Ethnic Studies Issues - Essay Example

Ethnic Studies According to Healey (20), history has always been written from the perspective of those in power. History is written from the viewpoint of what counts as succeeding within dominant discourses. The elite in society are the most powerful people; thus, they tend to be covered and written about more than the minorities. There are more coverage historical viewpoints from those in power such as presidents and other leaders than there is of minority groups in society. The voices of the minorities have been repressed, ignored, forgotten or trivialized. The history of slavery in America, for instance, has been told from the viewpoint of the slave owners. In addition, peoples understanding of minority groups is often based on the experience of minority males, and the experience of minority females are much less known and recorded(21). Though both minorities have been hushed, those of female minorities are the worst affected as they have been totally silenced. 2 Prejudice involves an individual thinking negatively of other groups in negative ways, attaches negative emotions, and prejudges individuals based on their group memberships. Every form of prejudice, even the most ancient, started at some point in history. A common factor that is critical in the origin of prejudice is a contest between groups (23). Prejudice originates in the center of that competition and is used to justify and rationalize the advantaged class of the winning set. History gives examples of one group dominating and takes resources from, or eliminates a threat from some other group that becomes a minority group. Prejudice helps mobilize emotional energy for the contest; justify rejection and attack as well as rationalizes the structures of domination such as slavery or segregation. Groups react to the competition and all threats presented by other groups. The link between prejudice and competition has been exhibited in differing settings and circumstances that range from labor strikes to the international war. In 1950s, an experiment was conducted to illustrate group competition and prejudice. It was conducted on 11 and 12 years old boys at a summer camp called Robber’s cave. The boys were split into two factions classified as the Rattlers and the eagles and lived in separate cabins. They were frequently pitted beside each other in various activities based on a competitive basis. The boys from each group developed and expressed damaging feelings towards the other group. The strength of this is that it helps to mobilize feelings and justify rejection and attacks against the enemy group. However, the weakness of the theories is that they generalize from a sample results. 3 Assimilation is the merging of cultural qualities from initial distinct cultural groups while pluralism is the energetic blending with diversity (48). The two are similar in that they occur jointly in an assortment of blending with a meticulous society or group. However, the chief distinction between the two is that whereas assimilation involves coming together of many small cultures to create a common culture while in pluralism groups exist and maintain their individual identity. While assimilation does away with previous culture and merges to anew one pluralism groups remain separate, and their cultural and social differences persist over time. Assimilation takes various forms including the melting pot, and Anglo-conformity. Pluralism takes forms such as cultural and structural pluralism (49). 4 The noel hypothesis concerns the formation of minority groups that states that if two or more factions come together in a contact position illustrated by ethnocentrism, contention and a discrepancy in power some structure of racial or ethnic stratification will outcome. Contact among the minority groups has led to the creation of a prevailing-minority group arrangement. When the Mexican Americans and the American Indians came into contact, they formed stratification of the white Americans. Contact with black Americans resulted to the African American formation and culture domination. The contact also led to the creation to the dominant Latino racial group. With time, the contact between these minority groups led to the dominant culture of diversity of the American people, as we understand it currently (35). 5 Blauner explains in his theory on the creation of minority clusters created by colonization will incur more strong prejudice, racism, and inequity than those created by immigration. This is because the colonized people are forced to do away with their culture and adopt the western culture. The immigrant minority, however, can enjoy pluralism as they can maintain their culture and enjoy the diversity in the majority culture. Blauner’s theory is similar to Gordon’s, which emphasizes the need for complex models and a multilayered understanding of prejudice. They both analyzed the historical concepts of attitudes, affect, stereotype, group identity and concerns of intergroup contact. The immigrants and colonized minorities are likely to encounter high levels of prejudices and discrimination because they are considered as subordinate instead of minority group. They are subjected to t slavery, inequality to the majority group, which holds the minority group in low esteem (57). 6 Individual prejudice originates in competition between groups, but it more a result of the competition than a cause. It is created to help mobilize feelings and emotional energy for competition and the consignment of a group to minority status. The individual prejudice was instrumental in relegating the African American, the Mexican American and the American Indians to minority status as they competed with the dominant white Americans. Ideological racism asserts inferiority of the three American minorities stated above. This was because of being exposed to ideological racism and being socialized to a culture teaching stereotypes and negative emotions about other groups. The African Americans were exploited as slaves and because of their inherent racial weakness of blacks, and this belief was engrossed by each new generation of the southern whites. The Mexican Americans and the American Indians who were no white through ideological racism were not considered as equals to the dominant white Americans. 7 During colonization, men were taken to work in firms as slaves of the whites. They did all the hard manual work in plantations serving the whites as their masters. The women on the other had worked as slaves in doing house chores as well as served as sex objects to their masters. Their masters at times exploited the women sexually. The men were mostly separated from their families, as they followed their masters in their conquests and expeditions, while the women were left to work at their masters’ homesteads, and still took care of their children. The Minority group’s families were split for a long time as they did not have the freedom of staying together and live as they wished. 8 Slavery in America started when the first African slaves arrived in the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia in 1969, to assist in the production of profitable crops such as tobacco. Slavery was rampant in the US colonies throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, and African American slaves assisted in construct the economic basis for the new nation. In 1793 when the cotton gin was invented, it solidified the central magnitude of slavery in the southern economy. The black servants largely labored on the tobacco, indigo and rice plantations at the southern coast. The slave and plantation owners looked for means of making the slaves entirely dependent on them, and a system of restricting codes governed life among the slaves (87). 9 Stereotype is a preset, commonly held concept or image of someone or group, footed on an oversimplification of some experiential or predictable trait of deeds or appearance. Positive stereotypes include Asians are skilled in mathematics or Native Americans are spiritual. Negative stereotypes are such as Arabs are terrorists are Africans are primitive. Stereotypes commonly put people with some withheld likeness into a group without permitting for the individual. Stereotypes make one to feel superior to the group or individual being stereotyped. Cultural stereotype represents represent a societal consensual set of beliefs and perspectives shared by the people. Linguistic stereotype, however, is an extensively seized mental depiction of how a given social group chats. 10 Many immigrants come to the US in search of a better quality life and education while others come to work and send money to their homeland for their families. Others came because they were escaping the harsh rules and living conditions in their native countries. Furthermore, others came to escape war especially those from Europe (88). Work cited Healey, Joseph F. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender, 2011/2012. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Pine Forge Press/Sage, 2012. Print. Read More