Page 151 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Social Stratification Rosy Hastir, Lovely Professional University

Notes Unit 8: Race and Ethnicity

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
8.1 Race
8.2 Racial Groups
8.3 Ethnic Groups
8.4 Minority and Majority Relations
8.5 Summary
8.6 Key–Words
8.7 Review Questions
8.8 Further Readings

Objectives

After studying this unit students will be able to:
• Know the Race and Racial Group.
• Explain the Ethnic Group.
• Discuss the Minority and Majority Relations.
Introduction

The distinction between race and ethnicity is considered highly problematic. Ethnicity is often
assumed to be the cultural identity of a group from a nation state, while race is assumed to be
biological and/or cultural essentialization of a group hierarchy of superiority/inferiority related
to their biological constitution. It is assumed that, based on power relations, there exist ‘racialized
ethnicities’ and ‘ethnicized races’. Raman Grosfoguel (University of California, Berkeley) notes
that ‘racial/ethnic identity’ is one concept and that concepts of race and ethnicity cannot be used
as separate and autonomous categories. Before Weber, race and ethnicity were often seen as two
aspects of the same thing. Around 1900 and before the essentialist primordialist understanding of
ethnicity was predominant, cultural differences between peoples were seen as being the result of
inherited traits and tendencies. This was the time when “sciences” such as phrenology claimed to
be able to correlate cultural and behavioral traits of different populations with their outward
physical characteristics, such as the shape of the skull. With Weber’s introduction of ethnicity as
a social construct, race and ethnicity were divided from each other. A social belief in biologically
well-defined races lingered on.
In 1950, the UNESCO statement, “The Race Question”, signed by some of the internationally
renowned scholars of the time (including Ashley Montagu, Claude Levi-Strauss, Clauford von
Magellan desch Singrones Strauss, Julian Huxley, etc.), suggested that : “National, religious,
geographic, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups : and the
cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated genetic connection with racial traits. Because
serious errors of this kind are habitually committed when the term ‘race’ is used in popular
parlance, it would be better when speaking of human races to drop the term ‘race’ altogether and
speak of ’ethnic groups’.”

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