As the world grows and changes, society does become more integrated. It is, inarguably, a more connected world. Division does still occur at smaller levels—especially across classes and ethnicities. Classes and ethnicities play specific divisive roles. Understanding what these roles are, as well as how and why they form, can help bring about better understanding of the groups.
Despite debates regarding immigration, it is still true that there are a myriad of ethnic groups in the United States. These groups develop their own communities, services, and organizations specific to their ethnicity. One example is the existence of Chinatowns, which occur in many major cities. A Chinatown is important because it allows for the established and incoming Chinese immigrants to have a place that is welcoming and familiar. They may seek all of the services available to Americans, but in their original language and culture. Seeking employment, medical care, and financial aid may be intimidating, but having all of these services concentrated in an area that is similar to their home country can make doing so more possible (Ember & Ember, 2007, p.215).
Positive divisive roles do not only occur within ethnic groups, but classes as well. These class divisions allow for support from like-minded individuals. Situations that arise due to class division include informal credit associations, clubs, and charity groups (Ember & Ember, 2007, p. 218). Groups are often related to occupation. While their express purpose is not to be class-divisive, they do tend to develop as such. They can offer money and occupational support. Specified military-related non-profit organizations are good examples of class divisive groups. Many veterans returning home are in...
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...nce power is passed down. It is possible that an unfit leader may be granted unjustified authority. Politics at the state level can be improperly executed if the political parties do not have the best interests of their communities in mind. Imposing taxes and drafting men for war are hugely impactful responsibilities and must be regarded as such.
The power and authority that comes along with political leadership is an important responsibility. It cannot be taken lightly. Even a headman must be able to lead his people in whatever capacity necessary. Being granted power and authority does offer the opportunity for corruption, so it is important that those in power are fair and objective. It is when these positions are not handled well that corruption occurs. This is why understanding political organizations at every level is crucial for a properly running society.
The first Chinese immigrants to arrive in America came in the early 1800s. Chinese sailors visited New York City in the 1830s (“The Chinese Experience”); others came as servants to Europeans (“Chinese Americans”). However, these immigrants were few in number, and usually didn’t even st...
Nayan Shah is a leading expert in Asian American studies and serves as professor at the University of California. His work, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown explores how race, citizenship, and public health combined to illustrate the differences between the culture of Chinese immigrants and white norms in public-health knowledge and policy in San Francisco. Shah discusses how this knowledge impacted social lives, politics, and cultural expression. Contagious Divides investigates what it meant to be a citizen of Chinese race in nineteenth and twentieth-century San Francisco.
This nation was relatively stable in the eyes of immigrants though under constant political and economic change. Immigration soon became an outlet by which this nation could thrive yet there was difficulty in the task on conformity. Ethnic groups including Mexicans and Chinese were judged by notions of race, cultural adaptations and neighborhood. Mary Lui’s “The Chinatown Trunk Mystery” and Michael Innis-Jimenez’s “Steel Barrio”, provides a basis by which one may trace the importance of a neighborhood in the immigrant experience explaining the way in which neighborhoods were created, how these lines were crossed and notions of race factored into separating these
One very important form of ethnic stratification is the colonialization of the Americas, truly the Spaniards destroyed a highly advanced civilization when they took over the lands of the Native Americans. Yang uses the colonization of Puerto Rico to portray how ethnic stratification occurs, when the Puerto Ricans had contact with Americans in 1898 (65). Colonization and ethnic group interactions alone are not enough for ethnic stratification, Yang mentions there are “conditions” that cause stratification. These conditions are the “Social-Darwinian approach, the social-psychological approach, the functionalist approach, the conflict approach, and the Donald Noel hypothesis (66). These theories share what is the conditions causing stratification, though some theories have some holes in them, these are very important in understanding ethnic stratification. Personally, I do not like being called a “minority group” because the title describes what the society thinks of my ethnic group and at the bottom of the hierarchy. People have told me I need to be diligent to succeed in education, implying everyone has an equal opportunity to receive the most benefits from society. I did not realize living in the projects, having a low social class or being a minority group affected your chances of becoming successful, because of people around me who had an abstract-liberism
Immigration has existed around the world for centuries, decades, and included hundreds of cultures. Tired of poverty, a lack of opportunities, unequal treatment, political corruption, and lacking any choice, many decided to emigrate from their country of birth to seek new opportunities and a new and better life in another country, to settle a future for their families, to work hard and earn a place in life. As the nation of the opportunities, land of the dreams, and because of its foundation of a better, more equal world for all, the United States of America has been a point of hope for many of those people. A lot of nationals around the world have ended their research for a place to call home in the United States of America. By analyzing primary sources and the secondary sources to back up the information, one could find out about what Chinese, Italians, Swedish, and Vietnamese immigrants have experienced in the United States in different time periods from 1865 to 1990.
According to Anthias (2001), “class approaches have underpinned, however, some of the most influential contributions to the fields of gender and ethnicity/race…Marxist feminist, for example provide a Marxist informed analysis of gendered subordination, often apply Marxist economic categories to what later was acknowledges to be an inappropriate object”(p.372). Anthias (2001) explains the ethnicity and class focus on the correlations of a particular ethnic position and class position. Anthias (2001) notes “ethnicity and class, when twinned together have led problems of reductionism…Marxist approaches may treat it as false consciousness, where the real divisions of class take on symbolic forms. Ethnicity may also be seen as being a way that class organize (not as a disguise but as a vehicle), in order to struggle over economic resources. Anthias (2001) writes that there are three dimension of social stratification the shows class, gender and ethnicity into an approach to social inequality. The first is social stratification is seen as outcomes that relation to life condition, how a person is positioned in a social relations Secondly, there are a set of predisposition that is placed for individual s with different realms of production (class), sexual difference (gender) and collective formations (ethnicity). Lastly, the dimension of collective allegiances that helps
The United States of America is the place of opportunity and fortune. “Many immigrants hoped to achieve this in the United States and similar to other immigrants many people from the Asian Pacific region hoped to make their fortune. They planned to either return to their homelands or build a home in their new country (Spring, 2013).” For this reason, life became very complicated for these people. They faced many challenges in this new country, such as: classifying them in terms of race and ethnicity, denying them the right to become naturalized citizens, and rejecting them the right of equal educational opportunities within the school systems. “This combination of racism and economic exploitation resulted in the educational policies to deny Asians schooling or provide them with segregated schooling (Spring, 2013).”This was not the country of opportunity and fortune as many believed. It was the country of struggle and hardship. Similarly, like many other immigrants, Asian Americans had the determination to overcome these obstacles that they faced to prove that the United States was indeed their home too.
In learning about different ways that we as a society categorize and divide people, it is essential to understand what about people it is that we feel the need to label and differentiate between. When a person is born into this world, there are certain statuses that they automatically obtain, called ascribed statuses (Henslin 98). These statuses determine each person’s social location in society. This includes gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and ability. Each person has their own unique social location, and is affected in a different way than the next person may be. As a white, queer, cisgender, middle class, female, in relatively good health, I have always been relatively privileged.
This book serves as the best source of answers to those interested in questions about the origin of ethnicity and race in America. Impossible subjects is divided into seven chapters, and the first two talk about the action and practices that led to restriction, exclusion and deportation. It majorly traces back experiences of four immigrant groups which included the Filipino, Japanese, Chinese and Mexican. Ngai talks of the exclusion practices which prevented Asian entry into America and full expression of their citizenship in America. Although the American sought means of educating the Asians, they still faced the exclusion policies (Mae Ngai 18). All Asians were viewed as aliens and even those who were citizens of the USA by birth were seen as foreign due to the dominant American culture (Mae Ngai 8). Unlike the Asians, Mexicans were racially eligible to citizenship in the USA because of their language and religion. However, she argues that Mexicans still faced discrimination in the fact that entry requirements such as visa fee, tax and hygiene inspection were made so difficult for them, which prompted many Mexicans to enter into the USA illegally. Tens and thousands of Mexicans later entered into America legally and illegally to seek for employment but were seen as seasonal labor and were never encouraged to pursue American
The United States has often been referred to as a global “melting pot” due to its assimilation of diverse cultures, nationalities, and ethnicities. In today’s society, this metaphor may be an understatement. Between 1990 and 2010, the number of foreign born United States residents nearly doubled from 20 million to 40 million, increasing the U.S. population from almost 250 million to 350 million people. With U.S. born children and grandchildren of immigrants, immigration contributed to half of this population growth. These immigrants, consisting of mostly Asian and Hispanic backgrounds, have drastically changed the composition of the U.S. population. In 2010, Asians and Hispanics made up 20 percent of the U.S. population, in contrast to a 6 percent share of Asians and Hispanics in 1970. It is predicted that by 2050, the share of immigrants in the United States will increase to one half of the entire population. With this rapid increase in diversity, many citizens have opposing views on its impact on the United States. In my opinion, an increase in immigration does contain both positive and negatives effects, but in general it provides an overriding positive influence on America’s society (“Population”).
Especially here in the United States, but also in other countries around the world, certain races are placed in social hierarchies, creating inequality for accessible treatment and opportunities for one race over another. In the “Boat Game,” we learned first-hand that identities, ranking, and positions of power are not natural, although they appear to be; the social categories are socially constructed and are not permanent (Palaita,
Millions of immigrants over the previous centuries have shaped the United States of America into what it is today. America is known as a “melting pot”, a multicultural country that welcomes and is home to an array of every ethnic and cultural background imaginable. We are a place of opportunity, offering homes and jobs and new economic gains to anyone who should want it. However, America was not always such a “come one, come all” kind of country. The large numbers of immigrants that came during the nineteenth century angered many of the American natives and lead to them to blame the lack of jobs and low wages on the immigrants, especially the Asian communities. This resentment lead to the discrimination and legal exclusion of immigrants, with the first and most important law passed being the Chinese Exclusion Act. However, the discrimination the Chinese immigrants so harshly received was not rightly justified or deserved. With all of their contributions and accomplishments in opening up the West, they were not so much harming our country but rather helping it.
Throughout lecture 5-9b we get introduced to Social Inequalities and explore the opportunities and rewards that are disbursed to groups and individuals. Trying to understand inequality patterns based on different varieties of sources. Through these lectures we focus how sociologist define social class, gender, age, region, race, and ethnicity. We also began to learn about the variables that affect someone’s access to opportunities and resources. We have explored how those resources and available opportunities are closely connected to the theory Structural functionalist by looking at the privilege and power in a society. Another important aspect is the study of Social stratification, which is an understanding of how those patterns of inequalities are maintained and challenged. We should have a basic understanding of how societies differ based on inequalities that they show and different varieties of inequalities that come together and reinforce one another. By that, this section is dissect how race, classs, gender, and age come together through structure of a society. Throughout these we also take a look at deviance and conformity. We get up close to the sociological definition of deviance, and emphasizing the importance its social reaction in societies. We begin to understand what forces society to allow or even encourage breakdowns of social order and disorganization of socialization and social control. By that, this section is dissect how race, class, gender, and age come together through structure of a society. We have been taught to answer questions like: what actions are defined as actually threatening to social order or deviant and who get to be the judge? Also what sorts of things lead to individuals to “deviant actions” a...
Though the United States is home to many immigrants, controversy surrounds the issue of immigrants in the United States. The United States in a melting pot of various backgrounds and cultures, yet it is hard for all to merge into acceptance of one another. The first chapter of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and class covers stratification, prejudice and discrimination, and inequality.
In today’s society, racism plays a fundamental role in multiple aspects throughout many people’s lives. These aspects can include getting a job, getting into college, fairness in the legal system, and many more. Racism is the belief that one certain race is superior to another race such as European American people thinking they are superior to Asian Americans, although this idea is not supported by any empirical evidence. Social conflict theorists may study the racial groups in America. These theorists embrace the idea that the upper class controls the community while the lower class strives for the limited resources (Giddens et al 2014). This would clearly cause major problems in vital situations in an individual’s life through racial groups