CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

NATIVES and NEWCOMERS

 
These lectures were developed by Lisa Lamb, @copyright, 2002.   The lectures parallel the material in the text with additional explanation.  An effort was made to summarize using original language, however, the exact language of the text may be used in some cases without quotation.

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INTRODUCTION

Key Concepts, Definitions and Components of Race Relations
The difference between race and ethnicity: 
Race is a category of men and women who share biologically transmitted traits that members of society deem significant. 

  • Racial types: 19th century biologists developed 3 racial types. Caucasoid: light skin and fine hair.  Negroid: dark skin and coarse hair. Mongoloid: yellow or brown skin and folds on the eyelids.
These types are misleading because no society contains people that are purely one or the other.  Societies rank people into racial hierarchy claiming that one race is biologically superior than another but there is no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. 
Ethnicity is a shared cultural heritage.  Members share common ancestors, religion and culture.  Race is biological and ethnicity is cultural. The two can go together or apart.  People can modify their ethnicity but not race. 
Ascribed characteristics are race, ethnicity, family , sex, age while  achieved characteristics are those that an individual achieves such as education.

The relationship between race and ethnicity is such that  a person can be black (race) and Jamaican (ethnicity). Other examples include:
Race-Hispanic, ethnicity-Mexican-American.  Race-white, ethnicity-Haitian.  Race-Asian, ethnicity-Japanese.
Currently, in the discipline of Sociology, racial classifications can include: white, black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American and 'other.'
An important point to remember is that several problems exist with racial and ethnic classifications due to the overlapping and blurring of  the lines.

A Minority is a category of people set apart by physical or cultural traits and socially disadvantaged.

  •  Two major characteristics: distinctive identity and subordination.
 Distinctive identity because race is highly visible-as is gender, and subordination because minorities typically have lower income, lower occupational  prestige and  limited schooling.  Gender, race and ethnicity are usually overlapping to form a subordinate population.
It is important to remember that a minority can be more in numbers (i.e.; women) but still a minority.

Attitudinal components of race relations include: ethnocentrism, racism, prejudice and stereotype.

  • Ethnocentrism is when you are judging a persons culture by the standards of your own. 
  •  Racism is the belief that one racial category is innately superior or inferior to anther. Ideas about racial inferiority supported slavery.
  •  Prejudice is a rigid and irrational generalization about an entire category of people.  Inflexible attitude based on generalizations.  May target a social class, sex, sexual orientation, age, race, etc..
  • A form of prejudice is stereotype which is a biased characterization of some category of people.  For example saying that Indians were savages.
Behavior Components: Discrimination
  • Discrimination is the act of treating various categories of people unequally.  It is an action. This can be either positive (giving advantages) or negative (creating obstacles).  Prejudice and discrimination often occur together. 
Race is a cultural creation, a product of human creation.
From the beginning of its use in the English language, the term race was used to interpret human differences.
  • Race is a world view; the racial worldview holds that some groups are by nature unequal and can be ranked as superior/inferior.
Race was fabricated out of a combination of physical differences and the domination and exploitation of certain groups.  So it is not the presence of physical differences between groups that creates races but the social recognition of such differences as socially significant. 

Four Patterns of Majority and Minority Interaction

  • 1. Pluralism: all races and ethnic groups are distinct but have social parity.
  • 2. Assimilation: the process by which minorities gradually adopt patterns of the dominant group. (the melting pot theory).   Assimilation may be an avenue towards upward social mobility.  Assimilation involves changing ethnicity but not race.
  • 3. Segregation: physical and social separation of categories of people.  Usually segregation occurs to the detriment of a minority.. slavery, unequal schooling. 
  • 4. Genocide: the systematic killing of one category of people by another. For example what happened to Native Americans and the Holocaust.
 

Natives and Newcomers
Chapter 1

Assimilation is the process through which newcomers to a group are transformed from outsiders to full members of a group or society.  The three generation process refers mainly to European groups that came to America from 1880-1924. 
  •  First generation: unwilling to give up certain elements of foreign culture although they wish to be accepted as American.
  • Second generation: attend public schools, become more fluent in English, but still consider themselves ethnic.  Example is a child born in the U.S. to immigrant parents.
  •  Third generation will move mostly to mainstream American life.
Groups that do not fit into the three generation process  include American Indians who entered American society through conquest or black Americans who came involuntarily as slaves.

Factors Affecting Assimilation

  • Differences in social power.
  • Involuntary or Voluntary entrance
  • Group size, concentration, time of entry
  • Economic conditions
  • Ethnic and racial similarities
  • The attitudes of the majority towards the minority

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