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Ethnicity and Race

• Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity
• Race
• The Social Construction of Race
• Stratification and “Intelligence”
• Ethnic Groups, Nations, and Nationalities
• Peaceful Coexistence
• Roots of Ethnic Conflict
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Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity

• Ethnic group – members share certain
beliefs, values, habits, customs, and
norms because of their common
background
– Ethnicity revealed when people claim a
certain ethnic identity for themselves and
are defined by others as having that
identity

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Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity

• Race is ethnic group assumed to have a
biological basis
– American culture doesn’t draw a very clear
line between ethnicity and race.
– Ethnicity – identification with, and feeling
part of, an ethnic group and exclusion from
certain other groups because of this
affiliation

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Race/Ethnic Identification in the

United States, 2002

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Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity

• Status – various positions that people
occupy in society
– Ascribed status – little or no choice about
occupying status
• People are born members of a certain group
and remain so all their lives
– Achieved status – gained through
choices, actions, efforts, talents, or
accomplishments
• May be positive or negative
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Social Statuses

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Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity

• Status Shifting
– Some statuses, particularly ascribed ones,
mutually exclusive
– Some statuses are contextual
– Minority Groups – ascribed status
associated with a position in the social-
political hierarchy
• Inferior power and less secure access to
resources than majority groups
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Race
• Cultural category rather than a
biological reality
– Not possible to define human races
biologically
– Better to use term “ethnic group” instead of
“race” to describe any social group

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The Social Construction of Race

• Social Races
– Ethnic groups assumed to have biological
basis but actually defined in a culturally
arbitrary, rather than scientific, manner
• Race is socially constructed

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Hypodescent: Race
in the United States
• In American culture, one acquires his or
her racial identity at birth
– Rule of Descent – assigns social identity
on basis of ancestry
– Hypodescent – automatically places
children of a union or mating between
members of different groups in the minority
group
• Helps divide American society into groups that
have been unequal in access to wealth, power,
and prestige
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Race in the Census

• U.S. Census Bureau gathering data by
race since 1790
– Constitution specified that a slave counted
as three-fifths of a white person, and
Indians not taxed
– Attempt by social scientists and interested
citizens to add a “multiracial” category to
the census category opposed by NAACP
and National Council of La Raza
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Reproduction of Questions on Race and Hispanic

Origin from Census 2000

Source: U.S. Census Bureau,

Census 2000 questionnaire
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Americans Reporting
They Belonged to Just One Race

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Not Us: Race in Japan

• American culture ignores considerable

diversity as it socially constructs race
within U.S.
– Also overlooks diversity in Japan
– Scholars estimate 10% of Japan’s
population minorities of various sorts
– Intrinsic racism – belief that perceived
racial difference is a sufficient reason to
value one person less than another
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Not Us: Race in Japan

• Valued group in Japan is majority (“pure”)
Japanese, who are believed to share “the
same blood”
– Children of mixed marriages between
majority Japanese and others may not get
the same “racial” label as the minority parent,
but still stigmatized for non-Japanese ancestry

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Not Us: Race in Japan

• Majority Japanese define themselves by
opposition to others
– Japanese culture regards certain ethnic
groups as having a biological basis, when
there is no evidence
• Burakumin – descendants of a low-status social
class; genetically indistinguishable from the
dominant population; treated as a different race
• Discrimination against burakumin strikingly
similar to discrimination that blacks faced in
U.S.
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Phenotype and Fluidity: Race in Brazil

• The Brazilian construction of race is

attuned to relatively slight phenotypic
differences
– Phenotype – organism’s evident traits, its
physiology and anatomy, including skin
color, hair form, facial features, and eye
color
– More than 500 distinct racial labels
reported
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Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity

• Brazilian “race” far more flexible
– Individual’s racial classification may
change due to achieved status,
developmental biological changes, and
other irregular factors
– No hypodescent rule ever developed in
Brazil to ensure whites and blacks
remained separate

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Stratification and “Intelligence”

• Dominant groups declare minorities to
be biologically inferior
– Evidence that within any stratified society
differences in performance between
economic, social, and ethnic groups reflect
different experiences and opportunities
• Differences not genetic
– Contemporary human populations seem to
have comparable learning abilities
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Ethnic Groups, Nations,

and Nationalities
• Nation once synonymous with “tribe” or
“ethnic group”
• Nation now means a state –
independent, centrally organized
political unit
• Migration, conquest, and colonialism led
most nation-states to become ethnically
heterogeneous.
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Nationalities and
Imagined Communities
• Nationalities – groups that now have,
or wish to have or regain autonomous
political status
– Nationalities are imagined communities
• Diasporas – dispersed populations
spread out from a common center or
homeland

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Assimilation
• When minority adopts the patterns and
norms of a host culture
– “Melting pot” model
– Incorporates into the dominant culture to
point where it no longer exists as a
separate cultural unit

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The Plural Society

• A society combining ethnic
contrasts, ecological specialization,
and economic interdependence
– Barth believed ethnic boundaries are most
stable and enduring when groups occupy
different ecological niches
– Barth shifted analytic focus from specific
cultural practices and values to relations
between ethnic groups (interdependence
and exchange)
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Multiculturalism and Ethnic Identity

• Multiculturalism – socializes individuals into
the dominant (“national”) culture and into a
minority (“ethnic”) culture (salad/mosaic
model)
– Number and size of minority ethnic groups
grew dramatically in recent years
– Multiculturalism seeks ways for people to
understand and interact with a respect for
differences
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Ethnic Composition of the United States

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Roots of Ethnic Conflict

• Prejudice and Discrimination
– Prejudice – devaluing a group because
of its assume behavior, values, capabilities
or attributes
– Discrimination – policies and practices
that harm a group and its members
• De facto – practiced but not legally sanctioned
• De jure – part of the law

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Roots of Ethnic Conflict

• Chips in the Mosaic
– Ethnic competition and conflict evident in
North America
• New arrivals versus long-established
ethnic groups
• Aftermaths of oppression
– Genocide
– Forced assimilation
– Ethnocide
– Cultural colonialism
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Roots of Ethnic Conflict

• Cultural colonialism
– Colonialism – political, social, economic,
and cultural domination of a territory and
its people by a foreign power for an
extended time
– Refugees – people who have been forced
or who have chosen to flee a country to
escape persecution or war

©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.