Chapter 10: Racial and Ethnic Relations

     Societies always say how they try to make everyone equal, to make each person equal to one another, but the simple truth is that, no matter how hard we try, we are all born different. Society tends to divide people into groups depending on their characteristics, which similar to other people on the group, and different to the characteristics to the rest of the members of that society. 

     People in society are mostly separated into race and ethnicity. These groups, as part of the same society, interact with one another and there are identified interaction patterns among dominant and minority groups. Many people go into the USA in search for a new life, these people come from many different places, and when they get to the American society, they begin to form part of one of these groups as well, the population of these minority groups in the USA is growing at a very fast rate, faster than in any other period in history. Race is a category of people who share inherited physical characteristics and whom others see as being a distinct group. Ethnicity is the set of cultural characteristics that distinguishes one group from another group. People who share a common cultural background and a common sense of identity is called ethnic group. Societies also have what they call minority groups. A minority group is a group of people who, because of their physical characteristics or cultural practices, are singled out and unequally treated.

 

     Society is divided and these groups that it is divided into treat each other differently, after all, people all treat each other depending on the group that they come from. Main behaviors that these group take towards each other are: discrimination, “treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction infavor of or aga-inst, a person or thing based on the group,class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit”, and Prejudice, “any preconceived opinion or feeling, either favorable or unfavorable.” There are two types of discrimination, legal discrimination, discrimination upheld by law, and Institutionalized discrimination, discrimination as an outgrowth of the structure of a society. There are also many types of prejudice, stereotype, an oversimplified, exaggerated, or unfavorable generalization about a group of people, for example, or racism, the belief that one’s own race or ethnic group is naturally superior to other races or ethnic groups, these two are two great examples of prejudice. Scapegoating, a term used by psychologists, refers to the practice of placing the blame for ones troubles on a innocent individual or group, psychologists believe this might affect discrimination between members of society.

     Minorities have cultural pluralism a policy which allows each group within society to keep its unique cultural identity. Assimilation, the blending of culturally distinct groups into a single group with a common culture identity. Minorities have throughout history undergone segregation, minority group is forbidden to live in the same areas as the dominant group and cannot use the same public facilities. There are two types of segregation, De jure segregation based on laws, and de facto segregation based on informal norms. Minorities in many cases have suffered of subjugation, the maintaining of control over a group through force, slavery, the ownership of one person by another, and finally, and worse, genocide, intentional destruction of the entire targeted population, extermination.

      The discrimination just for being different like another type of race and not to be the same as the others.

                                                            

     Societies always try to show off how equal their people is, but people will never be equal, and people tend to discriminate those that are not from their equal race or ethnicity, these groups feeling things such as repulsion towards each other eventually lead to conflict and chaos. Discrimination will probably change a lot in upcoming years too, we can see how in societies such as the American society minorities have increased in number to almost equal the number of those of dominant groups, eventually minorities will become the vast majority of people, and have the power over the dominant group that once the dominant group had over the minority group.