American Minority Relations

The question of how relations between marginalized groups are impacted by their common and sometimes competing search for equal rights has become acutely important. Demographic projections make it easy now to imagine a future majority population of color in the United States. Minority Relations sets forth some of the issues involved in the interplay among members of various racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities. Robert S. Chang initiated the Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation Project and invited historian Greg Robinson to collaborate. The two brought together scholars from different backgrounds and disciplines to engage a set of interrelated questions confronting groups generally considered minorities. This collection strives to stimulate further thinking and writing by social scientists, legal scholars, and policymakers on inter-minority connections. Particularly, scholars test the limits of intergroup cooperation and coalition building. For marginalized groups, coalition building seems to offer a pathway to addressing economic discrimination and reaching some measure of justice with regard to opportunities. The need for coalitions also acknowledges a democratic process in which racialized groups face significant difficulty gaining real political power, despite such legislation as the Voting Rights Act.

This book is designed to develop readers' understanding of the principles and processes that shape the patterns of relations between racial, ethnic, and other groups in society. A wide variety of information is provided about a number of such groups with an emphasis on the relationships between dominant (majority) and subordinate (minority) racial and ethnic groups in the United States and abroad. Coverage includes discussions on the latest African-American perspectives; the Census Bureau's decision to allow people to check more than one race in the 2000 census; the influence of the culture-of-poverty perspective on welfare reform legislation; interracial relationships; Neil Foley's award-winning book The White Scourge ; the debate over Hemstein and Murray's The Bell Curve ; how diversity programs helped an insurance company become more profitab the rising debate over race/ethnicity and langua race/ethnicity in our schools; race/ethnicity onli affirmative action; welfare reform; wage and labor laws, minorities, and the growing income gap; the war on drugs; and more. For those interest in majority-minority relations or race and ethnic relations.

This book focuses on the five largest ethnic groups in the U.S. - Mexican Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, Japanese Americans, and Puerto Ricans. McLemore et al present historical information and contemporary examples of the largest ethnic and minority groups in the United States. Using the assimilation model, they analyze the strengths and weaknesses of this model in explaining how various racial and ethnic groups have been incorporated (or not) into U.S. society. Focusing on interracial and interethnic relations in the U.S., the authors give a sociological analysis of intergroup processes and the history of the interactions of these groups. Organized thematically rather than chronologically, the book illuminates the main racial and ethnic dilemmas faced in America as shown through the examples of these five groups. For anyone interested in Racial and Ethnic Relations, Minority Relations, Multicultural Education, or Ethnic Studies.