Yet race and ethnicity are not all about inequality. They also give us a profound sense
of identity. If you are African American, you have access to an enormous infrastructure
of political, social, and economic organizations, churches, colleges, fine arts, and mass
media that you might not want to give up even if your race became irrelevant. People
lacking recognizable ethnic heritages often envy those whose grandparents told stories
about the old country, or who can plan a visit overseas to connect with their roots, or
who can point to a famous novel and say “it’s about us.” The story of being a racial or
ethnic minority in America is as often a story of pride as it is of prejudice.Minority Groups
A racial or ethnic minority group is not defined strictly by being a numerical minority.
In fact, there are more “minorities” in the United States than the “majority” population.
Blacks constitute 71 percent of the population of Allendale County, South Carolina,
and 0.3 percent of the population of Blaine County, Montana, but no one would say
they are a minority group in only one of those places. And not all groups that are few
in numbers are necessarily minorities. There are only 2.8 million people of Swedish
ethnicity in the United States, a relatively small number, but according to the 2000 Cen-
sus, 27 percent have graduated from college, 33 percent are in managerial/professional
jobs, and their median household income is $42,500, all higher than the national aver-
age. Clearly, they are not subjected to significant amounts of discrimination.
For a race or ethnic group to be classified as a minority group, it needs to have
four characteristics:1.Differential power.There must be significant differences in access to economic,
social, and political resources. Group members may hold fewer professional jobs
and have a higher poverty rate, a lower household income, greater incidence of
disease, or a lower life expectancy, all factors that point to lifelong patterns of
discrimination and social inequality.2.Identifiability.Minority group members share (or are assumed to share) physi-
cal or cultural traits that distinguish them from the dominant group.3.Ascribed status.Membership is something you are born with. Membership is not
voluntary. You are born into it, and you cannot change it. Affiliation in many
ethnic groups is a matter of choice—you can decide how much of your French
heritage, if any, you want to embrace—but you can’t wake up one morning and
decide to be Japanese.4.Solidarity and group awareness.There must be awareness of membership in a
definable category of people, so that there are clearly defined “us” and “them.”
The minority becomes an in-group(Sumner, 1906), and its members tend to dis-
trust or dislike members of the dominant out-group.When a group is the object
of long-term prejudice and discrimination, feelings of “us versus them” can
become intense.Majority Groups
Minority groups and majority groupsare often constructed in the United States not
so much through race as through skin color: dark people versus light people, people
“of color” versus people who are “White.” In an interesting linguistic experiment
called the Implicit Association Test, students were given word association tests, and
all of them, regardless of their own race, tended to associate “White” with purity,248 CHAPTER 8RACE AND ETHNICITY