Soc 1 Chapter 8 Race and Ethnicity

minority group

A group one is born into, which has a distinguishable identity and whose members have less power and access to resources than other groups in society because of that group membership.

Understand what it means (and does not mean) to refer to prejudices as a "self-fulfilling prophecy."

As we've seen, prejudice is a set of ideas, assumptions that we have about other groups. Is there any way to reduce prejudice? Some social scientists in the 1950s believed that prejudice could be changed by exposure to members of minority group During the 1960s and 1970s, a huge amount of time and money was invested in busing students from segregated schools, not only to equalize instruction, but to introduce black and white students to each other. It didn't work. Contact alone does not diminish prejudice. People who have never met even one member of another particular group may not be prejudiced, while people who are surrounded by members of the minority group may still be prejudiced. Social psychologist Mark Snyder (1987) found that even awareness of prejudice and desire to change were insufficient. You can realize that prejudice is wrong, and you can try to stop, but you might still believe stereotypes. They are beyond the reach of reason and goodwill. One of the problems in combating prejudice is that it is not merely a matter of individual perceptions. Gordon Allport (1954) called prejudice "a self-fulfilling prophecy." We see what we expect to see and don't see what we don't expect to see. Thus, what we see "fulfills" our expectations, and the stereotypes are confirmed. John Ogbu, wondered why middle-class African American students in affluent Shaker Heights, Ohio, got lower grades than their white classmates (an average of C instead of B). Usually such disparities are explained by economic and social inequalities, but in this case, both groups of students were attending well-funded middle-class schools.He concluded that the black students were afraid of being labeled as "acting white" if they studied too hard or got good grades.More recent research in inner-city schools suggests an even more compelling picture. It turns out that black girls who do well in school are indeed accused of "acting white," but black boys who do well are accused of "acting like girls".For these boys, being seen as a girl is even worse than being seen as white. However, there is hope. People can and do decrease their prejudice. Mere contact is not enough, but when people of different groups must work together toward a common goal most measures of prejudice decrease. Other important factors are strong role models that contradict the stereotypes and a decrease in institutional forms of discrimination that make inequality seem normal and natural. Still, it is important to recognize that decreasing prejudice is not the same as decreasing institutional racism. The latter is much more challenging to dismantle given the vested interests among those privileged to maintain the status quo.

Sentencing discrimination

Black defendants receive harsher sentences from judges and juries, on average, when compared with white defendants on trial for the same crimes (even when we account for prior offenses and other issues that affect both conviction rates and other decisions regarding sentencing). Sometimes discrimination is the result of conscious bigotry, but sociologists are equally interested in institutionalized forms of discrimination that do not necessitate deliberate acts on the part of individuals actively acting on various prejudices they harbor.

who is "white" and who isn't? Even historically?

But, who qualifies as "white" in the first place has historically depended on much more than skin color alone. It has a history and is the result of social positioning. During the nineteenth century, ethnologists, anthropologists, and sociologists traveled around the world, dividing people into "races" and ordering them from the most to least intelligent, moral, interesting, and evolved. Initially, they "found" hundreds of races and divided them into ten broad categories. Teutonic people (from England, Germany, and Scandinavia) were defined as white, but people from other parts of Europe were not. The U.S. Census used to separate them on surveys and forms. Magazine illustrations, popular songs, and sociology textbooks characterized these "others" as savage, lazy, sexually promiscuous, born criminals, and responsible for the "social disintegration" of the slums. They were denied jobs and places to live. In the South, many were lynched along with blacks. The furor of racial classification in the late nineteenth century and the "discovery" that Europe had inferior and superior races was directly related to a fear of immigration. Both Irish immigrants and black men were seen as "ape-like" Before 1880, most European immigrants were German, French, English, or Scots-Irish. They were mostly middle class and Protestant, and they settled in small towns, where they assimilated quickly into the middle-class, Protestant population. But between 1880 and 1920, 23 million immigrants came to the United States, too fast to disperse and assimilate. Instead, they piled up in cities; in 1900, immigrants and their children made up more than 70 percent of populations of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. They were primarily working-class and poor, they spoke Italian, Polish, or Yiddish, and they were more often Catholic or Jewish The U.S.-born English-German, Protestant, small-town elite feared these new "primitive" groups; they were outnumbering them coming over in flocks. Because the immigrants tended to have larger families than the native elites, President Theodore Roosevelt raised the alarm of "race suicide" and urged Anglo-Saxon women to have more children, just as poor and immigrant families were advised to limit the number of children they had. Gradually the Irish, the Italians, the European Jews, and other European ethnic groups became categorized as "white." The 1940 census distinguished only native white and immigrant white. How did that happen? Historian Noel Ignatiev (1995) maintains that the Irish deliberately positioned themselves in opposition to blacks, visibly participating in the massive anti-black violence in the northeastern United States in the 1840s, to posture for a place at the table of "whiteness."

Racial wealth gap

Gap in wealth—based on total financial assets including home equity—between blacks and whites. Because whites make more than blacks, are more likely to be in the professions, and more likely to own their own homes, the gap between them has continued to widen. The racial wealth gap between white Americans and black and Hispanic Americans has remained consistently wide over the last three to four decades. As of 2013, the median net worth of white family households was almost 10 times higher than Hispanic family households and more than 12 times higher than black family households. example of institutional racism

Stereotypes

Generalization about a group that is oversimplified and exaggerated and that fails to acknowledge individual differences in the group. ex. One occasionally hears that blacks are more "naturally" gifted basketball players but that white players are "smarter" or "have a better work ethic."

People from Sub-Saharan Africa

In the most recent Census, 13.2 percent of the U.S. population was identified as black or African American, with ancestry in sub-Saharan Africa. The two terms are often used interchangeably, but technically black is a race that includes Andaman Islanders, Australian aboriginals, and other people with ancestry from outside sub-Saharan Africa and does not apply to the white, Asian, and Khoisan residents of Zimbabwe or Zaire. African American is an ethnicity, referring to the descendants of black Africans who came to North America as slaves between 1500 and 1820 and who, after slavery, were subject to "Jim Crow" laws that kept blacks and whites separate and unequal. They therefore share a history and cultural traditions. African Americans are the only group to immigrate to the United States against their will, as they were forcibly abducted to serve as slaves in the South and in the Caribbean. To reinforce that common cultural tradition, some have celebrated June 19, called "Juneteenth," the day that word of the Emancipation Proclamation reached the slaves of the South; others have invented new holidays, like Kwanzaa. Some have fashioned a distinctive dialect of English, sometimes referred to as "Ebonics," with some terms and grammatical structures borrowed from West African languages. The creation of new, and distinctly African American, names is also an invented way to "preserve" traditions. Historically, slaves were named by their masters and likely to bear Anglo names like "Sally" and "Bill"; the power to name your child a more African-sounding name, like, say, "Shaniqua" or "Kadeem," illustrates the power to control the fate of that child. Thus, in the process, they transformed race into ethnicity in its own right. it also perpetuates social inequality as "black-sounding" names on resumes have been shown to produce fewer job opportunities. It's an underappreciated and sometimes less visible form of racial discrimination. The African American population is expected to experience modest growth by 2050, growing from 40.2 million to 61.4 million. There is a sizable black middle class, with educational background and earnings comparable to those of middle-class whites. Overall, however, African Americans lag behind white non-Hispanic Americans in high school graduation rate by 15 percentage points and college graduation rate by 24 percentage points Black men's median earnings are 73 percent of what white men earn (women are roughly equal), while 27.4 percent of black people and 9.9 percent of white people are below poverty level;young black men are eight times more likely to be murdered than are white men, and black women three times as likely as white women.

overt racism

Systematic prejudice applied to members of a group in clear, manifest ways, such as speech, discrimination, or a refusal to associate with members of that group.

subtle racism

Systematic prejudice applied to members of a group in quiet or even unconscious ways; a simple set of mental categories that one may possess about a group based on stereotypes.

Multiculturalism

The doctrine that several different cultures (rather than one national culture) can coexist peacefully and equitably in a single country.

The Bradley Effect

The phenomenon of white people saying the right thing publicly but still acting in discriminatory ways privately has a name.

Pluralist perspective

This perspective argues that assimilation is not inevitable and that ethnic identities are not necessarily abandoned as ethnic groups become less isolated. For instance, some sociologists highlighted the fact that many ethnic groups continue to marry others of their ethnic background even after they are many generations removed from immigrating. They also continue to self-identify among their ethnic groups on many surveys

hate groups

Groups with beliefs or practices that attack or malign a class of people often due to immutable characteristics associated with the group (like sexual orientation, skin color, ancestry, gender identity). ex. KKK

Interracial relationships

Once labeled "miscegenation", and punishable by prison sentences a relationship between people of different racial categories. thought to be a threat of the social fabric

Stereotype promise

Term coined by Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou to address the "promise" of being viewed through the lens of a positive stereotype that leads one to perform in ways that confirms the positive stereotype (the counterpart to "stereotype threat").

People from East and South Asia

About 4.6 percent of the U.S. population traces its ancestry to East, Southeast, or South Asia. These groups include China (22%), the Philippines (15%), India (15%), Korea (10%), Vietnam (10%), and Japan (9%). Harsh quotas limited immigration before the 1960s, so most are recent immigrants. They differ tremendously in language, religion, and culture, and often they have long-standing ethnic and national conflicts back home (Korea versus Japan, China versus Vietnam, and so on) that make the umbrella term Asian American problematic. Even within a nationality, there are many ethnic differences. People from China may speak Mandarin, Cantonese, or any of a dozen other varieties of Chinese or a hundred local languages. People from India may be Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, or atheist. People from Mindanao, the largest and most industrialized island of the Philippines, may look down on people from other islands as uncouth and uncivilized. The Asian American population is expected to increase 115 percent by 2050, rising from 14.7 million to 34.3 million, primarily due to immigration Asian Americans are often depicted as "the model minority." Many measures of discrimination are significant only for blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans (like school achievement, college enrollments, prison populations); Asian Americans score the same as Whites or surpass them. They have the highest college graduation rate of any ethnic group. hough Asian Americans are just less than 6 percent of the labor force, they comprise 21 percent of all U.S. physicians and surgeons, 32 percent of all software developers, and are the most likely group to have graduated from college. They are less likely to become victims of racially motivated hate crimes than any ethnic group except whites. Prejudiced ideas about Asian Americans stereotype them as weak, passive, and asexual. In the mass media, they commonly appear not as thugs and drug dealers but as mystical sages and science nerds—stereotypes that are equally unfair but not nearly as threatening. Sociologically speaking, the success of Asian Americans, though, is attributed to their incredible work ethic, discipline, and parental influence in addition to several economic niches Asian Americans have come to dominate in the United States (like nail salons and dry cleaning businesses) which has helped solidify their community and shape the assimilation experiences of subsequent waves of immigration. Scholars wondering about the "success" of the Asian American population have come up with several explanations. First, most Asian immigrants belonged to the middle class in their home country, so they find it easier to enter the middle class in the United States. In fact, those who were from lower classes did not do especially well at all—class trumps ethnicity (Zhou 2007). They are more likely to be fluent in English. Because there are relatively few of them, they are unlikely to live in segregated neighborhoods and much more likely to marry someone of another racial/ethnic group (Tran and Birman 2010). Finally, if prejudice boils down to light versus dark, they may profit by being, on average, relatively light skinned.

People from the Middle East

The U.S. Census does not give them a separate category, but about 2 million people in the United States trace their ancestry to the Middle East or North Africa. Presently, the Census is considering including "Middle Eastern and North African (MENA)" as an ethnic group in the 2020 Census. About 1.5 million are recent immigrants who have arrived since 1970. About one-third of these are Iranian, one-third Turkish, and the other one-third are Arabs, Israelis, Cypriots, and others. There have been two broad migrations of Middle Easterners to the United States: Between 1880 and 1920, refugees came here from the failing Ottoman Empire, especially Lebanon, Cyprus, Syria, and Armenia. They were mostly working class and poor, about 75 percent Christian and the rest Muslim or Jewish. They settled primarily in the industrial Northeast and Midwest. After 1970, many middle-class Israelis, Arabs, and Iranians immigrated to the United States. Of those, 73 percent were Muslim. They settled primarily in large cities, especially Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, and Washington, DC. Members of the first wave of immigration were assimilationists; like most other immigrants of the period, they hid or minimized their Middle Eastern ancestry and sought to fit in. During the past 50 years, there has been an increase in efforts to retain separate, distinct, identities as Middle Eastern. Like Asian Americans, Middle Eastern Americans tend to be a "model minority." They are the most well-educated ethnic group in the United States: Almost half have college degrees, as opposed to 30 percent of white non-Middle Easterners. The median salary of Middle Eastern men is slightly higher than the national mean. However, it is also unfair to depict them as a single group as 30 percent live below the poverty level Stereotypes about Middle Easterners tend to be more extreme, and more commonly believed, than stereotypes about other minority groups. The men are stereotyped as wide-eyed terrorists; the women as subservient chattel. Especially after 9/11 attacks Even the hero of Disney's Aladdin (1993), who was an Arab but evidently not "as Arab" as everyone else, complains of the barbarity of his country: "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face, it's pathetic, but hey, it's home." 38 percent of respondents would not vote for a well-qualified Muslim for president(a higher percentage than for any minority except gays) and half believed that half or more of all Muslims are anti-American Eighty percent of Muslims in the United Kingdom said they had experienced discrimination in 2001, a jump from 45 percent in 2000 and 35 percent in 1999; hostility increased in Spain and Germany after the Madrid train bombing and in the Netherlands after the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, both in 2004. In 2010, a case study of "Islamophobia" in the city of London found the continuing problem of hate crimes against Muslims is being fueled by mainstream politicians and some sections of the media which are circulating the belief that Muslims are a security threat to the country

What he discovered is that white people rely on a small collection of strategies when discussing race and racism that downplay the enduring role that race plays in structuring social life—what Bonilla-Silva refers to as the "central frames of color-blind racism."

Abstract Liberalism—This tactic involves relying on ideals associated with political and economic liberalism (like "equal opportunity," choice, and individualism) in an abstract manner when discussing issues related to race relations. So, whites might employ this tactic when discussing affirmative action if they said things like, "I'm opposed to affirmative action because I'm all for equal opportunity; and that's not fair." It's sounds race-blind. But this only makes sense if we ignore centuries of racism. Similarly, whites often employ ideals like "individualism" and "choice" when talking about segregated neighborhoods and schools. When disconnected from racial realities in the United States, these ideals sound reasonable and as having little to do with race at all. Naturalization—This strategy is relied on by whites to rationalize racial issues by proposing that they are the result of natural differences or natural inclinations of people. So, racial segregation (whether between neighborhoods, in workplaces, or even in school cafeterias) can be justified within this framework by explaining that people "naturally gravitate toward people like themselves." This strategy allows whites to avoid discussing racial inequality by simply suggesting (using different language) that different racial and ethnic groups naturally (perhaps even biologically) tend to have different qualities and prefer to be around one another rather than in mixed-race settings. Cultural Racism—This tactic is similar to "naturalization," but rather than putting the emphasis on nature to explain racial differences, the focus is on culture. Similarly, cultural racism is relied on to suggest that there are natural differences between groups (just that they reside in culture rather than nature). White people are relying on this strategy when they explain, for instance, racial gaps in education by saying something like, "Mexicans just don't value education as much" or when they talk about racial differences in family formation practices by suggesting, "Black people just have too many babies too early." Minimization—This final strategy refers to the ways that white people suggest that race is no longer the most important factor in determining racial minorities' lives and life chances. Bonilla-Silva discovered that it was common for white people to minimize racial inequality by suggesting things like "Well, it's better now than it used to be" or "There are some racists left; but most people aren't racist anymore." This tactic enables white people to accept extreme examples of contemporary racial inequality while simultaneously suggesting that racial minorities are being "too sensitive," or "using race as an excuse."

Understand the history of movements for racial equality in the United States and their continued significance today.

For many years, in the United States and around the world, racial prejudice and institutionalized forms of racial inequality and discrimination went hand in hand. Beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, these barriers began to fall—but not without significant struggle. In 1948, President Harry Truman lifted segregation in the military (today the U.S. military is perhaps the most integrated institution in the country). In 1954, in the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the U.S. Supreme Court ended centuries of legal segregation in education. The next year, a black woman, Rosa Parks, refused to give up her seat in a crowded bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in violation of segregation laws on public transportation. After she was arrested, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King led a yearlong boycott of the Montgomery bus system, catapulting him to the national stage as the leader of the Civil Rights movement. In 1957, in Greensboro, North Carolina, the "Greensboro Four" attempted to integrate a racially segregated lunch counter at Woolworths. These events heralded a decade-long struggle that culminated first in the successful passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, and successive campaigns for equality in all arenas of U.S. life that continue to this day. Notable events—such as the Voting Rights Act (1965) and the March on Washington (1963)—were accompanied by dramatic, and often vicious opposition by Southern police and elected officials. Partly due to its success, and partly because of how long success seemed to take, the Civil Rights Movement splintered into groups following more militant leaders like Malcolm X (assassinated in 1965) and the Black Panther Party (founded in 1968), both of which argued for direct insurrection against an irredeemably racist government. Even today, the legacy of those movements remains in the black community—in the black church, where so many of the Civil Rights leaders began their careers, and in popular culture, where films like Do the Right Thing (1989) and political rap like Public Enemy (in the 1980s) or perhaps Kendrick Lamar more recently (both of whom urge listeners to "fight the power"). a hoodie in reference to the exoneration of a man in a neighborhood watch who killed an unarmed 17-year-old black boy (Trayvon Martin) in Sanford, Florida, who happened to be wearing a hoodie while walking home at night. After Martin's killer was not sentenced, pleading self-defense, the hoodie became the symbol of an international social movement about racial inequality. The movement has since taken on the slogan "Black Lives Matter" in reference to the disproportionate deaths of black people at the hands of (often white) state authorities. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, groups of Chicano activists, Asian American activists, and Native American activists began to challenge all racial and ethnic forms of discrimination.

racialization or ethnicization

Twin processes of ascribing either racial or ethnic qualities to groups who did not identify themselves as such. Hate crimes were even committed against groups perceived to be either Muslim or Middle Eastern.

Can you be prejudice without discriminating and discriminate without being prejudice?

Prejudice and discrimination are not always causally connected. I can be prejudiced but not discriminate—if, for example, none of my friends is discriminating and I don't want to appear different or do something socially unacceptable. Or I can also discriminate without being prejudiced—if all of my friends are discriminating, and I believe that it is "the thing to do" or participate just to go along with what others are doing. Sociological research has shown that many of the perpetrators of hate crimes are no more prejudiced than those who do not commit hate crimes: They are just "going along for the ride"

Summarize the similarities and differences between race and ethnicity.

"Race" was initially used to mean something more similar to the ways we might use the term culture today (e.g., the German "race"). Today, race has different meanings. But some of the meanings that were once associated with race are today associated with our understanding of "ethnicity." Ethnicity is something much more fluid in nature—meaning people both classify themselves and are classified by others as a race, but are more likely to "opt in" to various ethnic identities. This means that, in general, ethnicity has a more fluid quality than does race; people's racial identities are more stable over time than are ethnic identities. Race and ethnicity are related, but the concepts are distinct. In fact, we sometimes use the terms interchangeably, like our penchant to use the terms black (a racial category) and African American (an ethnic category) as though they mean the same thing. This mix-up occurs because black and African American, as identities, have some overlap—including the perception of shared physiological characteristics like skin color (race) alongside the perception of a common cultural identification (ethnicity). ex. Filipino Americans are "breaking the rules of race." And they are doing so in patterned ways as they search for racial identities in the United States that feel "right" to them. respondents felt they had more in common with Latinos in the United States than they did with "Asian Americans" as a group.

life chances

A person's abilities to have access to material goods (food and shelter) and social resources (health care, education) that together control the quality of life.

assimilation

A process of decline in cultural distinctions between immigrants and mainstream society.

Assimilation

A process of decline in cultural distinctions between immigrants and mainstream society. Simply put, assimilation refers to how important an ethnic group feels it is to maintain their ethnic identity.

For a race or ethnic group to be classified as a minority group, it needs to have four characteristics:

1. Differential power. There must be significant differences in access to economic, social, and political resources. Group members may hold fewer professional jobs and have a higher poverty rate, a lower household income, greater incidence of disease, or a lower life expectancy, all factors that point to lifelong patterns of discrimination and social inequality. 2. Identifiability. Minority group members share (or are assumed to share) physical or cultural traits that distinguish them from the dominant group. 3. Ascribed status. Membership is non-voluntary—it is something you are born with. Affiliation in many ethnic groups is a matter of choice—you can decide how much of your French heritage, if any, you want to embrace—but you can't wake up one morning and decide to be Japanese. 4. Solidarity and group awareness. There must be awareness of membership in a definable category of people, so that there are clearly defined "us" and "them." The minority becomes an in-group (Sumner [1906] 2002), and its members tend to distrust or dislike members of the dominant out-group. When a group is the object of long-term prejudice and discrimination, feelings of "us versus them" can become intense.

The history of contact between European immigrants and Native Americans left many tribes destroyed, decimated, or displaced onto "reservations" (which were ironically conceived of initially as places to "protect" the Native Americans from further harm by whites who were stealing their land). As a result, today, Native Americans are worse off than other minorities in many measures of institutional discrimination and racism:

A 65 percent high school graduation rate and 9 percent college attendance rate, far below the national average A poverty rate of 32.2 percent, higher than any other ethnic group The highest rate of suicide in the 18- to 24-year-old age group of any racial or ethnic group in the United States A lower percentage of "current drinkers" than whites and Hispanics, yet a higher rate of alcoholism A lower life expectancy than the nation as a whole Reservation life has grown difficult, and funds are scarce for needed services. Many Native American cultures have taken advantage of tax and legal opportunities to open casinos (because reservations are not legally restricted from gambling) as a way to raise money since federal and state funds have all but dried up. This presents Native tribes with a cynical "choice": Either open a casino and feed the nation's gambling addiction or fail to provide needed services for their people.

ethnic group

A group that is set apart from other groups by language and cultural traditions. Ethnic groups share a common ancestry, history, or culture.

majority groups

A group whose members experience privilege and access to power because of their group membership. With regard to race, lighter-colored skin usually means membership in the majority group.

minorities vs. majorities

A racial or ethnic minority group is not defined strictly in terms of its numerical proportion of the population. In fact, there are more "minorities" in many places in the United States than the "majority" population. Blacks constitute 71 percent of the population of Allendale County, South Carolina, and 0.3 percent of the population of Blaine County, Montana, but no one would say they are a minority group in only one of those places. And not all groups that are few in numbers are necessarily minorities There are only 2.8 million people of Swedish ethnicity in the United States (a relatively small number); but according to the most recent Census, 27 percent have graduated from college, 33 percent are in managerial/professional jobs, and their median household income is $42,500, all higher than the national average. Clearly, they are not subjected to significant amounts of discrimination. So, discussing who qualifies as a racial or ethnic "minority" is about more than just numbers. Minority groups and majority groups are often constructed in the United States through skin color: dark people versus light people, people "of color" versus people who are "white." Implicit Association Test:students were given word association tests, and all of them, regardless of their own race, tended to associate "white" with purity, goodness, and happiness, and "black" with corruption, evil, and sadness. Within racial groups, people who are lighter are privileged over people who are darker Whiteness becomes the standard, the "norm," against which everyone else is measured (like being a man, being heterosexual, or being able-bodied). It's not uncommon for advertisers to offer several versions of a product—the standard, unmarked version, and the "African-American" version or the "Latino" version.

Discrimination

A set of actions based on prejudice and stereotypes. a pattern of interactions, a set of behaviors, by which one denies some rewards to some groups based on prejudice.

Prejudice

A set of beliefs and attitudes that cause us to negatively prejudge people based on their social location. Often based on stereotypes "a pattern of hostility in interpersonal relations which is directed against an entire group, or against its individual members; it fulfills a specific irrational function for its bearer" ex. For example, you may decide not to sell your car to an Asian American because you believe they are bad drivers, or you may decline to rent an apartment from a Hispanic owner because you believe the building would be sloppily maintained.

racial formations

A theory that understands race and ethnicity as socially constructed identities. This means that both the content and importance of racial and ethnic categories are determined by the societies in which they exist. This means that both the content and importance of racial and ethnic categories are determined by the societies in which they exist. Omi understands race as a "project" (racial formation) The theory of racial formations views race and ethnicity as "projects" and understands race and ethnicity as socially constructed identities, meaning that both the content and importance of racial and ethnic categories are determined by the societies in which they exist.

Herrnstein and Murray Study (The Bell Curve)

African Americans, on average, scored significantly lower than white Americans on standard intelligence tests. Scientists have known about racial differences on intelligence tests for many years and explain that they are due to cultural bias in the testing instrument or social inequality during the crucial period of primary socialization, rather than to inherent racial differences in the way brains actually process information. But Herrnstein and Murray argue that intelligence is 40-80% inherited, based on genetics. And they claimed to have proven that white Americans are inherently, indeed genetically smarter than black Americans. Among other failings, Herrnstein and Murray failed to account for the impact of institutional racism—the structures of discrimination that have nothing to do with individual abilities. Social structures set "the rule of the game" whereby individual differences come to matter. If you have high intelligence but no access to the elite education necessary for social prestige, you might learn the skills of drug dealing or adapt to the new situation of a federal penitentiary rather than going for a Berkeley PhD. On the other hand, if you have low intelligence but the right social connections, you just might inherit the family fortune.

Racial ethnicity

An ethnic group believed to also have common psychological characteristics. This is why it is common to see sociologists capitalize terms like "White" and "Black"—it's a shorthand way of indicating that we are talking about racial ethnicities rather than only skin color

Racism

An ideology that holds that inequality based on race is justified because of assumed natural differences between races.

Explain the difference between "multiculturalism" as an ideal and as realized in a society with rich cultural diversity.

At its most stable, pluralism becomes multiculturalism, in which cultural groups exist not only side by side, but equally. Real multiculturalism seems to be rare—one language, religion, or culture will usually dominate, either by numbers or by status, and people will be drawn to it, even in the absence of institutional discrimination Advocates of multiculturalism like to point out the case of Switzerland, where four linguistic and cultural groups enjoy complete equality under the law. But are they really equal in everyday life? As of 2016, nearly two-thirds (64%) of the population speaks German, 23 percent French, 8 percent Italian, and less than 1 percent Romansch (descended from Latin). Street signs are usually in the local language and German. In Parliament, speeches may be given in any of the national languages, but most politicians choose German, even if they speak something else at home. All schoolchildren must learn a second national language, but schools usually offer only German and French, so learning Italian or Romansch (at least in school) is not an option. Some people outside the German-speaking cantons often pretend that they do not understand German at all, as a way of resisting what they feel is linguistic imperialism by the "dominant" linguistic group. Clearly, the other languages do not enjoy the same prestige. Today's immigrants learn English faster than previous generations. Perhaps it's because those earlier generations were able to live in ethnically and linguistically contained neighborhoods (ethnic enclaves), reading only their own newspapers, shopping at stores owned by members of their ethnic group. Today, by contrast, just about everyone in the same neighborhood, regardless of ethnicity, shops at the same bodegas, buys vegetables from the same Korean green grocers, and drops their laundry off at the Chinese laundry. So English is the lingua franca, right? But this has effects on native-born Americans as well. But, is it fair to call the United States "multicultural" just because we have a great deal of cultural diversity? Is race, alone, still the defining feature of U.S. social life? Some sociologists, using a more intersectional approach, have tracked two linked phenomena: the rise of a new black middle class (increasing numbers of black professionals, who live in affluent areas and wield significant disposable income) and the development of a permanent black underclass, of chronically unemployed or underemployed poor people in the nation's ghettos.In both these cases, sociologists following William Julius Wilson (1978, 1987, 2009), argue that class is a more important predictor than race of your "life chances" (the sort of life, job, education, marriage, and health you are likely to have). In other words, race used to be the single most important force in our lives, but now that some blacks have become middle class, and others remain mired in a permanent underclass, class has become the more salient feature in our lives. Because the urban poor are so often people of color, we "see" race more readily than class, but Wilson argues that class actually exerts more social influence over our lives. Race is often a shorthand for class, yes, but it also exerts an independent effect on one's life chances. Even black professionals face discrimination and archaic stereotypic attitudes.

Are we a melting pot?

Beyond this, although the United States is often discussed as a "melting pot" where people with different ethnicities can come and all become assimilated into a single, common, uniquely U.S. identity, this has always been untrue (on incomplete, at the very least). For example, were we truly assimilated, you would not expect to see the degree of ethnic segregation that we witness in the United States. And, although some groups remain largely separate and are able to excel and achieve status and success (as some people from South and East Asia have), their assimilation can best be described as "incomplete."

Explain the changing trends in intermarriage and multiracial identities in recent U.S. history.

Children of mixed-race unions were called half-breeds or "mulattos" (black-white) or "mestizos" (white-Indian) and considered morally and intellectually inferior to members of both races. Although interracial relationships have become increasingly common, not all configurations are equally common. For instance, in 2010, roughly 7 percent of married couple households in the United States included spouses of different races.And interracial couples are not equally distributed around the United States—regionally, interracial couples are most common in the west and by state, Hawaii (37%), Oklahoma (17%), and Alaska (17%), have the highest proportions of interracial couples. Interracial marriage rates also vary by racial group. For instance, white men's and women's rates of intermarriage for newlyweds in 2013 were the same (7% for both). But more black men (25%) than black women (12%) who married in 2013 married someone of another race while fewer Asian men (16%) than Asian women (37%) married outside their race. The two numerically smallest racial groups (American Indian and Alaska Native & Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander) had a large proportion of their racial groups identify as multiracial. Of everyone in the United States claiming Native Hawaiian or a Pacific Islander racial identity, 55.9 percent of them also claimed another racial identity. As multiracial identities become more common, how people make sense of them and what kinds of social outcomes are associated with each will be the source of more and new scholarship on the subject. Perhaps biracial will become a new ethnicity. It was not possible to identify as multiracial on the U.S. Census until the year 2000.

Symbolic identity

Discrimination has largely disappeared and ethnic identity has become mostly a choice to be asserted in times and situations when it will increase their prestige and downplayed or ignored when it may decrease their prestige. Ethnicity is fluid; but it is not equally fluid for everyone. Sometimes ethnic identification is stronger than at other times. For some groups for whom discrimination has largely disappeared, such as the Irish and the Italians, ethnic identity has become mostly a choice (Waters 1990)—or what sociologist Herbert Gans referred to as symbolic ethnicity. Ethnicity becomes "situational"—to be asserted in times and situations when it will increase their prestige and downplayed or ignored when it may decrease their prestige. Or it becomes symbolic ethnicity, something to participate in on special occasions, like St. Patrick's Day or Passover, but ignored the rest of the time. More marginalized groups are often presented with less choice when if comes to ethnicity—or what Mary Waters (1990) refers to as "ethnic options." Research by sociologists has shown that although immigration has increased since the 1990s, the crime rate has decreased. Immigrants, as a group, are less likely to commit crimes than are native-born Americans.

People from North America

Early European settlers usually approached the Native Americans through stereotypes: They were either "noble savages," living without sin in a sort of Garden of Eden or they were "wild savages," uncivilized and bestial. They were systematically deprived of their land and herded onto reservations, if not hunted and killed outright. William Henry Harrison and Andrew Jackson were both elected to the presidency primarily on their prestige as "Indian fighters." Political slogans and illustrations of the day showed them as noble, heroic white men "saving" the United States from the savage Indian threat. This threat was contrived as the excuse to appropriate Native American land and natural resources and especially to clear a path for the transcontinental railroad. Native Americans have long been used as mascots for sports teams. Roughly half of all high school, college, and professional teams that used Native American mascots in 1960 have changed their mascots. Despite claims that these mascots are signs of "respect" for the tenacity and ferocity of the Native American tribes—tribes on whose appropriated land the colleges and universities may actually have been built—most Native Americans feel such mascots are insulting and perpetuate racist stereotypes.The Native American association made a baseball T-shirt against this mascot stuff and it says "Caucasians" playing on the name of the team "Indians" and then puts a white man with a money symbol. "One's reliance on stereotypes appears to be heightened with increased exposure to stereotypes, regardless of whom the stereotypes are portraying," the authors conclude. In other words, exposure to some ethnic stereotypes may lead to greater acceptance of stereotypes of other ethnic groups as well. (did experiments with Asian Americans)

iSoc of Race and ethnicity

IDENTITY: showed how social, economic, and political forces helped to shape the categories of identities themselves as well as their salience in the societies in which they are constructed in the first place. INEQUALITY: Racial and ethnic inequality shape your experience in school, where you attend school, the opportunities and constraints you will confront while there. They shape your interactions with others, where you are likely to live, as well as how long you are likely to live. They shape how much education you will likely receive, what kind of job you might eventually acquire, your experiences in the workplace, and more. Racial and ethnic inequality are issues that affect groups of individuals in patterned ways. INTERACTIONS:This means that sociologists are equally interested in how race and ethnicity are produced in interactions—race and ethnicity as not only properties of self, but performances of self as well. Thus, we are "doing" race and ethnicity throughout our lives. And sociologists are not only interested in examining race and ethnicity as something accomplished in interactions. INSTITUTIONS: Sociologists studying racial and ethnic inequality are interested in how the experiences of different racial and ethnic groups are powerfully shaped by their interactions with large-scale social institutions, like education, the workplace, the State, and more. This way of understanding racial and ethnic inequality frames them as "systemic," in that they do not always require conscious bias or evil people to be perpetuated. INTERSECTIONS: Categories like age, gender, sexuality, class, nationality, citizenship status, and more all interact with race and ethnicity in ways that differently shape our experiences of these identities as well as any outcomes we experience associated with them.

Affirmative Action drama

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson asked employers to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated ... without regard to their race, color, creed, or national origin." He established the Equal Opportunity Commission, which administers many affirmative action programs to ensure that minorities get fair treatment in employment applications. Affirmative action programs are controversial. Opponents complain that minority applicants are "stealing jobs" from more qualified white applicants, a form of what some refer to as "reverse discrimination." But this rhetoric relies on an incomplete understanding of why affirmative action programs exist in the first place. Many white people are unaware of just how much history has advantaged them, and what it really means today. Some whites, for instance, might think that racial inequality is less of an issue today and that slavery and racism are largely associated with a distant (if uncomfortable) past. Indeed, this is part of what sociologists today refer to as color-blind racism. Yet, when looked at this way, it's not an exaggeration to claim that white males have been the beneficiaries of a 2,000-year "affirmative action" policy that favored them. Because race has long benefitted white people in the United States, they collect on a legacy of privilege that has passed down through generations of white Americans. Affirmative action is about your ancestors and the history of the society in which you happen to live. Although you might feel like your GPA, SAT scores, and resume are solely the result of your individual talents, it is also true that some people have had the historical luck of being privy to forms of privilege collected over generations. And programs like affirmative action proceed from the well-founded assumption that the residue of the systematic, and lawful enslavement of an entire racial group will not diminish simply because we decide to open school doors and allow them to apply for the same jobs as everyone else. History has resulted in "undeserved impoverishment" and "undeserved enrichment."

Residential segregation

Institutional discrimination of housing created neighborhoods, usually with lower quality infrastructure, for whites and other race and ethnic groups. This remains one of the primary means through which racial inequality is institutionalized and perpetuated.

People from Latin America

Latinos are now the largest ethnic minority group in the United States and they are growing almost three times faster than the population as a whole, due both to immigration and higher birth rates. By 2050, the Hispanic population will nearly triple, from 35.6 million to 102.6 million. Hispanic Americans are not only the fastest growing minority group in the United States. They also have the fastest-growing rates of college attendance. And they have the fastest-growing rate of affluence Marketing executives have noticed. Hispanic people appear regularly on television commercials as purveyors of "traditional American values." When Mexican American actor Mario Lopez starred in the teen sitcom Saved by the Bell, his character had to be made Anglo: Executives feared that no one would watch a show "with a Mexican in it." A full 13 percent of Americans identifying as "Hispanic" said they do not know whether being Hispanic is about race or ethnicity. More than half of Americans identifying as Hispanic understand it as both a racial and an ethnic identity. And about 30 percent of Americans identifying as Hispanic understand it as either a racial identity (11%) or an ethnic identity (19%), but not both. It's complicated and it illustrates how even the categories the Census relies on are best understood as moving targets.

pluralism

Maintains that different groups in a stable society can treat each other with mutual respect and that minority cultures can maintain their own distinctiveness and still participate in the greater society without discrimination.

Summarize what sociologists mean when they say that race is a biological fiction with a political function.

Most cultures divide people into different "types" on the basis of cultural traits—usually "us," the real people, against "them," the cannibals (who eat the "wrong" food), barbarians (who speak the "wrong" language), or infidels (who worship the "wrong" God). But physical appearance was not always part of the equation. Historically, the word race meant the same thing as culture: The French "race" lived in France and spoke French, and the Russian "race" lived in Russia and spoke Russian. We even refer to the "human race." Not until the eighteenth century, however, did physical attributes become determining factors in "race."In the United States, debates about the morality of "Negro slavery" indicated a concern for skin color that was more important than the different cultures from which slaves were stolen. By the nineteenth century, "race science" tried to give the real people/barbarian division a scientific-sounding gloss, arguing that some "races" were more highly evolved than others. And just as mammals are physiologically different from reptiles and fish, the more highly evolved races differed from the less highly evolved, not only culturally, but physiologically, intellectually, and even morally. What is important to recognize here is that this was done with political, social, and economic goals, such as when "race science" was used to justify the genocide of Native Americans, or slavery. Today, we use the term race to talk about what we think of as physiological differences between groups and the term ethnicity to refer to cultural distinctions between groups.But, neither race nor ethnicity is biological—not in the sense nineteenth-century "race scientists" thought.Genetic makeup, blood type, facial type, skin color, and every other physical attribute vary more within the groups we call races than between them. Neither race nor ethnicity has any basis in biological or genetic fact.Race has a social, not a biological, origin.

Explain what "color-blind" racism is and how it is different from previous forms of racism.

One important distinction to remember when it comes to thinking about racism individually versus institutionally is that, although we think of individuals as discriminating intentionally (though, as sociologists have found, this is not always the case), it makes little sense to think of institutions that way. Rather, institutions discriminate based on race as they rely on policies and practices that put certain racial and ethnic groups at a patterned form of disadvantage (one that tends to accumulate over time). Over the past half-century, Americans have become much more likely to support racial intermarriage, racially integrated schools, and to oppose racially segregated neighborhoods for white people. In fact, alongside the racially progressive views on surveys on the issues mentioned previously, white Americans (as a group) support a set of beliefs that are at odds with racial equality. For instance, when asked about the persistence of racial inequality, roughly 65 percent of whites explained income, housing, and employment inequality as the result of a lack of motivation among black Americans It is still true today that white Americans are much more likely to support the statement that many white minorities (Irish, Italian, Jewish) worked their way up in the United States, and that "Blacks should do the same without any special favors." Sociologists who have sought to disentangle these seemingly contradictory data have done so, primarily using either qualitative research methods or experimental research designs. Although resume audit studies illustrate that racial inequality can be perpetuated in the labor market even in ways of which we are not entirely aware, what about life outside of work? Another method sociologists have used to study racial inequality in an era sometimes classified as "post-racial" or "post-racist" is to analyze the ways that people and groups talk about race.

Hate group info

People join hate groups to promote discrimination against ethnic and other minorities, usually because they feel that the main society is not doing a very good job of it. The Know-Nothing Party was formed in 1849 to promote anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant legislation. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), formed shortly after the end of slavery in 1863, tried to prevent newly freed blacks from acquiring social equality with both political legislation and the more immediate tactics of violence and intimidation. When open discrimination is commonplace in the main society, these groups can acquire a great deal of political power. The Know-Nothings managed to dominate several state legislatures, including Massachusetts, and promoted the sitting president, Millard Fillmore, in the 1852 presidential election (he lost, but not due to an anti-immigrant agenda). At its height in the 1920s, the second Ku Klux Klan had more than 4 million members and was praised by many public figures, including President Warren Harding. When open discrimination is frowned upon in the main society, it becomes more difficult for hate groups to get laws passed or sponsor successful political candidates. Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke rose highest, when he captured 55 percent of the white vote in the 1989 Louisiana gubernatorial election, although he had to explain that his KKK membership was a "youthful mistake." Similarly, when Duke supported Donald Trump as a candidate during the 2016 presidential race, Trump denied formal affiliation with Duke and knowledge of the KKK. Hate groups today usually do not hope to legislate discriminatory policies. Instead, they want to make their presence known, win supporters, and promote individual acts of discrimination, especially violence. Nowadays in public presentations, they never use racist slurs. They say that they are interested in science, Christianity, or patriotism rather than racism. Many hate groups use the rainbow as a symbol to talk about race relations in the United States ("All of the colors of separate and equal, and that's the way it ought to be"). The number of hate groups in the United States has risen by over 50 percent since 2000. Although membership in organized hate groups is relatively low, there is an alarming increase in violent crimes in which the victim was chosen because of his or her membership in some minority group. In 2005, the FBI documented 7,163 hate crimes. The most (2,630) were against blacks, and 828 were against whites. The second highest group, however, was anti-Jewish (848). There are more anti-Semitic crimes than against all other religious groups combined. The 128 anti-Islamic crimes, however, are by far the fastest growing type of bias crime.

ethnic renewal

Process by which ethnic identities are reconstituted and reclaimed after having been discarded earlier. Nagel noticed that between 1960 and 1990, the numbers of Americans selecting an American Indian race on the Census more than tripled. And she showed that the increase was not due to more births, lower death rates, or immigration. Nagel discusses how and why more Americans who might have previously identified as "non-Indian" are changing their racial designation. Nagel argued that this kind of "ethnic switching" had a great deal to do with American Indian political activism among other things.

Race vs. Ethnicity

RACE Singular—you are assumed to only have one Rigid—something we think of as unchanging Compulsory—we are identified in the society in which we live whether we agree with that identification or not (though there is fluidity here as well) Physiological—based on perceived biological, physical, or genetic differences Ranked—not only about difference, but hierarchy and inequality ETHNICITY Multiple—you might claim many different backgrounds Fluid—can change Chosen—we get to select whether or not to identify any origins to which we see ourselves as having a legitimate claim (though not everyone is afforded the "choice") Cultural—based on perceived cultural differences Not ranked—need not be ranked

Race vs. Ethnicity

Race depends on the assumption of biological distinctions; yet sociologists understand it as socially constructed. You can be black or white and live in any country in the world, have any religion, and speak any language.All that matters is your skin color and whatever other physical trait(s) are understood to "count." These distinctions between different groups are more arbitrary than you might think and have been historically relied upon to differentiate and exclude. Ethnicity defines a cultural group, distinct not by biology but by cultural practices and origins. You can belong to any race and have a Swedish ethnicity—if you speak Swedish at home, attend the Swedish Lutheran Church, eat lutefisk (cod soaked in lye and served with bacon fat), and celebrate St. Lucia's Day on December 13 by walking with lit candles on your head, as many young girls still do in Sweden. Though, certainly some groups will have a more challenging time making the claim that they are Swedish than others. But you might even be Swedish if you do none of these things at all. Few Swedish American students at undergraduate colleges today eat lutefisk or wear crowns of candles! Their Swedish ethnicity resided entirely in how their ancestors might have lived.

Understand the "matrix of domination" and how this applies to thinking about inequality intersectionally.

Race overlaps with other social categories, like ethnicity, age, class, gender, and sexuality. One doesn't stop being a woman when one is marginalized on the basis of, say, religious intolerance or racial stereotypes. Interestingly, stereotypes about stigmatized groups often reinforce each other, because these stereotypes are often remarkably similar: The group in question is considered illogical (childlike), overly emotional, primitive, potentially violent, and sexually promiscuous. Consequently, stereotypes and prejudices often combine, and the effects of racism are compounded by the effects of classism, sexism, heterosexism, and all manner of "-isms." Often, this intersectionality offers a painful reminder of marginality, and the ways in which even the oppressed groups can still hold prejudices. Consider a woman who is black and identifies as lesbian. She might feel that whenever she is around other black people, she is keenly aware that she is lesbian and feel that she doesn't fully "fit in." But when she is around other lesbians, she might remain keenly aware that she is black and feel like she doesn't "fit in" there either. Sometimes, the intersections of different categories of identity leave us feeling marginal—even when we are in a group of "our own." Sociologists discuss intersectionality to analyze an interlocking system of control in which each type of inequality reinforces the others so that the impact of one cannot be fully understood without also considering the others.

Summarize what it means to think about racism "institutionally."

Racial and ethnic inequality is fueled by stereotypic attitudes, which solidify into an ideology supporting inequality (racism) premised on supposed differences between groups. These differences then become the bases for institutional inequalities—the ways that inequalities are solidified in various social institutions like law, health, workplaces, education, the economy and so on. Attitudes become ideologies which become institutionalized practices, which then reinforce the very stereotypes from which they emerge.

ethnicity

Social category that depends on an assumption of inherent cultural differences to rate and organize social groups. Refers to a group of people with a shared cultural identity, founded on shared national identity, ancestry, language, religious beliefs, and collections of cultural traditions and practices.

Distinguish between "assimilationist" and "pluralist" understandings of ethnic diversity in the United States.

Some immigrant groups felt that assimilation was not desirable. They didn't want to lose their distinctive customs, social norms, language, and religion. Why couldn't they continue to speak their native language, read newspapers from home, eat the same food they ate at home, and still be Americans? Maybe in the nineteenth century, when the journey from the homeland to the United States took months and there was little chance of ever returning, assimilation made sense, but now the homeland was only a short plane flight away, and friends and relatives back home as close as a telephone call or e-mail message. During the 1980s and 1990s, many minority groups proposed pluralism as an alternative to the melting pot. he different groups can treat each other with mutual respect instead of competing and trying to dominate each other. Thus, minority cultures can maintain their own distinctiveness and still participate in the greater society without discrimination.

Stereotype threat

Term coined by Claude Steele to assess the extent to which labels about people "like us" have measurable impacts on their performances. It refers to the variation in performance measured when the belief that people who belong to an identity category you share are worse at a particular task than the comparison group. ex. black guy walking down the street people would walk on the other side or couples would hold hands but when he started whistling white songs the white people felt more comfortable

Consequences of institutional racism

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned discrimination in housing. Nevertheless, unequal access to housing has continued in spite of legislation. African Americans and Latinos are turned down for home loans twice as often as whites with the same qualifications. The HUD Housing Discrimination Against Racial and Ethnic Minorities 2012 Study found that minority renters are told about and shown fewer housing units (homes and apartments) than equally qualified whites. Minority renters were also less likely to be offered a unit for inspection, and were quoted higher rents. A separate consequence of institutional forms of racial discrimination is the dramatic under-representation of minorities in the professions. Institutionally based inequality leads to growing gaps between whites and minorities—gaps widen, rather than shrink, over time. Because whites make more than blacks, are more likely to be in the professions, and more likely to own their own homes, the gap between them has continued to widen, dramatically at times, especially fueled by the housing bubble. Between 1984 and 2007, the racial wealth gap—based on total financial assets including home equity—increased by $75,000, from $20,000 to $95,000

Price you pay for becoming "white"

The Irish and the Jews "chose" to be white and then set about trying to convince native-born Protestant whites that they should be included in the racial category. The idea of the United States as a "melting pot" seemed to work only with Europeans and with some drawbacks: Assimilation meant abandoning cultural traditions. Immigrant parents punished their children for speaking the language from back home, and in a generation or two an entire cultural heritage was nearly forgotten.

Racial income gap

The gap in income between blacks and whites. The gap between high-income whites and blacks is astonishingly high, and because of the racial income gap over time, even middle-income whites have far more wealth than high-income blacks. This racial income gap holds true for both middle-income and high-income groups, although the gap between high-income whites and blacks is astonishingly high; middle-income whites have far more wealth than high-income blacks. And it is important to look at the wealth gap (rather than the income gap alone) because it helps us better capture the effects of institutional racism and how a history of racial discrimination and inequality piles up Although the racial income gap is wide in the United States, the racial wealth gap is even wider. Part of the reason for this is that the wealth gap is wider among the middle and upper-classes among white and Asian Americans than it is for other groups. So, while middle and upper-class black Americans earn different amount of income each year, the differences between how much wealth they have accumulated are much smaller than the differences between the amounts of wealth middle- and upper-class white Americans have accumulated.

Assimilationist perspective

The idea that as we are around one another for sustained periods of time, ethnic distinctions will gradually erode. hey suggest that social factors that might maintain ethnic solidarity will wane over time. So, as residential segregation and occupational specialization decline, and intermarriage, social mobility, and distance in time and generation from the original immigrant group increase, ethnic groups will be less isolated and their ethnic identities will become less important to them

People from Europe Explain how "white people" comprise a historically constructed (and changing) category in U.S. history.

The largest ethnic groups were German (14.9%), Irish (10.8%), English (8%), and Italian (5.5%) (U.S. Census Bureau 2015). We may now call them "European Americans" as a matter of convenience, but really we are saying "white people," referring to race rather than ethnicity. The differences today among many of these groups are far smaller than they once were. The white Non-Hispanic population will experience an 8.2 percent decrease by 2060, changing from 198 million in 2014 to 181 million

Institutional racism

The most subtle and pervasive type of discrimination, it is deeply embedded in such institutions as the educational system, the business world, health care, criminal justice, and the mass media. These social institutions promote discriminatory practices and traditions that have such a long history they just "seem to make sense," and minority groups become the victims of systematic oppression, even when only a few people, or none at all, are deliberately trying to discriminate.

Genocide

The planned, systematic destruction of a racial, political, or ethnic group. When several different ethnic groups are present in a single nation, they often compete for power and resources. Because there are around 5,000 ethnic groups in the world trying to share 190 nations, ethnic conflict is common, ranging from discrimination to violence and sometimes even civil war. Since 1945, 15 million people have died in conflicts involving ethnicity to some degree (Doyle 1998). At its most brutal, ethnic conflict can result in genocide Why do ethnic minorities live in relative harmony in some countries although in others they are at each other's throats? There are no easy answers, but one factor appears to be heterogeneity. If there are many ethnic groups in the country, it is less likely that any one will dominate (in a genocidal manner). However, if there are only two or three, it is easier for them to characterize each other as demonic. Another factor is the rights and privileges given to minorities. In countries where ethnic minorities are accepted as ordinary parts of the political structure, they are less likely to compete for resources, real or imagined, and ethnic conflict is less common. This also often means, however, that social hierarchies are well-established and institutionalized to the extent that groups in relative power have little to worry about the prospect of being "dethroned."

Acculturation

The process of acquiring a new culture and language.

color blind racism

The process of disregarding race as a method attempting to realize or express equality, it has the unintended consequences of reproducing racial inequality in new ways.

Scientific racism

The science of "breeding," and encouraged laws that would help the country breed a superior race, eugenics. By the 1920s and 1930s, scientists developed theories of eugenics, the science of "breeding," and encouraged laws that would help the country breed a superior race

Legacy of Slavery

Those enduring forms of racial inequality that result from generations of systematic, institutionalized, legal forms of racial oppression.

Prejudice vs. discrimination vs. racism

Thus, prejudice refers to the attitude that structures our interactions, racism to the ideologies that justify those interactions, and discrimination to the institutional dynamics at play in determining various outcomes of those interactions.

race

To sociologists, race is socially constructed, not biologically determined. It refers to a class of individuals who are understood to be differentiated by shared physical characteristics and are believed to share a common genetic ancestry. Social category, still poorly defined, that depends on an assumption of biological distinction to rate and organize social groups. Race is a biological fiction with a political function. Race has always been about more than racial difference—from the beginning, distinguishing different races has been a "political" project in that it has been about establishing racial hierarchies ("superior" and "inferior" races).

Summarize why sociologists study racism as a systemic, rather than individual, issue.

When sociologists talk about racism, we are talking about interactions, but we are also interested in examining how social institutions play a key role in structuring interactions in ways that reproduce forms of power and inequality between different racial groups in society. Simply put, racism is prejudice that is systematically (or "institutionally") applied to members of a group. It can be overt or subtle. Sociologists understand racism in ways that do not require individuals to consciously be aware of how they are promoting racial inequality.