8 Race and Ethnicity

When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, thousands of refugees fled the violence to neighbouring countries, but not all refugees were treated equally. Students from Africa attempting to leave Ukraine were ordered off public buses as they approached the checkpoint near the Polish border. Indian students were similarly denied the right to cross borders while white Ukrainians walk through without needing any identification.  As Rachel Onyegbule, a Nigerian first-year medical student in Lviv stranded at the border, told CNN, “There’s no need for us to ask why. We know why” (Busari, 2022).

Race continues to matter in the 21st century. It matters at borders, it matters within state territories, and it matters within the classroom. Practically all scientists today recognize that race has a real status as a biological category, yet racism continues to structure people’s lives in very real ways. Why then does race and racism persist?

Few people would describe themselves as racist, and some deny that racism is a problem, and there are those who argue that we should just stop talking about it altogether and adopt a colour blind perspective towards others. While this idea may sound attractive, sociology teaches us that we are all socialized into structures that reward and stigmatize racial and ethnic identities. Being reflexive about how these systems are internalized and externalized is an important aspect of the sociological imagination, whatever your own racial and ethnic identity might be.

Race and Ethnicity

The terms “race” and “ethnicity” are sometimes conflated, but these terms have distinct meanings for sociologists and are not synonymous. The idea of race refers to superficial physical differences that a particular society considers significant, while ethnicity describes shared culture.

Sociologists also use the term “minority” to describe groups that are subordinate, or that lack power in society regardless of skin colour or country of origin. In the USA, the term “minority” is sometimes conflated with race, particularly on right-wing news networks, but for sociologists this term refers more to relations of power and can apply to non-racial groups as well. Somewhat confusingly, it can also be used to describe a group that is in the numerical majority. For example, women in North America form a numerical majority (50.6%), but as a group do not have the same economic or political power that men do, and are therefore considered a minority group, as are Indigenous, Black, and Hispanic people.

Historically, the concept of race has changed across cultures and throughout eras, eventually becoming less connected with ancestral and familial ties, and more concerned with superficial physical characteristics. In the past, theorists have posited categories of race based on various geographic regions, ethnicities, skin colours, and more. Their labels for racial groups have connoted regions (Mongolia and the Caucasus Mountains, for instance) or denoted skin tones (black, white, yellow, and red, for example).

Constructing typologies of race, as was common in the early days of scientific racism, has fallen into disrepute due to its lack of validity and its abhorrent effects. Today, we understand that race is a social construction; we refer to the process of constructing racial identity as racialization. Objectively speaking, race is not biologically identifiable. Rather, certain groups become racialized through a social process that marks them for unequal treatment based on perceived physiological differences.

When considering skin colour, for example, the social construction of race perspective recognizes that the relative darkness or fairness of skin is an evolutionary adaptation to the available sunlight in different regions of the world. Contemporary conceptions of race, therefore, which tend to be based on socioeconomic assumptions, illuminate how far-removed modern race understanding is from biology’s understanding of skin colour. In modern society, some people who consider themselves “white” actually have more melanin (a pigment that determines skin colour) in their skin than other people who identify as “Black.” Consider the case of the American actress Rashida Jones. She is the daughter of a Black man (Quincy Jones) but she does not play a Black woman in her television or film roles. In some countries, such as Brazil, class is more important than skin colour in determining racial categorization. People with high levels of melanin in their skin may consider themselves “white” if they enjoy a middle-class lifestyle. On the other hand, someone with low levels of melanin in their skin might be assigned the identity of “Black” if they have little education or money.

Race is real in the sense that people treat it as real, and as we are socialized to react to race, the effects of race are real.  But where did the idea of race come from to begin with? Race as we know it today is largely a product of the colonialism and was supported by scientists from colonizing countries. One of the most famous groupings for races was created by German physician, zoologist, and anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840). Blumenbach divided humans into five races (MacCord 2014):

• Caucasian or White race: people of European, Middle Eastern, and North African origin
• Ethiopian or Black race: people of sub-Saharan African origin (sometimes spelled Aethiopian)
• Malayan or Brown race: people of Southeast Asian origin and Pacific Islanders
• Mongolian or Yellow race: people of all East Asian and some Central Asian origin
• American or Red race: people of the Americas

Over time, descriptions of race like Blumenbach’s came to be understood as technologies of power, more ideological legitimations than scientific facts. Biological studies show that there is little difference in genetic makeup of different races and ethnicities, and that there is much more variation within racialized groups than between them (Kolbert, 2018; McGettigan & Smith, 2015). Yet racist thinking persists as it helps legitimate inequality in society today, and because this means privileges for some groups, it is hard to put to rest. People used to think that the genetics of race determined intelligence and they used this idea to legitimate underfunding non-white schools. Race driven IQ studies were also an important concept in the global eugenics movement, which sought to improve the human races through sterilization programs and selective breeding. While the idea that race was connected to IQ was widely rejected in the later 20th Century, it resurged several times in the past 50 years, including the widely read and cited 1994 book, The Bell Curve. Researchers have since provided substantial evidence that refutes a biological-racial basis for intelligence, including the closing of so-called IQ gaps as marginalized populations were allowed more access to education (Dickens 2006). Unfortunately, there are always people who want to argue that some races are naturally more intelligent than others, reflecting how deeply embedded racist thinking continues to be within our social institutions today.

What Is Ethnicity?

Ethnicity is sometimes used interchangeably with race, but they are very different concepts. Ethnicity is based on shared culture—the practices, norms, values, and beliefs of a group that might include common language, religion, and traditions, among other commonalities. Like race, the term ethnicity is difficult to describe, and its meaning has changed over time. And as with race, individuals may be identified or self-identify with ethnicities in complex, even contradictory, ways. For example, ethnic groups such as Irish, Italian, Russian, Jewish, and Serbian might all be groups whose members are predominantly included in the “white” racial category. Ethnicity, like race, continues to be an identification method that individuals and institutions use today—whether through the census, diversity initiatives, nondiscrimination laws, or simply in personal day-to-day relations.

In some cases, ethnicity is incorrectly used as a synonym for national origin, but those constructions are technically different. National origin (itself sometimes confused with nationality) has to do with the geographic and political associations with a person’s birthplace or residence. But people from a nation can be of a wide range of ethnicities, often unknown to people outside of the region, which leads to misconceptions. For example, someone in the Argentina may consider all Vietnamese people as an ethnic group. But Vietnam is home to 54 formally recognized ethnic groups.

Adding to the complexity: Sometimes, either to build bridges between ethnic groups, gain recognition, or other reasons, diverse but closely associated ethnic groups may develop a “pan-ethnic” group. For example, the various ethnic groups and national origins of people from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and adjoining nations, who may share cultural, linguistic, or other values, may group themselves together in a collective identity. If they do so, they may not seek to erase their individual ethnicities, but finding the correct description and association can be challenging and depend on context. The large number of people who make up the Asian American community may embrace their collective identity in the context of the United States. However, that embrace may depend on people’s ages, and may be expressed differently when speaking to different populations (Park 2008). For example, someone who identifies as Asian American while at home in Houston may not refer to themselves as such when they visit extended family in Japan. In a similar manner, a grouping of people from Mexico, Central America and South America—often referred to as Latinx, Latina, or Latino—may be embraced by some and rejected by others in the group (Martinez 2019). In this sense, ethnicity can be contextual, and sociologists are more often interested in how the boundaries are drawn, rather than looking for some essential trait that all members of particular group must share (Barth, 1969).

What Are Minority Groups?

Sociologist Louis Wirth (1945) defined a minority group as “any group of people who, because of their physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination.” The term minority connotes discrimination, and in its sociological use, the term subordinate group can be used interchangeably with the term minority group, while the term dominant group is often substituted for the group that represents rulers or is in the majority who can access power and privilege in a given society. These definitions correlate to the concept that the dominant group is that which holds the most power in a given society, while subordinate groups are those who lack power compared to the dominant group.

Note that being a numerical minority is not always or necessarily a characteristic of being a minority group; sometimes the numerically larger group can be considered a minority group due to their lack of power. It is the lack of power that is the predominant characteristic of a minority, or subordinate group. For example, consider apartheid in South Africa, in which a numerical majority (the black inhabitants of the country) were exploited and oppressed by the white minority.

Stereotypes

The terms stereotype, prejudice, discrimination, and racism are often used interchangeably in everyday conversation. But when discussing these terms from a sociological perspective, it is important to recognize their distinctive meanings: Stereotypes are oversimplified ideas about groups of people; prejudice refers to thoughts and feelings about those groups; while discrimination refers to actions toward them.

As stated above, stereotypes are oversimplified ideas about groups of people. Stereotypes can be based on race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation — almost any characteristic. They may be positive (usually about one’s own group, such as when women suggest they are less likely to complain about physical pain) but are often negative (usually toward other groups, such as when members of a dominant racial group suggest that a subordinate racial group is stupid or lazy). In either case, the stereotype is a generalization that doesn’t take individual differences into account.

Where do stereotypes come from? In fact, new stereotypes are rarely created; rather, they are recycled from subordinate groups that have assimilated into society and are reused to describe newly subordinate groups. Stereotypes that groups of immigrants are more prone to crime are transferred to all sorts of groups, from Polish migrants to England, Burmese migrants to Thailand, and Mexican migrants to the USA. In fact, migrants are generally less likely to engage in crime than the long-term residents, though of course both migrants and non-migrants sometimes engage in criminal acts (Light, He, and Robbie, 2020). It’s hard to know who this idea was first applied to, but it represents a particular schema applied to different peoples the world over.

Ways of Othering

Prejudice refers to beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and attitudes that someone holds about a group. A prejudice is not based on experience; instead, it is a prejudgment originating outside of actual experience. Racism is a type of prejudice that is used to justify the belief that one racial category is somehow superior or inferior to others. White supremacist groups are examples of racist organizations; their members’ belief in white supremacy has encouraged hate crimes and hate speech for over a century.

While prejudice refers to biased thinking, discrimination consists of actions against a group of people. Discrimination can be based on age, religion, health, and other indicators. Race-based discrimination and anti-discrimination laws strive to address this set of social problems.

Discrimination based on race or ethnicity can take many forms, from unfair housing practices to biased hiring systems.

Discrimination can also involve the promotion of a group’s status, such as occurs with white privilege. While most white people are willing to admit that non-white people live with a set of disadvantages due to the colour of their skin, very few white people are willing to acknowledge the benefits they receive simply by being white. White privilege refers to the fact that dominant groups often accept their experience as the normative (and hence, superior) experience. Failure to recognize this “normality” as race-based is an example of a dominant group’s often unconscious racism. Feminist sociologist Peggy McIntosh (1988) described several examples of “white privilege.” For instance, white women can easily find makeup that matches their skin tone, and white people can be assured that, most of the time, they will be dealing with authority figures of their own race.

Because their experience is taken as normative, white people often have a difficult time thinking of themselves as a racial group and may react with hostility and defensiveness when the topic of race and racism is raised. This hostile reaction is known as white fragility (DiAngelo, 2018). This is due in part to the way we have been taught to think about racism as something we are rather than a system we are socialized into. Most of us are taught that to be a racist is a bad thing, and since we ourselves are not bad people, then we therefore cannot be racist. While there are people (such as neo-nazi skinheads) who make being racist a core element of their personal identity, within sociology racism is understood as something connected with social structures rather than an aspect of someone’s character.

Racism is used to justify inequalities against individuals by maintaining that one racial category is superior or inferior to others; it is a set of practices used by a racial dominant group to maximize advantages by disadvantaging racial minority groups. Such practices have affected wealth gap, employment, housing discrimination, government surveillance, incarceration, drug arrests, immigration arrests, infant mortality and much more (Race Forward 2021).

Racism is not simply discrimination based on perceptions of race. Rather, it refers to social situations where prejudice about a particular racial group is suffused with relations of power (Smith, 2000). People of colour can be prejudiced towards white people and even discriminate against them, for example by refusing to serve them, but lack the institutional and legal means to act collectively against white people. Of course, this dynamic is not tied to the colour white per se. The Batwa in the Democratic Republic of Congo experience racism and violence at the hands of the majority Luba, even though neither group is white. Because of colonization, though, whiteness does tend to colour inequality. During the colonial period, for example, both the Batwa and Luba experienced racism and brutality at the hands of white colonizers from Belgium. Remembering that there is no biological reality to race helps us understand why racism needs to be seen as rooted in relations of power.

While racism is always tied to social systems, it can also refer to the behaviour and actions of individual people. Individual racism refers to prejudice and discrimination performed by individuals consciously and unconsciously that occurs between individuals. Examples include telling a racist joke or attacking a person on the street for being Asian (as happened during the COVID-19 pandemic).

Systemic Racism, also called structural racism or institutional racism, refers to systems and structures that have procedures or processes that disadvantages racial minority groups. Systemic racism occurs in organizations as discriminatory treatments and unfair policies based on race that result in inequitable outcomes for the dominant racial group.

Systemic racism can take many forms. In Canada, for example, Dechief and Oreopolous (2012) found there was widespread and systemic discrimination taking place in Toronto’s job market. They found that individuals with Indian and Chinese names were much less likely to receive job callbacks after submitting resumes, even where the resumes were practically identical to people with European sounding names. Their study shows that discrimination is not just the result of a few bad apples, but that there is a widespread racial bias in the labour market.

While racism is often thought of in terms of groups, people within groups can also experience prejudice and exclusion based upon the colour shade of their skin. Colourism is a form of racism in which someone believes one type of skin tone is superior or inferior to another within a racial group. In her novel The Desirable Sister, Taslim Burkowicz describes the experience of two South Asian sisters born to immigrant parents in Canada. One sister has lighter skin, which grants her membership to the social circles of white kids as a teen, while the other sister has dark skin and is therefore labelled as Indian and treated in a way that is inferior to her sister.

Intergroup Relations

Sociologists use four main categories to classify the way dominant groups interact with minority groups: pluralism/multiculturalism, genocide (or expulsion), segregation, and assimilation.

Pluralism/Multiculturalism

Pluralism is represented by the ideal that minority ethnic groups maintain their unique cultural practices while the dominant culture is maintained. Multiculturalism, on the other hand, advocates that the diversity of cultures forms a mosaic, without emphasis on any one particular dominant culture. In the 21st century, Thailand has shifted from a pluralistic model (where the Tai culture was pushed as the dominant culture, and other cultures were tolerated, perhaps even celebrated, but subordinate), to a multicultural model, where the Thai nation consists of diverse cultures. Pluralism tends to promote assimilation while multiculturalism strives to maintain distinct ethnic identities. In practice, between pluralism and multiculturalism is often blurry and contested, as can be seen in Thailand today where the Tai culture of Bangkok remains the hegemonic tradition.

Assimilation

Assimilation describes the process by which a minority individual or group gives up its own identity by taking on the characteristics of the dominant culture. One of the ways white supremacy operates is by creating the desire in others to become white. Take for example the

1923 Supreme Court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind. Thind, a South Asian man who had moved the United States, wanted the courts to recognize him as white, as many states enforced segregation and did not protect the rights of non-white people. The court conceded that, while Indians were traditionally classified as “Caucasians” by anthropologists, “the average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences” between them and white Americans, and refused to recognize him as white. The case of Thind represents an unsuccessful attempt at assimilation. Yet other groups, such as the Irish, Italians, and Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe represent cases of groups who were initially considered to be non-white, or given a subordinate whiteness, but later became recognized as White. (Ignatiev, 2008).

Segregation

Segregation refers to the physical separation of two groups, particularly in residence, but also in workplace and social functions. It is important to distinguish between de jure segregation (segregation that is enforced by law) and de facto segregation (segregation that occurs without laws but because of other factors). A stark example of de jure segregation is the apartheid movement of South Africa, which existed from 1948 to 1994. Under apartheid, black South Africans were stripped of their civil rights and forcibly relocated to areas that segregated them physically from their white compatriots. Only after decades of degradation, violent uprisings, and international advocacy was apartheid finally abolished.

De jure segregation occurred in the United States for many years after the Civil War. During this time, many former Confederate states passed Jim Crow laws that required segregated facilities for Black and White people. These laws were codified in 1896’s landmark Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, which stated that “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional. For the next five decades, Black people were subjected to legalized discrimination, forced to live, work, and go to school in separate—but unequal—facilities. It wasn’t until 1954 and the Brown v. Board of Education case that the Supreme Court declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” thus ending de jure segregation in the United States.

De facto segregation, however, cannot be abolished by any court mandate. Segregation is still alive and well in many parts of the world, with different racial or ethnic groups often segregated by neighborhood, borough, or parish.

Genocide

Genocide, the deliberate annihilation of a targeted (usually subordinate) group, is the most horrific intergroup relationship. Historically, we can see that genocide has included both the intent to exterminate a group and the function of exterminating of a group, intentional or not.

Possibly the most well-known case of genocide is Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jewish people in the first part of the twentieth century. Also known as the Holocaust, the explicit goal of Hitler’s “Final Solution” was the eradication of European Jewish people, as well as the destruction of other minority groups such as Catholics, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ people. With forced emigration, concentration camps, and mass executions in gas chambers, Hitler’s Nazi regime was responsible for the deaths of 12 million people, 6 million of whom were Jewish.

Genocide is often tied to colonization, particularly settler colonialism, which was the type of colonization practiced Australia, Canada, and the United States. In Canada, a series of residential schools were set up in the 1840s for the purpose of assimilating Indigenous children into the mainstream white culture of the colonizers. Attendance at these schools was required from 1894, and children as young as four were forcibly removed from their families and taken to boarding schools, sometimes located far away from their communities. The children were not permitted to speak their language and suffered physical, emotional, and sexual violence at the hands of the religious authorities from the Catholic, Anglican, United and Presbyterian churches who ran the institutions. In 2015, a nationwide truth finding commission known as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that the schools amounted to cultural genocide. Other maintain that the term cultural genocide is not adequate, especially after the confirmation of hundreds of unmarked grave sites found at former residential schools, and advocate for the term genocide to be used instead.

Genocide is not a just a historical concept; it is practiced still in the twenty- first century. For example, ethnic and geographic conflicts in the Darfur region of Sudan have led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. As part of an ongoing land conflict, the Sudanese government and their state-sponsored Janjaweed militia have led a campaign of killing, forced displacement, and systematic rape of Darfuri people. Although a treaty was signed in 2011, the peace is fragile.

Expulsion

Expulsion refers to a subordinate group being forced, by a dominant group, to leave a certain area or country. As seen in the example of the Holocaust, expulsion can be a factor in genocide. However, it can also stand on its own as a destructive group interaction. Expulsion has often occurred historically with an ethnic or racial basis.

The British conquest of Acadia (which included the contemporary Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and parts of New Brunswick, Quebec, and Maine) in 1710 created the problem of what to do with the French colonists who had been living there for 80 years. In the end, approximately three-quarters of the Acadian population were rounded up by British soldiers and loaded onto boats without regard for keeping families together. Many of them ended up in Spanish Louisiana where they formed the basis of contemporary Cajun culture, while others mutinied on the ships and sailed them back to their homes, only to find them occupied by British soldiers and settlers.

Expulsion can also occur within the context of “population transfers.” Population transfers sometimes occurred to establish the limits of national membership when new national borders were drawn. For example, after Independence in 1947, British India was partitioned into two different states: Pakistan (East and West) and India. Pakistan was to become the home of the Muslims while India was to be a country of Hindus. As is often the case in national imaginations, though, there were many Hindus living in what was to become Pakistan and many Muslims living in what was going to be India. As a result, 15 million people moved across the new borders, the largest migration event ever to have occurred, with as many as 2 million people dying in the process (Sharma, 2020).

Theoretical Perspectives

Issues of race and ethnicity can be observed through three major sociological perspectives: functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. As you read through these theories, ask yourself which one makes the most sense, and why. Is more than one theory needed to explain racism, prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination?

Functionalism

In the view of functionalism, racial and ethnic inequalities must have served an important function in order to exist as long as they have. This concept, of course, is problematic. How can racism and discrimination contribute positively to society? Sociologists who adhere to the functionalist view argue that racism and discrimination do contribute positively, but only to the dominant group. Historically, it has indeed served dominant groups well to discriminate against subordinate groups. Slavery, of course, was beneficial to slaveholders. Holding racist views can benefit those who want to deny rights and privileges to people they view as inferior to them, but over time, racism harms society. Outcomes of race-based disenfranchisement — such as poverty levels, crime rates, and discrepancies in employment and education opportunities — illustrate the long-term (and clearly negative) results of slavery and racism in Canadian society.

Apart from the issues of race, ethnicity, and social inequality, the close ties of ethnic and racial membership can be seen to serve some positive functions even if they lead to the formation of ethnic and racial enclaves or ghettos. The close ties promote group cohesion, which can have economic benefits especially for immigrants who can use community contacts to pursue employment. They can also have political benefits in the form of political mobilization for recognition, services, or resources by different communities.

Symbolic Interactionism

For symbolic interactionists, race and ethnicity provide strong symbols as sources of identity. In fact, some interactionists propose that the symbols of race, not race itself, are what lead to racism. Famed interactionist Herbert Blumer (1900-1987) suggested that racial prejudice is formed through interactions between members of the dominant group: without these interactions, individuals in the dominant group would not hold racist views. These interactions contribute to an abstract picture of the subordinate group that allows the dominant group to support its view of the subordinate group, thus maintaining the status quo. An example of this might be an individual whose beliefs about a particular group are based on images conveyed in popular media. These beliefs are unquestioned because the individual has never personally met a member of that group.

A culture of prejudice refers to the idea that prejudice is embedded in our culture. We grow up surrounded by images of stereotypes and casual expressions of racism and prejudice. Consider the casually racist imagery on grocery store shelves or the stereotypes that fill popular movies and advertisements. It is easy to see how someone living in Cambodia, who may know no Mexican people personally, might gain a stereotyped impression from such sources as the Speedy Gonzales cartoon character, Taco Time fast-food restaurants, or Hollywood movies. Or what someone from Denmark might think about people form the Middle East after watching countless movies depicting Arab people as terrorists.

Conflict Theory

Conflict theories are often applied to inequalities of gender, social class, education, race, and ethnicity. While race and ethnicity alone can serve as the basis for discrimination and prejudice, these categories are often tied up with other social systems and forms of identity. For example, capitalism has a history of exploiting racial and ethnic differences for the purposes of keeping wages low and discouraging class solidarity. As Cedric Robinson explains, “The tendency of European civilization through capitalism was thus not to homogenize but to differentiate–to exaggerate regional, subcultural, and dialectical differences into ‘racial’ ones” (Cedric Robinson, quoted in Bhattacharrya, 1983, p. 11). The term racial capitalism describes the process whereby racialized population come to serve as the Other to a white working class (Battacharrya, 2018).  This process is still evident today, with racial minority groups frequently used as scapegoats by right-wing populist leaders in the 21st century, and relegated to lower paying, precarious occupational positions.

For conflict theorists, addressing the issues that arise when race and ethnicity become the basis of social inequality is a central focus of any emancipatory project. They are often complex problems, however. As noted in the previous chapter, feminist sociologist Patricia Hill Collins (1990) developed intersection theory, which suggests we cannot separate the effects of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other attributes. When we examine race and how it can bring us both advantages and disadvantages, it is important to acknowledge that the way we experience race is shaped, for example, by our gender and class. Multiple layers of disadvantage intersect to create the way we experience race. For example, if we want to understand prejudice, we must understand that the prejudice focused on a white woman because of her gender is very different from the layered prejudice focused on a poor Asian woman, who is affected by stereotypes related to being poor, being a woman, and being part of a visible minority.

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