Race and Minority Relations: A Historical Overview of Discrimination and Civil Rights - Pr, Study notes of Introduction to Sociology

Download Race and Minority Relations: A Historical Overview of Discrimination and Civil Rights - Pr and more Study notes Introduction to Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! Race and Minority Relations Midterm In Class - turning points- missed opportunities o writing of the Constitution  democracy  blacks were equivalent to 3/5 of a white person  ended slave trade but not slavery o Reconstruction  13th, 14th, 15th amendments  blacks elected in government  Ku Klux Klan took over to maintain hierarchy  Jim Crow racism - overtly racist society o explicitly racist ideology o social, political, and economic segregation and discrimination are matters of law - Jim Crow racism o legal manifestations  schools were segregated by law  no interracial marriage  black people count not be on a jury  Plessy v. Ferguson: separate but equal o political manifestations  social security- domestic workers and agricultural workers  no vote= no representation (Grandfather clause, literacy test) o education manifestations  separate schools: worse condition, inferior  curriculum: taught that slave owners were good, scientific myths about African American inferiority o social manifestations  separate water fountains, restaurants, busses  weren’t treated at hospitals  couldn’t try on clothes or return them o economic manifestations  menial jobs o physical manifestations  lynching and beatings, riots - eugenics: blacks not as intelligent as whites (scientific theories) - fear of difference, fear of change, fear of losing power, desire to maintain economic power - North ignored it but knew about it, benefits from cheap labor, inexpensive products, lack of competition - 3 things about World War II o revulsion over the Nazis (forced us to look at our own inhumanity) o black men fought in the war for freedom of others o Cold War (treating people as second-class citizens) - 3 events that started Civil Rights Movement o desegregation of baseball- Jackie Robinson o President Truman desegregated the military o 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education - 5 events of the Civil Rights Movement o murder of Emmitt Till in 1955  illustrated internalized inferiority o Montgomery Bus Boycott  lasted 381 days- more than a year  illustrated the power/difference that one person can make  event that brought MLK to prominence- was 26 years old, nonviolent leadership o Little Rock, Arkansas  Orville Faubus announced that there was too big a threat of violence to desegregate schools  President Eisenhower sent in federal troops to make sure that Central High School was being desegregated and to protect blacks  said to the country that the Supreme Court’s decision was going to be enforced, violence would not work  set a precedent  9 black students, protected by federal troops for one year, took a lot of courage o Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964  killing of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner  led to Civil Rights Act of 1964  outlawed job discrimination and other things  accomplished everything Civil Rights Movement set out to accomplish (in terms of legislation) o Bloody Sunday and March from Selma to Montgomery  Led to passage of Voting Rights Act of 1965  outlawed grandfather clause, literacy tests  enormous impact- black elected officials - 4 reasons Civil Rights Movement ended: o Vietnam War was rising in importance, energy of white people who supported movement then shifted to protest war o legislation accomplished what it needed to, justice would emerge  Civil Rights Act of 1964  Voting Rights Act of 1965  Fair Housing Act of 1968 o people entered the movement that scared people  whites withdrew from the movement - race: group that is treated as distinct in society because of certain perceived characteristics that have been defined as signifying superiority or inferiority - anti-Semitism: hatred of Jewish people - ethnic groups: those that share a common culture and have a shared identity - racial formation: social and historical process by which racial categories are created Chapter 1- Defining Race: - racial minorities in America have a lower life expectancy that Whites o less access to medical care - Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be arrested for crime, more likely to be held without bail, more likely to be sentenced, and more likely to receive longer sentences - any two racial groups compared are 99% similar genetically o skin color, lip form, hair texture are not indicators of race - race is what interacting humans define it to be - social construction means that people learn, through socialization and interaction processes, to attribute certain characteristics to people who are classified into a racial category - process essentialization: negative stereotypical traits are regarded by society as essential to the character of any person identified by the stereotype - culture includes language, religions, tools, music, habits, socialization practices, and other elements - government, educational institution, the state and federal system, and the criminal justice system can define race - racial formation theory: over time, society’s powerful institutions define what race is and who is to be classified within what racial category - US government declares one to be an American Indian once through an elaborate bureaucratic process, involving paper forms and legal documents - a person is free to designate himself or herself in any way they might wish - 6 definitions of race: by one’s physical appearance, by social construction, as an ethnic group, as a social class rank, as racial formation, by one’s own self- definition Chapter 2- The Race Myth: - Craig Venter knew it was not possible to distinguish people who were ethnically African American, Chinese, Hispanic, or white at the genome level - could not identify race of individual from DNA - to qualify as a biological race: o it can have its own distinct genetic lineage, it evolved in enough isolation that it never mated with individuals outside its borders o genetic distance between one population and another has to be significantly greater than the genetic variability that exists within the population themselves - geographical distance does not equal genetic distance - genetic distance between populations of humans is about 2% - 1% genetic variability with humans - humans vary in small increments from group to group - genes in combination with environmental factors determine physical traits - physical traits fail to define races because local populations produce traits that adapt to climate and other environmental factors wherever those factors occur Chapter 3- Planting the Seed: - race did not appear in the English language until the 16th century and was used as a technical term to define human groups in the 17th century - the Bible’s explanations for human variations: o there was a single creation of humanity, monogenesis o various human groups were created separately, polygenesis - Carolus Linnaeus: attempted to classify all living things, humans within the matrix of the natural world, monogenesis - Buffon: blacks became dark-skinned because of the hot tropical sun and that if they moved to Europe their skin would eventually lighten over time, monogenesis - Blumenbach: 5 human races= Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay - science defined race as a concept believed to be hereditary and unalterable - scientific beliefs about race were accepted by the general public, led to support for the one-drop rule - racial classification, the maintenance of racial boundaries, and racism are linked Chapter 6- American Racism in the 21st Century: - hate groups still exist in the US - racism is much broader than hate groups, racial slurs, and defiled Korans- it comes in much quieter forms/everyday-ordinary forms - 5 fallacies about racism o individualistic fallacy  conflating racism with prejudice ignores the more systematic and structural forms of racism; it looks for racism within individuals and not institutions  racism is often habitual, unintentional, commonplace, polite, implicit, and well-meaning o legalistic fallacy  de jure= based on the law  de facto= based in fact  assumes that abolishing racist laws automatically leads to the abolition of racism writ large o tokenistic fallacy  assumes that the presence of people of color in influential positions is evidence of the complete eradication of racial obstacles o ahistorical fallacy  renders history impotent  all that is socially constructed is historically constructed; and since race is a social construction, it is a historical construction o fixed fallacy  those with their  standard definition of racism only the most heinous forms (violence) they conclude that things have gotten better - institutional racism: systemic white domination of people of color, embedded and operating in corporations, universities, legal systems, political bodies, cultural life, and other social collectives o symbolic power, political power, economic power - interpersonal racism: racial domination that manifests in everyday interactions and practices, found in the habitual, commonsensical, and ordinary practices of our lives Chapter 7- Color-Blind Privilege: - color-blind racism refers to the dominant belief that race no longer matters in shaping people’s experiences- a belief that is contradicted by the reality of race in America - bombarded by depictions of race relations in the media which suggest that discriminatory racial barriers have been dismantled - white America sees a level playing field, while a majority of black Americans sees a field that is uneven - whites and black differ on their support for affirmative action, the perceived fairness of the criminal justice system, the ability to acquire the American Dream, and the extent to which whites have benefited from past discrimination - colorblind depictions of the US race relations serve to maintain white privilege by negating racial inequality - colorblindness allows whites to believe that segregation and discrimination are no longer an issue because it is now illegal for individuals to be denied access to housing, public accommodations or jobs because of their race - color-blind perspective allows whites to imagine that depictions of racial minorities working in high status jobs and consuming the same products, or at least appearing in commercials for products whites desire or consume, is the same as living in a society where color is no longer used to allocate resources or shape group outcomes - whites imagine socio-economic success is a function of individual hard work, determination, thrift and investments in educations - colorblindness allows whites to define themselves as politically and racially tolerant as they proclaim their adherence to a belief system that does not see or judge individuals by the “color of their skin” Chapter 27- Between Two Worlds: - Hispanics are the largest and youngest minority group in the US - mixed picture: young Latinos are satisfied with their lives, optimistic about their futures and place a high value on education, hard work, and career success, yet they are much more likely than other Americans to drop out of