Page 284 - Essencials of Sociology

Laying the Sociological Foundation 257

The reason I selected these photos
is to illustrate how seriously we must
take all preaching of hatred and of
racial supremacy, even though it
seems to come from harmless or
even humorous sources. The strange-
looking person with his hands on
his hips, who is wearing lederhosen,
traditional clothing of Bavaria,
Germany, is Adolf Hitler. He caused
this horrific carnage at the Landsberg
concentration camp.

considered an ethnic group, since it is their cultural characteristics, especially their reli-
gion, that bind them together. Wherever Jews have lived in the world, they have inter-
married. Consequently, Jews in China may have Chinese features, while some Swedish
Jews are blue-eyed blonds. The confusion of race and ethnicity is illustrated in the
photo on the next page.

Minority Groups and Dominant Groups
Sociologist Louis Wirth (1945) defined a minority group as people who are singled
out for unequal treatment and who regard themselves as objects of collective discrimina-
tion. Worldwide, minorities share several conditions: Their physical or cultural traits are
held in low esteem by the dominant group, which treats them unfairly, and they tend to
marry within their own group (Wagley and Harris 1958). These conditions tend to cre-
ate a sense of identity among minorities (a feeling of “we-ness”). In some instances, even
a sense of common destiny emerges (Chandra 1993).

Not Size, But Dominance and Discrimination. Surprisingly, a minority group is not
necessarily a numerical minority. For example, before India’s independence in 1947, a
handful of British colonial rulers dominated tens of millions of Indians. Similarly, when
South Africa practiced apartheid, a smaller group of Afrikaners, primarily Dutch, dis-
criminated against a much larger number of blacks. And all over the world, as we dis-
cussed in the previous chapter, females are a minority group. Because of this, sociologists
refer to those who do the discriminating not as the majority but, rather, as the domi-
nant group. Regardless of its numbers, the dominant group has the greater power and
privilege.
Possessing political power and unified by shared physical and cultural traits, the domi-
nant group uses its position to discriminate against those with different—and supposedly
inferior—traits. The dominant group considers its privileged position to be the result of
its own innate superiority.
minority group people who are
Emergence of Minority Groups. A group becomes a minority in one of two singled out for unequal treatment
ways. The first is through the expansion of political boundaries. With the exception of and who regard themselves as
objects of collective discrimination
females, tribal societies contain no minority groups. In them, everyone shares the same
culture, including the same language, and belongs to the same group. When a group dominant group the group with
expands its political boundaries, however, it produces minority groups if it incorpo- the most power, greatest privileges,
and highest social status
rates people with different customs, languages, values, or physical characteristics into