Week 10 · Chapter

Chapter 10 — Race & Ethnicity

Introduction to Sociology Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~40–50 minutes · Objective 6 (analyze race and ethnicity and sex, gender, and sexuality as socially constructed categories — prejudice, discrimination, and institutional racism; gender socialization and 'doing gender'; the earnings gap and its competing explanations — reasoning from documented evidence in the source's own categories rather than from anecdote or stereotype), building on Objective 1 (apply the sociological imagination — connecting personal troubles to public issues — and the three major theoretical perspectives (structural functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism) to interpret a social phenomenon, naming the level of analysis each works at and placing the discipline's founders with the ideas and works they are known for) and Objective 2 (describe and evaluate the major sociological research methods (surveys, experiments, field research and ethnography, secondary-data analysis), distinguish reliability from validity and a population from a sample, and read a social statistic critically — what it measures, over what population and period, what it shows and does not, and whether it is a correlation or a cause) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slide deck, the tutorial, the quiz, and the Sociology in Action Workshop all build on it.

In plain language

Almost every form you fill out asks you to check a box for your race and your ethnicity, and this week asks what those boxes really measure. You will learn that race (a way of grouping people by how they look or are seen) is a category people built, not a fact of biology. You will also see that ethnicity (a shared heritage, such as a language or a faith) is something different. You will learn to tell prejudice (an attitude) from discrimination (an action), and to spot unfairness built into a rule rather than a person. Then you will read the real 2020 Census figures one careful step at a time.

Why you already care about this

In the 2020 Census, the Census Bureau counted 33.8 million people who reported Two or More Races. That was 10.2% of the population. Ten years earlier, in 2010, the same category held 9.0 million people, or 2.9%.

Numbers like these show up in your life more often than you might think. You check a race box on a job application, a financial-aid form, or a doctor's intake sheet. A friend with parents from two different backgrounds is unsure which box to check. A manager notices that every new hire at a store came in through a friend of someone already on staff. A neighborhood that looks the same as it did twenty years ago still has an invisible line down the middle.

Each of these moments raises the same question for you. Who decided what the categories are, and what do the people inside them experience? This chapter gives you the words for those questions and the habits to read the numbers behind them without being fooled.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

explain why sociologists call race a social construction, and tell race from ethnicity in a case;
define a minority group by power and treatment rather than by size;
tell prejudice from discrimination, and sort a case into Merton's four types;
tell individual racism from institutional racism, and find the bias in a procedure;
place Du Bois with the color line, double consciousness, and The Philadelphia Negro;
name the patterns of intergroup relations and state the contact hypothesis as a hypothesis;
read the 2020 Census race and ethnicity shares four ways, with the arithmetic shown.

Carry this line with you: race is a category people built — ask who built it and how.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1 gave you the three perspectives and introduced Du Bois. Week 2 taught the four data questions and the percentage point. Week 3 named ethnocentrism, and Week 5 showed that people build reality together. Week 7 sorted people into layers, and Week 9 carried those layers across the whole world.
This week: race as a social construction, ethnicity, minority and dominant groups, prejudice and discrimination, institutional racism, Du Bois's work, the patterns of intergroup relations, and the 2020 Census figures.
How they connect: Week 7 asked who sits on which layer; this week asks how one kind of category, race, became a basis for layering, and reads the census figures with Week 2's four questions.
Where we're going next: Week 11, Sex, Gender & Sexuality, reads a second socially constructed category, gender, with the same habits.

Week 5 is the chapter this one leans on most. There you met the social construction of reality, the idea that habits repeated long enough start to feel like "the way things are." Race is a case of that idea. Week 1 also introduced Du Bois's color line and double consciousness; Section 5 returns to them with more depth. And Week 2's percentage point, the unit for the difference between two percentages, is the tool you need when a census share changes.

1. Race: see a category people built

Picture an illustrative family filling in census forms across three generations. A grandparent's form offered only a handful of race boxes and told each person to check one. A parent's form allowed more than one box. A grandchild's form offers several boxes, write-in lines, and a separate question about Hispanic origin. The family has not changed its ancestry. The categories changed around them.

That is the first idea of the week. Race feels like a natural fact, something you can see. Sociologists ask you to treat it as a category people built.

Race is a socially constructed way of grouping people by perceived physical or social traits, whose categories differ between societies and change over time rather than resting on biology.

You can check three pieces of evidence for that definition. First, the categories differ from one society to another, so the same person can be sorted differently in two countries. Second, the categories change over time, including from one census to the next. Third, the major social-science associations reject a biological basis for racial categories. The Census Bureau says the same thing about its own form: its race categories reflect a social definition of race, and each person's answer is self-identified.

Self-identified describes an answer a person gives about themselves, such as the race they report on a census form, rather than a label someone else assigns.

Calling race socially constructed does not mean race is unreal, and you should not hear it that way. Week 5's Thomas theorem said that situations defined as real are real in their consequences. A category people built can still shape where people live, how they are treated, and what chances they get.

Ethnicity is a different idea.

Ethnicity is shared culture, such as language, religion, customs, and ancestry, that a group of people hold in common and pass down.

Worked example — sorting four illustrative descriptions. Decide whether each describes race or ethnicity.

A census box a person checks after reading a list of categories such as "Asian" or "White". A category of perceived traits on an official form: race.
A neighborhood association that runs a festival in a shared heritage language, with recipes passed down through families. A shared language and customs: ethnicity.
A sports team's roster sorted by how teammates look in a photo. Grouping by perceived physical traits: race, and a reminder that the sorting is done by the viewer.
A congregation whose members share a religious tradition and an ancestral homeland. Shared religion and ancestry: ethnicity.

In words: ask "is this a category of perceived traits, or a heritage people share?" The first is race; the second is ethnicity.

Misconception check — race as biology. Students often say race is "in your DNA," because people look different and the boxes look scientific. But the categories change between countries and between censuses, and the major social-science associations reject a biological basis for them. The cure: say "race is a category a society built," then ask who drew it and when.

Misconception check — race and ethnicity as one word. Students also use the two words interchangeably. The cure is one question: perceived traits, or shared heritage? A census asks about them separately for a reason Section 8 will show.

Memory hook: boxes are drawn by people; heritage is handed down.

2. Minority groups: define them by power, not by size

Picture an illustrative company town. Most people who live there work in the mine, rent their homes from the company, and cannot vote on the town council. A smaller group owns the mine, the land, and the houses, and fills every seat on the council. Which group is the minority?

If you answered "the smaller one," you counted heads. Sociologists ask you to count power.

In 1945, Louis Wirth published "The Problem of Minority Groups." He defined a minority group by its unequal treatment and its subordinate position in a society, not by its numbers.

A minority group is a group defined by its unequal treatment and subordinate position in a society rather than by its size, so a larger group can be a minority group.
The dominant group is the group in a society that holds more power and advantage and whose ways are treated as the standard, whatever its size.

Worked example — the company town. Apply Wirth's test step by step.

Who is treated unequally? The mine workers: they cannot vote on the council and do not own their homes.
Who holds the power? The owners: they hold the land, the jobs, and every council seat.
The verdict. The larger group of workers is the minority group; the smaller group of owners is the dominant group.

In words: a minority group is defined by power and treatment; the headcount does not decide it.

Misconception check — "minority means fewer." Students often define a minority group as the smaller group, because in everyday speech "minority" means "less than half." But Wirth's sociological meaning is about subordinate position. The cure: ask "who holds the power, and who is treated unequally?" before you ask "who has more people?"

Memory hook: count the power, not the people.

3. Prejudice and discrimination: tell an attitude from an action

Think about two illustrative coworkers at a busy restaurant. One privately believes that customers from one group tip poorly, but serves every table with the same care. The other holds no such belief, yet seats customers from that group near the kitchen door because the manager told staff to. What each one thinks and what each one does point in different directions.

Sociology asks you to separate the thinking from the doing.

Prejudice is an attitude: the beliefs and feelings a person holds about a group and applies to its members before knowing them.
A stereotype is an oversimplified generalization about a group that is applied to everyone in it, ignoring the differences among its members.
Discrimination is an action: treating people unequally because of the group they belong to or are seen to belong to.

A stereotype often feeds prejudice, and your restaurant example shows how. The belief about tipping in the restaurant is a stereotype: it takes a whole group and paints every member with one brush.

In 1949, Robert Merton crossed the two ideas in "Discrimination and the American Creed." If prejudice is an attitude and discrimination is an action, a person can have either one, both, or neither.

Merton's typology is Robert Merton's four-way sorting of people by crossing prejudice with discrimination, showing that an attitude and an action do not always match.

The table below lays out the four types.

Merton's four types, formed by crossing prejudice (an attitude) with discrimination (an action)
Type	Holds prejudice?	Discriminates?
Unprejudiced nondiscriminator	No	No
Unprejudiced discriminator	No	Yes
Prejudiced nondiscriminator	Yes	No
Prejudiced discriminator	Yes	Yes

An unprejudiced nondiscriminator is a person who holds no prejudice against a group and does not treat its members unequally.
An unprejudiced discriminator is a person who holds no prejudice against a group but treats its members unequally anyway, often to go along with others or a rule.
A prejudiced nondiscriminator is a person who holds prejudice against a group but does not act on it, often because a rule or the people around them forbid it.
A prejudiced discriminator is a person who holds prejudice against a group and acts on it by treating its members unequally.

Worked example — the two restaurant coworkers, and two more. Ask two questions of each person: what do they think, and what do they do?

The first coworker. Holds a stereotype about tipping, but serves every table the same: a prejudiced nondiscriminator.
The second coworker. Holds no prejudice, but follows the manager's seating instruction: an unprejudiced discriminator.
An illustrative campus club officer who dislikes one group and rejects its members' applications. Attitude and action match: a prejudiced discriminator.
An illustrative bookstore clerk who holds no prejudice and helps every customer the same way. An unprejudiced nondiscriminator.

In words: prejudice lives in the head; discrimination shows up in what people do.

Misconception check — prejudice and discrimination swapped. Students often call any unfair act "prejudice." It is tempting, because the two usually travel together. But prejudice is an attitude and discrimination is an action, and the second coworker shows that discrimination can happen with no prejudice at all. The cure: ask "is this a thought or a deed?"

Memory hook: thinking it and doing it are not the same.

4. Institutional racism: find the bias in the procedure

Picture an illustrative warehouse that fills every opening through referrals from current staff. Workers recommend friends, cousins, and neighbors, and the manager hires from that list because it is fast. No one involved says or believes anything unkind about anyone. Yet if the current staff came mostly from one group's neighborhoods, the referral rule keeps hiring inside that group year after year.

Where is the bias? You will not find it in any one person's head. You find it in the procedure.

Individual racism is prejudice or discrimination based on race that a particular person carries out in their own attitudes or actions.
Institutional racism is disadvantage built into the rules and routine procedures of organizations, whatever the individuals in them believe; it is also called systemic racism.

You are seeing Week 1's macro level at work. Individual racism happens between people, at the micro level. Institutional racism lives in the rules of an organization, at the macro level, and it can continue even after every prejudiced person has left.

Worked example — reading the warehouse rule. Walk through it step by step.

The rule. Every opening is filled from staff referrals.
Who is in the referral pool? The friends and neighbors of current staff.
Who is not? Qualified people from other neighborhoods who know no one on staff.
Whose attitudes does the rule need? No one's. The rule repeats the current staff's networks on its own.
What evidence would show a group pattern? The share of applicants and hires from each group over several years, compared with the people in the area who could do the job.

In words: individual racism needs a person who acts on prejudice; institutional racism needs only a procedure that keeps producing unequal results.

Caveat: a rule that produces unequal results by group is a pattern you show with evidence, not a guess. Step 5 is what turns a suspicion into a finding.

Misconception check — institutional racism as "prejudiced people in institutions." Students often read institutional racism as a workplace full of prejudiced individuals. It is tempting, because we are used to looking for a villain. But institutional racism is bias in the procedures themselves, whatever the people running them believe. The cure: before asking "who is prejudiced?", ask "what does the rule do, and to whom?"

Memory hook: look at the rule, not only the people.

5. Du Bois: read the color line and the evidence

Week 1 introduced W. E. B. Du Bois among the founders. This week his ideas move to the center.

In 1903, Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk. Its opening Forethought names the problem of the twentieth century as the problem of the color line, the division between races. Its first chapter describes double consciousness: the sense of always seeing yourself through the eyes of others. Both ideas come from one book about life on either side of that division.

Four years earlier, in 1899, Du Bois published The Philadelphia Negro, one of the first empirical community studies in American sociology. An empirical study gathers evidence in the field rather than arguing from an armchair. Du Bois's work therefore joins a theory of the color line to evidence about a real community.

Worked example — matching the idea to the work. Place each idea with its source.

The color line as the problem of the twentieth century. The Forethought of The Souls of Black Folk (1903).
Double consciousness, the sense of always seeing yourself through others' eyes. The first chapter of The Souls of Black Folk (1903).
An empirical study of one urban community. The Philadelphia Negro (1899).

In words: Souls (1903) gave the field its two famous ideas; The Philadelphia Negro (1899) showed the field gathering evidence.

Misconception check — double consciousness as the looking-glass self. Students often credit double consciousness to Cooley, or treat it as the same idea as Week 4's looking-glass self, because both involve seeing yourself through others. The cure is to name who and what. Cooley's looking-glass self (1902) describes how everyone forms a self from imagined judgments. Du Bois's double consciousness (1903) is his name, in a book about the color line, for the sense of always seeing yourself through the eyes of others.

Honesty note: famous lines from Souls are often quoted from memory and slightly wrong. This course states Du Bois's ideas in its own words rather than risk a misquotation.

Memory hook: Du Bois named the line — then went out and measured it.

6. Intergroup relations: map how groups meet

Picture four illustrative towns, each home to two groups.

In the first town, both groups keep their own languages and holidays, and both hold seats on the council as equals.
In the second, the newer group's grandchildren speak only the main language, celebrate the main holidays, and are hard to tell apart from everyone else.
In the third, a highway and a set of rules keep the two groups in separate neighborhoods, schools, and clinics.
In the fourth, one group sets out to destroy the other.

You can name these four patterns.

The patterns of intergroup relations are the range of ways groups in one society can relate to each other, running from pluralism through assimilation and segregation to genocide.
Pluralism is a pattern of intergroup relations in which groups keep their distinct cultures while sharing one society as equals.
Assimilation is a pattern of intergroup relations in which a minority group takes on the dominant group's culture until it becomes hard to tell apart from it.
Segregation is a pattern of intergroup relations in which groups are kept physically and socially apart, in where they live, work, learn, or gather.
Genocide is the deliberate attempt to destroy a group of people, the most extreme pattern of intergroup relations.

The four towns, in order, show pluralism, assimilation, segregation, and genocide.

Can contact between groups change any of what you have read so far? In 1954, Gordon Allport proposed an answer that sociologists still test.

The contact hypothesis is the idea, associated with Gordon Allport in 1954, that contact between members of different groups can reduce prejudice under some conditions.

Worked example — two illustrative kinds of contact. Describe each kind of contact before you predict anything.

A community garden. Neighbors from both sides of a dividing street share plots, split the work, and plan the harvest together. They talk, depend on each other's effort, and meet again every week.
A crowded bus. Riders from both groups share a bus every morning but never talk and never work on anything together. They are near each other, and nothing more.

In words: both settings are contact, but very different kinds. The hypothesis says contact can reduce prejudice under some conditions, so it does not promise that sharing a bus is enough. Which conditions matter is what researchers test, and the Readings & Resources page has a short video on that research.

Misconception check — "any contact reduces prejudice." Students often state the contact hypothesis as "put people together and prejudice goes away." It is tempting, because the idea sounds hopeful. But the hypothesis says contact can reduce prejudice under some conditions, and it is a hypothesis to test, not a proven law. The cure: say "can, under some conditions," describe the kind of contact, and treat the prediction as something to test.

Misconception check — pluralism and assimilation swapped. Students also mix these two up. The cure: in pluralism the groups stay distinct; in assimilation one group becomes hard to tell apart from the other.

Pause and choose one of these two prompts.

(a) Describe a team, job, or class project from your own life where people from different backgrounds worked together on a shared aim, and say whether the contact seemed to change how they saw each other.
(b) Describe a setting where people from different groups were in the same place but rarely worked together, and say how that kind of contact differed from working together.

Memory hook: contact can help under some conditions — a hypothesis to test, not a promise.

7. Three lenses: run one census form through them

Picture an illustrative household of four filling in the race question on a census form at the kitchen table. One parent checks one box. The other checks two. The teenager writes in a heritage that matches neither list. You can read the same scene through three perspectives.

Worked example — one census form, three lenses. You read the same kitchen-table scene three ways.

Structural functionalism (macro): shared categories do a job for the whole society. When everyone answers the same questions, a society can count itself and plan.
Conflict theory (macro): someone draws the categories, and the categories have changed from one census to the next. This lens asks who holds the power to draw them and who gains or loses when they change.
Symbolic interactionism (micro): checking a box is a moment of meaning. This lens asks what the choice means to the teenager writing in a heritage, and how others will read the answer.

In words: the first two lenses read the form at the macro level of the whole society, and the third reads it at the micro level of the meanings a person attaches at the kitchen table. No lens is declared correct; each answers a different question.

Misconception check — "one lens is the right one." Students often decide that the conflict lens is the "real" story of race, or that the functionalist lens is. Both moves skip the work. The three perspectives are complementary lenses that answer different questions at different levels. The cure: run all three, name each one's level, and let the evidence weigh in a specific case.

Memory hook: one form, three questions; no single lens wins.

8. The 2020 Census: read the race and ethnicity shares

Now read the real numbers with Week 2's four questions. The source is the Census Bureau's 2021 release, "2020 Census Illuminates Racial and Ethnic Composition of the Country."

Your first job is the labels. Several need to be clear before you read a single figure.

Alone is a race category label counting the people who reported that one race and no other.
Alone or in combination is a race category label counting the people who reported that race either by itself or together with at least one other race, so these categories overlap and are never added together.
Hispanic origin is a census question asked separately from race, so people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race and the Hispanic share is not a slice of the race total.
Two or More Races is the census category for people who reported more than one race on the race question.
A decennial census is the count of a country's entire population taken once every ten years, rather than a survey of a sample.

The table below sets out the shares you will work with, in the Census Bureau's own labels.

Self-identified race and Hispanic-origin shares of the U.S. population in the 2020 Census, in percent, from the Census Bureau's 2021 release
Category (Census Bureau label)	Share, 2020
White alone	61.6%
Black or African American alone	12.4%
Asian alone	6.0%
American Indian and Alaska Native alone	1.1%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone	0.2%
Some Other Race alone	8.4%
Two or More Races	10.2%
Hispanic or Latino (of any race), asked separately	18.7%

Worked example — the 2020 Census shares, read four ways. Take the five steps in order.

What is measured? Two separate self-identified questions, one on race and one on Hispanic origin.
Over whom? Everyone in the United States counted in the 2020 Census, a decennial census that counts everyone, not a sample.
What does it show? Work it one step at a time.
- The race shares as one whole: 61.6 + 12.4 + 6.0 + 1.1 + 0.2 + 8.4 + 10.2 = 99.9, which is 100% once you allow for rounding, so the race categories form one whole.
- The Hispanic share: Hispanic or Latino (of any race) was 18.7%, or 62.1 million people, written out as 62,100,000, asked as a separate question. People of Hispanic origin appear in every race category.
- Not one pie: adding the Hispanic share to the race shares gives 99.9 + 18.7 = 118.6, more than 100. That tells you the two questions overlap and cannot be stacked into one pie.
- Count to base: White alone was 204.3 million people, written out as 204,300,000, and 61.6% of the population, so 204.3 ÷ 61.6 × 100 ≈ 332, about 332 million people counted, or about 332,000,000.
- Two or More Races, the change: the share rose from 2.9% in 2010 to 10.2% in 2020, a rise of 10.2 − 2.9 = 7.3 percentage points. Next, 10.2 ÷ 2.9 ≈ 3.5, so the share was about 3.5 times its 2010 level. The count rose from 9.0 million to 33.8 million, written out as 9,000,000 and 33,800,000, a rise of 33.8 − 9.0 = 24.8 million.
- Two or More Races, the measurement: the Census Bureau attributes the change partly to improved question design and coding. Part of the rise is a change in how the question was asked and read, not only a change in the population.
- Alone versus alone or in combination: White alone was 61.6% and White alone or in combination was 71%, so 71 − 61.6 = 9.4 percentage points of the population reported White together with at least one other race. The two shares overlap and are never added.
What does it not show? Why the population has this composition, anything about you or any one person, or whether any group is treated unequally. A share describes composition, not causes.
Correlation or cause? Neither. These are descriptions of one count in one year.

In words: in 2020, about one person in ten reported Two or More Races, about one in five was Hispanic or Latino of any race, and neither figure says why.

Put the two years side by side: 10.2% versus 2.9% is a rise of 7.3 percentage points, a share about 3.5 times as large. A city planning office that read the rise as a population change alone would misread its own data. That is the practical stake in naming the measurement.

In practice (your tools). You can check every step in a free spreadsheet. Type the seven race shares, 61.6, 12.4, 6.0, 1.1, 0.2, 8.4, and 10.2, into cells A1 through A7. In A8, type =SUM(A1:A7) to get 99.9. Type 18.7 in A9, and in A10 type =A8+A9 to get 118.6, the sum that shows the two questions overlap. Type 2.9 in B1, and in B2 type =A7-B1 to get 7.3, the change in percentage points.

Misconception check — adding "alone" to "alone or in combination." Students often add the two White shares, 61.6 + 71, as if they counted two different sets of people. It is tempting, because both are labeled White. But everyone in "White alone" is also inside "White alone or in combination," so adding them counts the same people twice. The cure: read the label before you add.

Misconception check — the Hispanic share as a slice of the race pie. Students also draw one pie with a Hispanic slice beside the race slices. Hispanic origin is a separate question, and Hispanic people appear in every race category. The cure is the 118.6: if the slices sum past 100, they were never one pie.

Misconception check — a share read as a cause. A composition figure tells you who was counted, not why. The cure: end every read with "correlation or cause?" and answer "neither" for a description.

Memory hook: read the label first — two questions never make one pie.

For more on this week's ideas, the module's Readings & Resources page links to short articles, data pages, and videos.

Key terms

Race — A socially constructed way of grouping people by perceived physical or social traits, whose categories differ between societies and change over time rather than resting on biology. (first used: 1. Race: see a category people built)
Self-identified — Describes an answer a person gives about themselves, such as the race they report on a census form, rather than a label someone else assigns. (first used: 1. Race: see a category people built)
Ethnicity — Shared culture, such as language, religion, customs, and ancestry, that a group of people hold in common and pass down. (first used: 1. Race: see a category people built)
Minority group — A group defined by its unequal treatment and subordinate position in a society rather than by its size, so a larger group can be a minority group. (first used: 2. Minority groups: define them by power, not by size)
Dominant group — The group in a society that holds more power and advantage and whose ways are treated as the standard, whatever its size. (first used: 2. Minority groups: define them by power, not by size)
Prejudice — An attitude: the beliefs and feelings a person holds about a group and applies to its members before knowing them. (first used: 3. Prejudice and discrimination: tell an attitude from an action)
Stereotype — An oversimplified generalization about a group that is applied to everyone in it, ignoring the differences among its members. (first used: 3. Prejudice and discrimination: tell an attitude from an action)
Discrimination — An action: treating people unequally because of the group they belong to or are seen to belong to. (first used: 3. Prejudice and discrimination: tell an attitude from an action)
Merton's typology — Robert Merton's four-way sorting of people by crossing prejudice with discrimination, showing that an attitude and an action do not always match. (first used: 3. Prejudice and discrimination: tell an attitude from an action)
Unprejudiced nondiscriminator — In Merton's typology, a person who holds no prejudice against a group and does not treat its members unequally. (first used: 3. Prejudice and discrimination: tell an attitude from an action)
Unprejudiced discriminator — In Merton's typology, a person who holds no prejudice against a group but treats its members unequally anyway, often to go along with others or a rule. (first used: 3. Prejudice and discrimination: tell an attitude from an action)
Prejudiced nondiscriminator — In Merton's typology, a person who holds prejudice against a group but does not act on it, often because a rule or the people around them forbid it. (first used: 3. Prejudice and discrimination: tell an attitude from an action)
Prejudiced discriminator — In Merton's typology, a person who holds prejudice against a group and acts on it by treating its members unequally. (first used: 3. Prejudice and discrimination: tell an attitude from an action)
Individual racism — Prejudice or discrimination based on race that a particular person carries out in their own attitudes or actions. (first used: 4. Institutional racism: find the bias in the procedure)
Institutional racism — Disadvantage built into the rules and routine procedures of organizations, whatever the individuals in them believe; also called systemic racism. (first used: 4. Institutional racism: find the bias in the procedure)
Patterns of intergroup relations — The range of ways groups in one society can relate to each other, running from pluralism through assimilation and segregation to genocide. (first used: 6. Intergroup relations: map how groups meet)
Pluralism — A pattern of intergroup relations in which groups keep their distinct cultures while sharing one society as equals. (first used: 6. Intergroup relations: map how groups meet)
Assimilation — A pattern of intergroup relations in which a minority group takes on the dominant group's culture until it becomes hard to tell apart from it. (first used: 6. Intergroup relations: map how groups meet)
Segregation — A pattern of intergroup relations in which groups are kept physically and socially apart, in where they live, work, learn, or gather. (first used: 6. Intergroup relations: map how groups meet)
Genocide — The deliberate attempt to destroy a group of people, the most extreme pattern of intergroup relations. (first used: 6. Intergroup relations: map how groups meet)
Contact hypothesis — The idea, associated with Gordon Allport in 1954, that contact between members of different groups can reduce prejudice under some conditions. (first used: 6. Intergroup relations: map how groups meet)
Alone — A race category label counting the people who reported that one race and no other. (first used: 8. The 2020 Census: read the race and ethnicity shares)
Alone or in combination — A race category label counting the people who reported that race either by itself or together with at least one other race, so these categories overlap and are never added together. (first used: 8. The 2020 Census: read the race and ethnicity shares)
Hispanic origin — A census question asked separately from race, so people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race and the Hispanic share is not a slice of the race total. (first used: 8. The 2020 Census: read the race and ethnicity shares)
Two or More Races — The census category for people who reported more than one race on the race question. (first used: 8. The 2020 Census: read the race and ethnicity shares)
Decennial census — The count of a country's entire population taken once every ten years, rather than a survey of a sample. (first used: 8. The 2020 Census: read the race and ethnicity shares)

Summary

Race is a socially constructed category; its boxes change across countries and censuses.
Ethnicity is shared heritage: language, religion, customs, ancestry.
A minority group is defined by power and treatment, not by size.
Prejudice is an attitude; discrimination is an action; Merton crossed them into four types.
Institutional racism is bias built into procedures, whatever people believe.
Du Bois named the color line and double consciousness and studied a real community.
Intergroup relations run from pluralism to genocide; contact can reduce prejudice under some conditions, a hypothesis still tested.
Census race shares and the Hispanic share come from two questions and are never one pie.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

In an illustrative county survey, the share of residents reporting more than one race rose from 4% to 9% after the county redesigned its form. By how many percentage points did the share rise, by what percent, and what caution does the redesign add?
An illustrative town survey reports that 52% of residents chose one category alone and 58% chose it alone or in combination. A classmate adds 52 + 58 = 110 and says the survey is broken. What is the right reading of the two numbers?
Sort each person into one of Merton's four types. (a) A hiring manager with no prejudice follows an owner's order to skip applicants from one group. (b) A club treasurer privately dislikes one group but follows the club's equal-treatment rule. (c) A coach with no prejudice picks players on skill alone. (d) A landlord dislikes one group and refuses to rent to its members.
On an illustrative island, 70% of the people work the fields, cannot own land, and have no vote. The other 30% own all the land and hold every office. Which group is the minority group, and why?
An illustrative scholarship requires every finalist to attend an unpaid interview at an office far from any bus line. No one on the committee holds a prejudice. Could this be institutional racism, and what evidence would you need before calling it that?

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

9 − 4 = 5 percentage points. As a percent change, 5 ÷ 4 × 100 = 125 percent. The caution: the form changed, so part of the rise may come from how the question was asked rather than from a change in who lives in the county. The Census Bureau attaches the same caution to its own Two or More Races figure.
The two numbers overlap. Everyone who chose the category alone is also inside "alone or in combination," so 58 − 52 = 6 percentage points of residents chose that category together with another one. Adding them counts the same people twice; nothing is broken.
(a) Unprejudiced discriminator: no prejudice, but an unequal action. (b) Prejudiced nondiscriminator: prejudice held, but no unequal action. (c) Unprejudiced nondiscriminator: neither. (d) Prejudiced discriminator: attitude and action match.
The 70% group is the minority group. Wirth defined a minority group by unequal treatment and subordinate position, not by size, and the 70% cannot own land or vote. The 30% group, which holds the land and the offices, is the dominant group.
It could be. A rule that no one intends as unfair can still disadvantage finalists who lack a car, and if that lack is more common in one group, the rule produces a group pattern without any prejudice. Before calling it institutional racism, you would need evidence: the share of finalists from each group who could not attend, compared with the share who applied. Without that evidence it is a hypothesis, not a finding.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, the quiz, the discussion, and the assignment — and next week the same four-question method meets a second built category, gender, and the earnings ratio that comes with it.

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