Matriarchal family • Authority is vested in the elder of the mother’s kin.

This is rarely found

in societies.

Equalitarian family • One in which the husband and wife exercise a more or less equal
amount of authority

Matricentric family • One where the absence of the father who may be working gives the
mother a dominant position in the family. Prevalent in the suburbs.

D. Functions of (1) Sexual regulation

the family (2) Biological reproduction
(3) Organizing production and consumption
(4) Socializing children
(5) Providing emotional intimacy and support
(6) Providing care and attention
(7) Providing social status
(8) Providing mechanism for social control
(9) Serves as the individual’s first and foremost school
(10) Providing maintenance of order
(11) Providing placement of members in the larger society
(12) Maintaining motivation and moral

V. RACE AND
ETHNICITY

Race • A socially constructed category of people who share biologically

transmitted traits that members of society consider important
• Constructed from biological traits – skin, color, facial features, hair
texture, and body shape
• As a result of living in different geographic regions, racial diversity
appeared among humans
• Racial diversity is also a product of migration

Racial types • Racial categories allow societies to rank people in a hierarchy

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 Ethnicity • A shared cultural heritage; based on common ancestry, language, or
religion
• Like race, ethnicity is socially constructed

Minority • Any category of people distinguished by physical or cultural differences

that society sets apart and subordinates
• Groups subordinated in terms of power and privilege to the majority or
dominant group
• Characteristics of minorities:
(1) Have physical or cultural characteristics that distinguish them
from the dominant groups
(2) Membership is not voluntary; it is ascribed since a person is born
to an existing group that defines him as part of a minority group
(3) Members generally marry members of the same minority group
(4) Are aware of their subordinate status
(5) Members experience unequal treatment from the dominant group
in the form of prejudice, discrimination

Minority Groups

Racial groups • Those minorities and corresponding majorities who are classified
according to obvious physical differences (hair color, color of the skin,
or shape of earlobe)

Ethnic groups • Designated by their ethnicity based on cultural differences such as

language, attitudes toward marriage and parenting, and food habits,
among others
• Groups set apart from others because of their national origin or
distinctive cultural patterns

Religious groups • Association with religion other than the dominant faith

Gender groups • Generally, males are the social majority. Females, although more
numerous, are relegated the position of social minority.
• Women encounter prejudice and discrimination

Problems in Race and Ethnic Relations

Prejudice • A rigid and unfair generalization about an entire category of people

• A prejudgment, an attitude with emotional bias
• An irrationally based negative, or occasionally positive attitude toward
others who are not like themselves
o Positive prejudices tend to exaggerate the virtues of people like
ourselves
o Negative prejudices tend to condemn those who differ from us
which can be expressed from mild dislike to outright hostility
• Results from a lack of knowledge of or unfamiliarity with the subject

Discrimination • An overt action

• Unequal treatment of various categories of people
• Discrimination refers to actions while prejudice refers to attitudes

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 • Four types of people manifesting various categories related to racial prejudice
and discrimination:
(1) Unprejudiced non-discriminators
o People who are not prejudiced against members of other racial and
ethnic groups
o Also do not practice discrimination
o Believe in the ideals of justice, freedom, equality, and dignity of
individuals
(2) Unprejudiced discriminators
o People who always think of expediency
o At times, they are free from prejudice, but would always keep silent
when unreasonable people speak out
(3) Prejudiced non-discriminators
o Timid bigots who do not accept the tenets of equality for all.
o They conform to equality and do lip services when there are pressures
(4) Prejudiced discriminators
o People who do not believe in equality and strongly express their non-
belief
o For them, there is no conflict between attitudes and behavior.
o They practice discrimination

Causes of Prejudice

(1) Stereotyping
o The tendency to picture all members of a group in an oversimplified
or exaggerated manner
o A process by which all members of a particular category have the
same qualities
o We generalize by thinking everyone else in the category is just like
that person
(2) Ethnocentrism
o Occurs when one has the belief that his own race, nation, or group is
the best; believe that other groups of societies are inferior to his own
(3) Scapegoating
o Occurs when people have problems they cannot solve and feel
frustrated which can lead to an aggressive behavior
o People usually search for a way to let out that aggression
o They find a scapegoat to blame their problems
o “scapegoat” comes from the Hindu custom of identifying the sins of
the people with a goat and then driving the goat into wilderness
(4) Authoritarian personality
o Some members of a majority group manifest authoritarian
personality, often intolerant, submissive to superius, and bullying to
inferiors

Patterns of Interaction

Pluralism • A society in which ethnic and racial groups maintain their distinctiveness but
treat one another with respect
• Celebrates the differences among groups of people
• A reaction against assimilation and melting pot idea

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 • Not only assumes that minorities have rights but also considers the lifestyle
of a minority group to be a legitimate and even a desirable way of
participating in society
• Unlike assimilation that views minority as a subordinate group that should
give up its identity, pluralism assumes that minority is a primary unit of
society
• The minority groups are permitted to retain their cultural identity

Assimilation • Occurs when a minority group becomes integrated into the dominant society;
cultural differences are lessened
• Process whereby groups with different cultures come to have a common
culture
• Cultural assimilation
o adoption of the dominant group’s food, dress, customs, and language;
a prerequisite to structural assimilation
• Structural assimilation
o admission to major businesses and professions
• Primary assimilation
o acceptance to private clubs, friendship cliques, and family through
intermarriages
o ethnic does not totally disappear
• Acculturation
o Process of learning the norms and values of a new, or second culture,
so that different racial and ethnic groups become similar in their
thinking, feeling, and acting
• Amalgamation
o Intermarriages among people from different ethnic groups
o Known as the melting pot process
o Occurs in a society where different ethnic and racial groups
intermingle producing a new and distinctive genetic and cultural blend

Ethnic struggle • Occurs when two or more groups in a society vie for power and privilege
• Develops when a society is split into two main ethnic or racial groups

Genocide • Considered as the ultimate solution to intergroup conflict – mass murder of

an ethnic or racial group
• “…any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, or part of in
whole, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group such as the following:
(a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm
to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of
life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d)
imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and (e)
forcible transferring children of the group to another group

Slavery • Refers to the treatment of a group of people as property, rather than as

persons
• Slaves may be acquired through war, conquest, or trade

Subjugation • Subordination of one group and the assumption of a position of authority,

power, and domination by the other
• Subordinate group may accept their lower status

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