Racial, Ethnic, and Minority Groups

Little, W. (2016). Introduction to Sociology

Racial, Ethnic, and Minority Groups: Canada has different cultures. Here, Visible Minority means those who are not Indigenous or Non-white. Nowadays, every five people in Canada has one visible minor. Mostly, they came from three different groups. They are South Asian, Black, and Chinese. However, in 1921, most of the people were White. The Visible Minority lives in Two different cities: Vancouver and Toronto. By 2031, 32% of the total population is projected to be a visible minority. These visible Minority groups came because of Canadian Immigration policy.

The concept of race changed with time. Previously, theorists divided people into different races based on geographical location, skin colour, etc. Nowadays, Race means when a group of people is racialized by a social process.

 Ethnicity means when a group of people share their culture.

Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

                Stereotypes mean oversimplified ideas about a group of people.

                Prejudice refers to beliefs or thoughts which are held by a group.

                Discrimination: When prejudice refers to biased thoughts in a group, that is called discrimination. Examples include white Privilege and institutional racism.

                Income Inequality among Racialized Canadians: If we check the income statistics, we will find that Institutional Racism creates income inequality among the Visible Minority or Racialized Canadians.

Theories of Race and Ethnicity: Issues of Race and Ethnicity can be observed by three theories: functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. Functionalism: Racial and Ethnic discrimination can be observed by Functionalism, which only works with the Elite group of society, like slaveholders, who benefit from slaves.

Intergroup Relations and the Management of Diversity: Intergroup Relations refer to relations between small groups, and Management of Diversity refers to who manages all the groups in a society.

Race and Ethnicity in Canada: When Europeans discovered Canada, they thought this a land of opportunity for them. However, it was already occupied by the Indigenous people. Then came South Asian, and South American people. A lot of Africans went as a slave. The land became the settler’s attraction. Here the only non-immigrated Ethnic group is the Indigenous group. Once, they were the largest group of the population; however, now they are only 4.3% of the total population of Canada. There are different theories about how or when they came to this land—mostly believed that they came from Asia in search of hunting resources. Then they settled, and gradually, they had different groups with different thoughts, languages, and cultures. The relationship between Indigenous people and Europeans has developed in 4 stages.

Reference:

Little, W. (2016). Introduction to Sociology: 2^nd Canadian Edition.

Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology2ndedition/licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.