Social Conceptions Of Identity And The Perception Of Social Identity

Everyone is part of a dominant or subordinate group. Both groups are similar because they label the targeted group. However, both groups are completely different from each other. The dominant groups distinguish people who are privileged, while subordinate is for people who are underprivileged. As I reflected on my past I discovered I was part of a subordinate do to my ethnicity and dominant group because of my sexuality. Being a heterosexual Mexican women comes with some costs and benefits.

One pattern of minority and dominant group relations is genocide. In genocide the dominant group tries to destroy the minority group. One of the biggest examples of genocide in our history is when Hitler and the Nazis attempted to destroy all Jews by murdering them. Another pattern is population transfer which includes two different types. Indirect transfers refer to a dominant groups making life so miserable for members of the minority that they leave on their own. Direct transfer occurs whenever a dominant group expels a minority. Like when the U.S. government relocated Native Americans to reservations. A third

Society has a way of making assumptions based on one’s physical characteristics. Often at times we categorize individuals to a particular social group. In regard to society’ perception of an individual this however, contributes to the development of social construction of racism. Most people want to be identified as individuals rather than a member of specific social group. As a result, our social identity contains different categories or components that were influenced or imposed. For example, I identify as a, Jamaican, Puerto Rican and a person of color. I identify racially as a person of color and ethically as Jamaican and Puerto Rican. According to Miller and Garren it’s a natural human response for people to make assumptions solely

Appiah presents different ideas about social norms and the status of minorities in society throughout his entire essay. In the chapter, A Common Culture, Appiah talks about the great divide between the minority and the majority in terms of employment and educational opportunities, saying, “At the same time, it has always been true that there was a dominant culture in these United States. It was Christian, it spoke English, and it identified with the high cultural traditions of Europe and, more particularly, of England. This dominant culture included much of the common culture of the dominant classes---the government and business and cultural elites---but it was familiar to many others who were subordinate to them. And it was not merely an effect but also an instrument of their domination.”(Appiah 87). In this quote, Appiah brings up the fact that even though there was nothing written stating that minorities cannot be elites, it was know by the people of our country that the dominant race held claim to those positions. Though not stated

15. Which of these is an illustration of the concept of out-group homogeneity? 
A. Members of some minority groups are perceived as being very similar to the dominant group in society.
B. Members of a set of minority groups, such as Laotians, Chinese, Japanese, and Indonesians, are perceived as being similar enough to share a general category (Asian).
C. Members of all groups considered minority groups in a society are perceived as having the

No matter how much a person desires to live according to their personal autonomy, he or she will never escape the influence of societal forces. Explicitly or subtlety, these forces shape our individuality. One intriguing manner that these societal forces manifests itself in is our name. As Ruth Graham writes, “It’s becoming increasingly clear today that names carry a wealth of information about the world around us, the family we arrived in, the moment we were born—and that they mark us as part of cultural currents bigger than we realize.” Names alone provide evidence that individuals are made by interactions with social institutions and groups. Ultimately, the inescapable nature of society’s influence demands individuals to ponder how much personal autonomy is actually autonomous and to what extent does the pursuit of personal autonomy lead to a life of emptiness and vanity.

Imagine all your life you been surrounded with people that have the same characteristic as you. You didn't even know that you been separated into a group in which you classify in depending where you live, the color of your skin and income level. All my life I have been surrounded with latinos, the group I belong to at school, where I live, and daily activities i do. I didn't even know my race impacted my life until I went to college and explored places out of my comfort zone. Throughout history people have been separated into a specific group based on the color of their skin and how they physically look. These groups were separated into a dominant and nondominant group, which were whites the dominant group and minorities (african americans, asians, mexicans etc…) the non dominant group, but as times passes by minorities start to rebel to have equal dominance as whites. Now we have more freedom and power in this world. I am going to share experience I had when I was growing up that impacted my life being the race I am.

He threw himself on me like a wild beast, beating be in the chest, on my head… crushing me with ever more violent blows, until I was covered in blood.” (53) This shows how horribly these minority groups were treated by the more superior groups, which goes to show that society functions on the idea that one group will always be superior than the other. Our present society, in fact, also functions on that idea as well. Society today is separated into groups based on class, race, religion, political party, gender, and many other groups as well. Even though

being the most powerful group? The caller a Charles Blow basically felt it was because of minorities joining the ranks of positions in power swaying the cultural trend. But what does that

By privilege being unearned power, and prejudice and discrimination being negative thoughts and actions towards a group, you can start making connections between the majority and the minority groups. Over history, oppression was a part of society with whites being, mostly or not all the majority. You can see this by examples such as segregation, slavery, and even when we first established America. However, little to change ever happens. The reason we do this is because the people in power likes to keep and stay in power. The dominant groups, if they do make an effort to change, do little to nothing because of the social pull that keeps us where we are. The power to change the nation socially and the power to lower the higher, dominant groups is more difficult than

Ethnicity has distinctive cultural characteristics in distinction to race, people denote to biological characteristics which distinguish one group from another. In addition to group’s developing a minority social class by one or two ways. Either, through expansion of political boundaries or by cultural, identical language, or belonging to the identified group. The type of roles played are people with unequal treatment and discern considered to be minority groups. In Progression in political power and cohesive by allocating physical and cultural traits. The dominant group’s has an advantage of power and being privileged. The dominating groups use its position to discriminate against those with different hypothetically inferior traits. Minority

The dominant group in society are the one whom created restriction for group membership by defining race as a biological factor. “White is seen as a ‘pure’ category”, as stated in the reading (Omi and Winant 21). Those who were ‘black’ were biologically inferior to a ‘white’ person. This is how the color line became about. Because of the color line , race was

This is done deliberately through representations of the other by the dominant group, as they have the power to mark, assign and classify (Hall, 2001), to justify the subordination of these groups (Lorber, 1994). It is through these subordinate characteristics (stereotypes) assigned to the subordinate groups that they become the way in which the group is defined and hierarchically stratified on the basis of race, class, sexuality or gender and then become naturalised through discourse (Hall, 2001). For example black people are hyper-sexualised and characteristics such as barbaric and savage are associated with them (Hall, 2001). This then becomes the reason why black people are seen as inferior and in need of being subordinated, oppressed and marginalised. This is then articulated through discourse and by doing this the dominant group maintains power as it is connected with knowledge; knowledge that dominant groups aim to replace their own specialized thought so as to produce internalised oppression in subordinate groups (Collins, 1990).

In my opinion, dominant groups are usually the targeted group. Consequently, they behave by a positive reaction. On the other hand, the non-dominants are groups that become aware of the targeted groups, subsequently act in response sometimes with critical comments, emotional and attitudinal conduct. For instance, in Rwanda the Tutsi ethnic group is the dominant group because of their wealth, education and social opportunities. Meanwhile, the Hutu ethnic crowd is the non-dominant since they are in a social context underprivileged. As such the Hutu promote a rough hatred crusade into genocide. They felt that their slaughter campaign would reinstate and improve their social condition.

“Some…memberships are more salient than others; and some may vary in salience in time and as a function of a variety of social situations” (Tajfel, 2-3) Salience of identity, in the way that we need to understand it in the case of perception and decision making, can be operationalized as the likelihood that a particular identity will be invoked within a certain situation that the individual is being faced with (Hogg, Terry, & White, 257). As mentioned previously, everyone holds various identities but salience is the process through which we subconsciously decide which we be used to base our decision making or preferences on. “The salience of a particular social identity for an individual may vary from situation to situation and indeed from