An ‘ethnic group’ has been defined as a group that regards itself or is regarded by others as a distinct community by virtue of certain characteristics that will help to distinguish the group from the surrounding community. Ethnicity is considered to be shared characteristics such as culture, language, religion, and traditions, which contribute to a person or group’s identity.
Ethnicity has been described as residing in:
• the belief by members of a social group that they are culturally distinctive and different to outsiders;
• their willingness to find symbolic markers of that difference (food habits, religion, forms of dress, language) and to emphasise their significance; and
• their willingness to organise relationships with outsiders so that a kind of ‘group boundary’ is preserved and reproduced
This shows that ethnicity is not necessarily genetic. It also shows how someone might describe themselves by an ethnicity different to their birth identity if they reside for a considerable time in a different area and they decide to adopt the culture, symbols and relationships of their new community.
It is worth noting that the Traveller Community is now recognised as a distinct ethnic group.
Ethnicity is also a preferential term to describe the difference between humans rather than ‘race’. This is because ‘race’ is a now a discredited term, seen as a social construct only, that divided people based on the idea of skin colour and superiority. There is only one ‘race’, the human race as we are essentially genetically identical. For example, there is no French ‘race’ but the French people could be described as a separate ethnic group.
Get more resources and support from our Equality and Intercultural Programme, which works to support you to embed equality, inclusion, diversity and interculturalism in your youth work setting.
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Unit Exam 3 Review - Chapter 9
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| Assimilation | The blending of culturally distinct groups into a single group with a common culture and identity |
| Cultural Pluralism | A policy that allows each group within a society to keep its unique cultural identity |
| Discrimination | The denial of equal treatment to individuals based on their group membership |
| Ethnic Cleansing | The practice of removing a group from a particular area through terror, expulsion, and mass murder |
| Ethnicity | A set of cultural characteristics that distinguishes one group from another |
| Minority Group | A group of people who, because of their physical characteristics or cultural practices, are singled out and treated unequally |
| Prejudice | An unsupported generalization about a category of people |
| Self-Fulfilling Prophecy | A prediction that results in behavior that in turn makes the prediction true |
| Stereotype | An oversimplified, exaggerated, or unfavorable generalization about a group of people |
| Subjugation | Maintaining control over a group through force |
| Genocide | the destruction of a national, racial, ethnic, or religiioius group |
| institutionalized discrimination | Pushing some minority groups into less-powerful positions because of unequal access to resources is called |
| Segregation | the physical separation of minority and dominant groups by policies |
| dominant group | group that possesses the ability to discriminate by virtue of its greater power, privilege, and social status |
| minority group | group that is singled out and treated unequally because of their physical characteristics or cultural practices |
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