Lecture 7: Race and Ethnicity

Race

A social construct used to separate people by numerous physical appearance

What does race create?

Social inequality and the justifications for it

False answer: social construction

People have choice or freedom to change race

Ethnicity

Reflects someone’s culture

• includes languages, religion, customs or values

Ethnicity facts

1. NOT a physical characteristic you were born with

2. You are not socialized into your ethnicity

3. NOT the same as race and nationality

Objective Definition: Ethnicity

Assume that ethnic groups exist because of people’s attachment

Subjective approaches: Ethnicity

Focusing on the process of ethnic identification

Cultural hegemony

Control of culture by dominant classes and other groups where their values are universally accepted as common sense

Importance of race

1. Used to create inequality and hierarchy

2. Revealed the operation of unequal power relations in society

3. Promoted unequal distributions of power and access to resources/opportunities

Otherness

Phenomenon where groups or individuals as people are seen to be apart of the dominant in the group

Purpose of the dominant controlling resources

Control how other ethnic and racial groups are imagined and represented

Resources the dominant is controlling

1. Writing

2. History

3. Making art

4. Taking pictures

5. Setting up museums

Forms of otherness

1. Primitivism

2. Exoticism

3. Orientalism

Primitivism

How non-European cultures were described savage and uncivilized by European people

• E.g., residential schools

Primitivism: Ethnocentric view

European people saw themselves as the pinnacle of evolution

Exoticism

Ideal version of “otherness” in western standards

Exoticism: Ethnocentric view

1. Fascination as non-European people are seen as

• Mystical

• Fantastical

• Romanticized

• Glamourized

2. More tolerated then representation of primitivism

Different types of primitivism

1. Ambiguity

2. Hybridity

3. Imagination

4. Desire

Orientalism

The enforcement of exaggerated differences between east and west, that assumes western superiority

What does Orientalism include?

Representations, fear of people & culture, and fascinations

• E.g., American people and their feelings of arabs/turks/middle eastern culture

• E.g., the rise of Islamophobia after 9/11

Orientialism: Ethnocentric view

1. Barbaric

2. Sensual and exotic

3. Decadent

4. Untrustworthy

Core countries

Capitalist countries that are the worlds major sources of capital and technology

• USA, Japan, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Monaco, Ireland, UK

Peripheral countries

Worlds major sources of raw materials and cheap labour

• Africa (central African republic, Chad, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Zambia, etc)

• Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sudan, etc)

• Latin America (Bolivia, Haiti, Honduras)

Semi-peripheral countries

Former countries making progress in wealth

• Brazil, India, China, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, Indonesia, Turkey, Iran, Singapore and Malaysia

• Argentina, Chile, Hungary, Philippines, Russia

Racism

Inherent belief that there are physical differences between groups of people

• That race determines a persons achievements, moral values, and behaviour as people/individuals

• This legitimizes inequality between groups

Colonialism

People from one country taking/invading another countries political, economic, and cultural assets

Internal colonialism

One race or group subjecting another in the same country

• Prevents assimilation by segregating groups in jobs, housing and social contracts

Assimilation

Minority groups blending into a majority population, such as disappears as distinct people in larger society