Race & Ethnicity

What Race Is and Is Not

Race is a symbolic category based on phenotype. It is constructed according to specific social and historical contexts that is misrecognized as a “natural” category. Phenotype refers to a person’s physical

appearances.

Race does not exist on the genetic level, but rather on the social and political levels.

What Race Is and Is Not

Race is a symbolic category also based on a person’s ancestry (lineage, regional, or national affiliations). Ethnicity refers to a shared lifestyle informed by cultural,

historical, religious and/or national affiliations. ▪ Race and ethnicity tend to be decoupled for white Americans but

tightly bound for nonwhite Americans. Nationality is equated with citizenship – membership in a

specific delineated territory controlled by a formal power.▪ Citizenship is accompanied by many social privileges.

All three categories can be neither separated nor collapsed into one.

Sociological Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations

Structural Functionalist Perspective

Racial social inequality can be functional for some groups, and create strong social bonds

Racial and ethnic inequality also aggravates social problems and is dysfunctional for society as a whole

Sociological Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations

Conflict Perspective

Economic competition creates and maintains racial and ethnic group tensions (Minorities have far less power and resources).

Minorities who are disproportionately underprivileged and unemployed serve the interests of those in power (usually by keeping wages low).

Sociological Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations

Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

Meanings and definitions contribute to the subordinate status of racial and ethnic groups.

Negative terms associated with "black" (black knight is evil, white knight is good).

Negative stereotypes of racial and ethnic groups lead to self fulfilling prophecy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqSFqnUFOns

Stereotypes: Exaggerations or generalizations about the characteristics and behavior of a particular group.

Negative stereotyping of minorities leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy—a process in which a false definition of a situation leads to behavior that, in turn, makes the originally falsely defined situation come true.

Sociological Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations

Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

Why Should We Care?

Some people argue that race is something that no longer matters. Notion of a “color-blind society”

The consistency (and perhaps rise) of many forms of racial injustices are undeniable: Hate crimes Employment inequalities Poverty Incarceration disparities Media representation

Why Should We Care?

Stereotypes are often believed to be facts. Social differences between people become naturalized; social

inequalities become natural inequalities biological determinism and naturalization.▪ This allows us to leave institutional and cultural processes unexamined as issues

and problems are rooted in the race itself.

Racism: the belief that one category of people is superior to another in some way

Racism continually shape-shifts. Contemporary racism is not always obvious; it is so familiar than it is

often unnoticeable. History always structures the present.

U.S. Racial Taxonomy

Native American / Alaska Native

Asian and Pacific Islander

African Americans

Hispanic / Latino

Caucasian

Questions for Thought

Why should we have only five main racial groups – why not 50?

Why not base divisions based on foot size, or height, or whether we live in the northern or southern hemisphere?

Historical Racial Interactions Genocide- the annihilation of an entire group of people

(including, but not limited to racial groups)

Colonialism- A racial or ethnic group from one society dominates the racial or ethnic group(s) of another society.

Acculturation- Refers to adopting the culture of a group different from the one in which a person was originally raised (can include language, behaviors, and names)

Assimilation- The process by which formerly separate groups merge and become integrated as one. (primary vs. secondary)

Pluralism-Refers to a state in which racial and ethnic groups maintain their distinctness but respect each other and have equal access to social resources.

Racism in America

While nonwhites have certainly achieved greater equality than in the past, overt racism is still common. Racism cannot and should not be defined only by those

actions and values of extreme groups and their extreme acts. ▪ “To define racism only through extreme groups and their

extreme acts is akin to defining weather only through hurricanes.”

Racism can also be covert, existing in common, unnoticeable and everyday forms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqh6Ap9ldTs

Racism in America

Institutional racism is systemic white domination of people of color that is embedded and operating with our culture and its social institutions

People do not often see institutional racism as racism since it operates outside the scope of individual intent.

Prejudice and Discrimination

Prejudice An attitude or judgment, usually negative, about an

entire category of people.

Discrimination Actions or practices that result in differential treatment of

categories of individuals.

Institutional discrimination Occurs when normal operations and procedures of

social institutions result in unequal treatment of minorities.

Reverse Racism?

There is no such thing as reverse (institutional) racism – or nonwhite institutional racism – because there is no centuries-old socially ingrained and normalized system of domination designed by people of color to deny whites full participation in the rights, privileges, and access to power in our society.

While racism can flow from dominated groups to the dominant group, it does not pack the same punch.

Symbolic Violence

Symbolic violence refers to the process of nonwhites unknowingly accepting and supporting the terms of their own racial domination (internalized oppression). The normalized racial “order of things” seems to

feel natural and legitimate. Everything we see, think, and do are done within

the modes of domination and are therefore products of domination.

Intersectionality

Racial domination does not exist inside a vacuum.

Sociologists use the term intersectionality to explain the overlapping systems of advantages and disadvantages that affect people differently positioned in society. Different identity characteristics lead to different experiences The matrix of domination

There is no monolithic experience; we must look people’s lives in their full complexity. Moving away from racial essentialism

Whiteness

Whiteness often goes unnamed or unnoticed; white = raceless White people have a hard time coming to terms with their

whiteness and become uncomfortable when having to analyze it.

Whiteness: the dominant category of race with which all other categories are compared or contrasted.

White privilege is the collection of unearned cultural, political, economic, and social advantages and privileges possessed by people of Anglo-European descent or by those who pass as such.

Whiteness Some white people are fully aware of how the current

system of racial domination benefits them and work to uphold the system.

Some white people do not recognize their privilege and unknowingly support a system of racial domination.

Color-blindness refers to (typically well-intentioned) behaviors and thought processes that aims to ignore all racial markers: “I don’t see color at all.” Requires simultaneous recognition and non-recognition Denying race also denies any related privileges or domination

that exists.

Moving Forward

We can use our sociological imagination, which is one’s ability to understand everyday life not through personal circumstances but through the broader historical forces that structure and direct it.

Reflexivity: looking within ourselves to uncover taken-for-granted ways of thinking that influence of we understand the social world.

Relationality: exploring the networks of relationships within which individuals or groups are embedded to better understand them

Reconstruction: taking our new-found knowledge and using it to change the world in which we live

Responding to Prejudice, Racism, and Discrimination

Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action: A broad range of policies and practices in the workplace and educational institutions to promote equal opportunity as well as diversity. Federal Affirmative Action Affirmative Action in Higher

Education

Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action Pros: Produces benefits for women, minorities, and

the economy. Employers adopting affirmative action

increase number of women and minorities by 10 to 15%.

Has increased percentage of blacks attending college by a factor of three and percentage of blacks in medical school by a factor of four.

Responding to Prejudice, Racism, and Discrimination

Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action Cons: Some minorities argue that it

perpetuates feelings of inferiority. Fails to help the most impoverished of

minorities. Not needed because laws “should”

prohibit discrimination.