Chapter 12
MINORITY-DOMINANT RELATIONS IN
CROSS-NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Overview
This chapter examines the theories
and concepts of earlier chapters and applies them to an international
examination. Examples of pluralism focus on
Learning Goals
1.
Students
will learn how to apply the ideas from earlier in the text to a variety of
societies around the globe.
2.
Students
will learn the ways in which dominant-minority conflicts, inequality and
discrimination have existed (and continue to exist) in Canada, Northern
Ireland, Germany, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, South Africa, and the Middle
East. With the exception of immigrant workers in Germany, these conflicts are
decades or centuries old and began in a contact period that featured
competition and conquest.
3.
Students
will learn that the issues at the core of these aforementioned conflicts are
highly variable but commonly deal with questions of assimilation and pluralism,
inequality and access to resources and opportunities, prejudice and racism, and
diversity and unity.
4.
Students
will learn why Hawaii, Switzerland and Brazil have reputations for relatively
peaceful intergroup relations with high levels of tolerance.
Outline
I.
Overview of
the Chapter
II.
A Brief
Review of Major Analytical Themes
A.
One theme
that has been constantly stressed is the importance of the initial contact situation between groups. The
characteristics of the initial meeting can shape relations for centuries.
1.
The fates of
minority groups created by colonization and conquest are different from those
created by immigration. Colonized or conquered minority groups are subjected to
greater rejection, discrimination, and inequality and become more completely
mired in their minority status.
2.
Nations have
been conquering, enslaving, persecuting, and oppressing their neighbors for
millennia. When the neighbors differed in some visible way, prejudice, racism,
and systems of inequality based on group membership often followed the military
conquests.
B.
Dominant-minority
relationships tend to change most rapidly and dramatically when the level of development
or the basic subsistence technology of the larger society changes.
C.
Contact
situations, assimilation and pluralism, prejudice, racism, and institutional
discrimination are all central to understanding the past and present situations
of U.S. minority groups.
III. A Global Tour
A. Canada.
1.
Citizens of
the United States often see Canada as simply a colder version of their home
society, a perception that is sustained by the enormous impact the United
States has had on everyday social, economic, and political life in Canada.
2.
Dominant-minority
situations in the two societies share many similarities, both historically and
at present. But the two societies are also quite different.
3.
Perhaps the
most obvious difference between the two nations is that at present, the major
minority issue in Canada is cultural and linguistic, not racial. For more than
two centuries, Canadian society has been divided into two major language
groups, French speaking and English speaking.
French speakers are the minority group.
4.
Issues of
assimilation and pluralism separate the two linguistic and cultural groups.
French Canadians have preserved their language and culture in the face of
domination by English speakers for more than 200 years.
5.
English-speaking
Canadians have shown little support for separation or pluralism. The present pluralistic movement began in the
1960s. Since the 1960s, the
status of Quebec’s French-speaking residents has risen, and they have gained
more economic and political power, but issues of control of resources and
wealth continue.
B.
Northern
Ireland.
1.
In Northern
Ireland, the bitter, violent conflict between Protestants and Catholics has
some parallels with Canadian and U.S. group relations and has been closely
watched and widely reported.
2.
The roots of
this conflict lie in armed hostilities between England and Ireland that began
centuries ago. By the 1600s, England had colonized much of Irelandand had
encouraged Protestants from Scotland and England to move to what is now
Northern Ireland to help pacify and control the Catholic Irish. The newcomers,
assisted by the English invaders, came to own much of the land and control the
economy and the governing structure.
3.
Over the
centuries, the Protestants in Northern Ireland have consolidated their position
and power and separated themselves from the native Catholic population in the
school system, in residential areas, and in most other areas of society. Law and strong custom reinforced the
subordinate position of Catholics, and the system, at its height, came to
resemble Jim Crow segregation.
4.
The
Catholics of Northern Ireland began a civil rights movement in the late
1960s, seeking amelioration for their minority status. Protestants,
fearing loss of privilege and control, resisted attempts at reform, and the
confrontation escalated.
5.
In 1998,
lengthy and difficult negotiations resulted in the “Good Friday Agreement” that
established a new power-sharing arrangement for the governance of Northern
Ireland in which both Protestant and Catholic parties will participate.
6.
In both
Canada and Ireland, these divisions do not exist in a vacuum; they are highly
correlated with social class position, access to education and jobs, and
political power.
C.
Germany.
1.
Germany is
infamous as the site of the greatest minority group atrocities in history. In
the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazi leadership of the nation attempted to eradicate
the Jewish community (and several other groups). Six million Jews died.
2.
Since the
end of World War II, modern Germany has broken from its racist past, democratized,
industrialized, and modernized. It is a global leader politically and
economically and has one of the world’s best-trained and educated workforces.
3.
Germany has
become a highly desirable destination for immigrants who come to satisfy the
demand for both unskilled, cheap labor and “high-tech" professionals.
4.
Based on the
patterns we have documented in the United States, we would predict that high
rates of immigration would be accompanied by episodes of racist violence.
D.
Switzerland.
1.
Swiss
society incorporates three major and distinct language and cultural groups:
French speakers, German speakers, and Italian speakers. Each language group
resides in a particular region of the country and enjoys considerable control
of its local affairs.
2.
Switzerland
is a pluralistic society in which the groups are separate both culturally and
structurally.
3.
At the
national level, political power and economic resources are shared in proportion
to the size of each group. The leaders of the different groups are careful to
cooperate in national affairs and maintain the sense of proportional sharing
and fundamental fairness. Switzerland is
able to function effectively as a multicultural, multilingual society.
4.
Perhaps the
key to the success of the Swiss in combining diversity and unity is that none
of the three major groups were forced to join the nation by military conquest
or coercion.
E.
Former
Yugoslavia.
1.
Eastern
Europe is a region of immense ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity. The
former nation of Yugoslavia exemplifies both the diversity of the region and
the complex history of intergroup conflict and cooperation.
2.
When it was
created in 1918, the nation encompassed a variety of ethnic groups, each with
its own language, religion, history, and memories of grievances against other
groups.
3.
The larger
groups include Croats (who are mainly Roman Catholic), Serbs (primarily Eastern Orthodox), and Bosnians
(roughly half Muslim, half Christian). Each of these groups had a home
territory in which it was the numerical majority.
4.
During World
War II, Yugoslavia was one of the bloody battlegrounds, and each of these
groups took sides. World War II also saw the emergence of Josip Broz Tito as a
leader of anti-Nazi guerrilla forces. After the war, Tito became the chief
architect of the modern nation of Yugoslavia. Tito’s design incorporated many
of the same elements that make Switzerland a successful pluralistic society.
5.
Postwar
Yugoslavia comprised several different subnations, or republics, each of which
was associated with a particular ethnic group. Power at the national level was
allocated proportionately, and each region had considerable autonomy in the
conduct of its affairs.
6.
A major
difference between Yugoslavia and Switzerland, however, lies in the contact
situation. The latter nation was formed
on a voluntary basis. Yugoslavia was
first created by post–World War I diplomatic negotiations and then re-created
at the end of World War II by Tito's authoritarian regime.
7.
Self-serving
political and military leaders in Serbia and in the other former Yugoslavian
states inflamed prejudices and antipathies. Vicious conflicts broke out
throughout the region, with the worst violence occurring in Bosnia. Bosnia’s attempt to establish its independence
was opposed by Serbia and by the Serbian and Croatian residents of Bosnia, both
of whom formed armed militias.
8.
Serbs began
a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia in 1992 and committed the worst
excesses. Croats used the same tactics
against Bosnian
Muslims, and Bosnians have retaliated in kind against Serbs. By the time
relative peace was established in Bosnia in 1995, more than 200,000 people had
died.
F.
Rwanda.
1.
Rwanda’s two
ethnic groups, Hutus and Tutsis, had a long history of mutual enmity and
hatred, but attacks beginning in 1994 reached new heights of brutality. Perhaps
800,000 people—perhaps many more—were murdered, and millions fled to
neighboring nations.
2.
Accounts by
witnesses and survivors told of massacres with rifles, machetes, rocks, and
fists. No one was spared in the killing frenzy.
3.
Colonization
and conquest are part of the explanation for the brutal confrontation. European
nations began colonizing Africa in the 1400s.
4.
European
colonizers attempted to ease the difficulty of administering and controlling
Rwanda by capitalizing on the long-standing enmity between Tutsis and Hutus. In
a classic case of divide and rule, Germany placed the Tutsis in position to
govern the Hutus, a move that perpetuated and intensified hostilities between
the tribes. The Belgians continued the tradition and maintained the political
and economic differentials between the tribes.
5.
Throughout
the colonial era, mutual tribal hostilities were punctuated by periodic armed
clashes, some of which rose to the level of massacre.
6.
In the early
1960s, the era of direct European political colonialism ended, and two nations
were created in the region: Rwanda was dominated by the Hutus and neighboring
Burundi by the Tutsis. However, the
borders between the two nations were drawn arbitrarily and do not reflect local
traditions or tribal realities.
7.
In the early
1990s, a rebel force led by exiled Tutsis invaded Rwanda with the intention of
overthrowing the Hutu-dominated government. The conflict continued until the
spring of 1994, when the plane carrying the Hutu president of Rwanda was shot
down, killing all aboard. It was this incident that set off the massacres, with
Hutus seeking revenge for the death of their president and attempting to
eliminate their Tutsi rivals.
G.
South
Africa.
1.
As recently
as the late 1980s, the Republic of South Africa was one of the most racist and
discriminatory societies in the world. A small minority of whites (about 30%)
dominated the black African population and enjoyed a level of race-based
privilege rarely equaled in the history of the world.
2.
Today,
although enormous problems of inequality and racism remain, South Africa has
officially dismantled the machinery of racial oppression, has enfranchised
nonwhites, and has elected two black presidents.
3.
Europeans
first came into contact with the area that became the nation of South Africa in
the 1600s, at about the time the British were establishing colonies in North
America. First to arrive were the Dutch,
who established ports on the coast to resupply merchant ships for the journey
between Asia and Europe. Some of the Dutch began moving into the interior to
establish farms and sheep and cattle ranches. The “trekkers,” as they were
called, regularly fought with indigenous black Africans and with tribes moving
into the area from the North. These interracial conflicts were extremely bloody
and resulted in enslavement for some black Africans, genocide for others, and a
gradual push of the remaining black Africans into the interior.
4.
In some
ways, this contact period resembled that between European Americans and Native
Americans, and in other ways, it resembled the early days of the establishment
of black slavery in North America. In the 1800s, South Africa became a British
colony, and the new governing group attempted to grant more privileges to blacks.
These efforts stopped far short of equality
5.
In 1899,
British and Dutch factions fought each other in the Boer War, a bitter and
intense struggle that widened and solidified the divisions between the two
white communities. Generally, the descendants of the Dutch have been more
opposed to racial change than have the descendants of the British.
6.
In 1948, the
National Party, the primary political vehicle of the Afrikaans, or Dutch,
segment of the white community, came into control of the state. As the society
modernized and industrialized, there was growing concern about controlling the
majority black population, and under the leadership of the National Party, the
system of apartheid was constructed to firmly establish white superiority.
7.
Apartheid
means “separate” or “apart;” the basic logic of the system was to separate
whites and blacks in every area of life: schools, neighborhoods, jobs, buses,
churches, and so forth. Apartheid was more oppressive than Jim Crow.
8.
Although the
official government propaganda claimed that apartheid would permit blacks and
whites to develop separately and equally, the system was intended to solidify
white privilege and black powerlessness. By keeping blacks poor and powerless,
white South Africans created a pool of workers who were both cheap and docile.
9.
Unlike the
situation in the United States at the end of Jim Crow segregation, in which
white liberals and nonsoutherners put considerable pressure on the racist
South, there was little internal opposition among South African whites to the
creation of apartheid. Furthermore,
South African blacks in the late 1940s were comparatively more powerless than
blacks in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. Although South African
black protest organizations existed, they were illegal and had to operate
underground or from exile. In the U.S. blacks living outside the South were
able to organize and pool their resources to assist in the campaign against Jim
Crow.
10. A final difference between the two situations has
to do with numbers. In the U.S., blacks are a numerical minority, but they were
the great majority of the population in South Africa. The difference in group
size helped to contribute to what has been described as a “fortress” mentality.
11. Internally, protests against apartheid by blacks
began in the 1960s and continued to build in intensity. The South African
government responded to these protests with violent repression. Internationally, pressure on South Africa to
end apartheid was significant.
12. In 1990, F.W. de Klerk, the leader of the
National Party and the Prime Minister of the nation, began a series of changes
that eventually ended apartheid. However, the future of South Africa remains
unclear.
H.
The Middle
East.
1.
Conflict in
the Middle East has roots deep in history but took on its modern form with the
founding of the nation of Israel in 1948.
2.
Following
World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust, European Jews began to push for
the establishment of a Jewish state in their traditional homeland. This cause
was strongly supported by the United Nations and by the United States, and the
modern state of Israel was founded in 1948. Unfortunately, the Jewish homeland
was established by taking land that was occupied by Arabs (Palestinians) who
also regarded it as their rightful homeland.
3.
A major
difference between this and other intergroup struggles is the scale of time
involved. Although the modern state of Israel encompasses the traditional
Jewish homeland, few Jews have lived in this area for the past 2,000 years. The
Middle East has been Arab land for most of the past thousand years. After
establishment, Israel found itself surrounded by hostile Arab nations. Warfare began almost immediately. Full-scale wars were fought in 1948, 1967,
and 1973. Israel was victorious in all
three cases and claimed additiona territory from its Arab neighbors to reduce
the threat and provide a buffer zone. The wars also created a large group of
refugees in the Arab countries neighboring Israel.
4.
The Arabs
who remained in Israel tended to be a subordinate group. Today, the number of Palestinian Arabs
exceeds six million, many of whom continue to live as displaced people in
refugee camps.
5.
Because of
the huge oil reserves in the region, the Israeli-Arab conflict has political
and international dimensions that directly involve the rest of the world.
6.
In 1979,
Egypt, formerly committed to the destruction of the Jewish state, signed a
peace accord with Israel. More recently, Israel and the Palestinians,
represented by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), have been
negotiating a peace settlement that would permit a Palestinian state. These
negotiations have been extremely difficult.
I.
Hawaii.
1.
Like
Switzerland, Hawaii is often identified as a society that maintains peaceful
group relations in the face of great diversity. The diversity of Hawaiian
society is suggested by its racial and ethnic makeup.
2.
The
population of Hawaii is much more racially mixed than the general population of
the United States. Americans of Asian descent are the largest group.
3.
Hawaii first
came into contact with Europeans in 1788, but conquest and colonization did not
follow the initial contact. Early relations between the islanders and Europeans
were organized around trade and commerce—not agriculture, as was the case in
the United States, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Quebec, and so many other
places. Thus, the contact situation did not lead to competition over the
control of land or labor.
4.
Hawaiian
society was highly developed and had sufficient military strength to protect
itself from the relatively few Europeans who came to the islands in these early
days. Although initial contact with
Europeans did not result in conquest or military dominance, it did bring other
consequences, including smallpox and other diseases to which native Hawaiians
had no immunity.
5.
As relations
between the island and Europeans developed, the land gradually began to be
turned to commercial agriculture. By the mid-1800s, white planters had
established sugar plantations, an enterprise that is extremely labor intensive.
The white plantation owners came to dominate the island economy and political
structure. Other groups, however, were not excluded from secondary structural
assimilation. Laws banning entire groups from public institutions or practices
such as school segregation are unknown in Hawaiian history.
6.
Hawaii has
no history of the most blatant and oppressive forms of group domination,
racism, and legalized discrimination. Yet, there is evidence of ethnic and
racial stratification as well as prejudice and discrimination. Native Hawaiians
tend to be the poorest of the various ethnic and racial groups, and recent
immigrants from Asia, like their mainland counterparts, tend to be “bipolar” in
their occupational and economic profiles.
7.
A protest
movement of native Hawaiians stressing self-determination and the
return of illegally taken land has been in
existence since at least the 1960s.
J.
Brazil
1.
Brazil is
the largest nation in South America. Its
population of 172 million and is racially and ethnically diverse. Several
hundred thousand Indians survive, down from per-haps five million at first
contact.
2.
The racial
histories of Brazil and the United States run parallel in many ways and racism,
discrimination, and racial inequality are very much a part of Brazilian
history. However, race relations in
Brazil are generally regarded as less problematical and confrontational than in
the United States.
3.
At the time
Brazil was established, Portugal, unlike England, had had a long acquaintance
with African cultures and peoples. In fact, Moors from North Africa ruled
Portugal for a time. Thus, darker skin and other African “racial” features were
familiar to the Portuguese and not, in and of themselves, regarded as a stigma
or an indication of inferiority.
4.
The relative
absence of skin color prejudice also may be reflected in the high rates of
intermarriage between Portuguese, Africans, and natives.
5.
Brazilian
slavery tended to be more open than the North American variety. Brazilian
slaves were freed at a much higher rate than British American slaves were, and
there was a large class of free blacks and mulattos filling virtually every job
and position available in the society. Compared with the U.S. experience,
slavery lasted longer in Brazil (until 1888) but ended more gradually and with
less opposition.
6.
In Brazil,
slavery was not so thoroughly equated with race as it was in North America.
Although slave status was certainly regarded as undesirable and unfortunate, it
did not carry the presumption of racial inferiority. In North America, in
contrast, antiblack prejudice and racism came into being as way of
rationalizing and supporting the system.
7.
The results
of the higher rates of racial intermarriage, large population of mulattos, and
lower levels of racial prejudice in Brazil are manifold. They helped to sustain
a way of thinking about race that is different from North American practices.
Race is seen as a series of categories that have ambiguous, indeterminate
boundaries. In the U.S., race is seen as
a set of sharply delineated categories with clear, definite boundaries.
8.
After the
end of slavery, Brazil did not go through a period of legalized racial
segregation like the Jim Crow system or apartheid. Brazil has not solved its
dominant-minority problems. The legacy of slavery is still strong, and there is
a high correlation between skin color and social status.
IV.
Analyzing
Group Relations
A.
Problems of
dominant-minority relations are extremely common. It seems that the only
nations that lack such problems are the relatively few (such as Sweden) that
are homogeneous in their racial, cultural, religious, and linguistic makeup.
B.
Dominant-minority
problems are highly variable in their form and their intensity. They range from
genocide in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda to hate crimes motivated by race,
religion, or ethnicity in Germany and many other locales to complaints of
racism, unfairness, and injustice virtually everywhere.
C.
As we have
noted on a number of occasions, the most intense, violent, and seemingly
intractable problems of group relations almost always have their origins in
contact situations in which one group is conquered or colonized by another.
Blauner’s hypothesis seems well supported by this examination of
dominant-minority relations around the globe.
D.
The impact of
modernization and industrialization on racial and ethnic relations is variable.
Whereas these forces led to less rigid group relations in the United States,
they had the opposite effect in South Africa until the 1990s. Furthermore,
around the globe, ethnic and racial groups that were thought to have been
submerged in the hustle and bustle of modern society have been reappearing.
E.
It seems
unlikely that even the most sophisticated and modern of nations will outgrow
the power of ethnic loyalties at any point in the near future. Whatever
tendencies modernization creates to set prejudice aside and judge others
rationally are offset by memories of past injustices; unresolved grievances; a
simple yearning for revenge; and continuing struggles over control of land,
labor, and other resources. Ethnic and racial lines continue to reflect
inequalities of wealth and power, and as long as minority group status is
correlated with inequality, ethnic and racial loyalties will remain powerful
motivations for conflict.
F.
Ethnic and
racial group conflicts are especially intense when they coincide with class
divisions and patterns of inequality.
G.
With
respect to the intensity and nature of dominant-minority problems, the United
States is hardly in a unique or unusual position. Many nations are dealing with
problems of assimilation and pluralism and diversity and unity, and some of
these issues seem far more difficult and complex than those facing our society.
Societies such as Switzerland and Hawaii help sustain the idea that peaceful,
just, and equal group relations are possible even for very diverse nations. Our
tour of the globe also shows that there are no racial paradises; even the
multi-group societies with the most glowing reputations for tolerance are not
immune from conflict, inequality, discrimination, and racism.
_ MAIN POINTS
Classroom Activities and Suggestions for Discussion
1. Ask
students to do on-line research regarding the latest race-related developments
in the countries described in this textbook.
For example, how have things changed in Israel since the time of this
writing? Or, ask students to engage in
similar research about other countries.
For example, they might investigate the current state of race relations
and racial stratification in Sudan or France. What was the original contact situation
between minority and majority groups in these countries? How did the situation change over time in
each of these countries? Are the Noel
and Blauner hypotheses useful for analysis of these countries? Have students report their findings in class
and discuss them.
2. Ask
students to pretend that they are at work (or in their dorm or on a date or…)
when someone says, "Those African Americans (or Latinos or Native
Americans or Asian immigrants or…) could be successful if only they tried. Using what they know from the text, how would
students respond to theses comments?
What evidence do they have to support their ideas? [NOTE: This type of activity would work well as a
role play where students imagine different types of race-related situations and
offer different ways to handle them.]
3. Ask
student to consider one area related to race, ethnicity, class, and gender that
this text didn't cover. Have them
research the topic using a good database or search engine. Discuss their findings in class.
4. Ask
students to interview a person from a different racial or ethnic group. Students might ask about racial attitudes and
stereotypes, experiences with discrimination, and so on. Have them use concepts from the text to
explain what they heard from their participant.
5. To give students a sense of how Apartheid developed, show The Power of One (1992, Warner Brothers). Additionally, the film also examines the strained relationship between Afrikaners and the British.