Nash focused his argument on the way racism is functional for the dominant group; for example, suggesting that racism morally justifies a racially unequal society. Another way to apply the functionalist perspective to racism is to discuss the way racism can contribute positively to the functioning of society by strengthening bonds between in-group s members dominant group through the ostracism of out-group members minority group members.
Consider how a community might increase solidarity by refusing to allow outsiders access. For example, gated communities or neighborhoods with covenants might include no-rent clauses, which can have a de facto in fact discriminatory effect although they are not du jure by law discriminatory.
Conflict theories are often applied to inequalities of gender, social class, education, race, and ethnicity. A conflict theorist would examine struggles between the white ruling class and racial and ethnic minorities and use that history to analyze everyday life for racial and ethnic minorities in the U.
Prejudice is a tool for maintaining power, and in many cases throughout U. The years since the Civil War have showed a pattern of attempted disenfranchisement, with gerrymandering redrawing congressional districts to favor one political party over another and voter suppression efforts, such as voter ID laws, aimed at predominantly minority neighborhoods.
In the late nineteenth century, the rising political power of blacks after the Civil War resulted in draconian Black Codes and Jim Crow laws that severely limited black political and social power.
It highlights many of the institutional discriminations that women of color faced, like being denied admission to study calculus and advanced mathematics, being overlooked for supervisory roles, and suffering the effects of Jim Crow segregation in the workplace.
Feminist sociologist Patricia Hill Collins elaborated on ideas related to the inseparability of various social characteristics in intersection theory , or intersectionality. Intersection theory suggests we cannot separate the effects of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other attributes. When we examine race and how it can bring us both advantages and disadvantages, it is important to acknowledge that the way we experience race is shaped, for example, by our gender and class.
The fourth type involves discriminatory practices embedded in an organizational culture. Next, we compare these discriminatory behaviors and institutional practices with existing legal standards defining discrimination in the courts.
We then discuss how these discriminatory behaviors and practices might operate within the domains of education, employment, housing, criminal justice, and health.
Finally, we discuss concepts of how cumulative discrimination might operate across domains and over time to produce lasting consequences for disadvantaged racial groups. This chapter is not concerned with identifying the relative importance of the various types of discrimination; rather, it is designed to present a set of conceptual possibilities that can motivate and shape appropriate research study designs.
Yet discrimination can include more than just direct behavior such as the denial of employment or rental opportunities ; it can also be subtle and unconscious such as nonverbal hostility in posture or tone of voice. Furthermore, discrimination against an individual may be based on overall assumptions about members of a disadvantaged racial group that are assumed to apply to that individual i. Discrimination may also occur as the result of institutional procedures rather than individual behaviors.
In , Gordon Allport, an early leader in comprehensive social science analysis of prejudice and discrimination, articulated the sequential steps by which an individual behaves negatively toward members of another racial group: verbal antagonism, avoidance, segregation, physical attack, and extermination Allport, Each step enables the next, as people learn by doing. In most cases, people do not get to the later steps without receiving support for their behavior in the earlier ones. In this section, we describe these forms of explicit prejudice.
By themselves such comments may not be regarded as serious enough to be unlawful balanced against concerns about freedom of speech , but they constitute a clear form of hostility.
Together with nonverbal expressions of antagonism, they can create a hostile environment in schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods Essed, ; Feagin, Verbal and nonverbal hostility are first steps on a continuum of interracial harm-doing. In laboratory experiments see Chapter 6 for detailed discussion , verbal abuse and nonverbal rejection are reliable indicators of. They also precede and vary with more overtly damaging forms of treatment, such as denial of employment Dovidio et al.
Such nonverbal hostility reliably undermines the performance of otherwise equivalent interviewees. In settings of discretionary contact—that is, in which people may choose to associate or not—members of disadvantaged racial groups may be isolated.
In social situations, people may self-segregate along racial lines. In work settings, discretionary contact may force out-group members into lower-status occupations Johnson and Stafford, or undermine the careers of those excluded from informal networks.
Sociological studies have measured avoidance in discretionary social contact situations by report or observation Pettigrew, b; Pettigrew and Tropp, In legal settings, avoidance of casual contact can appear as evidence indicating hostile intent.
Avoidance may appear harmless in any given situation but, when cumulated across situations, can lead to long-term exclusion and segregation. It may be particularly problematic in situations in which social networking matters, such as employment hiring and promotion, educational opportunities, and access to health care.
Avoiding another person because of race can be just as damaging as more active and direct abuse. Segregation occurs when people actively exclude members of a disadvantaged racial group from the allocation of resources and from access to institutions. The most common examples include denial of equal education, housing, employment, and health care on the basis of race. The majority of Americans about 90 percent in most current surveys; Bobo, support laws enforcing fair and equal opportunity in these areas.
But the remaining. The data indicate that these hardcore discriminators view their own group as threatened by racial outgroups Duckitt, Moreover, even the 90 percent who report support for equal opportunity laws show less support when specific remedies are mentioned see Chapter 8.
Physical attacks on racial outgroups have frequently been perpetrated by proponents of segregation Green et al. Extermination or mass killings based on racial or ethnic animus do occur. These are complex phenomena; in addition to the sorts of individual hostility and prejudice described above, they typically encompass histories of institutionalized prejudice and discrimination, difficult life conditions, strong and prejudiced leadership, social support for hostile acts, and socialization that accepts explicit discrimination Allport, ; Newman and Erber, ; Staub, Our report focuses more on the levels of discrimination most often addressed by social scientists.
In most cases involving complaints about racial discrimination in the United States, explicit discrimination is expressed through verbal and nonverbal antagonism and through racial avoidance and denial of certain opportunities because of race.
Racial segregation is, of course, no longer legally sanctioned in the United States, although instances of de facto segregation continue to occur. Even as a national consensus has developed that explicit racial hostility is abhorrent, people may still hold prejudicial attitudes, stemming in part from past U. Although prejudicial attitudes do not necessarily result in discriminatory behavior with adverse effects, the persistence of such attitudes can result in unconscious and subtle forms of racial discrimination in place of more explicit, direct hostility.
Such subtle prejudice is often abetted by differential media portrayals of nonwhites versus whites, as well as de facto segregation in housing, education, and occupations.
Members of the ingroup face an internal conflict, resulting from the disconnect between the societal rejection of racist behaviors and the societal persistence of racist attitudes Dovidio and Gaertner, ; Katz and Hass, ; McConahay, Subtle forms of racism are indirect, automatic, ambiguous, and ambivalent.
We discuss each of these manifestations of subtle prejudice in turn Fiske, , and then examine their implications for discriminatory behavior. Indirect prejudice leads ingroup members to blame the outgroup—the disadvantaged racial group—for their disadvantage Hewstone et al.
The blame takes a Catch form: The outgroup members should try harder and not be lazy, but at the same time they should not impose themselves where they are not wanted.
Such attitudes on the part of ingroup members are a manifestation of indirect prejudice. Differences between the ingroup and outgroup linguistic, cultural, religious, sexual are often exaggerated, so that outgroup members are portrayed as outsiders worthy of avoidance and exclusion.
Indirect prejudice can also lead to support for policies that disadvantage nonwhites. Subtle prejudice can also be unconscious and automatic , as ingroup members unconsciously categorize outgroup members on the basis of race, gender, and age Fiske, People have been shown to respond to even subliminal exposure to outgroups in these automatic, uncontrollable ways Dovidio et al. However, the social context in which people encounter an outgroup member can shape such instantaneous responses.
Outgroup members who are familiar, subordinate, or unique do not elicit the same reactions as those who are unfamiliar, dominant, or undifferentiated Devine, ; Fiske, Such automatic reactions have also been shown to lead to automatic forms of stereotype-confirming behavior Bargh et al.
The main effect of subtle prejudice seems to be to favor the ingroup rather than to directly disadvantage the outgroup; in this sense, such prejudice is ambiguous rather than unambiguous.
That is, the prejudice could indicate greater liking for the majority rather than greater disliking for the minority. As a practical matter, in a zero-sum setting, ingroup advantage often results in the same outcome as outgroup disadvantage but not always. Empirically, ingroup members spontaneously reward the ingroup, allocating discretionary resources to their own kind and thereby relatively disadvantaging the outgroup Brewer and Brown, People spontaneously view their own ingroups but not the outgroup in a positive light, attributing its strengths to the essence of what makes a person part of the ingroup genes being a major example.
These ambiguous allocations and attributions constitute another subtle form of discrimination. According to theories of ambivalent prejudice e.
Outgroups may be disrespected but liked in a condescending manner. At other times, outgroups may be respected but disliked. White reactions to black professionals can exemplify this behavior. Some racial outgroups elicit both disrespect and dislike. Poor people, welfare recipients, and homeless people all erroneously perceived to be black more often than white frequently elicit an unambivalent and hostile response.
The important point is that reactions need not be entirely negative to foster discrimination. One might, for example, fail to promote someone on the basis of race, perceiving the person to be deferential, cooperative, and nice but essentially incompetent, whereas a comparable ingroup member might receive additional training or support to develop greater competence. Translated by W.
New York: Free Press. Nash, Manning. Rose, Arnold. The Roots of Prejudice , fifth edition. Paris, France: Unesco. Skip to main content. Race and Ethnicity.
Search for:. Theories of Race and Ethnicity Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe how major sociological perspectives view race and ethnicity Identify examples of culture of prejudice. Summary Functionalist views of race study the role dominant and subordinate groups play to create a stable social structure.
Short Answer Give three examples of white privilege. Do you know people who have experienced this? From what perspective? What is the worst example of culture of prejudice you can think of?
Another way to apply the functionalist perspective to racism is to discuss the way racism can contribute positively to the functioning of society by strengthening bonds between in-groups members through the ostracism of out-group members. Consider how a community might increase solidarity by refusing to allow outsiders access. On the other hand, Rose suggested that dysfunctions associated with racism include the failure to take advantage of talent in the subjugated group, and that society must divert from other purposes the time and effort needed to maintain artificially constructed racial boundaries.
Consider how much money, time, and effort went toward maintaining separate and unequal educational systems prior to the civil rights movement. Conflict theories are often applied to inequalities of gender, social class, education, race, and ethnicity. A conflict theory perspective of U.
In the late nineteenth century, the rising power of black Americans after the Civil War resulted in draconian Jim Crow laws that severely limited black political and social power. The years since the Civil War have showed a pattern of attempted disenfranchisement, with gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts aimed at predominantly minority neighborhoods.
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