Chapter 9

Discrimination

An action - unfair treatment directed against someone.

Authoritarian Personality

Highly prejudiced people have deep respect for authority and are submissive to authority figures. These people believe that things are either right or wrong.

Symbolic Interactionists

Stress how labels create selective perception and self-fulfilling prophecies.

Functionalists

Stress the benefits and costs that come from discrimination.

Split labor market

The division of workers along racial-ethnic and gender lines.

Forced Assimilation

The dominant group refuses to allow the minority group to practice its religion, to speak its language, or to follow its customs.

Dominant Group

The group that has the greater power and privilege.

Selective Perception

Lead us to see certain things while they blind us to others.

Emory Cowen (1959)

Led a team of psychologists and measured the prejudice of a group of students.

Conflict Theorists

Look at how the groups in power exploit racial-ethnic divisions in order to control workers and maintain power.

Racism

When the basis of discrimination is someone's perception of race.

A group becomes a minority in one of two ways.

1.) Through the expansion of political boundaries 2.) Migration

Race

A group of people with inherited physical characteristics that distinguish it from another group.

Prejudice

A prejudging of some sort, usually in a negative way.

Indirect Transfer

Achieved by making life so miserable for members of a minority that they leave "voluntarily".

Discrimination can be based on many characteristics:

Age, Sex, Height, Weight, Skin Color, Clothing, Speech, Income, Education, Marital Status, Sexual Orientation, Disease, Disability, Religion, and Politics.

Permissible Assimilation

Allows the minority group to adopt the dominant group's patterns in its own way and its own speed.

Reserve labor force

Another term for the unemployed.

Three major racial categories

Caucasians - White Mongoloids - Yellow Negroids - Black

Internal Colonialism

Conflict theorist's use this term to describe how a country's dominant group exploits minority groups for its economic advantage.

Positive Prejudice

Exaggerates the virtues of a group, as when people think that some group is superior to others.

Two types of Assimilation:

Forced Assimilation and Permissible Assimilation.

Two types of Population Transfer:

Indirect and Direct.

Minority Group is not necessarily...?

Minority group is not necessarily the numerical minority.

Institutional Discrimination

Negative treatment that is built into social institutions.

Direct Transfer

Occurs when a dominant group expels a minority.

Minority Group

People who are singled out for unequal treatment and who regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination.

Multiculturalism (Pluralism)

Permits or even encourages racial-ethnic variation.

Discrimination is often the result of an attitude called...?

Prejudice

John Dollard (1939)

Psychologist that suggested prejudice is the result of frustration.

Eugene Hartley (1946)

Psychologist who asked people how they felt about several racial-ethnic groups. Hartley's study shows that prejudice does not depend on negative experiences with others. It also reveals that are prejudiced against one racial or ethnic group also tend to be prejudiced against other groups.

People often confuse the terms...?

Race and Ethnic Group.

Scapegoat

Something people often unfairly blame their troubles on. Often a racial-ethnic or religious minority.

Ethnicity and Ethnic

Refer to cultural characteristics.

Raphael Ezekiel

Sociologist who conducted studies on groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazi's.

Louis Wirth (1945)

Sociologist who defined a Minority Group.

Genocide

The attempt to destroy a group of people because of their presumed race or ethnicity.

Individual Discrimination

The negative treatment of one person by another.

Assimilation

The process by which a minority group is absorbed into the mainstream culture.

Segregation

The separation of racial or ethnic groups.

Ethnic Work

The way we construct our ethnicity.

Compartmentalize

To separate acts of cruelty from their sense of being good and decent people.

True or False: Most Prejudice is negative

True, Most prejudice is negative and involves prejudging a group as inferior.

True or False: Prejudice and frustration are often related.

True.