Catching Flies

"One can catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than a gallon of vinegar". This phrase is commonly used in politics, business, and foreign relations as a means of explaining that forced coercion is not always the most effective means of accomplishing one's goals. However, this also relates to how a dominate ethnic group can continually maintain a place of authority over various other subordinate groups.

One of the general areas of racial ethnic relations deals with ethnic stratification, and how that arranges ethnic groups hierarchically and determines their access to the various forms of power. In general social stratification is defined as a system of structured inequality that distributes an unequal amount of a society's valued resources. Ethnic stratification is merely different in that it bases it hierarchy primarily on ethnicity. Overall, within every society there exists a hierarchy based on a variety of factors beyond ethnicity such as age, religion, gender, and class. These systems of inequality are used by the dominant group to ensure a continued occupation of the upper levels of the ethnic hierarchy.

One idea discussed in the chapter was how the dominate group approaches exerting their power over the subordinate groups. Two examples were used in the text, one being Whites in South Africa who used the system of apartheid to keep the significant proportion of non-whites in a state of subjugation. The other was White slave owners in the antebellum South in the US. In both of these cases the dominate groups used extreme force and regularly employed violence and fear to maintain the racial hierarchies they had put in place. Another similarity shared by these two examples is that neither exist any longer. While force has its advantages the most effective way to ensure the continuation of ethnic stratification is through shaping the culture, ideology, and presumptions of a nation so that the general populace will involuntarily see the established system of inequality as natural and fair. Unfortunately, this can be said of the US today as many see our nation as one a meritocracy, in which a person's lot in life is directly influenced by that person's abilities and motivation. The success of certain individuals from an ethnic group that largely occupy the lower end of society only further supports this assumption.

In the end while the US has made great strides in recent decades in making social mobility a greater possibility for individuals who in previous years would not have such opportunity there is more work yet to be done. I believe the first step in this process is to just simply have an open discussion on how race and ethnicity shape our lives even today. By merely admitting that there is still work to be done, rather than simply lure ourselves into a false reality we can begin to further improve these issues of ethnic stratification.

Fitting In

The first step to understanding racial ethnic relations is defining what is an ethnic group. Ethnic groups are basically smaller subgroups within a larger population that maintain a distinct identity that differentiates them from other subgroups. They have unique cultural traits, a communal connection to others in the group, and generally have a belief in the superiority of their group.

One of the more interesting qualifications of an ethnic group is the concept of ascribed membership, which is when an individual is placed within an ethnic group, usually at birth. For almost all people this is how they end up in the group they occupy. While some may attempt to leave their group ultimately it may prove difficult, if not impossible, for someone to fully escape the identity prescribed to them at birth.

In addition to learning about what traits define an ethnic group as a class we were presented with a variety of questions to ponder, one of which I see as pertaining to ascribed membership. While generally external forces place us into ethnic categories or groups, we may sometimes place ourselves into a specific group. One question given to us was how do people mold their behavior to fit in and belong to a certain group. That made me think about my life and how I have spent the majority of it doing the opposite.

An example provided in class of self ascribed membership were children whose families had not traditionally hailed from the Southeastern United States behaving as a part of this group known as 'Southerners'. Being from a family that has been in Georgia for sometime I have many family members who believe in this concept of Southern pride and see themselves as different from other Americans. One of the biggest supporters of this is my mother who doesn't see any state outside of the Deep South, which include Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi,Louisiana, Tennessee, and North and South Carolina as being southern states. My entire life I have adamantly rejected this idea of being from the South somehow makes me different, which has greatly annoyed her over the years. I even consciously took extra effort in distancing myself from what the members in my family saw as being Southern.

Of those efforts perhaps the most noticeable is my accent, specifically my lack of one. Despite living in the North Georgia mountains my entire life I possess no accent and at work and among other natives of Gilmer County whenever I am asked where I am from they are astounded to learn that I come from the same place they have. Looking back the reason I chose to reject many family traditions and actively work to change how I spoke I realize that my situation is not exactly the same as that described in chapter one of the book, but this has given me the opportunity to at least try to understand the steps that some take to move away from the group they were placed into involuntarily.