Materi Ajar - 10 - Race and Ethnicity
Materi Ajar - 10 - Race and Ethnicity
Materi Ajar - 10 - Race and Ethnicity
Learning Objectives
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Race (1)
A race is a socially constructed category of
people who share biologically transmitted traits
that members of a society consider important
People may classify one another racially based
on physical characteristics such as skin color,
facial features, hair texture, and body shape
Racial diversity appeared among our human
ancestors as the result of living in different
geographic regions of the world
The striking variety of physical traits found today
is also the product of migration; genetic
characteristics once common to a single place
(such as light skin or curly hair) are now found in
many lands
Race (2)
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Ethnicity
Minorities
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Measuring Prejudice:
The Social Distance Scale (1)
One measure of prejudice is social distance,
how closely people are willing to interact with
members of some category
In the 1920s, Emory Bogardus developed the
social distance scale
Bogardus found that people felt much more
social distance from some categories than
from others
In general, students in his surveys expressed
the most social distance from Hispanics,
African Americans, Asians, and Turks,
indicating that they would be willing to
tolerate such people as co-workers but not as
neighbors, friends, or family members
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Measuring Prejudice:
The Social Distance Scale (2)
What patterns of social distance do we
find among college students today?
A recent study using the same social
distance scale reported three major
findings:
1. Student opinion shows a trend toward
greater social acceptance
2. People see less difference between
various minorities
3. The terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001,may have reduced social
acceptance of Arabs and Muslims
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Racism
A powerful and harmful form of
prejudice, racism is the belief that one
racial category is innately superior or
inferior to another
Racism has existed throughout world
history
Today, overt racism in this country has
decreased because more people
believe in evaluating others, in Martin
Luther King Jr.s words, not by the
color of their skin but by the content of
their character.
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Theories of Prejudice
Where does prejudice come from?
Social scientists provide several
answers to this question, focusing on
frustration, personality, culture, and
social conflict
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Scapegoat Theory
Scapegoat theory holds that prejudice
springs from frustration among people who
are themselves disadvantaged
Her prejudice does not improve her situation,
but it is a relatively safe way to express
anger, and it may give her the comforting
feeling that at least she is superior to
someone
A scapegoat, then, is a person or category of
people, typically with little power, whom
people unfairly blame for their own troubles
Because they have little power and thus are
usually safe targets, minorities often are
used as scapegoats
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Authoritarian Personality
Theory
Culture Theory
Conflict Theory
Discrimination
Evaluate
Closely related to prejudice is
discrimination, unequal treatment of
various categories of people
Prejudice refers to attitudes, but
discrimination is a matter of action
Like prejudice, discrimination can be
either positive (providing special
advantages) or negative (creating
obstacles) and ranges from subtle to
extreme
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Pluralism
Assimilation
Segregation
Genocide
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Native Americans
White Anglo-Saxon
Protestants
African Americans
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Asian Americans
Chinese Americans
Japanese Americans
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Hispanic Americans/Latinos
In 2009, the number of people of Hispanic
descent in the United States topped 48 million
(15.8 percent of the population), surpassing the
number of Asian Americans (14.6 million, or 4.8
percent of the U.S. population) and even African
Americans (39.6 million, or 12.9 percent) and
making Hispanics the largest racial or ethnic
minority
About two out of three Hispanics (some 32
million) are Mexican Americans, or Chicanos
Puerto Ricans are next in population size (4.4
million), followed by Cuban Americans (1.7
million)
Many other nations of Latin America are
represented by smaller numbers
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Mexican Americans
Puerto Ricans
Cuban Americans
Arab Americans
Arab Americans are another U.S. minority
that is increasing in size
Like Hispanic Americans, these are people
whose ancestors lived in a variety of
countries
Even so, Arab Americans may choose to
downplay their ethnicity as a way to avoid
prejudice and discrimination
Its also helps explain why Arab Americans
have been targets of an increasing number of
hate crimes and why many Arab Americans
feel that they are subject to ethnic profiling
that threatens their privacy and freedom
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Evaluate
The United States has been and will remain a
land of immigrants
Immigration has brought striking cultural
diversity and tales of hope, struggle, and
success told in hundreds of languages
Many new arrivals face the same kind of
prejudice and discrimination experienced by
those who came before them
In fact, recent years have witnessed rising
hostility toward foreigners (an expression of
xenophobia, from Greek roots meaning fear of
what is strange)
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