Sociology

Sociology Study Guide

Here are the patterns of acceptance: • Assimilation: Ideal method of minority absorption into the dominant culture. o Cultural assimilation: Where the minority group loses its own distinctive cultural features and instead adopts those of the dominant group. o Racial assimilation: Where distinctive physical differences disappear as a result of interbreeding. • Amalgamation: Biologically merging racial and ethnic groups into the dominant. • Cultural pluralism: Retaining minority culture while also fully embracing the culture of the dominant society. Here are the four distinct patterns of rejection: • Annihilation and genocide: o Annihilation occurs when the dominant groups causes the death of a large percentage of the minority group. o Genocide is a deliberate and systematic elimination of an ethnic or racial group. • Expulsion: Forcing a minority out of an area of society. • Partition: Using political boundaries to separate racial and/or ethnic groups from participating in the dominant society. • Segregation: Socially and legally separating ethnic and/or racial groups from the dominant society. Perspectives • Functionalist Perspective: Functionalists believe that any social inequality can benefit society as a whole, except when considering the impact of racial or ethnic discrimination. While behaviors such as these seem to be beneficial from the dominant society’s viewpoint, in the long term, these behaviors prove to bedysfunctional. • Conflict Perspective: Conflict theorists believe that social inequalities develop from the inherent competition betweengroups for resources. The most common resources fought over are: wealth, power, and prestige. Whoever wins these resources becomes (or remains) the dominant society and the others are relegated to the positionof minority groups. Racism, Prejudice, and Discrimination: Racism is the belief that one ethnicity or racial group is inferior to another. Racism justifiesunequal treatment. Institutional racism takes the form of policies that seem to be racially neutral on the surface but actually limit opportunities for minority groups. This effect is often unintentional and is commonly seen in the American economic and educational institutions. Internal colonialism is an economic exploitation in which the dominant group places minorities as subordinates forcheap labor. Affirmative action is a set of policies that grant preferences to minorities in an effort to makeup for past discrimination. This legal action began in the 1960s and is supposed to grant minorities equal

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