Creation and Consequences of Minority Group Status

Parent Category: Race and Racial Groups

Category: Understanding Minority Group Status

Richard T. Schaefer,

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Based on Richard T. Schaefer, Racial and Ethnic Groups 18 - 34 (1993).

Creation of a Minority Group

Migration

Transfer of population by emigration (leaving a country to settle in another). Immigration (coming to a country) may be voluntary (such as Japanese Americans and other Asian Americans) or it may be involuntary (such as African Americans through slavery). Immigrations can occur within a country such as the Great Black Immigration from the South to the North.

• Annexation

The incorporation or attachment of land that is contiguous to the nation; can result from war (such as Mexican Americans in Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo) or purchase such as (Native Americans and Eskimos in Alaska). With annexation, the dominant power generally attempts to suppress the language and culture of the minority groups.

• Colonialism

The maintenance of political, social, economic, and cultural domination over people by a foreign power for an extended period. Such as (Native Americans in the United States and Native Hawaiians). Even to day Puerto Rico continues to be a colony. Colonialism is usually external but can also be internal.

Consequence of Minority Group Status

• Extermination

Elimination of a people; includes genocide or the deliberate, systematic killing of an entire ; Describes White policies toward Native Americans; in 1850 Indian population was 600,00 by 1850 it was 250,000.

• Expulsion

A dominant group may force a specific minority group to leave a certain area or even vacate a country; For example, the Us government drove virtually all Native Americans out of their tribal lands on to reservations.

• Secession

A group secedes to form a new nation or moves to an already establish nation where it becomes dominant; The American Colonization Society> sought to form a new nation for African Americans in Liberia, some proposals also advanced establishing settlements in the western United States.

• Segregation

The physical separation of two groups in residence, workplace and social functions. Segregation can be legally imposed as it was under Jim Crow laws, or as Native Americans on reservation or it can be de facto as significant residential, social and educational segregation of Hispanic/Latino Americans and African Americans.

• Fusion

Result when a minority and a majority group combine to form a new group. Fusion does not require intermarriage, but it is similar to amalgamation or the cultural and physical synthesis of various groups into a new people; Only modest evidence of fusion in the United States, although there is a push by multiracial people to have a separate legal identity from either the minority or majority groups.
(represented by:
Whites (A) + Blacks (B) + Asian (C) = Interracial (D))

• Assimilation

Process by which a minority individual or groups takes on the characteristics of the dominant group. he process whereby individuals or groups of differing ethnic heritage are absorbed into the dominant culture of a society. Usually
they are immigrants or hitherto isolated minorities who, through contact and participation in the larger culture, gradually give up most
of their former culture traits and take on the new traits to such a degree . . . Assimilation is a majority ideology. (represented by:
Whites (A) + Blacks (B) + Asian (C) = Whites (A))

• Pluralism

Process by which a majority and minority individual or groups keep their separate identity. (Represented by:
Whites (A) + Blacks (B) + Asian (C) = Whites (A) + Blacks (B) + Asian (C)