Ethnic inequalities

Believe that in a meritocratic society ethnic inequality would decline as immigrants adopted norms & values of mainstream society & climbed their way up the career ladder.

Patterson Host immigration model – Britain was stale & orderly until 1950s when immigrants who had diff norms & values came. Created a culture clash, fears and anxieties from host community as they didn’t know how to act. 3 causes of ethnic inequality: fear of cultural difference from immigrants & the social change they bring, host cultures resentment of having to compete for scarce resources such as jobs/ housing, failure of immigrants to assimilate/ become ‘British’. Patterson said if ethnic minorities practiced their cultural norms & values in public, they would experience hostility because cultural strangeness causes anxiety. Immigrants would fully culturally assimilate by shedding their ‘old’ ethnic values. Immigrants go through 3 stages before fully assimilated:

accommodation – minimal adaptation such as finding employment.

Integration – when hosts & immigrants socialise with another outside of work.

Assimilation – the complete assimilation into mainstream society, complete acceptance of them by rest of society. Assimilation could lead to physical amalgamation, interbreeding between races leads to complete disappearance of distinctive features of ethnic groups.

Immigration serves the needs of the capitalist class for labour and is used to divide workers from each other so that they’re easy to control, thus capitalism prefers conflict between ethnic groups as it is beneficial to the ruling class.

Cox – race is a human creation. Racism is developed by exploiters against the exploited – racism has its origins in the development of capitalism, with its need to systematically exploit labour power. Early capitalism went hand in hand with colonialism. If racism is developed to justify exploitation, it cannot be developed by those who are exploited. It is not only white people who are capable of racism, but it was white people wo developed capitalism, therefore it was them who first developed racism. If capitalism had not developed, the world may never have experience racial prejudice.

Castles & Kosack: found that most immigrants were concentrated in low skilled & low paid manual jobs in poor working conditions. Many immigrants were also unemployed. They claimed that this treatment of immigrants came from the need in capitalist societies for a reserve arm of labour; it was necessary to have a surplus of labour power in order to keep age costs down. Britain turned to immigrant labour to provide a necessary cheap pool of workers who could be exploited. Arrival of immigrants led to the working class being divided into two – with the white population becoming the top layer & immigrant workers at the bottom. This ‘divide & rule’ tactic was beneficial to the ruling lass as it supressed the overall wage levels of the working classes and immigrant’s cold be scapegoated, i.e. blamed for problems such as unemployment, therefore allowing the bourgeoisie to divert the white working classes’ attention from the real cause of inequality; capitalism. 

defined class in terms of market situation – some workers have more sought-after knowledge & skills compared to others which affects ag levels of their jobs, work situation – some workers have more authority than others which affects levels of autonomy in their jobs. Therefore, classes are simply groups that share a similar market and work situation, it is these situations combined that affect a person’s life chances. Modern societies are characterised by status inequality. Status groups can compete and aim to achieve social closure – they try to monopolise privilege and exclude other groups form their position of privilege. This could mean that status and power are in the hands of the majority ethnic group, thereby making it difficult for ethnic minority groups to compete equally for jobs, housing etc. he also observed that status could divide a class or group or even cut across class differences e.g. ethnic minority manual workers may have a lower status than white manual workers. Weber also referred to party in his work – a group that forms to gain power and in doing so reflects and promotes their own interests e.g. trade unions. However, trade unions are dominated by white members, which often leads to ethnic minorities voices not being heard. Weber’s theory shows that structured inequality can occur because of cultural differences as well as economic.

Barron & Norris – dual labour market theory. They distinguished between the primary labour market consisting of well paid, secure jobs with good promotional aspects and the secondary labour market consisting of the worst, lowest paid jobs with the worst conditions. They reported that white men dominated the primary labour market and ethnic minorities were concentrated in the secondary labour market due to their low cultural status. Ethnic minorities tend to be concentrated in the secondary labour market because many employers subscribe to racist beliefs about the unsuitability of black and Asian people and may even practice discrimination against them, by not employing them or denying them responsibility or promotion. Race relations at 1976 was supposed to protect black people from discriminatory practices but has not worked as effectively as it could’ve. 

black feminists have pointed out the failings of the wider feminist movement, which lie in its continual failure to capture & reflect the extreme differences in how women live their lives.

Brewer – sees the basis of black feminist theory as ‘an understanding of race, class and gender as simultaneous forces’. Black women suffer from disadvantages because they are black, because they are women and because they are working class, but their problems arm or than the aim of these parts; each inequality reinforces and multiplies the other inequalities. The distinctive feature f black feminism to Brewer is that it studies the ‘interplay’ of race, class and gender in shaping the lives and restricting the life chances of black women. 

Murray – argued that the USA had a growing underclass – expressed concerns that government policies were encouraging increasing numbers of Americans to be dependent on benefits, welfare reforms had led to an increase in the number of never-married black single mothers and many black youths losing interest in getting a job. Claimed that as well as America, Britain too had developed an underclass – he said that their homes were littered and unkempt. The men in the family were unable to hold down a job for more than a few weeks at a time, drunkenness was common, the children grew up ill-schooled and ill-behaved and often became juvenile delinquents.

Sewell – argues that a high proportion of afro-Caribbean boys are raised in single parent families, usually headed by women, in the UK. His research highlights that in 2001, 57% of afro-Caribbean families with dependent children were headed by lone parents, compared with 25% of white families. As a result, many black boys lacked the male role model and the discipline provided by a father figure. He argues that the absence of a male role model/disciplinarian in the family makes young afro-Caribbean boys more vulnerable to peer pressure. For example, some young boys are drawn into gangs that emphasises an aggressive, macho form of masculinity. Members demand respect, reject authority figures such as teachers and police, and focus on the up to the minute street fashion and music. This form of black masculinity is then reflected and reinforced by the media, with gangster rap and hip-hop fashions and news reports emphasising black street crime and gun culture. 

Patterson - Though Patterson's theory emphasises the dynamic nature of ethnic relationships, critics argue she is naïve to assume all ethnic minority groups assimilate into ‘British culture’. Postmodern: argue that Britain is a multicultural society in which diff ethnic cultures co-exist and this should be celebrated. Marxists: criticise her for ignoring the significant role that capitalism plays within society and how the division of people by race helps to maintain the capitalist structure. This means assimilation will remain an idealistic goal that is impossible to achieve under capitalism.

Cox: his work is useful as it details the economic imperatives of migration for the capitalist class, critics argue his views are too simplistic because it is difficult to prove that racism is a capitalist ideology; it may benefit capitalism in the long term but there is no evidence that it functions exclusively as an ideological system, as Cox suggests. Many critics argue that he does not treat race as an important factor in its own right because he is mainly interested in the economic differences caused by capitalism. Therefore, it has been labelled as ‘race blind’.

Castles & Kosack: Though they offer a good illustration as to how workers are divided from one another through racial divisions, critics say it would be a mistake to thin all ethnic minorities are disadvantaged in the UK. E.g. there are over 5000 Muslim millionaires in Britain. De-industrialisation has also changed the nature of economic immigrants; in recent years immigration laws have become a lot tighter so many economic immigrants tend to possess higher level skills & knowledge.

Weber: useful theory as it suggests that there are other sources of power besides economic power, such as status derived from culture. In doing so, it provides useful insights into the nature of ethnic differences in contemporary society. Critics argue that Weberian theory still does not provide any way to distinguish between the relative importance of the different types of inequality.

Barron & Norris: useful theory as it provides an insight into how the labour market is divided. However, the theory ignores the fact that there are some ethnic minorities in crucial [primary labour market positions, as evidenced by Britain’s 100 richest list – the richest person in the UK comes from an ethnic minority background. They also fail to recognise that the situation for ethnic minority women is worse than it is for ethnic minority men as they experience the concrete ceiling too. Davidson use this term to describe the embedded discrimination that prevents ethnic minority women from being promoted. While white women can break through the glass ceiling, the concrete ceiling is impenetrable.

black feminism has been useful in introducing the idea that differences between women are as important as similarities and shared interests, but at the same time, it can be accused of emphasising racial difference at the expense of others, such as class, age, sexuality and disability. Legislation such as the equal pay act 1970, sex discrimination act 1975 and the race relations act 1976, aim to prevent discrimination on the grounds of class, gender and race. This legislation has particularly helped to empower ethnic minority women, as demonstrated by youth cohort studies that clearly show that Indian and Chinese female pupils outperform all other ethnic groups within the education system, and therefore need to be able to peruse successful careers free from discrimination.

Murray - by focusing on the cultural attributes of the working class, Murray ignored economic divisions that lead to the creation of such an underclass, such as racial prejudice and discriminate. Furthermore, rather than taking a sympathetic approach towards the underclass, he blamed them for the predicament they find themselves in, explaining their situation in terms of their own supposed aberrant behaviour.

Sewell - His study is controversial and has been attacked for what his critics see as blaming afro-Caribbean’s for the inequalities that they experience. He has been accused of blaming black fathers for deserting their families, blaming black youth for generating a subculture that lead to their own failure and blaming the black community for filing to support its young people. Critic argue that, in the process, Sewell has diverted attention from what they see as the real cause of black underachievement: a racist society, an institutionally racist education system and economic deprivation.