Race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status : a theoretical analysis of their interrelationship

Providing an adequate conceptual apparatus for the explanation and interpretation of behavior associated with race, ethinicity, and socioeconomic status is the goal of this book. Empirical research findings and their theoretical analysis are linked. E. Franklin Frazier, recognized minorities as mirrors of their society. He hypothesized that study of their adaptations would provide a clearer understanding of the relation of human motivation to culture. Race, Ethnicity, and Socioeconomic Status confirms the Frazier hypothesis and extracts from studies of blacks and other racial and ethnic minority populations propositions applicable to majority as well as minority groups. Theses studies of intergroup relations were conducted during the past 25 years and provide a perspective on changing patterns of contact between cultural gropus in the United States. Adaptations associated with race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status are analyzed from the perspective of sociology as a science of humanity. Historical trends as well as contemporary situations are considered; social, psychological, and geographical factors are researched as contextual variables in intergroup relations. By analyzing demographic data pertaining to mortality, disease, delinquency, and poverty, the varying contributions to the human condition of individual attributes, group customs, and institutional regulations are ascertained. Institutional and community studies illuminate the prides, fears, and prejudices of dominant and subdominant groups, particularly with reference to racial and ethnic relations in education. Also identified in these studies are the rights and responsibilities of such groups toward each other in social interaction.