{"id":184,"date":"2016-04-30T04:11:31","date_gmt":"2016-04-30T04:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/introductiontosociology-waymaker\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=184"},"modified":"2020-07-03T22:56:37","modified_gmt":"2020-07-03T22:56:37","slug":"race-ethnicity-and-discrimination","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-esc-introtosociology\/chapter\/race-ethnicity-and-discrimination\/","title":{"raw":"Race, Ethnicity, and Discrimination","rendered":"Race, Ethnicity, and Discrimination"},"content":{"raw":"<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\r\n<h3>Learning outcomes<\/h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Explain the difference between race and ethnicity<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Describe minority groups and scapegoat theory<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Explain the difference between stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, and racism<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Describe white privilege<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Explain different inter-group relations, ranging from extreme levels of intolerance (i.e. genocide) to tolerance (pluralism)<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_6229\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"560\"]<img class=\"wp-image-6229\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2034\/2016\/04\/08203651\/800px-Black_Lives_Matter_Protest.jpg\" alt=\"Protesters are holding signs that read &quot;Demilitarize the police&quot;, &quot;Black lives matter&quot; and &quot;Our generation, our choice&quot;. The photo is shown in sepia tones. \" width=\"560\" height=\"283\" \/> <strong>Figure 1<\/strong>. The Black Lives Matters movement started gaining attention in 2013 for its resistance and activism protesting police brutality and racial discrimination against black people. (Photo courtesy of Johnny Silvercloud\/Wikimedia Commons)[\/caption]\r\n<h2>Racial, Ethnic, and Minority Groups<\/h2>\r\nWhile many students first entering a sociology classroom are accustomed to conflating,\u00a0or using interchangeably, the terms \u201crace,\u201d \u201cethnicity,\u201d and \u201cminority group,\u201d these three terms have distinct meanings for sociologists.\u00a0If you recall some terms discussed in the module on social interaction, race is one example of a\u00a0<strong>social construct. <\/strong>According to the\u00a0Thomas Theorem, once individuals define situations as real, they become real in their consequences. For this reason, assumptions based on race can have materially and politically real effects. In this section, we will discuss these complex terms as both social constructs and as lived realities.\r\n\r\nFollowing the shooting of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968,\u00a0elementary school teacher <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jane_Elliott\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jane Elliot<\/a> sought to teach her white elementary students in rural Iowa about racism. She convinced\u00a0her third grade students that students with brown eyes\u00a0were superior to\u00a0blue eyed students\u00a0with\u00a0a (false) scientific explanation saying that more melanin meant greater intelligence. The students quickly exhibited discriminatory behaviors against their peers, and antagonisms between groups were further exacerbated by Elliot's new classroom policies for dominant and subordinate groups based on eye color.\r\n\r\nOften referred to as the \"Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes\" exercise,\u00a0Jane Elliott's\u00a0experiment allows us to see how once students in her classroom began to define the situation as real, the consequences of being brown eyed and blue eyed became real. She received national attention and was heavily criticized, especially by people in Riceville, Iowa (population 840), with many saying the experiment was cruel to her all-white class. Elliot replied,\u00a0\u201cWhy are we so worried about the fragile egos of white children who experience a couple of hours of made-up racism one day when blacks experience real racism every day of their lives?\u201d[footnote]Bloom, S. 2015. \"Lesson of a Lifetime.\" Smithsonian Magazine. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/science-nature\/lesson-of-a-lifetime-72754306\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/science-nature\/lesson-of-a-lifetime-72754306\/<\/a>. [\/footnote]\r\n<h2>What is Race?<\/h2>\r\n<section id=\"fs-id1382386\"><span style=\"color: #333333\">Biological anthropologists\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #0000ff\"><span style=\"color: #333333\">examine race through an evolutionary lens in which all Anatomically Modern Humans (AMHs) came from a common origin in Africa and had dark skin due to proximity to the equator and as a natural defense again the sun's rays. The relative darkness or fairness of skin is an evolutionary adaptation to the available sunlight in different regions of the world.\u00a0All scientists agree that there is no biological basis for racial differences, and in fact,\u00a0people who consider themselves \u201cwhite\u201d actually have more melanin (a pigment that determines skin color) in their skin than other people who identify as \u201dblack.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\r\n<p id=\"import-auto-id1161344\">Social science organizations including the American Association of Anthropologists, the American Sociological Association, and the American Psychological Association have all taken an official position rejecting the biological explanations of race. Over time, the typology of race that developed\u00a0based on phenotype or physical characteristics\u00a0has fallen into disuse in social and behavioral sciences (although examining melanin is still important in natural sciences), and the <strong><span id=\"import-auto-id3081454\">social construction of race<\/span><\/strong> has become the primary lens through which sociologists examine race.\u00a0<strong>Race\u00a0<\/strong>is a socially constructed category that produces real effects on the actors who are racialized [footnote]Bonilla-Silva, E. 2003. Racism without Racists. Lanham: Rownman &amp; Littlefield Publishers, Inc.[\/footnote]\u00a0and\u00a0refers to\u00a0physical differences that a particular society considers significant,\u00a0such as skin color.\u00a0In other words, a physical marker such as skin color, eye shape,\u00a0hair type, or cheekbone shape, when paired with some other element(s) of social significance, could become a social cue for inclusion\u00a0or exclusion in a certain group.<\/p>\r\nUsing the sociological imagination, we can delve into how racial categories were arbitrarily assigned, based on pseudoscience, and subsequently used to justify racist practices (Omi and Winant, 1994; Graves, 2003). Elliot's classroom exercise is not too far from what happened in American history. Science and religion were both used to create and justify racial categories and racist ideologies. The \"One Drop Rule,\" which states that someone is black if they have \"one drop\" of African blood is uniquely American (no other country defines race in this way) and a way to illustrate the social construction of race. For example, many people who appeared white and could \"pass\" as such in a social setting, could not pass in a legal sense because of the rule of hypo-descent, which meant that racially mixed people were automatically assigned the minority group status. There were strict prohibitions against miscegenation (or mixed offspring) in spite of centuries of white men raping enslaved black women. During slavery, this allowed intergenerational slavery to persist irrespective of skin color, and after slavery was abolished, segregationist Jim Crow laws were applied to many mixed-race Americans.\r\n\r\n<\/section><section id=\"fs-id1382386\">\r\n<div class=\"textbox key-takeaways\">\r\n<h3>Further Research<\/h3>\r\nExplore aspects of race and ethnicity at this PBS site, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/race\/001_WhatIsRace\/001_00-home.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">What Is Race?<\/a>\u201d\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<p id=\"import-auto-id3623356\">The social construction of race is\u00a0reflected in the way names for racial categories change over time. It\u2019s worth noting that race, in this sense, is also a system of labeling that provides a source of identity; specific labels fall in and out of favor during different social eras. For example, the category <span style=\"color: #0000ff\">\"<\/span>negroid,\u201d popular in the nineteenth century, evolved into the term \u201cnegro\u201d by the 1960s, and then this term fell from use and was replaced with \u201cAfrican American.\u201d This latter term was intended to celebrate the multiple identities that a black person might hold, but the word choice is a poor one, as it lumps together a large variety of ethnic groups regardless of geographical origin.<\/p>\r\n<span style=\"color: #333333\">For example, Jamaicans, Haitians, and other dark skinned Caribbean groups living in the U.S. are Black but they are not African American. Calling any person with dark skin African American highlights the importance of language while at the same time illustrating the challenges of racial categorization. We do not refer to Lupita Nyong'o (Nakia in\u00a0<em>Black Panther\u00a0<\/em>2018), who has Kenyan parents but was born in Mexico City and has dual citizenship in Kenya and Mexico, as African American. The U.S. Census includes \"Black\" or \"African American\" as a racial category to include \"any person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa.\"[footnote]\"Race,\" U.S. Census. last updated Jan. 23, 2018. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.census.gov\/topics\/population\/race\/about.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.census.gov\/topics\/population\/race\/about.html<\/a>.[\/footnote].\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #333333\">If race is a social construction, doesn't collecting information on artificial racial categories through the U.S. Census perpetuate the notion of biologically distinct racial categories? Why do we continue to categorize Americans based on race? Collecting information on race informs policy decisions related to civil rights, including voting and redistricting procedures at the state level; furthermore, \"race data also are used to promote equal employment opportunities and to assess racial disparities in health and environmental risks\" (U.S. Census, 2018).\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/section><section id=\"fs-id1382386\">\r\n<h2>What is Ethnicity?<\/h2>\r\n<\/section><section>\r\n<p id=\"import-auto-id2364915\"><strong><span id=\"import-auto-id1328940\">Ethnicity<\/span><\/strong> is a term that describes shared culture\u2014the practices, values, and beliefs of a group. This culture might include shared language, religion, and traditions, among other commonalities and is often based on country of origin.<\/p>\r\nThe largest ethnic group in the United States, Latinos or Hispanics, are more likely to identify by their country of origin (i.e., Cuban, Puerto Rican, Mexican) than by an overarching ethnicity like \"Latino\" or \"Hispanic.\" If you recall, language is one of the most important components of culture, and Spanish unifies many different ethnic groups within the Latino category. However, distinctive cultural practices and very different histories result in unique ethnic identities and strong ties to countries of origin that may warrant a hyphenated identity (i.e., Mexican-American, Cuban-American) or a new term altogether such as Nuyorican (New Yorker and Puerto Rican).\u00a0These examples illustrate the complexity and overlap of these identifying terms.\r\n\r\nIndividuals may be identified or self-identify with ethnicities in complex, even contradictory, ways. For example, ethnic groups such as Irish, Italian American, Russian, Jewish, and Serbian might all be groups whose members are predominantly included in the \u201cwhite\u201d racial category.\u00a0Depending on when they immigrated to the United States, many of these ethnic whites were treated as minority groups and were not afforded the same status as the White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs), who were typically the privileged whites throughout American history. For example, Irish immigrants were \"white\" in appearance and spoke English, but they were also predominantly Catholic, and made this made them suspect in terms of their prospective allegiance to the Pope in preference to the United States government. Italian immigrants were often olive-skinned, Catholic, and did not speak English, all of which made them seem even more foreign and, perhaps, unassimilable.\r\n\r\nIf we consider the British or the French as ethnicities with a common culture and geographic boundary, we see many ethnic groups within each country. Both countries have struggled with national identity as globalization and immigration, often originating in formerly colonized nations, change their demographics. For example, France won the 2018 World Cup with the help of star player Kylian Mbappe, a teenager born in Paris, whose father is from Cameroon and whose mother is Algerian.\r\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\r\n<h3>Ethnicities and the Census<\/h3>\r\nRead more about Latino opinions about the census data and identity in the article\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/hispanic\/2012\/04\/04\/when-labels-dont-fit-hispanics-and-their-views-of-identity\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cWhen Labels Don\u2019t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity\u201d<\/a>\u00a0from the Pew Research Center.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section><section>Ethnicity, like<span style=\"color: #333333\"> race, continues to be an identification method that individuals and institutions use today\u2014whether through the U.S. Census, affirmative action initiatives, nondiscrimination laws, or simply in personal day-to-day relations.\u00a0We celebrate ethnicity in the United States through a variety of holidays (i.e., St. Patrick's Day), enjoying different types of cuisine, and through popular cultural forms such as film, television, and music.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Review the ideas about race and ethnicity in the following Khan Academy video<\/strong>:[embed]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4WIiConeatM[\/embed]<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/section><section id=\"fs-id1306134\">\r\n<h2>What are Minority Groups?<\/h2>\r\n<p id=\"import-auto-id2095138\">Sociologist Louis Wirth (1945) defined a <strong><span id=\"import-auto-id2653190\">minority group<\/span><\/strong> as \u201cany 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.\u201d According to Charles Wagley and Marvin Harris (1958), a minority group is distinguished by five characteristics:<\/p>\r\n\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>unequal treatment and less power over their lives<\/li>\r\n \t<li>distinguishing physical or cultural traits like skin color or language<\/li>\r\n \t<li>involuntary membership in the group<\/li>\r\n \t<li>awareness of subordination<\/li>\r\n \t<li>high rate of in-group marriage<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\nAdditional examples of minority groups might include the LGBTQ+ community, religious practitioners whose faith is not widely practiced where they live, and people with disabilities.\r\n\r\n<strong>Subordinate group<\/strong> can be used interchangeably with the term minority, while the term <strong><span id=\"import-auto-id1555353\">dominant group<\/span><\/strong> is often substituted for the group that\u2019s in the majority. 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 by comparison.\r\n\r\nWhen we hear the word \"minority\" we often think of a group with a smaller number of members than the dominant group, but in some cases the \"minority\" is not a numerical minority. Women have been treated as a minority group\u00a0even though they outnumber men in the U.S. What differentiates a minority group is that its members are disadvantaged in some way by the dominant group, such as when women are paid less than men for the same job even though they may have similar qualifications and levels of experience as their male co-workers. Consider apartheid in South Africa, in which a numerical majority (the black inhabitants of the country) were exploited and oppressed by the politically dominant white minority.\r\n\r\nIn the contemporary United States, the elderly might be considered a minority group due to a diminished status that results from popular prejudice and discrimination against them. Ten percent of nursing home staff admitted to physically abusing an elderly person in the past year, and 40 percent admitted to committing psychological abuse (World Health Organization, 2011).\r\n<p id=\"import-auto-id1306663\"><strong><span id=\"import-auto-id2105932\">Scapegoat theory<\/span><\/strong>, developed initially from\u00a0psychologist John Dollard\u2019s (1939) Frustration-Aggression theory, suggests that the dominant group will displace its unfocused aggression onto a subordinate group. History has shown us many examples of the scapegoating of a subordinate group. An example from the last century is the way Adolf Hitler was able to blame the Jewish population for Germany\u2019s social and economic problems. In the United States, recent immigrants have frequently been the scapegoat for the nation\u2019s\u2014or an individual\u2019s\u2014woes. Many states have enacted laws to disenfranchise immigrants; these laws are popular because they let the dominant group scapegoat a subordinate group.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\r\n<h3>Exercises<\/h3>\r\nTake a look at the <a href=\"https:\/\/demographics.virginia.edu\/DotMap\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">racial dot map<\/a> from the <a href=\"https:\/\/demographics.coopercenter.org\/racial-dot-map\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Demographics Research Group<\/a> at the University of Virginia. The map shows a dot for each of the 308 million who were counted in the 2010 census, and displays each dot based on a person's race and ethnicity.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section><section id=\"fs-id1169033105847\" class=\"short-answer\">\r\n<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\r\n<h3>Think It Over<\/h3>\r\n<div class=\"exercise\">\r\n<div id=\"fs-id800121\" class=\"problem\">\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li id=\"import-auto-id1506356\">Why do you think the term \u201cminority\u201d has persisted when the word \u201csubordinate\u201d is more descriptive?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>How do you describe your ethnicity? Do you include your family\u2019s country of origin? Do you consider yourself multiethnic? How does your ethnicity compare to that of the people you spend most of your time with?<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section>\r\n<h2>Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination<\/h2>\r\nThe terms stereotype, prejudice, discrimination, and racism are often used interchangeably in everyday conversation. Let us explore the differences between these concepts. Stereotypes are oversimplified generalizations about groups of people. <strong>Stereotypes<\/strong> can be based on race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation\u2014almost any characteristic. They may be positive (usually about one\u2019s 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 sweeping overview that doesn\u2019t take individual differences into account.\u00a0Where do stereotypes come from? In fact new stereotypes are rarely created, but are instead recycled from earlier applications to subordinate groups that have since assimilated into society. They are then reused to describe newly subordinate groups. For example, many stereotypes that are currently used to characterize black people were used earlier in American history to characterize Irish and Eastern European immigrants.\r\n\r\n<section id=\"fs-id1662444\">\r\n<h2>Prejudice and Racism<\/h2>\r\n<p id=\"import-auto-id1948042\"><strong>Prejudice<\/strong> refers to the beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and attitudes someone holds about a group. A prejudice is not based on experience. Instead, it is a prejudgment, originating outside actual experience.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<section id=\"fs-id1662444\">\r\n<p id=\"eip-360\">While prejudice is not necessarily specific to race, <strong>racism<\/strong> is a stronger type of prejudice used to justify the belief that one racial category is somehow superior or inferior to others. It is also a set of practices used by a racial majority to disadvantage a racial minority. The Ku Klux Klan is an example of a racist organization. Its members' belief in white supremacy has encouraged over a century of hate crime and hate speech.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Watch this video to learn about racism, prejudice, and discrimination in the United States:<\/strong>\r\n[embed]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gSddUPkVD24[\/embed]<\/p>\r\n\r\nOther types of racism are much more difficult to perceive.\u00a0<strong>Institutional racism<\/strong> refers to the way in which racism is embedded in the fabric of society. For example, the disproportionate number of black men arrested, charged, and convicted of crimes may reflect <strong>racial profiling<\/strong>, a form of institutional racism in which the practice of law enforcement in determining whether to stop and detain someone is based on race alone.\u00a0<strong>Color-blind racism\u00a0<\/strong>refers to \"contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics\" (Bonilla-Silva, 2003), which is generally professed as, \"I don't see race\u2014I see everyone as equal.\"\u00a0The vast majority of Americans (some sociologists suggest up to three-quarters) profess to be \"color blind,\" which sociologists see as deeply problematic because it fails to recognize the social reality of minority groups in the United States.\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Watch this clip and consider how the media can shape the stories that are told and reaffirm stereotypes and prejudices. Note that this media coverage advances a prejudice that black men (and even young boys) are violent and\/or prone to aggression.<\/strong>\r\n[embed]https:\/\/youtu.be\/mu_LK_iEFE8[\/embed]<\/p>\r\n\r\n<strong>Colorism<\/strong> is another kind of prejudice, in which someone believes one degree of skin tone is superior or inferior to another within a racial group. Studies suggest that darker skinned African Americans experience more discrimination than lighter skinned African Americans (Herring, Keith, and Horton, 2004; Klonoff and Landrine, 2000).\u00a0At least one study suggested\u00a0colorism affected racial socialization, with darker-skinned black male adolescents receiving more warnings about the danger of interacting with members of other racial groups than did lighter-skinned black male adolescents (Landor et al., 2013).\r\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\r\n<h3>Whitewashing and the Academy Awards<\/h3>\r\nThe 2015 and 2016 Academy Awards brought attention to Hollywood's practice of whitewashing, or casting white characters\u00a0in historically non-white roles.\u00a0Soon after the 2015 nominations were announced, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite began trending, where a number of people pointed out that this was in fact the second time in 20 years that the nominations list featured exclusively white actors. But pull back the Academy\u2019s plush red carpet a little further, and one finds it was the <a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bustle.com\/articles\/58773-the-2015-oscar-nominees-are-the-whitest-in-17-years-were-all-to-blame\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fifth time in 30 years<\/a> this has happened. Pull it back even further and one finds that in the years between 1927 and 2012, 99 percent of women who have won \u201cBest Actress\u201d have been white, and the same is true for 91 percent of men who have won \u201cBest Actor.\"\r\n\r\nThe charge leveled against the Oscars is of racism; that consciously or not, members of the Academy consistently fail to appreciate and honor the work of non-white actors. The basis for the charge is that there have been enough nominations and enough awards given to detect\u00a0institutional discrimination or systemic biases that resulted in real consequences for minorities in film. That is, if Oscars were awarded like lottery winnings, by sheer chance alone non-white actors would take home a more proportionate share of the little statues, so there is cause to believe that somehow the creep of racial bias is contaminating the nomination process. The fact that 94 percent of voting members are white doesn\u2019t exactly ease fears that the Academy is playing racial favorites.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section><section id=\"eip-39\">\r\n<h2>Discrimination<\/h2>\r\n<p id=\"eip-497\">While prejudice refers to biased thinking, <strong>discrimination<\/strong> consists of actions against a group of people. Discrimination can be based on age, religion, health, and other indicators. Race-based laws against discrimination strive to address these social problems.<\/p>\r\n<p id=\"eip-id1170350570072\">Discrimination based on race or ethnicity can take many forms, from unfair housing practices to biased hiring systems. Overt discrimination has long been a part of U.S. history. In the late nineteenth century, it was not uncommon for business owners to hang signs that read, \"Help Wanted: No Irish Need Apply.\" And southern Jim Crow laws, with their \"Whites Only\" signs, exemplified overt discrimination that is not tolerated today.<\/p>\r\n<p id=\"eip-id1170350714309\">However, we cannot erase discrimination from our culture just by enacting laws to abolish it. Even if a magic pill managed to eradicate racism from each individual's psyche, society itself would maintain it. Sociologist \u00c9mile Durkheim calls racism a social fact, meaning that it does not require the action of individuals to continue. The reasons for this are complex and relate to the educational, legal, economic, and political systems that exist in our society.<\/p>\r\n<p id=\"eip-id1170366992282\">For example, when a newspaper identifies by race individuals accused of a crime, it may enhance stereotypes of a certain minority. Another example of racist practices is <strong>racial steering<\/strong>, in which real estate agents direct prospective homeowners toward or away from certain neighborhoods based on their race. Racist attitudes and beliefs are often more insidious and harder to pin down than specific racist practices.<\/p>\r\n<p id=\"eip-id1170351417464\">Prejudice and discrimination can overlap and intersect in many ways. To illustrate, here are four examples of how prejudice and discrimination can occur. Unprejudiced non-discriminators are open-minded, tolerant, and accepting individuals. Unprejudiced discriminators might be those who unthinkingly practice sexism in their workplace by not considering females for certain positions that have traditionally been held by men. Prejudiced non-discriminators are those who hold racist beliefs but don't act on them, such as a racist store owner who serves minority customers. Prejudiced discriminators include those who actively make disparaging remarks about others or who perpetuate hate crimes.<\/p>\r\n<p id=\"eip-id1170349782827\">Discrimination also manifests in different ways. The scenarios above are examples of individual discrimination, but other types exist. Institutional discrimination occurs when a societal system has developed with embedded disenfranchisement of a group, such as the United States military's historical nonacceptance of minority sexualities (the \"don't ask, don't tell\" policy reflected this norm).<\/p>\r\n<p id=\"eip-id1170361107941\">Institutional discrimination can also include the promotion of a group's status, as in the case of <strong>white privilege<\/strong>, which refers to the automatic benefits people receive simply by being part of a dominant group. While most white people are willing to admit that nonwhite people live with a set of disadvantages due to the color of their skin, very few are willing to acknowledge the benefits they receive.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Watch this video to learn more about white privilege:<\/strong>\r\n[embed]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZLgbw_A1mLI[\/embed]<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/section><\/section>","rendered":"<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\n<h3>Learning outcomes<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Explain the difference between race and ethnicity<\/li>\n<li>Describe minority groups and scapegoat theory<\/li>\n<li>Explain the difference between stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, and racism<\/li>\n<li>Describe white privilege<\/li>\n<li>Explain different inter-group relations, ranging from extreme levels of intolerance (i.e. genocide) to tolerance (pluralism)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_6229\" style=\"width: 570px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6229\" class=\"wp-image-6229\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2034\/2016\/04\/08203651\/800px-Black_Lives_Matter_Protest.jpg\" alt=\"Protesters are holding signs that read &quot;Demilitarize the police&quot;, &quot;Black lives matter&quot; and &quot;Our generation, our choice&quot;. The photo is shown in sepia tones.\" width=\"560\" height=\"283\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-6229\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 1<\/strong>. The Black Lives Matters movement started gaining attention in 2013 for its resistance and activism protesting police brutality and racial discrimination against black people. (Photo courtesy of Johnny Silvercloud\/Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Racial, Ethnic, and Minority Groups<\/h2>\n<p>While many students first entering a sociology classroom are accustomed to conflating,\u00a0or using interchangeably, the terms \u201crace,\u201d \u201cethnicity,\u201d and \u201cminority group,\u201d these three terms have distinct meanings for sociologists.\u00a0If you recall some terms discussed in the module on social interaction, race is one example of a\u00a0<strong>social construct. <\/strong>According to the\u00a0Thomas Theorem, once individuals define situations as real, they become real in their consequences. For this reason, assumptions based on race can have materially and politically real effects. In this section, we will discuss these complex terms as both social constructs and as lived realities.<\/p>\n<p>Following the shooting of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968,\u00a0elementary school teacher <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jane_Elliott\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jane Elliot<\/a> sought to teach her white elementary students in rural Iowa about racism. She convinced\u00a0her third grade students that students with brown eyes\u00a0were superior to\u00a0blue eyed students\u00a0with\u00a0a (false) scientific explanation saying that more melanin meant greater intelligence. The students quickly exhibited discriminatory behaviors against their peers, and antagonisms between groups were further exacerbated by Elliot&#8217;s new classroom policies for dominant and subordinate groups based on eye color.<\/p>\n<p>Often referred to as the &#8220;Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes&#8221; exercise,\u00a0Jane Elliott&#8217;s\u00a0experiment allows us to see how once students in her classroom began to define the situation as real, the consequences of being brown eyed and blue eyed became real. She received national attention and was heavily criticized, especially by people in Riceville, Iowa (population 840), with many saying the experiment was cruel to her all-white class. Elliot replied,\u00a0\u201cWhy are we so worried about the fragile egos of white children who experience a couple of hours of made-up racism one day when blacks experience real racism every day of their lives?\u201d<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"Bloom, S. 2015. &quot;Lesson of a Lifetime.&quot; Smithsonian Magazine. https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/science-nature\/lesson-of-a-lifetime-72754306\/.\" id=\"return-footnote-184-1\" href=\"#footnote-184-1\" aria-label=\"Footnote 1\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<h2>What is Race?<\/h2>\n<section id=\"fs-id1382386\"><span style=\"color: #333333\">Biological anthropologists\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #0000ff\"><span style=\"color: #333333\">examine race through an evolutionary lens in which all Anatomically Modern Humans (AMHs) came from a common origin in Africa and had dark skin due to proximity to the equator and as a natural defense again the sun&#8217;s rays. The relative darkness or fairness of skin is an evolutionary adaptation to the available sunlight in different regions of the world.\u00a0All scientists agree that there is no biological basis for racial differences, and in fact,\u00a0people who consider themselves \u201cwhite\u201d actually have more melanin (a pigment that determines skin color) in their skin than other people who identify as \u201dblack.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p id=\"import-auto-id1161344\">Social science organizations including the American Association of Anthropologists, the American Sociological Association, and the American Psychological Association have all taken an official position rejecting the biological explanations of race. Over time, the typology of race that developed\u00a0based on phenotype or physical characteristics\u00a0has fallen into disuse in social and behavioral sciences (although examining melanin is still important in natural sciences), and the <strong><span id=\"import-auto-id3081454\">social construction of race<\/span><\/strong> has become the primary lens through which sociologists examine race.\u00a0<strong>Race\u00a0<\/strong>is a socially constructed category that produces real effects on the actors who are racialized <a class=\"footnote\" title=\"Bonilla-Silva, E. 2003. Racism without Racists. Lanham: Rownman &amp; Littlefield Publishers, Inc.\" id=\"return-footnote-184-2\" href=\"#footnote-184-2\" aria-label=\"Footnote 2\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0refers to\u00a0physical differences that a particular society considers significant,\u00a0such as skin color.\u00a0In other words, a physical marker such as skin color, eye shape,\u00a0hair type, or cheekbone shape, when paired with some other element(s) of social significance, could become a social cue for inclusion\u00a0or exclusion in a certain group.<\/p>\n<p>Using the sociological imagination, we can delve into how racial categories were arbitrarily assigned, based on pseudoscience, and subsequently used to justify racist practices (Omi and Winant, 1994; Graves, 2003). Elliot&#8217;s classroom exercise is not too far from what happened in American history. Science and religion were both used to create and justify racial categories and racist ideologies. The &#8220;One Drop Rule,&#8221; which states that someone is black if they have &#8220;one drop&#8221; of African blood is uniquely American (no other country defines race in this way) and a way to illustrate the social construction of race. For example, many people who appeared white and could &#8220;pass&#8221; as such in a social setting, could not pass in a legal sense because of the rule of hypo-descent, which meant that racially mixed people were automatically assigned the minority group status. There were strict prohibitions against miscegenation (or mixed offspring) in spite of centuries of white men raping enslaved black women. During slavery, this allowed intergenerational slavery to persist irrespective of skin color, and after slavery was abolished, segregationist Jim Crow laws were applied to many mixed-race Americans.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"fs-id1382386\">\n<div class=\"textbox key-takeaways\">\n<h3>Further Research<\/h3>\n<p>Explore aspects of race and ethnicity at this PBS site, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/race\/001_WhatIsRace\/001_00-home.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">What Is Race?<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"import-auto-id3623356\">The social construction of race is\u00a0reflected in the way names for racial categories change over time. It\u2019s worth noting that race, in this sense, is also a system of labeling that provides a source of identity; specific labels fall in and out of favor during different social eras. For example, the category <span style=\"color: #0000ff\">&#8220;<\/span>negroid,\u201d popular in the nineteenth century, evolved into the term \u201cnegro\u201d by the 1960s, and then this term fell from use and was replaced with \u201cAfrican American.\u201d This latter term was intended to celebrate the multiple identities that a black person might hold, but the word choice is a poor one, as it lumps together a large variety of ethnic groups regardless of geographical origin.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333\">For example, Jamaicans, Haitians, and other dark skinned Caribbean groups living in the U.S. are Black but they are not African American. Calling any person with dark skin African American highlights the importance of language while at the same time illustrating the challenges of racial categorization. We do not refer to Lupita Nyong&#8217;o (Nakia in\u00a0<em>Black Panther\u00a0<\/em>2018), who has Kenyan parents but was born in Mexico City and has dual citizenship in Kenya and Mexico, as African American. The U.S. Census includes &#8220;Black&#8221; or &#8220;African American&#8221; as a racial category to include &#8220;any person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa.&#8221;<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"&quot;Race,&quot; U.S. Census. last updated Jan. 23, 2018. https:\/\/www.census.gov\/topics\/population\/race\/about.html.\" id=\"return-footnote-184-3\" href=\"#footnote-184-3\" aria-label=\"Footnote 3\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[3]<\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333\">If race is a social construction, doesn&#8217;t collecting information on artificial racial categories through the U.S. Census perpetuate the notion of biologically distinct racial categories? Why do we continue to categorize Americans based on race? Collecting information on race informs policy decisions related to civil rights, including voting and redistricting procedures at the state level; furthermore, &#8220;race data also are used to promote equal employment opportunities and to assess racial disparities in health and environmental risks&#8221; (U.S. Census, 2018).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"fs-id1382386\">\n<h2>What is Ethnicity?<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<section>\n<p id=\"import-auto-id2364915\"><strong><span id=\"import-auto-id1328940\">Ethnicity<\/span><\/strong> is a term that describes shared culture\u2014the practices, values, and beliefs of a group. This culture might include shared language, religion, and traditions, among other commonalities and is often based on country of origin.<\/p>\n<p>The largest ethnic group in the United States, Latinos or Hispanics, are more likely to identify by their country of origin (i.e., Cuban, Puerto Rican, Mexican) than by an overarching ethnicity like &#8220;Latino&#8221; or &#8220;Hispanic.&#8221; If you recall, language is one of the most important components of culture, and Spanish unifies many different ethnic groups within the Latino category. However, distinctive cultural practices and very different histories result in unique ethnic identities and strong ties to countries of origin that may warrant a hyphenated identity (i.e., Mexican-American, Cuban-American) or a new term altogether such as Nuyorican (New Yorker and Puerto Rican).\u00a0These examples illustrate the complexity and overlap of these identifying terms.<\/p>\n<p>Individuals may be identified or self-identify with ethnicities in complex, even contradictory, ways. For example, ethnic groups such as Irish, Italian American, Russian, Jewish, and Serbian might all be groups whose members are predominantly included in the \u201cwhite\u201d racial category.\u00a0Depending on when they immigrated to the United States, many of these ethnic whites were treated as minority groups and were not afforded the same status as the White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs), who were typically the privileged whites throughout American history. For example, Irish immigrants were &#8220;white&#8221; in appearance and spoke English, but they were also predominantly Catholic, and made this made them suspect in terms of their prospective allegiance to the Pope in preference to the United States government. Italian immigrants were often olive-skinned, Catholic, and did not speak English, all of which made them seem even more foreign and, perhaps, unassimilable.<\/p>\n<p>If we consider the British or the French as ethnicities with a common culture and geographic boundary, we see many ethnic groups within each country. Both countries have struggled with national identity as globalization and immigration, often originating in formerly colonized nations, change their demographics. For example, France won the 2018 World Cup with the help of star player Kylian Mbappe, a teenager born in Paris, whose father is from Cameroon and whose mother is Algerian.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\n<h3>Ethnicities and the Census<\/h3>\n<p>Read more about Latino opinions about the census data and identity in the article\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/hispanic\/2012\/04\/04\/when-labels-dont-fit-hispanics-and-their-views-of-identity\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cWhen Labels Don\u2019t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity\u201d<\/a>\u00a0from the Pew Research Center.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<section>Ethnicity, like<span style=\"color: #333333\"> race, continues to be an identification method that individuals and institutions use today\u2014whether through the U.S. Census, affirmative action initiatives, nondiscrimination laws, or simply in personal day-to-day relations.\u00a0We celebrate ethnicity in the United States through a variety of holidays (i.e., St. Patrick&#8217;s Day), enjoying different types of cuisine, and through popular cultural forms such as film, television, and music.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Review the ideas about race and ethnicity in the following Khan Academy video<\/strong>:<iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"oembed-1\" title=\"Demographic structure of society- race and ethnicity\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4WIiConeatM?feature=oembed&#38;rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"fs-id1306134\">\n<h2>What are Minority Groups?<\/h2>\n<p id=\"import-auto-id2095138\">Sociologist Louis Wirth (1945) defined a <strong><span id=\"import-auto-id2653190\">minority group<\/span><\/strong> as \u201cany 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.\u201d According to Charles Wagley and Marvin Harris (1958), a minority group is distinguished by five characteristics:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>unequal treatment and less power over their lives<\/li>\n<li>distinguishing physical or cultural traits like skin color or language<\/li>\n<li>involuntary membership in the group<\/li>\n<li>awareness of subordination<\/li>\n<li>high rate of in-group marriage<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Additional examples of minority groups might include the LGBTQ+ community, religious practitioners whose faith is not widely practiced where they live, and people with disabilities.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Subordinate group<\/strong> can be used interchangeably with the term minority, while the term <strong><span id=\"import-auto-id1555353\">dominant group<\/span><\/strong> is often substituted for the group that\u2019s in the majority. 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 by comparison.<\/p>\n<p>When we hear the word &#8220;minority&#8221; we often think of a group with a smaller number of members than the dominant group, but in some cases the &#8220;minority&#8221; is not a numerical minority. Women have been treated as a minority group\u00a0even though they outnumber men in the U.S. What differentiates a minority group is that its members are disadvantaged in some way by the dominant group, such as when women are paid less than men for the same job even though they may have similar qualifications and levels of experience as their male co-workers. Consider apartheid in South Africa, in which a numerical majority (the black inhabitants of the country) were exploited and oppressed by the politically dominant white minority.<\/p>\n<p>In the contemporary United States, the elderly might be considered a minority group due to a diminished status that results from popular prejudice and discrimination against them. Ten percent of nursing home staff admitted to physically abusing an elderly person in the past year, and 40 percent admitted to committing psychological abuse (World Health Organization, 2011).<\/p>\n<p id=\"import-auto-id1306663\"><strong><span id=\"import-auto-id2105932\">Scapegoat theory<\/span><\/strong>, developed initially from\u00a0psychologist John Dollard\u2019s (1939) Frustration-Aggression theory, suggests that the dominant group will displace its unfocused aggression onto a subordinate group. History has shown us many examples of the scapegoating of a subordinate group. An example from the last century is the way Adolf Hitler was able to blame the Jewish population for Germany\u2019s social and economic problems. In the United States, recent immigrants have frequently been the scapegoat for the nation\u2019s\u2014or an individual\u2019s\u2014woes. Many states have enacted laws to disenfranchise immigrants; these laws are popular because they let the dominant group scapegoat a subordinate group.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\n<h3>Exercises<\/h3>\n<p>Take a look at the <a href=\"https:\/\/demographics.virginia.edu\/DotMap\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">racial dot map<\/a> from the <a href=\"https:\/\/demographics.coopercenter.org\/racial-dot-map\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Demographics Research Group<\/a> at the University of Virginia. The map shows a dot for each of the 308 million who were counted in the 2010 census, and displays each dot based on a person&#8217;s race and ethnicity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"fs-id1169033105847\" class=\"short-answer\">\n<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\n<h3>Think It Over<\/h3>\n<div class=\"exercise\">\n<div id=\"fs-id800121\" class=\"problem\">\n<ul>\n<li id=\"import-auto-id1506356\">Why do you think the term \u201cminority\u201d has persisted when the word \u201csubordinate\u201d is more descriptive?<\/li>\n<li>How do you describe your ethnicity? Do you include your family\u2019s country of origin? Do you consider yourself multiethnic? How does your ethnicity compare to that of the people you spend most of your time with?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<h2>Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination<\/h2>\n<p>The terms stereotype, prejudice, discrimination, and racism are often used interchangeably in everyday conversation. Let us explore the differences between these concepts. Stereotypes are oversimplified generalizations about groups of people. <strong>Stereotypes<\/strong> can be based on race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation\u2014almost any characteristic. They may be positive (usually about one\u2019s 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 sweeping overview that doesn\u2019t take individual differences into account.\u00a0Where do stereotypes come from? In fact new stereotypes are rarely created, but are instead recycled from earlier applications to subordinate groups that have since assimilated into society. They are then reused to describe newly subordinate groups. For example, many stereotypes that are currently used to characterize black people were used earlier in American history to characterize Irish and Eastern European immigrants.<\/p>\n<section id=\"fs-id1662444\">\n<h2>Prejudice and Racism<\/h2>\n<p id=\"import-auto-id1948042\"><strong>Prejudice<\/strong> refers to the beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and attitudes someone holds about a group. A prejudice is not based on experience. Instead, it is a prejudgment, originating outside actual experience.<\/p>\n<section id=\"fs-id1662444\">\n<p id=\"eip-360\">While prejudice is not necessarily specific to race, <strong>racism<\/strong> is a stronger type of prejudice used to justify the belief that one racial category is somehow superior or inferior to others. It is also a set of practices used by a racial majority to disadvantage a racial minority. The Ku Klux Klan is an example of a racist organization. Its members&#8217; belief in white supremacy has encouraged over a century of hate crime and hate speech.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Watch this video to learn about racism, prejudice, and discrimination in the United States:<\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"oembed-2\" title=\"Racial\/Ethnic Prejudice &amp; Discrimination: Crash Course Sociology #35\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gSddUPkVD24?feature=oembed&#38;rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Other types of racism are much more difficult to perceive.\u00a0<strong>Institutional racism<\/strong> refers to the way in which racism is embedded in the fabric of society. For example, the disproportionate number of black men arrested, charged, and convicted of crimes may reflect <strong>racial profiling<\/strong>, a form of institutional racism in which the practice of law enforcement in determining whether to stop and detain someone is based on race alone.\u00a0<strong>Color-blind racism\u00a0<\/strong>refers to &#8220;contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics&#8221; (Bonilla-Silva, 2003), which is generally professed as, &#8220;I don&#8217;t see race\u2014I see everyone as equal.&#8221;\u00a0The vast majority of Americans (some sociologists suggest up to three-quarters) profess to be &#8220;color blind,&#8221; which sociologists see as deeply problematic because it fails to recognize the social reality of minority groups in the United States.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Watch this clip and consider how the media can shape the stories that are told and reaffirm stereotypes and prejudices. Note that this media coverage advances a prejudice that black men (and even young boys) are violent and\/or prone to aggression.<\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"oembed-3\" title=\"WBBM Criminalizes 4-Year Old\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mu_LK_iEFE8?feature=oembed&#38;rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Colorism<\/strong> is another kind of prejudice, in which someone believes one degree of skin tone is superior or inferior to another within a racial group. Studies suggest that darker skinned African Americans experience more discrimination than lighter skinned African Americans (Herring, Keith, and Horton, 2004; Klonoff and Landrine, 2000).\u00a0At least one study suggested\u00a0colorism affected racial socialization, with darker-skinned black male adolescents receiving more warnings about the danger of interacting with members of other racial groups than did lighter-skinned black male adolescents (Landor et al., 2013).<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\n<h3>Whitewashing and the Academy Awards<\/h3>\n<p>The 2015 and 2016 Academy Awards brought attention to Hollywood&#8217;s practice of whitewashing, or casting white characters\u00a0in historically non-white roles.\u00a0Soon after the 2015 nominations were announced, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite began trending, where a number of people pointed out that this was in fact the second time in 20 years that the nominations list featured exclusively white actors. But pull back the Academy\u2019s plush red carpet a little further, and one finds it was the <a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bustle.com\/articles\/58773-the-2015-oscar-nominees-are-the-whitest-in-17-years-were-all-to-blame\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fifth time in 30 years<\/a> this has happened. Pull it back even further and one finds that in the years between 1927 and 2012, 99 percent of women who have won \u201cBest Actress\u201d have been white, and the same is true for 91 percent of men who have won \u201cBest Actor.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The charge leveled against the Oscars is of racism; that consciously or not, members of the Academy consistently fail to appreciate and honor the work of non-white actors. The basis for the charge is that there have been enough nominations and enough awards given to detect\u00a0institutional discrimination or systemic biases that resulted in real consequences for minorities in film. That is, if Oscars were awarded like lottery winnings, by sheer chance alone non-white actors would take home a more proportionate share of the little statues, so there is cause to believe that somehow the creep of racial bias is contaminating the nomination process. The fact that 94 percent of voting members are white doesn\u2019t exactly ease fears that the Academy is playing racial favorites.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"eip-39\">\n<h2>Discrimination<\/h2>\n<p id=\"eip-497\">While prejudice refers to biased thinking, <strong>discrimination<\/strong> consists of actions against a group of people. Discrimination can be based on age, religion, health, and other indicators. Race-based laws against discrimination strive to address these social problems.<\/p>\n<p id=\"eip-id1170350570072\">Discrimination based on race or ethnicity can take many forms, from unfair housing practices to biased hiring systems. Overt discrimination has long been a part of U.S. history. In the late nineteenth century, it was not uncommon for business owners to hang signs that read, &#8220;Help Wanted: No Irish Need Apply.&#8221; And southern Jim Crow laws, with their &#8220;Whites Only&#8221; signs, exemplified overt discrimination that is not tolerated today.<\/p>\n<p id=\"eip-id1170350714309\">However, we cannot erase discrimination from our culture just by enacting laws to abolish it. Even if a magic pill managed to eradicate racism from each individual&#8217;s psyche, society itself would maintain it. Sociologist \u00c9mile Durkheim calls racism a social fact, meaning that it does not require the action of individuals to continue. The reasons for this are complex and relate to the educational, legal, economic, and political systems that exist in our society.<\/p>\n<p id=\"eip-id1170366992282\">For example, when a newspaper identifies by race individuals accused of a crime, it may enhance stereotypes of a certain minority. Another example of racist practices is <strong>racial steering<\/strong>, in which real estate agents direct prospective homeowners toward or away from certain neighborhoods based on their race. Racist attitudes and beliefs are often more insidious and harder to pin down than specific racist practices.<\/p>\n<p id=\"eip-id1170351417464\">Prejudice and discrimination can overlap and intersect in many ways. To illustrate, here are four examples of how prejudice and discrimination can occur. Unprejudiced non-discriminators are open-minded, tolerant, and accepting individuals. Unprejudiced discriminators might be those who unthinkingly practice sexism in their workplace by not considering females for certain positions that have traditionally been held by men. Prejudiced non-discriminators are those who hold racist beliefs but don&#8217;t act on them, such as a racist store owner who serves minority customers. Prejudiced discriminators include those who actively make disparaging remarks about others or who perpetuate hate crimes.<\/p>\n<p id=\"eip-id1170349782827\">Discrimination also manifests in different ways. The scenarios above are examples of individual discrimination, but other types exist. Institutional discrimination occurs when a societal system has developed with embedded disenfranchisement of a group, such as the United States military&#8217;s historical nonacceptance of minority sexualities (the &#8220;don&#8217;t ask, don&#8217;t tell&#8221; policy reflected this norm).<\/p>\n<p id=\"eip-id1170361107941\">Institutional discrimination can also include the promotion of a group&#8217;s status, as in the case of <strong>white privilege<\/strong>, which refers to the automatic benefits people receive simply by being part of a dominant group. While most white people are willing to admit that nonwhite people live with a set of disadvantages due to the color of their skin, very few are willing to acknowledge the benefits they receive.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Watch this video to learn more about white privilege:<\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"oembed-4\" title=\"White Privilege\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZLgbw_A1mLI?feature=oembed&#38;rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n\n\t\t\t <section class=\"citations-section\" role=\"contentinfo\">\n\t\t\t <h3>Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t <div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <div id=\"citation-list-184\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <div class=\"licensing\"><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Original<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>Revision, Modification, and Original Content. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Lumen Learning. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\">CC BY: Attribution<\/a><\/em><\/li><li>Introduction. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: Cathy Matresse and Lumen Learning. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Lumen Learning. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\">CC BY: Attribution<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Shared previously<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>Race and Ethnicity. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: OpenStax CNX. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/cnx.org\/contents\/AgQDEnLI@10.1:H023hgwT@3\/Introduction-to-Race-and-Ethnicity\">https:\/\/cnx.org\/contents\/AgQDEnLI@10.1:H023hgwT@3\/Introduction-to-Race-and-Ethnicity<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\">CC BY: Attribution<\/a><\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Download for free at http:\/\/cnx.org\/contents\/02040312-72c8-441e-a685-20e9333f3e1d@3.49<\/li><li>Millennials participating in a Black Lives Matter protest. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: Johnny Silvercloud . <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Wikimedia Commons. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Black_Lives_Matter_Protest.jpg\">https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Black_Lives_Matter_Protest.jpg<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><li>Whitewashing and the Academy Awards section, from What Is Whitewashing and Why Does It Matter?, modified by Lumen Learning. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: Lester Andrist. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: The Sociological Cinema. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.thesociologicalcinema.com\/blog\/category\/raceethnicity50b7e59aa9\">http:\/\/www.thesociologicalcinema.com\/blog\/category\/raceethnicity50b7e59aa9<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">All rights reserved content<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>Demographic structure of society- race and ethnicity. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: Sydney Brown. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Khan Academy. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4WIiConeatM\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4WIiConeatM<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em>Other<\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Standard YouTube License<\/li><li>White Privilege. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: Sociology Live!. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZLgbw_A1mLI\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZLgbw_A1mLI<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em>Other<\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Standard YouTube License<\/li><li>Racial\/Ethnic Prejudice &amp; Discrimination: Crash Course Sociology #35. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: CrashCourse. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gSddUPkVD24&#038;index=36&#038;list=PL8dPuuaLjXtMJ-AfB_7J1538YKWkZAnGA\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gSddUPkVD24&#038;index=36&#038;list=PL8dPuuaLjXtMJ-AfB_7J1538YKWkZAnGA<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em>Other<\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Standard YouTube License<\/li><li>WBBM Criminalizes 4-Year Old. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: Bob Butler. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=mu_LK_iEFE8\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=mu_LK_iEFE8<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em>Other<\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Standard YouTube License<\/li><li>An Introduction to Frantz Fanon&#039;s Black Skin White Masks. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Macat. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TR3hcm41Nb8&#038;list=PLRXstY5OaIwcj5m-boMjMhMUd6b1hnCmF&#038;index=6\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TR3hcm41Nb8&#038;list=PLRXstY5OaIwcj5m-boMjMhMUd6b1hnCmF&#038;index=6<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em>Other<\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Standard YouTube License<\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t <\/section><hr class=\"before-footnotes clear\" \/><div class=\"footnotes\"><ol><li id=\"footnote-184-1\">Bloom, S. 2015. \"Lesson of a Lifetime.\" Smithsonian Magazine. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/science-nature\/lesson-of-a-lifetime-72754306\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/science-nature\/lesson-of-a-lifetime-72754306\/<\/a>.  <a href=\"#return-footnote-184-1\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 1\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><li id=\"footnote-184-2\">Bonilla-Silva, E. 2003. Racism without Racists. Lanham: Rownman &amp; Littlefield Publishers, Inc. <a href=\"#return-footnote-184-2\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 2\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><li id=\"footnote-184-3\">\"Race,\" U.S. Census. last updated Jan. 23, 2018. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.census.gov\/topics\/population\/race\/about.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.census.gov\/topics\/population\/race\/about.html<\/a>. <a href=\"#return-footnote-184-3\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 3\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"author":29,"menu_order":2,"template":"","meta":{"_candela_citation":"[{\"type\":\"original\",\"description\":\"Revision, Modification, and Original Content\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"Lumen Learning\",\"url\":\"\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by\",\"license_terms\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"original\",\"description\":\"Introduction\",\"author\":\"Cathy Matresse and Lumen Learning\",\"organization\":\"Lumen 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