Race and ethnic relations: structured inequality

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Race and ethnic relations structured inequality

• Racial stratification

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Race and poverty

• Majority of poor are white
• Poverty rates among minorities higher
• Rates increasing faster for whites
• 2003 rates
• Blacks 24.3
• Hispanics 22.5
• Asian Americans 11.8
• Non-Hispanic white 8.2
• 2001 chart http//www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/pov
  erty01/povrac01cht.gif

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Why are minorities disproportionately poor?
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Culture of poverty theory

• Originated by Lewis Banfield in 1960s
• Social disorganizationist perspective

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Culture of poverty theory

• Ryans critique
• From sociological imagination approach
• Culture of poverty theory blaming the victim
• Source of poverty structural contradictions

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Race, racism

• Concepts are key
• Race and ethnic relations racial stratification

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Concepts race

• physical variations singled out by the members
  of a community or society as socially
  significant. (Giddens Duneier 211)
• not a biological concept, but an ideological one
  used to oppress (Simon Henderson, 1997 340)

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race

• A century of failed attempts to designate races
  as biological categories (scientific racism)
• So does this mean race doesnt exist? Was W. E.
  B. DuBois wrong to say the color line was the
  problem of the twentieth century?

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W. I. Thomas on the definition of the situation

• If men define situations as real, they are real
  in their consequences. (1928)

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So race as a concept is a social construction.

• Differences in skin color have been singled out
  as significant, and have been made significant in
  consequences.

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Concepts ethnicity

• cultural practices and outlooks of a given
  community that have emerged historically
  (Giddens Duneier 211)
• Since they are cultural, ethnicities are learned,
  and socially constructed.

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Concepts prejudice

• Preconceived opinions or attitudes about a group
• Attitudes are learned (and socially constructed

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Concepts discrimination

• Acts that deny members of a group or category
  access to valued resources or opportunities
• Discrimination is behavior
• May or may not be based on prejudice

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Concepts racism

• racism is an ideology supporting stratification
  based on the social construction of race

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Concepts racism

• Review ideology is a system of ideas which are
  used to justify a system of power
• Racism developed historically
• Along with the very concept of race
• To justify slavery, conquest, racial prejudice
  and discrimination

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Concepts institutional racism

• Patterns of racial stratification woven into the
  social structure and everyday practices of
  individuals and groups
• For example, segregation in KC metro (Gotham,
  2002)

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Institutional racism
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Education and race/ethnicity
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William Julius Wilson the significance of class
and race

• 1940s more social organization (145)
• Conditions of the urban underclass have
  deteriorated
• Primarily because of political policies and
  economic processes
• New Federalism
• economic shifts
• loss of job opportunities
• New urban poverty

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Anderson the salad bowl

• Old melting pot prediction not holding true
• Middle class/ professional blacks in a bind
• Succeed in white-dominated sphere
• Hold on to African-American ethnicity

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Affirmative action

• When were affirmative action policies put in
  place? Why?
• Why is there a frequently bitter reaction to
  these policies?
• What would work better?