Ch. 3. Race and Ethnicity Flashcards
Ideologies, Racism, Ethnicity, Race, Ethnoracism, and Ethnocentrism
IDEOLOGIES – Belief systems that serve to rationalize/justify existing social arrangements.
- Ideologies can make it difficult for us to accept that racial inequality continues to exist centuries after slavery, in an age when it seems a person of color can do anything, even become president of the United States.
RACISM – A system that advantages the dominant racial group in a society.
- COLOR-BLIND RACISM – Claims that race is irrelevant and racial discrimination is a thing of the past, so the problems minorities encounter must instead be the fault of individual inadequacies such as a poor work ethic.
RACE – A socially constructed category of persons created with certain physical traits (e.g., skin color, eye color, eye shape, hair texture) in mind but can also incorporate religion, culture, nationality, and social class, depending on the time, place, and political/economic structure of the society.
- There is NO biological basis for the separation of human beings into “races”
- RACE is now largely understood to be a social construction that uses certain traits—physical, religious, cultural, socioeconomic, or some combination—to organize people into hierarchical groups.
- The terms race and ethnicity are often used interchangeably, but should not be.
ETHNICITY – Cultural background, often tied to the nationality of origin and/or the culture practiced by the individual and his or her family of origin.
- Is a distinct concept that refers to a person’s cultural heritage.
- EX: Mary may be racially black, but ethnically Jamaican or Dominican. Bob may be racially white, but ethnically Irish or Italian. Cheryl may be racially Native American, but ethnically she is part of the Cherokee nation.
- Ethnicity can also be associated with particular languages, surnames, holidays, clothing styles—anything we think of as culture
- Ethnicity ranges on a continuum of strength from thick to thin, depending on how big a part ethnic practices play in everyday life.
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SYMBOLIC ETHNICITY – Ethnicity that derives more from the heritage of one’s distant relatives than from one’s own life.
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THIN ETHNICITY – An ethnicity that is not particularly salient in an individual’s daily life and becomes relevant only at certain symbolic times or events.
- EX: Patrick O’Malley’s name identifies him as ethnically Irish, but other than celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day once a year, he may not take part in anything notably Irish during his daily activities. He participates largely in symbolic ethnicity that is ‘thin’.
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THIN ETHNICITY – An ethnicity that is not particularly salient in an individual’s daily life and becomes relevant only at certain symbolic times or events.
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THICK ETHNICITY – An ethnicity that is quite salient in an individual’s daily life.
- EX: Jose Ramirez speaks Spanish fluently at home, is a devout catholic, and highly anticipates Cinco de Mayo and other cultural activities.
- The way someone personally identifies racially or ethnically is only one piece of the ‘ethnicity’ puzzle.
- The way society perceives or categorizes that individual is equally, and sometimes more, influential.
- We can expect to find many ethnic groups within a particular race, but because any race is a social construction that varies with time and place, the ethnicities within it will vary too.
- Still, race and ethnicity matter when we analyze social problems, in part because social scientists have consistently measured disparities in social outcomes among racial and ethnic groups.
ETHNORACISM - When cultural characteristics like language, clothing, and religion acquire racial meaning.
ETHNOCENTRISM – Cultural superiority.
Minority Groups
Social scientists’ primary source of comprehensive data for the U.S. population by race, ethnicity, and Hispanic origin is the U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS.
- According to 2010 figures, of the 16% of the U.S. population that is Hispanic, more than half (53%) identified as “white” and a third identified as “other”.
- Hispanics have overtaken blacks as the largest minority group.
- Asian Americans as a group grew by 43% between 2000 and 2010.
- Asians and Hispanics are the two fastest-growing minority groups.
MINORITY GROUP – A group that does not hold a sizable share of power and resources in a society.
- Often the share of such resources is disproportionately small relative to the group’s numerical presence in the overall population, and the group has a history of being systemically excluded from those resources.
- For social scientists, the term ‘minority group’ denotes not so much a group’s size as the share of societal power and resources its members hold.
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EX: Women are considered a minority group despite the fact that they represent a numerical majority of the population because they lack the income and political power of men.
- People of color are the numerical majority globally, but they hold minority status within the United States due to their income, wealth, and health outcomes.
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Though whites are a majority nationwide, in several U.S. states and about one-tenth of all counties, they are already a numerical minority.
- In 2010, Texas joined California, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, and New Jersey as states that have a white nemerical minority.
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EX: Women are considered a minority group despite the fact that they represent a numerical majority of the population because they lack the income and political power of men.
Racialization
RACIALIZATION – The process by which a society incorporates and demarcates individuals who fit a certain profile (usually a stereotypical profile) onto a particular racial group without that group self-identifying in that way.
- In other words, we stereotype blacks, Hispanics, and other minority groups in one way whether they like it or not. And when a new member of that group appears, we automatically ascribe the stereotypes to that person.
- The Irish, Italians, and Jews were all subject to racialization in one way or another—caricatured with exaggerated features in popular media.
- While signs posted by businesses saying things like “Irish need not apply” revealed the prejudice and discrimination of the period.
Dream Act and Deportation
DREAM ACT – proposed legislation intended to prevent the deportation of any who entered the United States before age 16 for a 6-year period during which they could either join the military or attend college, rights they are currently denied, provided they pass extensive background checks and refrain from all criminal activity.
- It failed to gain support
- Obama signed an executive order freezing deportations of youth for 2 years, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which benefited 740,000 young people but was not guaranteed to last past the end of Obama’s term in office.
- Trump signed an executive order called “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States” in January 2017, revoking visas from anyone on a list of seven (predominantly Muslim) countries, prompting concern that campaign promises like a “Muslim ban” and a wall on the U.S.–Mexican border were imminent.
Tokenistic Fallaccy, Overt vs. Covert Discrimination, and Institutional Discrimination
WHITE MALE ADVANTAGE – Even among socioeconomically similar individuals, the U.S. white majority enjoys racial privilege in income and wealth.
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Addressing poverty alone will NOT eliminate racial inequality.
- Among male high school graduates, a white male earns an annual average income of nearly $10,000 more than minorities.
- A white male with a bachelor’s degree earns an annual average of $66,065, compared to a similarly educated black man’s $51,504, an Asian man’s $60,044, and a Hispanic man’s $55,867.
- A Black man has to earn an associate degree to make the same amount as a white male high school graduate, and a bachelor’s degree to reach the earnings level of a white male with an associate degree.
- Only with postgraduate education (Masters or above) do male Asians’ earnings approach those of whites.
- Across every category, women earn substantially less than men, sometimes as much as $20,000 less per year, particularly women of color.
TOKENISTIC FALLACY – The common misunderstanding that when a small number of persons from a minority group become successful in a society there must no longer be racism in that society.
- EX: People point to the great success of Oprah or Obama to ‘prove’ that minorities have the same opportunities as everyone else.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, or national origin
- OVERT EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION – race is actually cited as a reason for not hiring or harassment.
- COVERT EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION – Other reasons are cited but the real reason is race.
- The number of cases of racial discrimination that are successfully fought in court far underrepresents the real extent of employment discrimination.
- Consider also that civil rights violations are just that – civil – and a victim’s only recourse is to sue for monetary damages; there are no criminal penalties for racial discrimination.
EXPERIMENTAL AUDIT STUDIES – Methodology matches a group of testers on all relevant characteristics—résumé, qualifications, speaking patterns, and scripted answers for live interviews except race (or gender).
- The researchers send the testers out to interview for jobs, find housing, or buy automobiles and then examine the results the testers report to assess whether black and white testers were treated differently. (Hint: They were treated differently)
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Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan – Conducted a study in which they sent out 5,000 résumés in the Boston and Chicago areas, four to each employer. Two of the fictional job candidates (one white, one black) had weak work histories and experiences, while the other two (one white, one black) had stronger qualifications. As the title of their article reporting on the study suggests (“Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal?”).
- The applicants with white-sounding names got callbacks 1 in 10 times, while those with black-sounding names got callbacks only 1 in 15 times.
- Having a strong résumé had a bigger effect for whites (increasing callbacks by 30%) than for blacks (9%).
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Devah Pager (2003) found that –A white male with a criminal record was more likely to get a callback from a prospective employer than a black male without such a record.
- By revealing employer preferences for hiring members of the majority/dominant group, these two studies help explain the racial differences in income.
- Blacks have unemployment rates about twice as high as those of whites
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INDIVIDUAL DISCRIMINATION – Discrimination in which actors carry out their own intentions to exclude based on race, as opposed to being explicitly supported in doing so or directed to do so by an organization.
- Individual employers are acting in discriminatory ways against individual applicants.
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INSTITUTIONAL DISCRIMINATION – Discrimination based on policies often written without overt racial language that nonetheless have disproportionately negative impacts on people of color.
- Institutional discrimination happens as a matter of policy.
- It may not be racially intended, but regardless of intent, it has disparate impacts on members of minority groups.
- _Race and the INVISIBLE HAND, Deirdre Royste_r – Royster studied some of the stronger students at a vocational and trade school she calls “Glendale” and found striking racial differences postgraduation.
- Among all male students, blacks were less likely than whites to be employed in the skilled trade in which they had been trained.
- Blacks also earned less per hour, experienced fewer promotions, held lower-status positions, and experienced longer bouts of unemployment than whites.
- Royster argues that lack of education or willingness to work hard cannot explain these outcomes.
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Rather, blue-collar networks function to privilege white workers and disadvantage blacks.
- White interviewees often talked about opportunities that “fell into their laps” because of family connections or contacts made in bars and other gathering places.
- Even white teachers at Glendale, who spoke highly of the black students, were much more likely to recommend white students for job openings.
- Black interviewees called the teachers “nice” and “fair,” while whites called them instrumental in job placements—clearly a much more practical outcome than simply good grades.
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Older men in hiring positions felt more comfortable recruiting employees who reminded them of themselves.
- She describes this dynamic as the “INVISIBLE HAND” because such networking privileges do not fit traditional definitions of racial discrimination.
- Institutional discrimination is often difficult to pinpoint because contemporary media and even courts of law focus our attention on discerning the “true intentions” of alleged discriminators.
- No statistic shows the extent of continuing racial inequality like the black/white wealth gap (Adelman, 2003).
- The wealth of the average black family is one-tenth that of the average white family.
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Oliver and Shapiro (1995) – coined the term SEDIMENTATION OF RACIAL INEQUALITY to describe how a history of institutional discrimination has reinforced the wealth gap.
- EX: For example, when Social Security was established in 1935, it excluded virtually all blacks and Latinos—not by identifying specific racial groups as ineligible, but rather by excluding people in certain job categories, such as agricultural and domestic workers. As a result, this government-subsidized national savings and retirement program underserved nonwhites.
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Institutional discrimination creates systematized patterns of racial exclusion, but it is not 100% exclusionary—it has always allowed for tokens.
- This is one reason why some people find it difficult to realize that racism still exists (due to the Tokenistic Fallacy).
- Wealth inequality is more severe than income inequality due to the intergenerational transmission of wealth.
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Homeownership forms the basis of most U.S. adults’ net worth, but government policy on homeownership was racially biased for much of U.S. history.
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Before the Fair Housing Act of 1969, banks and home insurance companies could legally charge higher mortgage and insurance rates for homes in black neighborhoods and exclude blacks from more prosperous white neighborhoods.
- EX: When President Obama was attending college, many black families in the United States did not own homes with enough value against which to borrow to send their children to college.
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Before the Fair Housing Act of 1969, banks and home insurance companies could legally charge higher mortgage and insurance rates for homes in black neighborhoods and exclude blacks from more prosperous white neighborhoods.
Immigration and Ethnic Diversity in Western Europe
IMMIGRATION AND ETHNIC DIVERSITY IN WESTERN EUROPE – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are among the top 10 nations in the world receiving international migrants, yet their unemployment rates for foreign-born residents are significantly higher than those for their native-born.
- Most of these immigrants are also European, but culturally distinct Muslims among them often draw anti-immigrant sentiment,
- Some analysts draw analogies between blacks in the United States and Muslims in Western Europe in that both suffer high unemployment and school dropout rates.
NATIVIST SENTIMENT – Which combines nationalism and xenophobia (fear of difference) to view the entry of foreign-born people as a threat to stability.
- In Switzerland, once known for cultural tolerance, the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) helped win 58% of the popular vote to ban minarets (spires) atop mosques, though Muslims make up less than 6% of the population (Glazer, 2010; Papademetriou, 2012).
- The SVP also advocated banning burkas; Belgium, France, and the Netherlands already have such bans in place.
Criminal Justice and Race
CRIMINAL JUSTICE and RACE:
- Among black males born from 1965 through 1969, 60% who did not graduate high school had been in prison by 1999.
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Michelle Alexander – contends that mass incarceration is the “new Jim Crow.” – locking predominantly nonwhites at the bottom of a racial caste system from which they cannot escape, even after they have completed their prison sentences.
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JIM CROW – refers to the system of racialized segregation that existed from the time of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1865 to the landmark civil rights legislation of the late 1960s.
- Blacks remained unable to own their own labor, testify as witnesses, obtain education equal to that available to whites, or vote.
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JIM CROW – refers to the system of racialized segregation that existed from the time of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1865 to the landmark civil rights legislation of the late 1960s.
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Evidence does not support the argument that more blacks and Hispanics are in jail because they commit more crimes.
- Most inmates in U.S. prisons are black and Hispanic nonviolent drug offenders incarcerated for possession, not sale.
- Yearly data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services show nearly identical drug use rates for blacks and whites.
- Criminal Justice System is major enforcer of “the new Jim Crow”
POVERTY and CRIMINAL DEFENSE:
- We do know, however, that blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to be poor, and socioeconomic status plays a role in criminal justice outcomes.
- A defendant who can hire a good attorney might circumvent prison or probation altogether by negotiating for community service hours or treatment in a substance abuse program.
- Most criminal cases are settled by PLEA BARGAIN (Which is a negotiation for a lighter sentance in exchange for a guiltty plea), not a trial.
- Poor people who cannot afford a good attorney often submit to a plea bargain rather than spend time in jail (because they also can’t afford bail) awaiting a trial.
- Consequences to sitting in jail awaiting trial include:
- Not being able to assist in gathering evidence for their defense.
- Can’t provide for their families, circumstances that can make a plea bargain more alluring.
- In addition, a first-time offender may plead guilty and avoid jail, which in the short term returns him or her to job and family.
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In the long run, however, this person now has a criminal record.
- This disadvantages the person on the job market. prevents him or her from voting.
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In the long run, however, this person now has a criminal record.
- While the intended or MANIFEST FUNCTION of plea bargains may be to facilitate quicker outcomes, their unintended or LATENT FUNCTION is to create class and racial inequality in sentencing,
- Sociologists find this feature of the system racist and classist because even if judges, juries, lawyers, and police officers are not prejudiced, racial inequality still results.
INSTITUTIONAL RACISM: Policies embedded in social institutions that favor members of the dominant group while systematically disadvantaging people of color.
- Institutional racism in the criminal justice system results not only from the way the court system is structured but also from the way policing works.
- Easier for officers to patrol urban areas.
- In urban dwellings, people are more densely packed and therefore criminal activities are more likely to occur outdoors, in easily visible spaces.
- Police are rewarded for arrests that lead to convictions (“collars”), and they safely assume that poorer individuals (lacking high-quality counsel and vulnerable to plea bargain) are more likely to be convicted than affluent ones. (Note: This is Complete BS)
- Thus, while individual officers may not be racially or class-biased, their workplace incentives make targeting poor people and minorities for law enforcement a logical choice to help them gain better pay and advancement.
INTERNALIZED RACISM – happens when people of color buy into the dominant ideology and view themselves as inferior.
- Whether individual internalized racism motivates racial profiling or the structure of policing does so, officers of color are affected by the social forces supporting it.
Health by Race and Ethnicity
HEALTH by RACE and ETHNICITY – Racial minorities have worse health outcomes in all categories – like mortality, life expectancy, and infant mortality.
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Racism can shave years, sometimes a decade or more, from a life.
- Better education and socioeconomic resources alone cannot remedy these problems.
INTERNALIZED RACISM – Feelings that occur in people of color when they buy into racist ideology that characterizes their own group as inferior.
- EX: When they believe that they and other members of their group are not deserving of prestigious positions in society, or they assume that members of their group are prone to exhibiting stereotypical behaviors.
COLOR-BLIND IDEOLOGY – the idea that problems suffered by minorities are due to reasons other than race – might suggest that socioeconomic or cultural factors such as types of food, exercise rates, and other lifestyle behaviors explain these differences.
- However, sociological evidence points toward racial discrimination.
- Some health disparities between blacks and whites manifest most strongly in the highest socioeconomic categories
- The difference between whites and blacks in life expectancy at age 25 actually increases with education.
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DIMINISHING RETURNS HYPOTHESIS – African Americans receive fewer health advantages relative to whites with each step up in education because of increased stress from daily discrimination that contributes to hypertension and other health problems.
- Racial discrimination has as great or greater effect on blood pressure than smoking, lack of exercise, and diet combined
- Racial segregation has been linked to a host of health-related problems due to its correlation with social disorder, the concentration of poverty, lack of safe spaces for exercise, lack of infrastructure and trust in neighbors, and poor proximity to good-quality health care.
- Native American men have the highest rates of suicide, alcoholism, and death by automobile accident among all groups.
ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM – The process by which the dominant race in society is shielded from the most harmful environmental threats, while such health hazards are located closest to neighborhoods where minority groups reside.
- Native American reservations and predominantly black neighborhoods, regardless of income level, have been routinely targeted for toxic waste dumping and strip mining.
Structural Functionalism: Assimilation
STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM: ASSIMILATION – Structural functionalism assumes that the structures of society function to produce stability.
- Says that in a healthy society, where resources and rewards are appropriately distributed, racial and ethnic minorities that are poorly integrated throw off the equilibrium. Minorities must therefore assimilate into the dominant culture and become like the dominant group.
ASSIMILATION – The act of literally “becoming like” the dominant group of the host society.
- When assimilation is complete an immigrant would be indistinguishable from the dominant group in society.
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Robert E. Park developed the theory of the RACE RELATIONS CYCLE to explain the incorporation of various groups (mainly Southern and Eastern European immigrants) into U.S. society.
- He identified four steps in this cycle:
- CONTACT – between groups.
- COMPETITION – majority group asserts dominance.
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ACCOMMODATION – after some time, a hierarchical arrangement can prevail – one of accommodation – in which one race was dominant and others dominated.
- During the accommodation step, the minority group essentially proves itself by adapting as required, and the dominant culture rewards its efforts until assimilation occurs.
- ASSIMILATION – Minority group is absorbed into society as indistinguishable from the dominant group in society
- He identified four steps in this cycle:
- Park’s model assumes that a society characterized by rules of law will eventually evaluate even a culturally different minority group fairly based on universal standards. (unlikely).
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Maintaining cultural heritage is important to prevent some negative consequences of being a member of a minority group in an unequal society.
- Maintaining kinship ties through shared language (providing bilingual fluency) is shown to produce better outcomes for minority children than those who do not.
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Milton Gordon (1964) proposed seven stages of assimilation and described the institutions and cultural practices that a minority group is required to accommodate for full assimilation.
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Gordon developed his theory based on light-skinned immigrants prior to the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, based on groups whose members encountered fewer barriers to assimilation than the darker-skinned and refugee populations who came after.
- His “straight-line assimilation” theory has since been challenged and refined.
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Portes and Rumbaut – describe SEGMENTED ASSIMILATION, whereby a minority group embeds itself within a particular segment of the host society on one of three pathways:
- Assimilation to the white middle class (traditional)
- “DOWNWARD ASSIMILATION” to an impoverished class or
- a hybrid path combining:
- economic/structural assimilation
- strong cultural ties to the family of origin.
- In an increasingly globalized world, a second-generation immigrant following this third path might have advantages in a job market that values intercultural familiarity and bilingualism. Thus straight-line assimilation may not be the most functional in the modern context.
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Gordon developed his theory based on light-skinned immigrants prior to the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, based on groups whose members encountered fewer barriers to assimilation than the darker-skinned and refugee populations who came after.
- Herbert J. Gans (1992) – proposed the idea of BUMPY-LINE ASSIMILATION, in which individuals can have “thick” or “thin” ties to their parents’ culture of origin.
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Jessica Vasquez (2011) – study of three generations of Mexican American families, identified two types that have “made it” by U.S. standards. Both were highly educated, fluent in English, and economically successful.
- Vasquez’s research shows that immigrants do NOT have to complete all seven of Gordon’s stages to succeed in the dominant society.
- “THINNED ATTACHMENT” – families had members who had intermarried and no longer spoke Spanish by the third generation.
- “CULTURAL MAINTENANCE” (THICK ATTACHMENT) – families were fluently bilingual, married within the group, and were visibly and culturally Hispanic.
Structural Functionalist Theories: Policy Implications
STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL THEORY: POLICY IMPLICATIONS
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ASSIMILATION THEORY places the burden of avoiding racial/ethnic inequality on minority group members.
- Require immigrants to follow assimilation steps.
- EX: Citizenship tests that require English literacy and basic knowledge of the U.S. political process reflect structural functionalist priorities.
- EX: Nativist proposals to make English the official U.S. language have failed at the national level, many states have amended their constitutions to require “English only”.
- Require immigrants to follow assimilation steps.
- Even when minority groups play by all the rules, they face barriers erected by the dominant society.
Conflict Theory
CONFLICT THEORY – Conflict theory sees society as characterized by an imbalance of power and resources that the group in control will maintain to its advantage.
- It is thus not the minority group that needs to be changed but rather the dominant group’s exclusionary practices, intentional or not.
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W. E. B. Du Bois – Was a Conflict Theorist and Sociologist. who highlighted the poverty and unequal access to jobs and good health that African Americans experienced in the U.S. North.
- He was the first black man to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard
- He demonstrated that unequal access to wealth and power gave blacks and whites vastly different understandings of the world and their place within it.
- Used the concept of the VEIL to describe this psychic distance between unequal racial groups.
- VEIL – A metaphor for the physical and psychic separation between the dominant group and minority groups.
- His idea of DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS suggests that blacks possess a dual understanding of:
- Themselves as fully capable human beings,
- The majority group’s obscured perception of them.
- They use this double consciousness to negotiate their relationships with the majority group.
- EX: Middle-class African Americans may adjust their dress and speech in commercial settings to minimize the possibility that they will be discriminated against during their transactions.
- WHITE PRIVILEGE – whites are unaware of the advantages their race gives them—owes an intellectual debt to Du Bois and his work.
- Contemporary conflict theorists also examine how rivalry between minority groups solidifies the dominant group’s advantage.
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Edna Bonacich (1972) – proposes a SPLIT LABOR MARKET THEORY – to describe how the (white) capitalist class divides the working class by race to keep workers from uniting to demand better pay and benefits.
- builds on Du Bois’s concept of the:
- PSYCHOLOGICAL WAGE – whereby white capitalists simply make white workers feel superior to nonwhites to keep them from realizing they do not earn much more than the workers they look down upon.
- builds on Du Bois’s concept of the:
- Hubert Blalock (1967) – MIDDLEMAN MINORITY – shows how certain minority groups act as a buffer when they are elevated in status (though not rivaling the majority), protecting the majority from those on the bottom and serving as a scapegoat for the aggression of those below.
Conflict Theory: Policy Implications
Policy Implications of CONFLICT THEORY – For conflict theorists, the focus is not on better training or cultural adaptation of minorities, but rather on adjusting institutional practices that have historically benefited whites so others who contribute to society can get greater access to society’s benefits.
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Finding better solutions to drug offenses than prison would help to reduce the education and employment gap between whites and blacks.
- African Americans, make up 40% of ex-felons – mostly due to drug possession.
Conflict Policy - Review Terms
DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS – African Americans’ ability to see themselves both as active agents with full humanity and as they are seen through the eyes of whites who view them as inferior and problematic.
SPLIT LABOR MARKET THEORY – The theory that white elites encourage divisions between working-class whites and blacks so that little unity can form between the two groups, preventing their coordinated revolt against exploitation.
PSYCHOLOGICAL WAGE – Feelings of racial superiority accorded to poor/working-class whites in the absence of actual monetary compensation for labor.
MIDDLEMAN MINORITY – A racial group that is not in the majority but is held up by the majority as a “positive” example of a minority and is used by those in power to pit minority groups against each other.
CONTACT HYPOTHESIS – The prediction that persons with greater degrees of cross-racial contact will have lower levels of racial prejudice than those with less contact.
Symbolic Interactionist Theories
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONIST THEORIES – examine how racial messages affect individual performance and how people view themselves.
- Symbolic interactionist theorists are interested in how the messages we internalize from socialization agents such as significant others and mass media affect the ways in which we, as everyday actors, maintain and perpetuate racial inequalities.
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Gordon Allport (1954) – proposed the:
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CONTACT HYPOTHESIS – Predicting that the more intergroup contact whites have with members of minority groups, the less likely they are to be prejudiced.
- Not just any contact is effective, however. Intergroup contact in which members are of equal status and contact is regular and sanctioned by an authority is more likely than other forms of contact to reduce racial prejudice.
- The contact hypothesis was also proposed before the expansion of mass media and the Internet. To the extent these venues substitute for face-to-face contacts, they can have both positive and negative effects on users’ racial outlooks.
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CONTACT HYPOTHESIS – Predicting that the more intergroup contact whites have with members of minority groups, the less likely they are to be prejudiced.
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MODEL MINORITY – a minority group that acts in such a way that the dominant group approves.
- EX: Many adults in the United States perceive Asian Americans as the “model minority” and even admire and covet this group’s perceived educational and economic successes.
- COLOR BLINDNESS – Dismissing color as the reason for social problems suffered by minorities instead, blaming other factors.
- STEREOTYPE THREAT – Claude Steele describes how minorities’ self-concepts and performance on tasks are harmed by societal stereotypes that portray them as less competent than other racial groups.
- The minority group essentially begins to believe the stereotypes about them and they act accordingly.
- This is the same as the effects of ‘labeling’ and ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’.
- EX: Steele’s test subjects were told either that their group tended to perform well on a test or that their group tended to perform poorly. Individual test scores reflected what subjects were told.
- INTERNALIZED RACISM – occurs when people of color come to believe they deserve mistreatment or accept stereotypes about their own group.
- These negative messages permeate the culture in everyday acts of racism known as MICROAGGRESSIONS.
- Symbolic interactionist perspective is also useful for considering the COSTS OF PRIVILEGE for the majority group.
- EX: Despite substantial material advantages, whites lose out on the interactional benefits of being multicultural and able to get along with diverse groups—a marketable skill in the global economy.
Symbolic Interactionist: Policy Implications
Policy Implications of the Symbolic Interactionist Perspective – The symbolic interactionist perspective calls for more equal-status interracial contact with open and honest dialogue about race and racism in order to decrease prejudice.
- Beginning this sort of interracial contact in educational settings is ideal, and the earlier the better.
- Need to revamp media portrayals of people of color, removing stereotypes and facilitating that we are all one big happy family.
Policy with regard to STEREOTYPE THREAT: Individuals perform better or worse on standardized tests depending on what they have been told about their group’s abilities.
Policy with regard to MICROAGGRESSIONS: Everyday acts can (intentional or unintentional) serve to marginalize persons due to perceived subordinate group status.
Policy with regard to COST of PRIVILEGE: Members of the majority group may miss out on valuable experiences due to racial isolation and limited worldviews.
