8.1 Distinguish between racial and ethnic groups.

8.2 Describe the difference between prejudice and discrimination.

8.3 Provide examples of dominant and minority group contact in the world today.

8.4 Outline the effects of prejudice, racism, and discrimination on minority and majority groups.

8.5 Describe the efforts to reduce racial and ethnic inequality at the micro-, meso-, and macrolevels of analysis.

8.6 Provide examples of policies affecting minority and dominant group relations.

Key Points:

• Race is a social construction.
• Racial and ethnic stratification are common through­out the world. Racial and ethnic minority groups have less power and less access to resources than majority groups.
• Prejudice operates at the micro level of society while discrimination can occur at the micro, meso, and macro levels.
• The racial ideology of color-blindness does not acknowl­edge the reality of racial discrimination.
• At the meso level, institutionalized discrimination oper­ates through two processes: side-effect and past-in-present. These forms of discrimination are unintended and unconscious—operating quite separately from any prejudice of individuals in the society.
• The policies of the dominant group may include geno­cide, subjugation, population transfer, assimilation, or pluralism.
• The costs to society from racial discrimination are high, including loss of human talent and resources.
• The coping devices used by minorities include five main strategies: assimilation, acceptance, avoidance, aggres­sion, and organizing for societal change. Only the last of these addresses the meso- and macro-level causes.
• Policies to address problems of prejudice and discrimi­nation range from individual and small-group efforts at the micro level to institutional, societal, and even global social movements.
• Affirmative action includes three different sets of policies that are quite distinct and have different outcomes.

Summary:

If there is competition over resources in a society, groups tend to form. Groups with the most power become domi­nant, and those with less power become minority groups. Those with the most power stratify their society in a way that ensures that their group has more access to power, money, and status. Racial and ethnic prejudice and discrim­ination at the micro, meso, and macro levels work to uphold dominant-minority group relations.