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Americans, who distrust each other as competitors. Divisions among workers deflect anger and hostility away from the power elite and direct these powerful emotions toward other racial and ethnic groups. Instead of recognizing their common class interests and work- ing for their mutual welfare, workers learn to fear and distrust one another.

Symbolic Interactionism. While conflict theorists focus on the role of the owner (or capitalist) class in exploiting racial and ethnic divisions, symbolic interactionists examine how labels affect perception and create prejudice.

How Labels Create Prejudice: Symbolic interactionists stress that the labels we learn affect the way we perceive people. Labels cause selective perception; that is, they lead us to see certain things while they blind us to others. If we apply a label to a group, we tend to perceive its members as all alike. We shake off evidence that doesn’t fit (Simpson and Yinger 1972). Racial and ethnic labels are especially powerful. They are shorthand for emotionally charged stereotypes. As you know, the term nigger is not neutral. Nor are honky, cracker, spic, mick, kike, limey, kraut, dago, guinea, or any of the other scornful words people use to belittle ethnic groups. Such words overpower us with emotions, blocking out rational thought about the people to whom they refer (Allport 1954).

Labels and the Self-Fulfilling Stereotype: Some stereotypes not only justify prejudice and discrimination but also produce the behavior depicted in the stereotype. We examined this principle in Chapter 4 in the box on beauty (page 112). Let’s consider Group X. According to stereotypes, the members of Group X are lazy, so they don’t deserve good jobs. (“They are lazy and undependable and wouldn’t do the job well.”) Denied the better jobs, most members of Group X are limited to doing “dirty work,” the jobs few people want but that are thought appropriate for “that kind” of people. Since much “dirty work” is sporadic, members of Group X are often seen “on the streets.” The sight of their idle- ness reinforces the original stereotype of laziness. The discrimination that created the “laziness” in the first place passes unnoticed.

To apply these three theoretical perspectives and catch a glimpse of how amazingly dif- ferent things were in the past, read the Down-to-Earth Sociology box on the next page.

Global Patterns of Intergroup Relations In their studies of racial–ethnic relations around the world, sociologists have found six basic ways that dominant groups treat minority groups. These patterns are shown in Figure 9.3. Let’s look at each.

276 C h a p t e r 9 R A C E A N D E T H N I C I T Y

selective perception seeing certain features of an object or situation, but remaining blind to others

The dominant group structures the social institu- tions to maintain minimal contact with the minority group (e.g., the U.S. South before the 1960s)

The dominant group tries to destroy the minority group (e.g., Germany and Rwanda)

The dominant group exploits the minority group (e.g., low-paid, menial work)

The dominant group expels the minority group (e.g., Native Americans forced onto reservations)

The dominant group absorbs the minority group (e.g., American Czechoslovakians)

The dominant group encourages racial and ethnic variation; when successful, there is no longer a dominant group (e.g., Switzerland)

Genocide Population

Transfer Internal

Colonialism Segregation Assimilation Multiculturalism

(Pluralism)

Inhumanity

Rejection

Humanity

Acceptance

FIGURE 9.3 Global Patterns of Intergroup Relations: A Continuum