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considered not fully White; the same is true for Jewish people. Now, these groups are considered White by most Americans, and they have benefitted from systemic racism (McDermott, 2020). In the United States, a racial hierarchy is evident. Different groups are imagined, situated, and
but minority groups report far greater frequencies of this experience For each group studied by this survey, the two most frequently reported experiences of institutional discrimination are in the workplace: when applying for jobs and when it comes to being paid equally or considered for promotions. However, minority groups report these
- Prejudice and Discrimination
- What’s in a Name?
- Questions to Consider
- QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
- PATTERNS OF INEQUALITY
- Theoretical Perspectives
- Max Weber
- Patricia Hill Collins
- Minority Group Status and Stratification
- VISIBLE DISTINGUISHING TRAITS: RACE AND GENDER
- Race
- Race and Western Traditions
- Race and Biology
- KEY CONCEPTS IN DOMINANT–MINORITY RELATIONS
- Prejudice
The United States is a nation of groups as well as individuals. These groups vary in many ways, including their size, wealth, education, race, ethnicity, culture, religion, and language. Some groups have been part of American1 society since colonial days, while others have formed recently. Questions of unity and diversity are among the most pressin...
The group names we used in Figure 1.1 are arbitrary, and no group has clear or definite boundaries. We use these terms because they are familiar and consistent with the labels used in census reports, much of the sociological research literature, and other sources of information. Although such group names are convenient, this doesn’t mean that they ...
1. Is Carla’s confusion about her identity a result of her social and physical characteristics? Or, does is it result from how other people see her? Explain. How might Carla’s situation change if she were a man? What if her birth mother were Hispanic or black?
6. Consider the definition of a minority group. Which parts apply to gay and lesbian Americans? Which parts, if any, apply to other groups of interest that are not defined as American minority groups, such as Christians or men? What do your answers suggest about differences between minority and majority groups?
The most important defining characteristic of minority group status is inequality. As you’ll see, minor-ity group membership affects access to jobs, education, wealth, health care, and housing. It is associated with a lower (often much lower) proportional share of goods and services and more limited opportuni-ties for upward mobility. Stratificatio...
Sociologists (and other social scientists) have been concerned with stratification and inequality since the formation of sociology in the 19th century. We highlight four of the most significant thinkers in this section. An early and important contributor to our understanding of the significance of social inequality was Karl Marx, the noted social p...
One of Marx’s major critics was Max Weber, a German sociologist who did most of his work around the turn of the 20th century. Weber saw Marx’s view of inequality as too narrow. Weber argued that inequality included dimensions other than one’s relationship to the means of pro-duction. Weber expanded on Marx’s view of inequality by identifying three ...
Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins (2000) calls for an approach to the study of inequality and group relations that recognizes the multiplicity of systems of inequality and privilege in society. Some stratification systems are based on social class, while others categorize and rank people by their gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, disability,...
The theoretical perspectives we’ve just reviewed raise three important points about the connections between minority group status and stratification. First, minority group status affects access to wealth and income, prestige, and power. In the United States, minority group status has been and continues to be one of the most important and powerful d...
In this section, we focus on the second defining characteristic of minority groups: the visible traits that represent membership. The boundaries between dominant and minority groups have been established along a wide variety of lines, including religion, language, skin color, and sexuality. Let’s consider two of the more visible markers of group me...
Historically, race has been widely misunderstood, but the false ideas and exaggerated importance peo-ple have attached to race haven’t merely been errors of logic that are subject to debate. At various times and places, ideas about race have resulted in some of the greatest tragedies in human history: immense exploitation and mistreatment, such as ...
Europeans had been long aware of racial variation but, aided by breakthroughs in ship design and navi-gation, the nations of Western Europe began regularly traveling to Africa, Asia, and eventually North and South America in the 1400s. The contact with the peoples of other continents resulted in greater awareness and curiosity about observable phys...
Europeans primarily used race to denigrate, reject, and exclude people they perceived as nonwhite. However, as the tools of modern science developed, some people tried to apply the principles of scien-tific research to the concept of race. These investigations focused on constructing typologies or taxono-mies to classify every person of every race ...
When people discuss issues such as dominant–minority group relations, the discussion often turns to matters of prejudice and discrimination. This section introduces and defines four concepts to help you understand dominant–minority relations in the United States. This book addresses how individuals from different groups interact and how groups inte...
Prejudice is the tendency of an individual to think about some groups in negative ways, to attach negative emotions to those groups, and to prejudge individuals based on their group memberships. Individual prejudice has two aspects: cognitive prejudice, or the thinking aspect, and affective preju-dice, or the feeling part. A prejudiced person think...
1.2 Und erstand the concept of a minority group. 1.3 Exp lain the sociological perspectives that will guide this text, especially as they relate to the relationships between inequality and minority-group status. 1.4 Exp lain how race and gender contribute to minority-group status.
Nov 30, 2020 · other minority groups. Seventy percent of the interviewees said they usually hide their Romani identity to avoid being stigmatized, stereotyped and/or discriminated against by non-Roma. ROMANI VERSUS GYPSY We asked the participants about their choice between the terms “Gypsy” and “Romani.” While 8% strongly or somewhat preferred the term
Based on their high shares without a bachelor’s degree or more education, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) (78.5%), Hispanic (74.7%), and Black (69.5%) men are more likely to be considered working class (under this definition) than are white (52.3%) or Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) (35.8%) men. Even among the groups of men most likely to be considered working class ...
This report is part of a series titled “Discrimination in America.” The series is based on a survey conducted for National Public Radio, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Discrimination is a prominent and critically important matter in American life and throughout American history.
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