c
 

c 





There she lies, the great melting pot--listen! Can't you hear the roaring and the bubbling?

›
 
    

Americans are not a narrow tribe, our blood is as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a
thousand noble currents all pouring into one.

›  



Defining Core Terminology

cark Twain once keenly remarked, "The difference between the right word and the nearly
right word is the difference between 'lightning' and the 'lightning bug.'" Each word we speak
has its own special nuances of meaning, and words continuously adapt to patterns of usage.

Because of the dynamic nature of language, American racial and ethnic minorities have
expressed shifting preferences for how their groups should be named. For example,
emancipated slaves in America preferred to be called "Negroes" instead of the more
pejorative and all too popular terms "nigras," "darkies," "coons," or "niggers." Then over
several decades the term "Negro" lost favor to "Afro-American" and then "Black American"
or "African American." Likewise, until recently most writers--including Thomas Sowell, the
author of one of your texts--used the term "Orientals" to refer to persons of Asian ancestry.
Now, however, this term is seen as pejorative, and "Asian American" has come to replace it.
Once a term begins to accumulate undesirable connotations, the ever-present and
understandable temptation is to wipe the slate clean and start over with some fresh and
affectively unencumbered terminology.


 Is
Minoriy Group?

In an effort to protect against substantively ambiguous terminology, the scientific neologism

arises--that is, we invent new terms. In fact, the term "minority group" was introduced as a
scientific neologism by sociologist Donald Young in 1932. Over time, this term has taken on
an increasingly broad meaning. Today "minority group," as used by the American public, is
such an inclusive term that virtually everyone may be regarded as a member of some
minority group, even if it's the rather exclusive group of Fortune 500 corporation presidents.

Whenever such a term becomes so inclusive it excludes no one, it loses almost all utility as an
analytical concept. As Peter Berger has commented, "Definitions are matters of taste and thus
fall under the maxim O  " And as Kurt Lewin has observed, the only really
meaningful measure of any definition is its  as a tool for clarifying the true nature
of things. It is in this light that we must determine how best to sharpen our analytical
concepts.

omen

Because women often receive unequal treatment vis-a-vis men, some people today consider
women a minority group. When Young coined the term, he suggested that it "be applied to all
these groups which are distinguished by biological features, alike national traits, or a
combination of both." Although women certainly share biological features, Young did not
regard women as a social group and hence did not consider them as a minority group. He also
excluded occupational groups, interest groups, disability groups, and many others from
minority group status.

Why was the term so narrowly circumscribed? It appears that the intent was to limit the
minority group concept to group aggregates that have received unequal treatment and also
have distinctive cultures and historical longevity. Women differ from racial and ethnic groups
in a critical respect--they do not practice endogamy and so are not culturally and socially
separate from the dominant class.

In  O    Schaefer notes this distinction, but he makes light of it. Instead,
he and others have created a new category of minority group ("gender group" or "sexual
minority") to accommodate women as a special case. This is in keeping with the
contemporary political definition of minority group, which is now applied to statistical
aggregates of persons who are to be accorded special protection against discriminatory
treatment, regardless of the type of unequal treatment and whether or not they are culturally
distinct from mainstream society.

oliic
l Influences on Minoriy Group S
us

Over time the minority concept worked its way into political parlance and began to carry with
it governmental recognition of a group's entitlement to affirmative action protections. This is
where "science" and "politics" converge. As observed by Ira S. Lowry, the U.S. Census
Bureau's operative policy is:

... to elicit self-identification and then to group the responses into recognizable categories that
(a) are mandated for federal civil rights enforcement, (b) satisfy the more vocal ethnic lobbies,
and (c) provide enough continuity with past census statistics to satisfy social scientists
engaged in longitudinal analysis. Whereas item (c) is clearly motivated by scholarly interests,
items (a) and (b) are as clearly motivated by political interests. The tabulated census data that
results is a blend of scientific and political considerations.

Subsequent social scientific research utilizing this data is inescapably constrained by these
political influences. The net effect is that even scientific neologisms, such as minority group,
gradually become corrupted. As they attain currency in the public domain and are
manipulated by various political (as opposed to scholarly) interests, they stray away from
intended denotations.

You should not lose sight of this fact, since the subject matter of this course is particularly
sensitive to political influences. You will discover many situations in which popular history
appears to be, as Napoleon Bonaparte once remarked, "a fable agreed upon." However, the
nature of this "fable" systematically reflects the hierarchy of social power; the vanquished
and exploited always have fewer and less influential historians.




 
î
 

rejudice


 Consiues rejudice?

Prejudice is an attitude that consists of a set of negative beliefs, feelings, and action-
orientations that are associated with some identifiable group of individuals.

Some typical negative beliefs include assertions that people who belong to Group X are lazy
(they don't work very hard), stupid (they don't often graduate from high school or college), or
immoral (they don't behave as decent folks do). Some typical negative feelings would be that
people in Group X "make my skin crawl," "make me want to vomit," and "make my blood
boil." Negative action-orientations include such things as stating that people in Group X
"should not be admitted to our social club," "should not be sold real estate in our part of
town," or "should not be encouraged to socialize with our sons and daughters." The entire
blend of all these negative beliefs, feelings, and action-orientations concerning a particular
group constitutes the prejudice. Of course, not all people are conscious of their prejudices.
Some of the most prejudiced people insist they have no prejudice at all. This is because such
people regard their negative dispositions as simple matters of fact and not prejudgments.
cuch of the difficulty in combating prejudice is due to the fact that it is not easy to make
people cognizant of their prejudices. This is particularly true of well-educated people, who
are especially skillful in creating rationalizations for their prejudices.

T e Ten
ciy of rejudices

The difficulty in ridding people of prejudices is directly related to the peculiar fact that they
often do not exhibit consistency between the way they behave and the attitudes they hold. For
example, some people may openly exhibit strong prejudices against persons of Chinese
ancestry (perhaps referring to the Chinese as "slanty-eyed Chinks") and still not behave in a
discriminatory fashion toward specific Chinese acquaintances.

The Schaefer text refers to the LaPiere study (from the 1930s), which describes people who
indicate that they are prejudiced against the Chinese, but nonetheless do not discriminate
against them. At the time of the study, sinophobia was quite normal in American culture, and
on this basis alone, it would be fair to assume that the average adult American held very
prejudicial beliefs toward the Chinese. Specifically, the mass media (the primary source of
most everyone's misinformation on the Chinese) portrayed "the Chinaman" as slanty-eyed,
sinister, clannish, unkempt, and basically "unassimilable" (a frequent allegation made toward
Chinese people). So when LaPiere mailed letters to the business managers of hotels and
restaurants seeking to confirm a reservation for his Chinese traveler friends, it was not
surprising that 90 percent of the recipients denied his request, saying that Chinamen were not
welcome in their place of business. These letters represented action-orientations as to how
these business managers believed that they would have behaved if LaPiere's Chinese friends
were to actually show up. The letters provided, therefore, tangible evidence of the managers'
prejudice toward Chinese people in general. However, we know that when LaPiere's two
Chinese friends did show up at these same business places during the two years preceding the
letters, they were not discriminated against. Why not?

The biggest part of this perplexing inconsistency derives from the fact that prejudices are by
their nature global and abstract whereas most discrimination occurs in narrow and concrete
social circumstances. In short, the Chinese traveling with LaPiere did not conform to the
popular stereotypes and caricatures that the average person had deeply and uncritically
internalized. As a result, nearly everyone these Chinese encountered in their travels across the
American hinterland failed to discriminate against them and apparently decided to treat them
as exceptions. Notice that these Chinese were in fact exceptions to the mythical Chinaman of
popular folklore. However, if these were the only real people of Chinese ancestry whom these
business managers met, then their prejudices might still survive almost unscathed by this
anomalous experience. These business people might even buttress their prejudices by
invoking the "exception proves the rule" psychology. At least this would seem to be a likely
strategy if the popular culture continued to reinforce the old caricatures depicting Chinese
people as "unassimilable."

Of course, other factors might explain why these business managers chose not to discriminate
against the Chinese accompanying LaPiere. For example, they may have needed the extra
cash that day, they may have wanted to avoid an unpleasant scene, or they may have been
fearful. Nonetheless, it is highly unlikely that these other influences alone could account for
such a dramatic contradiction between attitude and behavior if these people really felt
disposed to discriminate against the Chinese travelers.

What we can learn from all this is that prejudice is a very elusive phenomenon. And to
effectively combat a prejudice, we must do more than meet some nice people from the
appropriate group. We must be willing to critically examine the societal caricatures upon
which our prejudices stand. To do this effectively requires courage, some knowledge, and,
most of all, a commitment to look at the facts objectively. In this light, we may better
appreciate why it is that prejudice doesn't die easily.

T eories on  e Origins of rejudice

Numerous theoretical perspectives have dealt with the origins of prejudice. Each has its own
distinctive strengths and weaknesses, and each contributes something to our understanding.
Schaefer identifies and briefly discusses the four following theories:

1.p The scapegoating theory

2.p The authoritarian personality theory
3.p The exploitation theory
4.p The normative approach

The first two, the scapegoating and authoritarian personality theories, are basically
psychological. The other two, the exploitation and normative theories, are sociological. These
two pairs of theories do not contradict each other as much as they offer complementary
explanations of why prejudice exists to the extent that it does. Each of the four perspectives
emphasizes a different root cause of prejudice that has commanded varying degrees of
popularity and support in the social-scientific community.
Overall, the theories tend to complement one another. In the composite, they help us better
understand what is otherwise a seemingly irrational phenomenon.

syc ologic
l T eories

@


@
 

The scapegoating theory asserts that people naturally project the blame for their own
shortcomings. The object onto which the frustrations are projected is called the scapegoat.
This theory is closely aligned with John Dollard's frustration-aggression theory.

When viewed objectively, this is admittedly an irrational process, but the individuals who
participate in the scapegoating phenomenon are genuinely convinced that the scapegoat
object is the "true" source of the world's ills. Hence they do not perceive the irrationality of
their activity. Although this theory has been heavily researched, it has yet to explain why
some scapegoats are preferred over others, despite their similar visibility and vulnerability. It
also fails to explain why some individuals are more prone to practice scapegoating than
others.

@
 



@
 

The authoritarian personality perspective tries to explain why some people scapegoat more
than others. It describes a character type that is formed in early childhood and is thereafter
inherently predisposed to a cognitive style that is prejudicial and categorical.

There are difficulties with this explanation. cost notably, it reduces the scope of prejudice to
only "pathological individuals" and in so doing ignores the full importance of the social
environments that have, at least putatively, spawned authoritarian personalities. In other
words, the primary agencies of prejudice formation that actually produce the authoritarian
personality disposition are likely to derive from the way the individual was taught to
internalize prejudices.

@








The major strength of the sociological perspective is that it puts prejudice in its proper social
context. In so doing, it de-emphasizes personality factors (which can be easily exaggerated).
Prejudice, in the sociological perspective, is not the sign of pathological personalities. Rather,
it is normative across cultures.

@


 

According to this approach, prejudice is normal and pervasive throughout society. Social
environments selectively reinforce the expression of socially correct prejudices in the same
way that they shape other socially correct thinking. In this light, we can appreciate the mass
media's role as an instrument of either prejudice-maintenance or prejudice-reduction. In
recent decades, American Blacks have benefited from reforms of the mass media, while other
minorities--such as American Indians, Chicanos, and Puerto Rican Americans--have
witnessed little substantive improvement of their image in the media.
The mass media remain one of the most potent forces in American society today as a shaper
of prejudice and stereotype.

@


@
 

The exploitation theory, as discussed by Schaefer, is a derivative of carxist theory. It views

prejudice as a means to further the interests of social classes in their warfare with one another
for social dominance. In this view, the dominant class benefits from racial prejudice by
creating an underclass of cheap wage laborers that is divided into factions that attempt to
procure the better-paying jobs for one group of laborers over another. For example, in mid-
nineteenth-century California, Caucasian workers hated Chinese workers and barred them
from eligibility in the American Federation of Labor. Here, prejudice was clearly a weapon
used by the Caucasian immigrant groups against the Chinese immigrants.

Clearly, not all prejudice is economically rooted, but careful historical evaluation reveals that
a great deal of it tends to be.

Discrimin
ion

While prejudice is an attitude, discrimination is the actual denial of equal rights and
opportunities. A pattern of institutional discrimination can be discerned in any situation
where an identifiable group of individuals systematically experiences inferior social
outcomes in attaining such scarce goods as status, income, education, and political power.

Insiuion
l R
cism

  refers to the whole body of laws, customs, and organizational practices
that systematically results in racial inequalities, regardless of how much racial prejudice is
involved.

In principle, institutional racism might exist in the total absence of personal racial prejudices;
in practice, however, discrimination and prejudice tend to be mutually reinforcing
phenomena. For instance, when U.S. Supreme Court justices exhibit personal prejudices,
these prejudices tend to become objectified in federal case law. These case precedents
subsequently reinforce the same types of prejudice in the American public.

An example of institutional racism of this type may be found in the 1854 case    
  !  a California State Supreme Court ruling disallowing persons of Chinese
ancestry from testifying against Caucasian defendants. As the chief justice of the court
explained it:

The anomalous spectacle of a distinct people [the Chinese], living in our community,
recognizing no laws of this State, except through necessity, bringing with them their
prejudices and national feuds, in which they indulge in open violation of law; whose
mendacity is proverbial; a race of people whom nature has marked as inferior, and who are
incapable of progress or intellectual development beyond a certain point, as their history has
shown; differing in language, opinions, color, and physical conformation; between whom and
ourselves nature has placed an impassable difference, is now presented, and for them is
claimed, not only the right to swear away the life of a citizen [White person], but the further
privilege of participating with us in administering the affairs of our Government.
On the basis of this ruling, the people of Chinese ancestry who had witnessed George W. Hall
murder a Chinese person were not allowed to testify against Hall. The court ruling was based,
in part, on state laws already in place that prohibited Blacks, culattos, and Indians from
giving testimony against Caucasian people. This is but one glaring example of the many
social policies that have discriminated against persons of color.

Ô
mples of Insiuion
l R
cism

Among the many social customs that have helped to perpetuate racial inequality in America
over the past hundred years are the following practices:

1.p Routinely striking all racial minorities from jury panels whenever the defendant was a racial
minority (a practice formerly allowed under the attorney privilege of unrestricted use of
peremptory strikes)
2.p Taking for granted that the educational attainments of Black Americans are substandard to
those of comparably educated White Americans
3.p Requiring racial minorities to post more collateral than Whites in order to qualify for bank
loans or mortgages
4.p Recruiting new employees for a business primarily through the social connections of the
current labor force (when this labor force is predominantly White, the job applicants are
predominantly White also)
5.p Being less cooperative with racial minorities than with White clients in relaying information
about government programs that apply to them

In addition to normative custom serving as an instrument for perpetuating institutional racism,

there is the law itself, whether it be at the federal, state, or city level of jurisdiction. Examples
of racially discriminatory laws include the following:

1.p The £
 



  which restricted naturalization rights to "free White persons
only" (the reign of this racist legislation did not completely end until 1952, when all racial
groups finally became eligible for naturalization rights)
2.p ozens of i
   (at the state level), which prohibited racial intermarriage of
various types (these laws were all declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1967)
3.p Ô 
   which was issued by President Franklin . Roosevelt and directed the
internment of 113,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast in 1942--no due process was
ever accorded to these Japanese Americans, and none were ever found guilty of any
disloyalty to the United States even though many were kept in internment camps for three
or more years
4.p The
 Ô 

  which, solely on the basis of ancestry, terminated all
Chinese labor immigration to the United States
5.p Π  which carried out the deportation of 458,089 Mexican Americans from 1929
to 1937 without any due process, under the presumption that these persons were "aliens"
who had "fallen into distress or public need" and that they had arrived in the United States
within the past three years (while this presumption was false in many instances, the
discrimination is evident in that this federal policy was practiced against only one nationality
group--Mexicans)

Insiuion
l Se ism

Another kind of institutional discrimination is institutional sexism, which refers to the body
of laws, customs, and organizational practices that systematically result in sexual inequalities,
regardless of how much prejudice is involved. For example, nineteenth-century Supreme
Court decisions proclaimed the legality of denying women the right to practice law. In the
words of Justice Joseph P. Bradley, "The paramount mission and destiny of women are to
fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator." This
judgment was made in 1872, and by 1900 only about one hundred women in the United
States had law degrees. As late as 1970, women made up only 2.8 percent of all attorneys in
the United States. It was not until 1984 that the U.S. Supreme Court made it illegal for law
firms to deny female attorneys a chance of being considered for partnerships on the sole basis
of gender. As of 1984, female attorneys constituted only about 5 percent of the law partners
in U.S. law firms, while accounting for 30 percent of the law associates. (Since 1990 more
than 40 percent of law students in the United States have been women.)

Case law such as that affecting a woman's right to practice law amplified already-existing
statutory law. Both types of law have served as vehicles of discriminatory behavior, which in
turn has reinforced the American public's prejudices toward women. The composite result has
been a mutually reinforcing set of prejudices and discriminations that have helped to
consolidate sexism in America. Throughout this unit of study we will observe numerous
instances of the complementary nature of the social processes that reinforce prejudice and
discrimination working in a cyclic fashion.

ånders
nding  y Be
ior Ofen Conr
dics rejudices

The certon typology discussed in the Schaefer text identifies "timid bigots" as that class of
persons whose behavior contradicts their strongly felt prejudices toward some minority group.
And while this label does correctly suggest one motive for such an inconsistency--that is, the
person fears the consequence of acting out his or her beliefs--numerous other influences
make such inconsistencies commonplace. Foremost among these would be the undesired
economic consequences that might follow from refusing to do business with a certain class of
client. Alternatively, social pressures originating from family, friends, church, or local
community might discourage discriminatory behavior. Such behavior might also violate city,
state, or federal laws. And on top of all these considerations, people's behavior often
contradicts their prejudices because behavior is more individually specific, whereas prejudice
is more global and diffuse.

‰



(Page references are to è" CSI indicates items discussed in the Comments and
Supplementary Information section.)

Amalgamation (25)

Assimilation (25)

Colonialism (21)

Emigration (20)

Ethnic group (9)

Fusion (25)

Genocide (22)

carginality (31)

celting pot (25)

cigration (20)

cinority group (5) (CSI)

cyth (CSI)

Pluralism (26)

Racial formation (15)

Racism (14)

Segregation (23)

Stratification (15)

 





Gener
l Insrucions

See the How to Do the Work of the Course section for instructions on how to submit your
written assignment.

Your Assignmen

1.p How does the sociological definition of minority group differ from more popular definitions?
What are the basic properties of all minority groups?
2.p Social scientists define race as a "mythic construction." How does that definition differ from
the biological or genetic definition of race?
3.p Clarify the differences among the following terms:  i
 
 and
 i

4.p Ôxplain how it is that the three circumstances of migration, annexation, and colonization are
likely to result in the creation of subordinate group status. Illustrate how each circumstance
has relevance to the history of the United States after 1850.
5.p escribe the factors that slow an ethnic group's rate of assimilation into mainstream society.
6.p Ôvaluate the extent to which cultural pluralism is a reality in modern American society. Also
explain how the extent of pluralism in the U.S. has increased significantly since 1960.
Written Assignment 1

1.p A minority group is often commonly depicted when something is being exceeded in

numbers, while on the sociological perspective a minority group is being interpreted

as when its members have extremely lesser grasp or authority over their own activities

in their daily lives in comparison to the members in the dominant or majority group.

All minority groups have five basic properties.

Firstly, the members of a minority group receive unfair treatment and also possess

little authority over their own lives in comparison to the people in the majority group

over theirs. Secondly, the members of the minority are often easily identified from the

dominant group based on their specific physical or cultural attributes. Thirdly, the

members of the minority group are in the group not because they want to be in it, they

are basically built-in into the group. Fourthly, the members of the minority group

have intense acquaintance of subordination. Last but not least, the members of the

minority group tend to marry people from the same minority group; the member of

the majority group is often reluctant to marry the member of the minority group as

they will then be joining an inferior group.

2.p Social scientists define race as a ³mythic construction´, this is due to the fact that such

classifications such as difference in physical characteristics, geographic origin and

culture have been generated in people¶s minds for such a long time.

The above definition differs from the biological or genetic definition of race

3.p The difference between the terms: , , and  can be

illustrated from an equation point of view as demonstrated by Schaefer in Chapter 1.

# can be illustrated as,w

   , where it means that the majority group

(A) and the minority groups (B and C) combine to form a new group (D) with a new

identity in terms of its cultural standpoint. This new group will only have the

outstanding element and traits of the various cultures contributing to it.

x is illustrated as,

  , where it means that the minority groups

(B and C) must learn the attributes of the dominant group (A) before it can be

welcomed or accepted as part of that dominant group. Thus, the minority groups must

abandon their own cultural belief and traditions in order to integrate into the culture of

the dominant group.

 is illustrated as,

 

 , where it means that the different

groups (A, B and C) treat each other with their outmost respect for one another¶s

culture, enabling them to practice their own culture without getting any judgements.

Therefore, it is seen that pluralist appreciates the value of anyone being able to

practise their own sets of culture and ethnics, but this is otherwise for the

assimilationist and integrationist.

On the other hand,    is the actual partitioning of the dominant group from

the minority group in almost anywhere in the society, this can take place for instance

at the workplace and housing.

4.p cigration basically describes the transfer of any population and when people migrate

to a new country where everything else is very unfamiliar they often will find

themselves as a minority in that new country. Things such as their religions or culture

or even physical attributes will often set them apart from the dominant group in that

new country. Due to their reduced role in the new country, they acquire the

subordinate group status.

Annexation is resulted when nations combine a country or another territory within the

domain of a state. When this happens, the peoples who were once the dominant group

in their own country, became part of the minority group in the new country and thus

obtaining the subordinate group status. Often, the dominant group will inhibit the

practise of the culture and language of the minority group.

Colonization occurs when