SOC 153 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Racialization, G.I. Bill, White Flight

• School: Miami University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 153
• Professor: Nelson Steven

Document Summary

The same characteristics that provide an ethnic group its identity and cohesiveness also separate it from other groups. It"s a human trait to judge our way good and their way strange, scary, and bad. Battle lines are often drawn along ethnicity. Since europeans arrived america has been the site of ethnic conflict and cooperation. Remember, identify derives from reflected appraisals: society tells us who we are. Race and ethnicity are fundamentally identifiers of the out group. Ethnic assimilation is made more difficult by minority physical characteristics. Racial minorities often cannot escape these identities and the stereotypes that go with them. It is a privilege of the majority to not have their race/ethnicity be socially noted. The concept of race developed here in america as a means of rationalizing the oppression of africans. Race differs from all previous ethnic prejudices in its elevation of the biological over the cultural and its simplistic categorical nature.