RACE AND ETHNIC SOCIAL INEQUALITY AND DISTINCTIONS

RACE & ETHNICITY: methodology of definition
RACE & ETHNICITY
PRIMORDIALISM
(ESSENTIALISM)
CONSTRUCTIVISM
(Instrumentalism)

Essentialist Primordialism
Race = Ethnicity
Cultural differences between peoples are seen as being the result of genetically inherited traits and tendencies.
Correlation cultural and behavioral traits of different populations with their physical characteristics.
Ethnicity has existed at all times of human history and that modern ethnic groups have historical continuity into the far past.
Ethnic groups are natural, not just as historical.

Constructivism
Max Weber:
Ethnic groups were artificial (a social construct) because they were based on a subjective belief in shared “Gemeinschaft” (community).
This belief in shared Gemeinschaft did not create the group; the group created the belief.
Group formation resulted from the drive to monopolise power and status.

RACE
Race refers to physical variations that are treated by members of a community or society as socially significant.
Race is not biologically determined. Rather it is a set of social relationships that allow individuals and groups to be assigned attributes and competencies based on their biologically grounded features.

ETHNICITY
Ethnicity refers to cultural practices and outlooks of a given community that have emerged historically and tend to set people apart.

Origins of Ethnic and Race Structures
Historical way of the construction of multinational states (conquering and unification of territories).
Immigration.

Migration
Immigration is the movement of people into a country to settle and emigration is the process of people leaving a country to settle in another.

Models of global population movements since 1945:
Classic model - immigration has been largely encouraged and the promise of citizenship has been extended to newcomers, e.g., Canada, the United States, and Australia.
Colonial model - favors immigrants from former colonies over those from other countries, e.g., England and France.
Guest worker model - a scheme immigrants are admitted into the country on a temporary basis, often to fulfill demands within the labor market, but do not receive citizenship rights, e.g., Germany, Switzerland and Belgium.
Illegal model - immigrants gain entry into a country either secretly or under a "non-immigration" pretence are often able to live illegally outside the realm of official society.
Diasporas, which is the dispersal of an ethnic population from their homeland into foreign areas, often by force

Models of ethnic relations (can be positive or negative)
Assimilation - New immigrant groups take over the attitudes and languages of the dominant community.
Melting pot - The different cultures and outlooks of the ethnic groups in a society are merged together.
Pluralism - Ethnic groups exist separately and participate in economic and political life.
Multiculturalism - Ethnic groups exist separately and share equally in economic and political life.
Segregation - The practice of keeping racial and ethnic groups physically separate, thereby maintaining the superior position of the dominant group.

Mechanisms of Race & Ethnic Hierarchy :
Social exclusion and social privileges on ethnic or race criteria. The status ascribed through the power of the state or majority’s behavior.
Ethnic culture as a factor of social mobility. Social status achieved through the individual or group activity.

Minority groups
Minority groups are disadvantaged ethnic groups compared to the dominant group (a group possessing more wealth, power, and prestige).

FORMS OF SOCIAL EXCLUSION
1. Social distance between “We”-group and “They”-group. Ethnic stereotypes. Ethnic prejudices. Ethnocentrism.
2. Discrimination.
3. Ethnic cleansing.
4. Genocide.

Prejudice
Prejudice refers to attitudes of one group toward another.

Ethnocentrism
It is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own culture, and to downgrade all other groups outside one’s own culture.

DISCRIMINATION
Discrimination is a disadvantageous treatment of ethnic minorities (in the housing, labor market, etc.).

Ethnic cleansing
It is “the attempt to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas through the deportation or forcible displacement of persons belonging to particular ethnic groups. Ethnic cleansing sometimes involves the removal of all physical vestiges of the targeted group through the destruction of monuments, cemeteries, and houses of worship”.

Targets of ethnic cleansing in Europe
The expulsion of Germans from Polish and Czechoslovak territory after World War II.
The Soviet Union's deportation of certain ethnic minorities from the Caucasus and Crimea during the 1940s.
Bosniacs (Bosnian Muslims) in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Serbs in the Krajina region of Croation.
Ethnic Albanians and later Serbs in the Serbian province of Kosovo.
Different ethnic groups of the Caucasus in 1990s and later.

GENOSIDE
Genocide is the systematic, planned destruction of a racial, political or cultural group (Giddens).
A key component of genocide is the intent to destroy or to cripple permanently a human group. The acts are directed against groups as such, and individuals are selected for destruction only because they belong to these groups.

ACTS OF GENOCIDE
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
(UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide)
( ) “Subjecting a group of people to a subsistence diet”.
( ) “Systematic expulsion from homes”.
( )The reduction of essential medical services below minimum requirement.
( ) “Rape and sexual violence constitute genocide as long as they were committed with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular group, targeted as such”.

Cases of genocide in Europe
Armenian massacres by the Turks in 1915–16.
The Nazi Holocaust of European Jews and Gipsy in the 1930s and '40s.

THE HOLOCAUST: RATIONALIZATION OF DEATH (Bauman)
Like bureaucracy , the Holocaust was a distinctive product of Western civilization.
The Holocaust may be seen as an example of modern social engineering in which the goal was a perfectly rational society.
The Holocaust was an effective mechanism for the destruction of massive numbers of human beings.
The Holocaust involved an effort to make mass murder routine. The whole process had an assembly-line quality about it.
Auschwitz was an extension of the modern factory system.
The Holocaust represented the ultimate in the irrationality of rationality.