Talk:Introduction to Sociology/Race and Ethnicity

My Notes for now

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The following is from: Brown, Rupert; Gaertner, Samuel L. Editors. - Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Intergroup Processes - 2002

p. 65 "In particular, two traditionally held views have undergone major revision. One view, that children become gradually more prejudiced with age, is no longer tenable. Empirical research now typically shows an inverted-U relation between age and prejudice. The second view, that children learn stereotypes and prejudice solely from parents and peers, has also not been supported. Rather, children are now seen to play a more active role in the biases they develop. Perhaps the revisions are due in part to a decline in normative forms of prejudice and thus greater variability in attitudes of parents and children."

p. 66 "Ethnic bias has been particularly harmful in imposing constraints on the social and academic opportunities afforded minority children, and on the social relationships of majority children. Gender stereotypes impose the same harmful constraints on development; however, we know that boys and girls will eventually be dating and mating. The ethnic divide only becomes larger with age, not necessarily because of personal bias, but because of societal structures such as marriage and religion that keep us a Dart."

p. 67 "A discussion of measurement techniques leads to the question of how children's prejudice differs from adults' prejudice. This question often arises because teachers and parents express disbelief at the early high levels of prejudice reported by researchers. They claim to be unaware of prejudice in all but a few young children. Most people identify spontaneous slurs and stereotypic remarks as indications of prejudice. Children, however, differ from adults in verbal and emotional sophistication. Consequently, they do not frequently express their prejudice in racial slurs. Furthermore, the emotional underpinnings of children's prejudice is less likely to be anger and hostility and more likely to be suspicion, fear, sadness, and expectations or projections of rejection, harm, and avoidance."

p. 70 "By the time minority children are between 7 and 10 years old, any pro-White bias seems to have disappeared, and they either no longer exhibit any clear bias or express pro-ingroup bias."

p. 71 "This is demonstrated with measures that highlight a fixation on ethnic classification over multiple classification. For example, children have been asked to sort pictures of people into as many groups as they like, based on whatever criteria are salient to them ("Make groups of children who go together or who are similar"). In some studies, race was a particularly salient cue for sorting, more salient than gender or age (e.g., Davey, 1983; Ramsey, 1991), whereas in others race was less salient (Bennett, Dewberry, & Yeeles, 1991; Bigler & Liben, 1993; Hirschfeld, 1996; Verkuyten, Masson, & Elffers, 1995). When children were asked to reclassify pictures they had already sorted based on one dimension, for example, race, they found this difficult at 4 and 5 years, but generally were able to resort at 6 or 7 years (Bigler & Liben, 1993). More difficult was the simultaneous multiple classification task which requires that the child use two criteria such as race and gender to classify people."

p. 72 "Most studies do not report the number of children who have close cross-race friends, but when they do, the percentages appear to be less than 50% during pre- and early adolescence (Aboud & Mendelson, 1999; DuBois & Hirsch, 1990; Graham & Cohen, 1997). Although studies generally report gender effects, there has been no consistent finding that girls or boys have more cross-race friends. "Black, Hispanic, and Asian students have generally, but not always, reported more cross-race friends than White students."

p. 73 "Several theories have been formulated over the years to explain the development of prejudice. The most commonly held theory of prejudice is that it is learned from parents (Allport, 1954). Most lay people, educators, and psychologists explain the ethnic conflicts and name-calling of young children in this manner. "If children are not born prejudiced, then they must have learned it from their parents" is the logic employed. The alternative cognitive-developmental theory proposes that cognitive maturation leads children at a young age to construct and evaluate categories from available information, and that subsequent maturation leads children to differentiation within these categories (Aboud, 1988; Katz, 1976; Piaget & Weil, 1951). Individual differences in the way children use these categories (Levy & Dweck, in press) may explain why some children maintain prejudice into adolescence. We now describe the theories and the evidence pertaining to them." Any guess which side he'll favor?

p. 74 "The simplest way to demonstrate parental influence on the acquisition of prejudice is to correlate the attitudes of parents and children. Some studies have found a small correlation (Carlson & lovini, 1985; Mosher & Scodel, 1960). Others found no significant relationship between White parents and their children (Aboud & Doyle, 1996b; Davey, 1983) or Black parents and their children (Branch & Newcombe, 1986). Children of 10 years could not accurately predict the attitudes of their parents or best friends, but their own attitudes correlated significantly with what they thought were others' attitudes (Aboud & Doyle, 1996b; Epstein & Komorita, 1966). Children generally seem to perceive in others levels of prejudice comparable to their own, either because they egocentrically distort others' attitudes or because they have little real evidence on which to base judgments to the contrary. "Most children receive very little information about race or ethnicity from their parents. Kofkin, Katz, and Downey (1995) reported that only 26% of White parents of 3-yearold children had ever commented on race, usually for the purpose of teaching their children about equality and appreciating differences, or merely to answer their children's questions. The correlation between parent and child attitudes was .33 in families where race had been discussed, and nonsignificant in families where race had not been discussed. This suggests that children are influenced by their parents' attitudes only when parents explicitly talk about their views. Typically it is in regions where ethnic conflict is high that parents explicitly and emotionally express their attitudes (e.g., Bar-Tal, 1996; Duckitt, 1988), leading to the one-sided conclusion that high prejudice in children comes from parents. However, parents are just as likely to be responsible for lowering the levels of prejudice in their children." Informative.

p. 75 "In contrast with gender socialization, which appears to decline with age during childhood, minority ethnic socialization may increase as parents detect their children's receptivity to the more complex aspects of ethnic group membership. Likewise, it is thought that minority children derive important ideas about minority group identity from watching television programs, which to date have not provided the kinds of models that parents find desirable (Graves, 1993)." I was right in my criticism of Elijah Anderson's work - media is a major influence on youth, minorities in particular.

p. 79 "Intervention experimental studies. Because category formation and outgroup homogeneity appear at a young age, researchers have not attempted to train these skills in order to observe their role in the formation of prejudice. However, a number of cognitive approaches have been used in schools to reduce prejudice. The common one is to provide knowledge about the cultural ways of minority groups. This is unrelated to cognitive developmental theory in that it makes no reference to age-related cognitive structures, but rather to the idea that prejudice is based on ignorance. Typically these studies find no consistent effect of information on reducing prejudice (Pate, 1988; Furuto & Furuto, 1983). In fact, the presentation of information about typical cultural patterns, simplified for young schoolchildren, runs the risk of contributing to group stereotypes. Even if the goal is to instill a positive stereotype, say about the eating habits of Chinese people, it is quite inappropriate to teach children that Chinese Americans use chopsticks, when many of them do not. "More successful are role-playing programs, where students re-examine their attitudes after experiencing powerlessness or discrimination in a simulation game (McGregor, 1993). Another cognitive approach, called antiracist teaching, seeks to reduce prejudice by discussing the social/historical inequalities that underlie racism and discrimination. Role-playing and antiracist teaching, however, are limited in scope and application. First, they are rarely used with elementary schoolchildren because they require a certain amount of social and emotional sophistication. Secondly, they may unintentionally portray minority members as helpless victims, rather than as potentially respectable friends. Thirdly, they are directed to a White audience only, and the material is often inappropriate for non-White ethnic group members. Fourthly, they may raise feelings of guilt that young children cope with in unproductive ways, for example, by blaming the victim or denying wrongdoing."

p. 80 "In summary, there may be several routes to the acquisition and reduction of prejudice. Children appear to have a predisposition to create ethnic categories around age 4 or 5, and then to use these to infer group distinctions and homogeneity of members within categories. If evaluations from parents are explicit, preoperational children may adopt these evaluations. However, a more likely scenario is that prejudice is acquired when children identify with one ethnic category and generalize their self-esteem to their group, or without a salient identification they generalize from social attachments to similar others. As a function of age and familiarity, children become more flexible in their thinking and more reciprocal in their social relations; this results in fewer distinctions between ethnic groups, more differentiation within groups, better reconciliation of differences, and use of multiple cross-cutting categories. These social-cognitive abilities, developing in the concrete operational stage, appear to contribute to a post-7 year reduction in prejudice. Minority group children differ from White children only in their greater attitude variability pre-7 years. They may not all follow the ingroup preference route to the extent that ingroup identification is not salient or personal attachments are multiethnic. Why some but not all children develop balanced attitudes in middle childhood is not clear, though there may be individual differences in cognitive assumptions about people or the presence of other controlled, as opposed to automatic, processes such as belief in fairness. Research published over the next decade will address questions about social and cognitive inputs to prejudice by designing experimental interventions to prevent early high levels of prejudice and to reduce prejudice and discrimination in school children (see Aboud & Levy, 2000)."

These look like very reasonable and comprehensive notes and should be added.

--Aunk (talk) 04:25, 23 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

Some examples of specific types of alleged racism

Afrocentrism - the belief that black African cultures were historically more powerful and influential than most historians believe, or that certain ancient civilizations were created or maintained by black Africans
Anti-Semitism - racism directed towards followers of the Jewish faith or people of Jewish ethnicity, the latter often including those who follow other faiths.
Apartheid - a now defunct, white supremacist system that once existed in South Africa, in which Whites, Blacks and "Coloreds" were segregated; some refer to current Israeli policies towards Palestinians as apartheid as well.
Black supremacy - the belief that those of African descent are the superior race.
Bumiputra - A system whereby Malays are accorded economic privileges not available to those of other races.
Caste system - (not always considered racist) A system of social hierarchy among various social groups, such as in India often stratified along color lines, with the darkest individuals being members of the most subordinate caste - each assigned a specific occupation and social role.
Colonialism - a practice of the imperial powers of Europe and Asia, wherein foreign territories were subjugated and minority ruling classes were installed to exploit the natural and human resources of the territory. Although not explicitly racist by intent, negative consequences due to racism nearly always resulted.
Colorism - a bias against dark skin resulting from an internalization of white racist values, manifested in such things as the paper bag test. There seems to be an implicit calculus behind this belief that makes the worth of an individual inversely related to the darkness of his/her skin.
Cultural genocide is a term used to describe the deliberate destruction of the cultural heritage of a people for political or military reasons.
Ethnic Cleansing - the intentional and systematic relocation and/or elimination of different ethnicities to produce an ethnicly "pure" territory or country - for example, recent history in the former Yugoslavia
Eurocentrism - the practice of historically and culturally focusing on white Europeans, to the exclusion of study, or even mention of, significant achievements of other groups of people; and often the appropriation of achievements of people of color as being European in origin
Genocide - the intentional and systematic elimination of different races to produce an racially "pure" territory or country - for example, the history of the Third Reich
Institutionalized Racism - the process of purposely discriminating against certain groups of people through the use of biased laws or practices. Often, institutionalized racism is subtle and manifests itself in seemingly innocuous ways, but its effects are anything but subtle. An example of this type of racism is the redlining of districts to keep certain people from moving in to a new neighborhood, pervasive in the financial industry in the 1950s and 60s.
Islamic terrorism - Political reverse discriminatory prejudice and terrorism against non-Muslims, Muslims who do not adhere to their particular brand of Islam, and non-Islamic governments.
Islamophobia - the manifestation of hatred and hostility towards Muslims and sometimes Arab people in general.
Manifest Destiny - a historical form of the belief that asserted that white Americans had the right and duty to colonize the West and "civilize" the Native American inhabitants.
Model Minority - stereotype that Asian Americans are intelligent and hardworking and should serve as a "model" for other minorities in the United States
Nazism (National Socialism) - a historical form of political organization coupled with extreme racism, that directed its energies against the w:Jews, Roma (the so-called Gypsies), Poles, among other groups. Some adherents of Nazi ideology continue to exist today.
Racial purity - the belief that the various so-called races should be kept "pure" by not permitting interbreeding
Racial segregation - the discriminatory practice of separating groups in society along racial lines, often associated with privilege, power and entitlement for a dominant group and disdvantage and oppression for the subordinate one.
Redlining - the practice of denying marginalized communities services (such as food delivery or taxi service), or access to home or business loans allowing residents to build equity and have a financial stake in their own communities, or refusal to locate businesses or other services in marginalized communities (such as supermarkets, banks, or bus and subway routes).
Reverse discrimination or reverse racism - the belief that measures designed to correct alleged racism, such as Affirmative action, have in fact simply created new racist policies against the dominant groups. This is a highly controversial idea.
White flight - the practice of white residents abandoning a neighborhood or area due to the arrival of black or other residents, often weakening the tax base and reducing public services. The practice is also known as the tipping point.
White man's burden - the belief once held by Europeans that they were obligated to civilize and "correct" the great unwashed heathen masses of the world. Although considered a noble mission by some, in practice its consequences nearly always resulted in more human suffering. Term coined by Rudyard Kipling. Similar to "colonialism".
White privilege - preferential treatment enjoyed by white persons in various aspects of society.
White supremacy - the belief that Caucasians are, as a race, superior or worthy of supremacy, even called by some the "master race".
Attitudes of suburb and gated community developers, who are often accused of pandering to racist views by emphasizing "crime risk" in more racially diverse downtowns, especially in North America.

[1] See Zionism and racism for details.

My Recommendations Regarding Accuracy, Errors and Additional Detail.

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hetep and Respect SuperUnspecial Wiki is a wonderful tool but as all new open tools it is a double-edged sword. That is, one will find accurate information and errors. This is especially true with respect to cultural information.

Below you will find my notes regarding this article, which, have been formally submitted to my fellow wikipedians and wikibookians for their consideration as we speak.

This book deals with complex subject matter and is useful as an introductory survey of the range of issues associated with notions of ethnicity and the later concepts of Euro-centrism and ‘race” my comments should be of interests to those concerned with sociology, anthropology, psychology, the nature of Cultural Health and social science in general.

The book like many in their early start up phase contains accuracy, error and the need for more detail. Below you will find my contribution, insofar as with my wikipedian hat on, I can attest to accuracy, point out an error and make a recommendation for the addition of detail. Accurate:

“…Debates continue in and among academic disciplines as to how race should be understood. Most sociologists believe race is a social construct, meaning it does not have a basis in the natural world but is simply an artificial distinction created by humans. As a result of this understanding, some researchers have turned from conceptualizing and analyzing human variation by race to doing so in terms of populations, dismissing racial classifications altogether. In the face of the increasing rejection of race as a valid classification scheme, many social scientists have replaced the word race with the word ethnicity to refer to self-identifying groups based on shared religion, nationality, or culture…”

“…The understanding of race as a social construct is well-illustrated by examining race issues in two countries, the U.S. and Brazil…”

This is a very useful survey and the contrast between the U.S. with its approximate 13 million African Americans and Brazil with more then 100 million African Brazilians is a good introduction to the subject.

Errors:

Here the first ethnographic studies are correctly attributed to “Egypt” But the indigenous name of the Country Kemet is not mentioned and the fact that we are here talking about Classical African Civilization in the same way that Greece is related to Western Civilization needs to be corrected. One must be careful here not to insert or overlook the work of anti-Kemetic Egyptologists. Anti-Kemetic Cultural Poisoning should be avoided and historicity should be maintained.

“…The division of humanity into distinct races can be traced as far back as the Ancient Egyptian sacred text the Book of Gates, which identified four races according to the Egyptians. This early treatment merged racial and ethnic differences, combining skin-color with tribal and national identities.

Here we have and example of mixing up truth with falsehood. The classical Africans of Kemet (Egypt) did produce the first ethnographic studies but they had no word for “race”. Yet the author talks as if such a concept existed, it did not, and he offers no proof that it did exist. I personally have never seen or heard of any word in the 10,000 year history of metu neter, (hieroglyphics) for “race”.

The Kemetic people do not ‘identify four “races” ‘ in this ethnographic study from the time of Seti I in the book of Gates. They do identify three major ethnic groups and two Nationalities. Blacks are shown by nationality Kemetian (Egyptian) and Nubian. The other two ethnic groups are Caucasian (White) and Multi-ethnic (Semitic).

There is also an Ethnographic study from the time of Ramosis II that deliniates three major ethnic groups and Two Nationalities. The study precisely notes the Kemetic nationality as belonging to the Black ethnic group. So the first ethnographic studies in recorded history, c. 1500 - 1200 B.C.E., delineate the three major ethnic groups Blacks, Asians and lastly Whites/Semites. Despite the invention of the word “race” some approximately 2,700 years later. I have seen no evidence to invalidate the Cultural Health Golden Rule (There is one race the human race and many ethnic groups) established by the first sociologists in recorded history.

To see a copy of a early ethnographic study from the time of Rameses II c. 1200 B.C.E. Click Here. This link will take you to the Cultural Health Training Center. Scroll down the page until you come to the “African American Cultural Literacy Section. Start the video clip 3.35 minutes in you will see the ethnographic study and the professor’s explanation.

http://aunk123.googlepages.com/home

Recommendation for Additional Detail

"...The word race was introduced to English from the French in the late 16th century..."

I do not have the details on the tip of my tongue but this detail should be filled in, as the facts are known. I recommend the following level of detail be added.

Name of first users of “race”, his book and page number (non racial use)

Name of Second user, book and page number (First racial use)

The 18th century rise of academic Euro-centrism and Racism, at the German university of Gottingen (Bernal 1987).

--Aunk (talk) 05:49, 23 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

My Notes for now

Some examples of specific types of alleged racism

Suggested additional reading

My Recommendations Regarding Accuracy, Errors and Additional Detail.