1. Racism, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Chapter 7
Racism, Prejudice, and Discrimination

2. The Social Construction of Minorities
What is race?
What is the basis of race?
Biology or Genetics?
Is it blood?
The law?
Or is it social?
What about ethnicity?

3. The Social and Political Construction of Race and Ethnicity
There are no biological or legal foundations that prove that “races” are distinct categories of people.
Evidence from the historical, anthropological, and sociological record indicates that “race” and ethnicity are socially and politically determined categories that change over time and place, and which, are arbitrary and subjective.

4. The Social Construction of Minorities
What are Minorities?
Subordinate segments of a complex society
Tend to have special physical characteristics that are seen as undesirable by the dominant segments of society
Develop a group consciousness, “we”
One is born into it
Tend to practice endogamy
Does not refer to a group’s numerical strength

5. The Continuing Struggle for Minority Civil Rights
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Civil Rights Act, & subsequent legislations
The discrepancy between legal equality and actual inequality has remained in society
The terrorist attacks on the US in 2001
Immigrant groups highlight the problems of minority status in the United States

6. Defining Racism, Prejudice, and Discrimination
The belief that human “races” have distinctive characteristics that determine abilities and culture… Also involves a belief in the superiority of one’s “race”
Prejudice
An irrational attitude
Discrimination
Differential treatment of individuals who belong to a particular social group

7. Institutional Discrimination
Stems from ongoing routines of societies’ social institutions -work or education
Is different from other types of discrimination- not always a conscious intent to discriminate
Harvard Project on School Desegregation found a pattern of schools’ resegregation

8. Institutional Discrimination
Racial Profiling
Education
Dejure Segregation and Defacto Segregation
Unequal Access to High-Quality Schooling
Jonathan Kozol
Housing
Employment and Income
Race, Wealth, and Intergenerational Poverty

9. Institutional Discrimination
Justice
Imprisonment and Employment Discrimination
Racial inequalities in Capital Punishment
Political Discrimination
Felony Disenfranchisement

10. Institutional Discrimination
Anti-Voter Fraud Campaigns
Civil rights groups note that recent state & federal efforts to investigate voter fraud & institute new
systems of voter identification can be seen as attempts to block higher minority voter turnouts

11. Table 7-2: Mean Earnings, by Highest Degree Earned

12. Table 7-3: Black-White Segregation in 30 Metropolitan Areas

13. Figure 7-3 & 4: Median Net Worth of Families; Effect of a Criminal Record

14. Some Consequences of Prejudice and Discrimination
Is Affirmative Action necessary?

15. Figure 7-5: Fighting for a Piece of the Pie

16. Table 7-4: Most Rapidly Black/White Resegregating Districts, 1986–2000

17. Table 7-5: Most Rapidly Segregating Districts, Latino/White, 1986–2000