the United States is a product of immigration
The “Great Immigration” extended from the end of the Civil War (1865) until the outbreak of World War I (1914)
“Nativists” opposed immigration as they feared that immigrants might overwhelm neighborhoods and schools and threaten the country’s mostly English culture

5. Recent Immigration
The next great immigration began in 1965 when Congress ended the quota system.
Immigrants came mainly from Mexico and other Latin American nations, as well as the Philippines, South Korea, and other Asian nations

6. Minorities
Minority: any category of people, distinguished by physical or cultural traits, that a society subjects to disadvantages
Characteristics:
They share a distinctive identity
They tend to be disadvantaged
About one-fourth of the people in the U.S. fall into a minority racial or ethnic category

7. Patterns of Minority – Majority Interaction
Pluralism – a state in which people of all racial and ethnic categories have roughly equal social standing
Assimilation – the process by which minorities gradually adopt the cultural patterns of the majority population

8. Patterns of Minority – Majority Interaction
Segregation – is the physical and social separation of categories of people
Genocide – the systematic killing of one category of people by another

9. Native Americans
Conflict has marked the relationship between Native Americans and explorers/colonizers since the late fifteenth century
At first the U.S. government saw Native peoples as independent nations and tried to gain land from them through treaties
It soon used military power against those unwilling to bargain

10. Native Americans
In 1871, the U.S. declared Native Americans wards of the federal government, granting them various forms of “assistance”
These attempts to encourage assimilation resulted in many Native Americans becoming dependent on the government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs

11. Native Americans Native Americans gained full citizenship in 1924.
During the 1990s, Native American organizations reported gains in new membership applications
One-fifth of all legal gambling in the country takes place in casinos on reservations
Most Native Americans continue to struggle and share a profound sense of injustice endured at the hands of whites

12. People of African Descent
People of African ancestry arrived in the Americas along with the early European explorers
While slave traders brought 500,000 Africans to the U.S. as slaves, not all people of African descent were slaves
The Civil War brought slavery to an end
“Jim Crow” laws barred black people from voting, sitting on juries, and institutionalized segregation policies

13. People of African Descent
By the early 1950s, opposition to segregation was building
the landmark Supreme Court decision in the 1954 case, Brown v. the Board of Education, eliminated “separate but equal” schooling
Rosa Parks sparked the bus boycott that desegregated public transportation in Montgomery, Alabama

14. People of African Descent
In the 1960s the federal government
passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964
passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965
passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
Together, these laws brought an end to most legal discrimination in public life

15. People of African Descent
Today, the struggle isn’t over
below-average incomes
rate of poverty is twice the national average
college completion rate is well below the national average

16. People of Asian Descent
Asian Americans include people with historical ties to dozens of Asian nations.
The largest number have roots in China, the Philippines, India, South Korea, and Japan
The first Asians to migrate to North America in the modern era came from China and Japan because of the Gold Rush of 1849
Once the demand for cheap labor lessened, whites pressured legislatures and courts to bar Asians from certain work

17. People of Asian Descent
World War II brought important change to Japanese and Chinese Americans
President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 forcibly relocated all Japanese Americans to internment camps where they stayed until 1944
Chinese Americans fared better
In 1943, the federal government ended the 1882 ban on Chinese immigration and extended citizenship to Chinese Americans born abroad

18. People of Asian Descent
Many Asian Americans prospered as the postwar economy grew
By the 1980s, Asian Americans were called the “model minority” based on their cultural commitment to study and hard work and their outstanding record of achievement
Many Asian Americans have assimilated into the larger cultural mix

19. Hispanic People
Hispanics came to the United States from Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Spain
Since few think of themselves as “Hispanics” or “Latinos”, there is no single Latino culture
A high birth rate and heavy immigration have resulted in Hispanics surpassing African Americans as the nation’s largest racial or ethnic minority

20. Hispanic People
While the social standing of Hispanics is below the U.S. average, various categories of Latinos have very different rankings
The most well off are Cuban Americans, who have greater education and enjoy higher incomes
Puerto Ricans have the lowest relative ranking - median family income is barely half the national average

21. Prejudice
Prejudice is any rigid and irrational generalization about an entire category of people
Stereotypes -exaggerated descriptions that are applied to everyone in the same category - greatly contribute to the perpetuation of prejudice

22. Prejudice
The most serious kind of prejudice is racism -the assertion that people of one race are innately superior or inferior to others
In today’s society, racism is less blatant than it once was
subtle forms of racism are still very much part of our national life

23. Prejudice Three causes of prejudice personality factors
societal factors
multiculturalism

24. Discrimination
While prejudice is an attitude, discrimination is a matter of actions
Discrimination can be positive or negative
Institutional discrimination is built into the operation of social institutions, including the economy, schools, and the legal system

25. Discrimination
Because prejudice and discrimination reinforce each other, societies can subject minorities to a vicious cycle of subordination
One strategy designed to break the vicious cycle of prejudice and discrimination is affirmative action
creates policies intended to improve the social standings of minorities subject to historical prejudice and discrimination

26. Structural-Functional Analysis: The Importance of Culture
The Culture of Poverty
Values and Disadvantage
Critics contend that this perspective focuses on the result, not the cause, of low social standing

27. Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: The Personal Significance of Race
When race becomes a master status, it becomes a personal trait that overwhelms all others and defines any person of color
Critics contend that race involves more than individual behavior

28. Social-Conflict Analysis: The Structure of Society
The Importance of Class
Multiculturalism
Critics contend that social-conflict theory:
understates what people in the U.S. have in common
takes away people’s responsibility for their own lives
tends to minimize the significant strides that have been made in dealing with social diversity

29. Conservatives: Culture and Effort Matter
Conservatives claim that differences in culture set some parts of the population apart from others
People in various racial and ethnic categories have different values and priorities
A free society must be an unequal society

30. Liberals: Society and Government Matter
Liberals contend that cultural differences are not the main reason for inequality
they view racial and ethnic inequality as resulting mostly from prejudice and discrimination built into society’s institutions
they urge people to avoid thinking that minorities are themselves the “social problem”

31. Radicals: Basic Changes Are Needed
Radicals suggest two ways to solve the problem of racial and ethnic inequality:
overhaul the whole capitalist economic system
eliminate the concept of race because it provides an ideological basis for dividing people