ethnic unit 1

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Minority Groups--Melting Pot or Ethnic

Resurgence?

There she lies, the great melting pot--listen! Can't you hear the roaring and the bubbling?

- Israel Zangwill, The Melting Pot, 1909

Americans are not a narrow tribe, our blood is as the flood of the Amazon, made up of athousand noble currents all pouring into one.

- Herman Melville

Issues

Defining Core Terminology

Mark Twain once keenly remarked, "The difference between the right word and the nearly

right word is the difference between 'lightning' and the 'lightning bug.'" Each word we speak

has its own special nuances of meaning, and words continuously adapt to patterns of usage.

Because of the dynamic nature of language, American racial and ethnic minorities have

expressed shifting preferences for how their groups should be named. For example,

emancipated slaves in America preferred to be called "Negroes" instead of the more

pejorative and all too popular terms "nigras," "darkies," "coons," or "niggers." Then over

several decades the term "Negro" lost favor to "Afro-American" and then "Black American"

or "African American." Likewise, until recently most writers--including Thomas Sowell, the

author of one of your texts--used the term "Orientals" to refer to persons of Asian ancestry.Now, however, this term is seen as pejorative, and "Asian American" has come to replace it.

Once a term begins to accumulate undesirable connotations, the ever-present and

understandable temptation is to wipe the slate clean and start over with some fresh and

affectively unencumbered terminology.

What Is a Minorit y Group?

In an effort to protect against substantively ambiguous terminology, the scientific neologism

arises--that is, we invent new terms. In fact, the term "minority group" was introduced as a

scientific neologism by sociologist Donald Young in 1932. Over time, this term has taken onan increasingly broad meaning. Today "minority group," as used by the American public, is

such an inclusive term that virtually everyone may be regarded as a member of some

minority group, even if it's the rather exclusive group of Fortune 500 corporation presidents.

Whenever such a term becomes so inclusive it excludes no one, it loses almost all utility as an

analytical concept. As Peter Berger has commented, "Definitions are matters of taste and thus

fall under the maxim d e gustibus. " And as Kurt Lewin has observed, the only really

meaningful measure of any definition is its usefulness as a tool for clarifying the true nature



of things. It is in this light that we must determine how best to sharpen our analyticalconcepts.

Women

Because women often receive unequal treatment vis-a-vis men, some people today consider

women a minority group. When Young coined the term, he suggested that it "be applied to all

these groups which are distinguished by biological features, alike national traits, or acombination of both." Although women certainly share biological features, Young did not

regard women as a social group and hence did not consider them as a minority group. He alsoexcluded occupational groups, interest groups, disability groups, and many others from

minority group status.

Why was the term so narrowly circumscribed? It appears that the intent was to limit the

minority group concept to group aggregates that have received unequal treatment and also

have distinctive cultures and historical longevity. Women differ from racial and ethnic groups

in a critical respect--they do not practice endogamy and so are not culturally and socially

separate from the dominant class.

In

acial and Ethnic Groups, Schaefer notes this distinction, but he makes light of it. Instead,

he and others have created a new category of minority group ("gender group" or "sexualminority") to accommodate women as a special case. This is in keeping with the

contemporary political definition of minority group, which is now applied to statisticalaggregates of persons who are to be accorded special protection against discriminatory

treatment, regardless of the type of unequal treatment and whether or not they are culturallydistinct from mainstream society.

Polit ical Influences on Minorit y Group Stat us

Over time the minority concept worked its way into political parlance and began to carry withit governmental recognition of a group's entitlement to affirmative action protections. This is

where "science" and "politics" converge. As observed by Ira S. Lowry, the U.S. Census

Bureau's operative policy is:

... to elicit self-identification and then to group the responses into recognizable categories that

(a) are mandated for federal civil rights enforcement, (b) satisfy the more vocal ethnic lobbies,

and (c) provide enough continuity with past census statistics to satisfy social scientists

engaged in longitudinal analysis. Whereas item (c) is clearly motivated by scholarly interests,

items (a) and (b) are as clearly motivated by political interests. The tabulated census data that

results is a blend of scientific and political considerations.

Subsequent social scientific research utilizing this data is inescapably constrained by these

political influences. The net effect is that even scientific neologisms, such as minority group,gradually become corrupted. As they attain currency in the public domain and are

manipulated by various political (as opposed to scholarly) interests, they stray away fromintended denotations.

You should not lose sight of this fact, since the subject matter of this course is particularly

sensitive to political influences. You will discover many situations in which popular history



appears to be, as Napoleon Bonaparte once remarked, "a fable agreed upon." However, thenature of this "fable" systematically reflects the hierarchy of social power; the vanquished

and exploited always have fewer and less influential historians.

Comments and Supplementary Information

Prejudice

What Const it ut esPrejudice?

Prejudice is an attitude that consists of a set of negative beliefs, feelings, and action-

orientations that are associated with some identifiable group of individuals.

Some typical negative beliefs include assertions that people who belong to Group X are lazy

(they don't work very hard), stupid (they don't often graduate from high school or college), or immoral (they don't behave as decent folks do). Some typical negative feelings would be that

people in Group X "make my skin crawl," "make me want to vomit," and "make my bloodboil." Negative action-orientations include such things as stating that people in Group X

"should not be admitted to our social club," "should not be sold real estate in our part of town," or "should not be encouraged to socialize with our sons and daughters." The entire

blend of all these negative beliefs, feelings, and action-orientations concerning a particular group constitutes the prejudice. Of course, not all people are conscious of their prejudices.

Some of the most prejudiced people insist they have no prejudice at all. This is because such

people regard their negative dispositions as simple matters of fact and not prejudgments.

Much of the difficulty in combating prejudice is due to the fact that it is not easy to make

people cognizant of their prejudices. This is particularly true of well-educated people, who

are especially skillful in creating rationalizations for their prejudices.

Th

e Tena

cit

y of P

rejudices

The difficulty in ridding people of prejudices is directly related to the peculiar fact that they

often do not exhibit consistency between the way they behave and the attitudes they hold. For

example, some people may openly exhibit strong prejudices against persons of Chinese

ancestry (perhaps referring to the Chinese as "slanty-eyed Chinks") and still not behave in a

discriminatory fashion toward specific Chinese acquaintances.

The Schaefer text refers to the LaPiere study (from the 1930s), which describes people who

indicate that they are prejudiced against the Chinese, but nonetheless do not discriminateagainst them. At the time of the study, sinophobia was quite normal in American culture, and

on this basis alone, it would be fair to assume that the average adult American held very

prejudicial beliefs toward the Chinese. Specifically, the mass media (the primary source of most everyone's misinformation on the Chinese) portrayed "the Chinaman" as slanty-eyed,

sinister, clannish, unkempt, and basically "unassimilable" (a frequent allegation made toward

Chinese people). So when LaPiere mailed letters to the business managers of hotels and

restaurants seeking to confirm a reservation for his Chinese traveler friends, it was not

surprising that 90 percent of the recipients denied his request, saying that Chinamen were not

welcome in their place of business. These letters represented action-orientations as to how

these business managers believed that they would have behaved if LaPiere's Chinese friends

were to actually show up. The letters provided, therefore, tangible evidence of the managers'





Overall, the theories tend to complement one another. In the composite, they help us better understand what is otherwise a seemingly irrational phenomenon.

Psychological Theories

The Scapegoating Theory

The scapegoating theory asserts that people naturally project the blame for their own

shortcomings. The object onto which the frustrations are projected is called the scapegoat.

This theory is closely aligned with John Dollard's frustration-aggression theory.

When viewed objectively, this is admittedly an irrational process, but the individuals who

participate in the scapegoating phenomenon are genuinely convinced that the scapegoat

object is the "true" source of the world's ills. Hence they do not perceive the irrationality of

their activity. Although this theory has been heavily researched, it has yet to explain why

some scapegoats are preferred over others, despite their similar visibility and vulnerability. It

also fails to explain why some individuals are more prone to practice scapegoating than

others.

The Authoritarian Personality Theory

The authoritarian personality perspective tries to explain why some people scapegoat more

than others. It describes a character type that is formed in early childhood and is thereafter

inherently predisposed to a cognitive style that is prejudicial and categorical.

There are difficulties with this explanation.Most notably, it reduces the scope of prejudice to

only "pathological individuals" and in so doing ignores the full importance of the social

environments that have, at least putatively, spawned authoritarian personalities. In other

words, the primary agencies of prejudice formation that actually produce the authoritarian

personality disposition are likely to derive from the way the individual was taught to

internalize prejudices.

The Sociological Perspective

The major strength of the sociological perspective is that it puts prejudice in its proper social

context. In so doing, it de-emphasizes personality factors (which can be easily exaggerated).

Prejudice, in the sociological perspective, is not the sign of pathological personalities. Rather,

it is normative across cultures.

The Normative Approach

According to this approach, prejudice is normal and pervasive throughout society. Socialenvironments selectively reinforce the expression of socially correct prejudices in the same

way that they shape other socially correct thinking. In this light, we can appreciate the mass

media's role as an instrument of either prejudice-maintenance or prejudice-reduction. In

recent decades, American Blacks have benefited from reforms of the mass media, while other

minorities--such as American Indians, Chicanos, and Puerto Rican Americans--have

witnessed little substantive improvement of their image in the media.



The mass media remain one of the most potent forces in American society today as a shaper of prejudice and stereotype.

The Exploitation Theory

The exploitation theory, as discussed by Schaefer, is a derivative of Marxist theory. It views

prejudice as a means to further the interests of social classes in their warfare with one another for social dominance. In this view, the dominant class benefits from racial prejudice by

creating an underclass of cheap wage laborers that is divided into factions that attempt toprocure the better-paying jobs for one group of laborers over another. For example, in mid-

nineteenth-century California, Caucasian workers hated Chinese workers and barred them

from eligibility in the American Federation of Labor. Here, prejudice was clearly a weapon

used by the Caucasian immigrant groups against the Chinese immigrants.

Clearly, not all prejudice is economically rooted, but careful historical evaluation reveals that

a great deal of it tends to be.

Discriminat ion

While prejudice is an attitude, discrimination is the actual denial of equal rights and

opportunities. A pattern of institutional discrimination can be discerned in any situation

where an identifiable group of individuals systematically experiences inferior social

outcomes in attaining such scarce goods as status, income, education, and political power.

Inst it ut ional Racism

Institutional racism refers to the whole body of laws, customs, and organizational practices

that systematically results in racial inequalities, regardless of how much racial prejudice is

involved.

In principle, institutional racism might exist in the total absence of personal racial prejudices;

in practice, however, discrimination and prejudice tend to be mutually reinforcing

phenomena. For instance, when U.S. Supreme Court justices exhibit personal prejudices,these prejudices tend to become objectified in federal case law. These case precedents

subsequently reinforce the same types of prejudice in the American public.

An example of institutional racism of this type may be found in the 1854 case The People v.

George W. Hall, a California State Supreme Court ruling disallowing persons of Chinese

ancestry from testifying against Caucasian defendants. As the chief justice of the court

explained it:

The anomalous spectacle of a distinct people [the Chinese], living in our community,recognizing no laws of this State, except through necessity, bringing with them their

prejudices and national feuds, in which they indulge in open violation of law; whose

mendacity is proverbial; a race of people whom nature has marked as inferior, and who are

incapable of progress or intellectual development beyond a certain point, as their history hasshown; differing in language, opinions, color, and physical conformation; between whom and

ourselves nature has placed an impassable difference, is now presented, and for them isclaimed, not only the right to swear away the life of a citizen [White person], but the further

privilege of participating with us in administering the affairs of our Government.



On the basis of this ruling, the people of Chinese ancestry who had witnessed George W. Hallmurder a Chinese person were not allowed to testify against Hall. The court ruling was based,

in part, on state laws already in place that prohibited Blacks,Mulattos, and Indians fromgiving testimony against Caucasian people. This is but one glaring example of the many

social policies that have discriminated against persons of color.

Examples of Inst it ut ional Racism

Among the many social customs that have helped to perpetuate racial inequality in Americaover the past hundred years are the following practices:

1. Routinely striking all racial minorities from jury panels whenever the defendant was a racial

minority (a practice formerly allowed under the attorney privilege of unrestricted use of

peremptory strikes)

2. Taking for granted that the educational attainments of Black Americans are substandard to

those of comparably educated White Americans

3. Requiring racial minorities to post more collateral than Whites in order to qualify for bank

loans or mortgages

4. Recruiting new employees for a business primarily through the social connections of thecurrent labor force (when this labor force is predominantly White, the job applicants are

predominantly White also)

5. Being less cooperative with racial minorities than with White clients in relaying information

about government programs that apply to them

In addition to normative custom serving as an instrument for perpetuating institutional racism,there is the law itself, whether it be at the federal, state, or city level of jurisdiction. Examples

of racially discriminatory laws include the following:

1. The Naturalization Act of 1790, which restricted naturalization rights to "free White persons

only" (the reign of this racist legislation did not completely end until 1952, when all racial

groups finally became eligible for naturalization rights)2. Dozens of miscegenation laws (at the state level), which prohibited racial intermarriage of

various types (these laws were all declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1967)

3. Ex ecutive Order 9066, which was issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and directed the

internment of 113,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast in 1942--no due process was

ever accorded to these Japanese Americans, and none were ever found guilty of any

disloyalty to the United States even though many were kept in internment camps for three

or more years

4. The Chinese Ex clusion Act (1882), which, solely on the basis of ancestry, terminated all

Chinese labor immigration to the United States

5. F ederal policy, which carried out the deportation of 458,089 Mexican Americans from 1929

to 1937 without any due process, under the presumption that these persons were "aliens"

who had "fallen into distress or public need" and that they had arrived in the United Stateswithin the past three years (while this presumption was false in many instances, the

discrimination is evident in that this federal policy was practiced against only one nationality

group--Mexicans)

Inst it ut ional Sexism

Another kind of institutional discrimination is institutional sexism, which refers to the body

of laws, customs, and organizational practices that systematically result in sexual inequalities,



regardless of how much prejudice is involved. For example, nineteenth-century SupremeCourt decisions proclaimed the legality of denying women the right to practice law. In the

words of Justice Joseph P. Bradley, "The paramount mission and destiny of women are tofulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator." This

judgment was made in 1872, and by 1900 only about one hundred women in the United

States had law degrees. As late as 1970, women made up only 2.8 percent of all attorneys in

the United States. It was not until 1984 that the U.S. Supreme Court made it illegal for lawfirms to deny female attorneys a chance of being considered for partnerships on the sole basis

of gender. As of 1984, female attorneys constituted only about 5 percent of the law partners

in U.S. law firms, while accounting for 30 percent of the law associates. (Since 1990 more

than 40 percent of law students in the United States have been women.)

Case law such as that affecting a woman's right to practice law amplified already-existing

statutory law. Both types of law have served as vehicles of discriminatory behavior, which in

turn has reinforced the American public's prejudices toward women. The composite result has

been a mutually reinforcing set of prejudices and discriminations that have helped to

consolidate sexism in America. Throughout this unit of study we will observe numerousinstances of the complementary nature of the social processes that reinforce prejudice and

discrimination working in a cyclic fashion.

Understanding Why Behavior Of t en Cont radict s Prejudices

TheMerton typology discussed in the Schaefer text identifies "timid bigots" as that class of persons whose behavior contradicts their strongly felt prejudices toward some minority group.

And while this label does correctly suggest one motive for such an inconsistency--that is, theperson fears the consequence of acting out his or her beliefs--numerous other influences

make such inconsistencies commonplace. Foremost among these would be the undesired

economic consequences that might follow from refusing to do business with a certain class of

client. Alternatively, social pressures originating from family, friends, church, or local

community might discourage discriminatory behavior. Such behavior might also violate city,state, or federal laws. And on top of all these considerations, people's behavior often

contradicts their prejudices because behavior is more individually specific, whereas prejudice

is more global and diffuse.

K ey Terms and Names

(Page references are to S chaefer; CSI indicates items discussed in the Comments and

Supplementary Information section.)

Amalgamation (25)

Assimilation (25)

Colonialism (21)

Emigration (20)

Ethnic group (9)



Fusion (25)

Genocide (22)

Marginality (31)

Melting pot (25)

Migration (20)

Minority group (5) (CSI)

Myth (CSI)

Pluralism (26)

Racial formation (15)

Racism (14)

Segregation (23)

Stratification (15)

Written Assignment 1

General Inst ruct ions

See the How to Do the Work of the Course section for instructions on how to submit your written assignment.

Your Assignment

1. How does the sociological definition of minority group differ from more popular definitions?

What are the basic properties of all minority groups?

2. Social scientists define race as a "mythic construction." How does that definition differ from

the biological or genetic definition of race?

3. Clarify the differences among the following terms: fusion, assi milation, segregation, and

pluralism.

4. Explain how it is that the three circumstances of migration, annexation, and colonization are

likely to result in the creation of subordinate group status. Illustrate how each circumstance

has relevance to the history of the United States after 1850.

5. Describe the factors that slow an ethnic group's rate of assimilation into mainstream society.

6. Evaluate the extent to which cultural pluralism is a reality in modern American society. Also

explain how the extent of pluralism in the U.S. has increased significantly since 1960.



Written Assignment 1

1. A minority group is often commonly depicted when something is being exceeded in

numbers, while on the sociological perspective a minority group is being interpreted

as when its members have extremely lesser grasp or authority over their own activities

in their daily lives in comparison to the members in the dominant or majority group.

All minority groups have five basic properties.

Firstly, the members of a minority group receive unfair treatment and also possess

little authority over their own lives in comparison to the people in the majority group

over theirs. Secondly, the members of the minority are often easily identified from the

dominant group based on their specific physical or cultural attributes. Thirdly, the

members of the minority group are in the group not because they want to be in it, they

are basically built-in into the group. Fourthly, the members of the minority group

have intense acquaintance of subordination. Last but not least, the members of the

minority group tend to marry people from the same minority group; the member of

the majority group is often reluctant to marry the member of the minority group as

they will then be joining an inferior group.



2. Social scientists define race as a ³mythic construction´, this is due to the fact that such

classifications such as difference in physical characteristics, geographic origin and

culture have been generated in people¶s minds for such a long time.

The above definition differs from the biological or genetic definition of race

3. The difference between the terms: fusion, assimilation, and pluralism can be

illustrated from an equation point of view as demonstrated by Schaefer in Chapter 1.

Fusion can be illustrated as, , where it means that the majority group

(A) and the minority groups (B and C) combine to form a new group (D) with a new

identity in terms of its cultural standpoint. This new group will only have the

outstanding element and traits of the various cultures contributing to it.

Assimilation is illustrated as, , where it means that the minority groups

(B and C) must learn the attributes of the dominant group (A) before it can be

welcomed or accepted as part of that dominant group. Thus, the minority groups must

abandon their own cultural belief and traditions in order to integrate into the culture of

the dominant group.

Pluralism is illustrated as, , where it means that the different

groups (A, B and C) treat each other with their outmost respect for one another¶s

culture, enabling them to practice their own culture without getting any judgements.

Therefore, it is seen that pluralist appreciates the value of anyone being able to

practise their own sets of culture and ethnics, but this is otherwise for the

assimilationist and integrationist.

On the other hand, segregation is the actual partitioning of the dominant group from

the minority group in almost anywhere in the society, this can take place for instance

at the workplace and housing.



4. Migration basically describes the transfer of any population and when people migrate

to a new country where everything else is very unfamiliar they often will find

themselves as a minority in that new country. Things such as their religions or culture

or even physical attributes will often set them apart from the dominant group in that

new country. Due to their reduced role in the new country, they acquire the

subordinate group status.

Annexation is resulted when nations combine a country or another territory within the

domain of a state. When this happens, the peoples who were once the dominant group

in their own country, became part of the minority group in the new country and thus

obtaining the subordinate group status. Often, the dominant group will inhibit the

practise of the culture and language of the minority group.

Colonization occurs when

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ethnic unit 1