Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter you should be able to understand the following:

2 When sociologists define a minority group, they are primarily concerned with the economic and political power, or powerlessness, of the group.

3 In a biological sense, there are no "pure races" and no physical traits that can be used to describe one group to the exclusion of all others.

4 The meaning that people give to the physical differences between races gives social significance to race, leading to stereotypes and self-fulfilling prophecy.

5 Prejudice often leads to discrimination, but the two are not identical, and each can be present without the other.

6 Institutional discrimination results from the normal operations of a society.

7 Functionalists point out that discrimination is both functional and dysfunctional in society. Conflict theorists explain racial subordination by exploitation theory. Interactionists focus on the microlevel of race relations, posing contact hypothesis as a means of reducing prejudice and discrimination.

8 Four patterns describe typical intergroup relations in North America and elsewhere: amalgamation, assimilation, segregation, and pluralism.

9 In the United States, the most highly rewarded pattern of intergroup relations is assimilation. Pluralism remains more of an ideal than a reality.

10 Contemporary prejudice and discrimination against African Americans are rooted in the history of slavery in the United States.

11 Asian Americans are commonly viewed as a "model minority," a stereotype not necessarily beneficial to members of this group.

12 The various groups included under the general term Hispanics represent the largest ethnic minority in the United States.

13 The increase of immigration worldwide has raised questions in individual nations about how to control the process.