Tatiana Ali
Assignment week 3: Chapters 3-4
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Chapters 3-4
1. In your own words explain the following key terms and feel free to provide examples: ethnocentrism, competition, power, colonized minority group, and immigrant minority group.
2. What is modern institutional discrimination? How does it differ from “traditional” institutional discrimination?
3. Explain paternalistic and rigid competitive relations and link them to industrialization. How does the shift from slavery to de jure segregation illustrate the dynamics of these two systems?
Question 1.
The Noel Hypothesis developed by the sociologist Donald Noel it is really helpful to help understand why some inequality between groups has been and is still present nowadays. He recognized three characteristics of the contact situation that had to be present for inequality to occur. Those characteristics are ethnocentrism, competition, and a differential in power. In my opinion and after reading chapter 3, I understood that ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s is better than the rest, and that sometimes because of the lack of understanding of someone else’s culture, we judge their lifestyle and think that our way of life, traditions, and values are superior. Also, we tend to compare them based on our culture’s standards. However, some argue that it might not always mean seeing other cultures as inferior. Joseph Healey and Andi Stepnick mentioned in their book Diversity & Society that “without some minimal level of pride in and loyalty to one’s own society and cultural traditions there would be no particular reason to observe the norms and laws, honor the sacred symbols, and cooperate with others doing the daily work of society” (109). I think that it is a valid point, but it is easy to cross that thin line that could either make ethnocentrism beneficial or dangerous based on the way people see minority groups or just any other culture in general. For example, I am from El Salvador and most of the typical dishes are supposed to be eaten with our hands, however, when I moved to the United States and I made those dishes for my friends, they used forks. I told them that it was not the right way, but they considered impolite to be eating with their hands.
Competition to me means that different groups or individuals fight for the control of a resource. An example of competition could be immigrants from all over the world that come to the United States. One of the complaints against them is that they are taking the jobs from the white American people, even if it is not that way, some Americans say that they feel that way. On the other hand, power is the amount of capacity that a person has to influence the policymaking of a social system. Something interesting mentioned in the book is that “the differential in power allows the dominant group to succeed in establishing a superior position” (110). That is true because the dominant group would just continue to create regulations that will continue to benefit and to maintain or give more power to the groups that have always had it in the first place. Illegal immigrants have to declare taxes, but do not receive a return, during the COVID-19 pandemic, they did not qualified for any type of help. African Americans were not as popular as white servants and were not as organized as the American Indian tribes, making them an easy target for an awful, immoral, and injustice treatment – the creation of slavery.
The terms colonized minority groups and immigrant minority groups were described by sociologist Robert Blauner to differentiate the beginning of the relationships between the dominant and the minority groups. The first one is a group that did not choose to have an interaction with the dominant group because they were colonized and became oppressed right away due to the way the dominant group thought of them. The colonizers did not see them as equal and argued that they had to teach them to be civilized just like them because they did not take the time to learn about a culture different than their culture. On the other hand, immigrant minority groups did decide to interact with the dominant group and had more power. When they came to the United States they saw a country with many opportunities and adapted relatively fast. But I think that it is important to mention that not every immigrant minority goes through the same experience. Hispanic immigrants, people of color from different countries, and Asian immigrants, for example, do not have the same treatment as the European counterpart.
Question 2.
Modern institutional discrimination is the fact that schools located in neighborhoods with more African American children receive less money, that a name associated with African Americans receive fewer calls than a name associated with a non-Hispanic white American would receive if looking for a job, the gender gap pay in the United States, immigration policies, and the fact that neighborhoods in which African Americans live are usually considered dangerous and have fewer resources available to them. It is the lack of power and wealth that affects people of color and women but keeps white males dominating society. It differs from traditional institutional discrimination in that nowadays it is not as obvious as it was with the Jim Crow Laws, and because of that reason they are harder to record. By the same token, sometimes it could even be involuntary. Healey and Stepnick mentioned the following examples related to modern institutional discrimination “racially and culturally biased standardized tests in school systems, the pattern of drug arrests that sends disproportionate numbers of black teenage boys and young men to jail and prison, and decisions by businesspeople to move their operations away from center city neighborhoods” (170). As stated before, all those situations are still taking place, but most of the people living in the United States have had to cope with those situations even if being directly affected since the day they were born. African Americans and other minorities have expressed how they feel about the lack of fair treatment they keep receiving, and sometimes the rest of the population do not pay attention because they believe that discrimination died when some inclusion policies were created, when in fact, it just changed the way it presents.
Question 3.
Paternalism refers to a type of interaction related to the agrarian sector in which a minority group is not fairly treated and it is dominated by another group. The minority groups are not allowed to make their own decisions, even if it involves their destinies and lives. The rigid competitive relation is an arrangement in which the dominant voluntary tries to exclude the minority group from competing against them when wanting to obtain the same resources, leaving them in a position of disadvantage. After the Industrial Revolution, the whole world changed and with that, the agrarian sector was not what the economy was looking for anymore, and the immobility of the minority groups was not a problem anymore. After African Americans migrated to the urban areas in the North from the South, the paternalistic relation could not continue to exist as it did while they were under slavery living in a certain area without the freedom of movement. This is when the rigid competitive relation presents itself, it was due to the dominant group, they feel threatened by the African Americans because they could start to do things the way they wanted to, attempting to access to resources and opportunities that were always available for the group that now feels like they are losing control: the dominant group.
The shift from slavery to the de jure segregation allows us to illustrate the dynamics of both paternalism and rigid competitive relations. First, paternalism was present during slavery, African Americans could be separated from their children if their owners wanted it to be that way, for example, they had to do everything being asked from them. They were considered inferior and did not have any control over their bodies, they were not able to leave or do anything different other than what the owners asked them to do. On the other hand, the Jim Crow or de jure segregation kept African Americans from obtaining a decent level of education, therefore limiting their future, or even from being part of politics. Even without slavery, African Americans were kept as subordinates and were even punished if they did not comply with the codes of conduct that were reinforced to keep them from being treated equally. Healey and Stepnick stated that “anyone who ignored them ran the risk of reprisal, physical attacks, and even death by lynching” (146). Unfortunately, that was common and even accepted to the point that they would take photographs of those attacks to then sell them. African Americans had to respect white Americans even though they were not being respected, under both slavery and de jure segregation. African Americans were attacked psychologically and physically under both systems.
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7 hours ago
Bobby Barnes
RE: Assignment week 3: Chapters 3-4
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I agree with you on what you said ” Competition to me means that different groups or individuals fight for the control of a resource. An example of competition could be immigrants from all over the world that come to the United States. One of the complaints against them is that they are taking the jobs from the white American people, even if it is not that way, some Americans say that they feel that way” Americans feel immigrant are taking away their jobs making them more dominant they are.
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Xiaoqing Yang
Chapter 3-4
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Question 1.
Ethnocentrism, competition, and power, these three characteristics are from The Noel hypothesis. It states that “If two or more groups come together in a contact situation characterized by ethnocentrism, competition, and a differential in power, then some form of racial or ethnic stratification will result.” (Noel, 1968, p. 163) and helps explain why colonists enslaved black Africans.
Ethnocentrism is an evaluation of other groups, cultures, or lifestyles according to the standards of one’s own culture, they judge another culture as inferior and believe that their own culture is superior to all other cultures. Black Africans, American Indians and white indentured servants are occupied a lowly status in society and were judged as different from the dominated colonial society.
Competition is all groups struggle for scarce resources like land or food. For example, American Indians’ competition with whites centered on land, not labor.
Differential power decided who was enslaved by colonists. There are vast power differentials and huge inequalities between dominant and minority groups. This differential in power between Africans and colonists explains why they were enslaved instead of the other groups. “The American Indian tribes were well organized social units capable of sustaining resistance to and mounting reprisals against the colonists.” (Healey 112) It gave American Indian bargaining power. Unlike white indentured servants, Africans had become indentured by force and coercion and had no bargaining power.
Colonized minority group, and immigrant minority group are two different initial relationships which are identified by Blauner. Colonized minority group is groups that are conquered or annexed by forced, such as African Americans and Mexican American. They are forced into minority status by the superior military and political power of the dominant group and subjected to massive inequalities and attacks on their cultures. Therefore, colonized minority group experiences more intense prejudice, racism, and discrimination.
Immigrant minority group is groups immigrate due to extreme pressures, but they have at least some control over their destinations. They do not occupy inferior position in society. Hence, immigrant minority groups are easier to accept the new culture and achieve equality.
Question 2.
Modern institutional discrimination is a more subtle form of discrimination, it is unintentional or unconscious and more difficult to identify, measure, and eliminate. However, “modern institutional discrimination is not necessarily linked to prejudice, and the decision makers who implement it may sincerely think of themselves as behaving rationally.” (Healey 168) Because modern institutional discrimination is too subtle to be found, even some people do not consider it is a discrimination. Some examples about modern institutional discrimination are the use of racially and culturally biased standardized tests in school systems, blacks and other minorities are filtered away from opportunities and resources.
Different with traditional institutional discrimination, modern institutional discrimination is more subtle and indirect. For nearly a century, well into the 1960s, elections and elected offices in the South were restricted to whites only. This is traditional institutional discrimination because it clearly stated that all elections were restricted to whites and it existed to disenfranchise the African American community and keep it politically powerless. Nowadays, although blacks and other minority are not prohibited from any work, they still hard to achieve their goal or get the job than whites because they face with lots of impediments such as standardized testing and hiring solely on educational criteria.
Question 3.
In an industrial economy, the close, paternalistic control of minority groups found in agrarian societies becomes irrelevant. With industrialization comes urbanization, and close, paternalistic controls are difficult to maintain in a city it causes paternalism gave way to rigid competitive group relations. An industrial economy requires a workforce that is geographically and socially mobile, skilled, and literate. For the industrialization, the role of slaves is changed and the owner’s dependence on the labor is also more. As competition increases, the threatened members of the dominant group become more hostile, and attacks on the minority groups tend to increase. Paternalistic systems were designed to directly dominate and control the minority group. Rigid competitive systems are more defensive, dominant group use it to consolidate their place, to preserve its advantage by handicapping the minority group’s ability to compete effectively.
When slavery was abolished, black-white relations in the South entered a new era. The period of Reconstruction was a brief respite in the long history of oppression and exploitation of African Americans. However, the heritage of prejudice and racism was thoroughly ingrained in southern culture. The system of race relations that replaced slavery in the South was ‘de jure segregation. The term de jure means that the system is sanctioned and reinforced by the legal code. Under de jure segregation, the minority group is physically and socially separated from the dominant group and consigned to an inferior position in virtually every area of social life. Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark decision which sanctioned de jure segregation which precipitated a host of Jim Crow laws restricting the rights of African Americans in all spheres of life from education to voting. Legal codes were enacted in the South designed to restrict the freedom of African Americans such as prohibiting first-class seating on railway cars, and denying African Americans access to public schools. “The more African Americans were excluded from the mainstream of society, the greater their objective poverty and powerlessness became. The more inferior their status and the greater their powerlessness, the easier it was to mandate more inequality.” (Healey 143) White workers took advantage of the new jobs brought by industrialization to improve economy, while black southerners remained a rural peasantry, excluded from participation in this process of modernization.
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5 hours ago
Guy Parkin
RE: Chapter 3-4
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Hello Xiaoqing,
I agree with your response to Question 3. While white immigrants were able to take advantage of the new jobs due to industrialization, African Americans were separated entirely from the dominant group and forced to follow the de jure segregation laws of the time. Laws passed such as restricting African Americans from sitting at the front of the bus and access to public schools only further limited their ability to be treated as equals. This only further perpetuated such racist ideals and became normalized to those in the dominant class. In this way, African Americans were barred from participating in the industrialization seen throughout the US, putting them at even more of a disadvantage.
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