Term Paper on "Role of Inequality to Our Understanding of Racial and Ethnic Group Relationships"

Term Paper 5 pages (1535 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Inequality in Ethnic and Racial Relationships

Race has been described as a plague of civilization so that chief U.S. representative to the United Nations in 1977 commented that a race war in South Africa would induce racial conflict in the U.S. (Kearl 2005). Some countries, like Great Britain and Australia, prevent this kind of conflict by severely restricting entry. But the U.S. has always been open to the waves of immigrants to the point of being called "a society of immigrants." It has been said that the very secret of America consists in being a nation of people who bring in their old traditions in exploring new frontiers. The volume of immigrants has risen to a level wherein the Census Bureau in 2004 predicted that present minority groups would comprise half of today's American population of 420 million. A quarter of the total projected population would be Hispanic, 15% Blacks and 8% Asian, according to the Census Bureau. The late President John F. Kennedy happily acknowledged Alexis de Tocqueville's opinion of the U.S. As a society of immigrants who wished to begin new lives on an equal footing with white Americans (Kearl). But recent developments and statistics have something else to say.

As the proportion of Americans increasingly becomes more Hispanic, black and Asians, inequalities grow along (Kearl 2005). Results of the Pew Hispanic Center's 2004 study on the wealth of Hispanic households from 1996 to 2002, say that the median net worth of Hispanic households in 2002 was $7,932 or only 9% of $88,651, which was the median wealth of non-Hispanic white households of the same period. The household incomes of non-Hispanic blacks, on the other hand, reached only $5,988. The combined Latino and black household incomes constitute less than a tenth of the wealth received by white households, although Census says their incomes were two-thirds as high.

An ethnic or racial group is a minority group, which is typically less numerically inferior to the rest of the population, in a non-dominant position and has a different ethnic, religious and language that distinguishes it from the rest of that population (Kearl 2005). A typical minority or ethnic or racial group shares a sense of solidarity and endeavors to preserve its culture, tradition, religion and language. Such a group can often be numerically superior but retain a minority or ethnic group position, because ethnicity or race status is not determined by numbers but by discrimination. An ethnic or race group exhibits certain characteristics, such as subordination or disadvantaged position at the hand of another or superior group; socially visible group characteristics; self-consciousness and a strong sense of "oneness;" involuntarily belonging to that group by birth and intermarrying within the group.

The minority or ethnic groups in the U.S. are the African-Americans, the Latin Americans, the Asian-Americans, the Arab-Americans and the Native Americans (Kearl 2005). African-Americans are the only ethnic or racial group, which has involuntarily immigrated to the U.S. In a 1995 survey, 56% of them did not believe the discrimination against them would never end and only 44% of them agreed that their race relations with the whites would improve. The Hispanics, on the other hand, were fewer than 4 million and was, therefore, invisibly non-existent to Census in 1950. But in 2001, they were 37 million or nearly 13% of the population, growing almost five time faster than the general population. Census again reported in 2003 that Hispanics surpassed blacks as America's biggest minority group. In 1990, Census bared that the Asian population also grew to nearly 7% as fast as the general American population and thrice as fast as blacks. Almost 23% of Asian-Americans have Chinese heritage and around 19% or 1.4 million have Philippine roots. Japanese-Americans in 1960 accounted for 52% of the Asian-American population. Other Asian ethnic groups are East Indians at 11.2% and Koreans at 10.9%.

Racism as an ideology of difference, wherein social significance is determined by or attributed to culturally constructed categories of race (Rhode Island Foundation and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity 2004). From a "scientific" form in the 19th century, it evolved into a "cultural" form, which emphasizes supposedly "inherent" cultural differences more than innate biological differences. Three types of racism have been identified as institutionalized, personally mediated, and internalized (Jones 2000 as qtd in RIF & CSRE). It is institutionalized when there is differential or preferential access to social and material resources in society by race, which has turned normative, often legalized, intrinsic disadvantage. It is personally mediated if it is described as prejudice and discrimination. And it is internalized when it is accepted by the members of the disadvantaged ethnic or minority group concerning their own abilities and self-worth. Racist ideas and practices in the U.S. have been challenged by abolitionists and laborers of the 19th century, the crusaders of civil rights, by the black power movement and Asian-Americans and Latino movements in the 20th century. History is replete with records of people of color struggling to alter their social conditions through political activity and community involvement. These multifarious efforts successfully managed to eliminate legal segregation, but discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity has remained. Deep and structurally-based types of racial and ethnic discrimination continue and persist because they are firmly and securely entrenched in public and private institutions and in the values and belief of American society. This is evident in employment, health, educational attainment and the rates and conditions of imprisonment.

Recently, efforts have been exerted to explore into the structural roots and relationships of these inequalities and disparities and has surfaced in public discourse (Rhode Island Foundation and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity 2004). These inequalities and disparities have been examined and challenged by community leaders, state entities, academic institutions and private citizens. These inequalities and disparities have been inter-connected with access to social and material resources. U.S. systems and institutions ignore and obscure these minority or ethnic groups on account of color and culture (RIF & CSRE).

Using the experiences of African-American women as second-class citizens, a study examined the tension between strong individual rights promised to U.S. citizens and ethnic or racial discriminations against African-Americans and other minority groups (Collins 2001). It investigated the paradox in exploring how a gendered family rhetoric influences the understanding of race and the U.S. national identity. The study found that these African-American women's experiences and treatment made them feel that they are "one of the family," or legally part of the nation-state, but also feel that they are subordinated within it. The study touched on the intersecting social hierarchies of race and ethnicity and how these create racialized understandings of U.S. national identity, the gendered rhetoric of the American family ideal and how it naturalizes and normalizes social hierarchies, and how the gendered family rhetoric leads to the racialized constructions of a U.S. national identity as a large national family (Collins).

The study used the experiences and treatment of Mildred, an African-American, who worked for the household of Mrs. C (Collins 2001) in exploring the paradox of being one in the family within the U.S. national family. Mildred rejected her subordination within this U.S. family and was not seduced by the promise of better treatment for being allowed to serve in a white family. Mildred furthermore challenged how her employer obscured or masked racial inequality with the use of condoning language and rejected the common idea that exploited marginalized races like hers were happy in their place of work. The subject Mildred challenged not only racism and gender bias, which viewed her as inferior, but also actual treatment and practices that made her economically subordinated. She not only refuted the empty talk that she was just like one in the family but demanded evidence in the form… READ MORE

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