SOC100H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Ethnic Enclave, Visible Minority, Ethnic Group
Starting Points: Chapter Eight
DEFINITIONS:
TERM
MEANING
Ethnic group
Set of people commonly defined as belonging to the same group by virtue
of a common birthplace, ancestry, language, culture
Racial group
Set of people distinguishable by visible physical features
Race
Set of people commonly defined as belonging to the same group by virtue
of common visible features, such as skin colour
Racialized
group
Set of people commonly defined as belonging to the same group by virtue,
of a common birthplace, ancestry, or culture
Essentialism
View that different social categories -- male and female, black and white --
characterized and differentiated on the basis of in intrinsic qualities, traits,
dispositions
Performativity
Idea that certain social factors, such as gender, are socially constructed and
then acted out using words and behaviours that have come to be associated
with what it means to be, say, male or female
Racial (Ethnic)
Socialization
Process by which we learn to perceive and evaluate people (including
ourselves) according to presumed racial or ethnic differences
Assimilation
Process by which an outsider or immigrant group becomes
indistinguishably integrated into the dominant host society
Acculturation
Process of adopting and fitting into a culture other than the one a person
was first socialized into
Imagined
communities
Social groupings, like races or racialized groups, that are treated as real
because they are widely believed or imagined to be real
Ethnic enclave
Neighbourhood that is mainly or exclusively populated by people who
belong to the same racialized group
Institutional
completeness
Degree to which a community or enclave has established services aimed at
a particular ethnic community, often in their traditional language
Diasporic group
Any ethnic group that has established multiple centers of immigrant life
throughout the world
Multiculturalism
Political and social policy aimed at promoting ethnic tolerance and ethnic
community survival
Ethnocentrism
Tendency to use one's own culture as a basis for evaluating other cultures
WHEN IS ONLINE DATING RACIST?
• Recent study of more than one million online daters in US:
o Mainly white people are likely to receive messages from daters outside their racial
group
o White women tend to respond to only messages from white men
o Black daters (women) tend to be ignored when they contact daters from other racial
groups
• Lavalife Poll on Race:
o 74% of women said ethnicity plays a role in their dating decisions
o 49% of men said the same ^
INTRODUCTION: WE'RE ALL IMMIGRANTS
• Since start of 20th century, more than 13 million immigrants have arrived in Canada
o Belong to over 200 different ethnic and racial groups speaking over 200 different
languages
• One in five Canadians were born outside of the country
• 20.6%, Canada has highest foreign-born population of any G8 country
RACE, ETHNICITY, AND RACIALIZATION:
• Ethnicity:
o Existence of social groups with shared national or cultural traditions
• In Canada, term visible minority is used officially to refer to people other than Aboriginals,
who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour
o Term is being replaced by racialized minority
• One of biggest advances in sociological study of race is due to study of genetics
• Suzanne Oboler and Deena Gonzalez (2005):
o Many people believe human beings can be described, classified, and evaluated
according to their physical appearance
• Racialization:
o Tendency to view and group humans according to their visible characteristics
• Problems of racialization:
o Encourages prejudice and discrimination based on the mistaken belief that certain
intellectual, emotional, and behavioural traits are inherent among all members of
certain groups
• EX: Asians are really good at math
o Entails minimizing historical, cultural, linguistic differences among people from the
same region such as Asia
• Movements towards identifying causes and effects of racialization through critical race
theory:
o CRT can be viewed as special case of standpoint theory
• Proposes only disadvantaged people are in position to see and assess the lined
reality of inequality
o CRT moved discussions on race and ethnicity from essentialism to performativity
• From a search of racial qualities to a search for racial labels and performances
FUNCTIONALISM:
• Sees existence of racialized groups as a way of providing people with the social links they
need to survive
• Ethnic solidarity based on rituals and ritual objects that Durkheim called totems
• Cultural totemic objects have different meanings for different groups
o Swastika is a symbol of good fortune for one group, but hatred for another group
• Ethnic solidarity increases social cohesion among people of the same ethnic group
o Also gives newly arrived groups a landing pad and strategies for assimilating
• Ethnic heritage serves as a link both to a rich cultural past and to current members of their
group
• Complete dissolution of group boundaries might reduce intergroup conflict
• Functionalists propose that diversity benefits society as a whole
o Allows for development of more widely varying opinions and perspectives than
might be available in a homogeneous society
CONFLICT THEORY:
• Focuses on how one group, the most powerful group, benefits more than another group
from differentiation, exclusion, and institutional racism
• Proposes that majority groups seek to dominate minorities because this allows them to gain
an economic advantage, also because their domination makes them feel superior
• 1923:
o Government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act
o Law remained in place until 1947
o Chinese immigration did not resume until 40 years later
• Exclusionary regulation is a form of racism
• Racialization includes tendency to introduce racial distinctions into situations that should
be managed without them
• Study carried out in the US: Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004
o Researchers responded to job advertisements by sending in resumes for fictitious
applicants
o Applicants with black first names were less likely to get a call back then applicants
with white first names
• Racial profiling:
o A tendency to expect individuals to act differently and to interpret their actions
differently based on their race, can easily replace fair treatment
o EX: Police pulling over cars driven by young black or Aboriginal men because they
expect to find alcohol, drugs, weapons
o Linked closely to Becker's labelling theory
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM:
• Focus on microsociological aspects of race and discrimination
o Such as ways people construct ethnic differences and racial labels to subordinate
minority group
• Approach used to study the way social organization contributes to racialization
• Residential and other forms of segregation may lead to the social construction of social
distance
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SOC100H1 Full Course Notes
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Document Summary
Set of people commonly defined as belonging to the same group by virtue of a common birthplace, ancestry, language, culture. Set of people distinguishable by visible physical features. Set of people commonly defined as belonging to the same group by virtue of common visible features, such as skin colour. Set of people commonly defined as belonging to the same group by virtue, of a common birthplace, ancestry, or culture. View that different social categories -- male and female, black and white -- characterized and differentiated on the basis of in intrinsic qualities, traits, dispositions. Idea that certain social factors, such as gender, are socially constructed and then acted out using words and behaviours that have come to be associated with what it means to be, say, male or female. Process by which we learn to perceive and evaluate people (including ourselves) according to presumed racial or ethnic differences.
