Effects Of Racial And Ethnic Stratification On American Culture

Within the great and influential American culture lies racial and ethnical stratification. Stratification is the ranking of entire groups of people within a society and this system distributes limited resources unequally. Racial and ethnic stratification is the ranking of groups in a hierarchal manner based off race and ethnicity. Race is socially defined on the basis of a presumed common genetic heritage resulting in the distinguishing physical characteristics. Ethnicity refers to the condition of being culturally rather than physically distinctive. Racism and discrimination perpetuate this stratification between races. The white race being on top and all other minority groups falling below in order. There are several theories to explain
the racial and ethnic stratification. The two particular theories that will be discussed in this paper are functionalist and conflict theory. Functionalist theory proposes that stratification is useful to society because it is necessary to motivate individuals to work hard so that they are not bottom ranking and receiving minimal resources. Minorities being continuously at the bottom of this order is justified by functionalists because they state that discrimination leads to group solidarity within the racial and ethnic groups (Easton-Brooks & Davis, 2007). This solidarity creates peace within the society to function as a whole.
Another benefit that functionalists propose is that discrimination provides a labor force to do the dirty work and it makes occupations which service the poor possible. They state that the discriminated minorities buy the goods others do not want, they set examples for others of what not to be, and they allow others to feel good about giving to charity. It is believed by functionalists that if racial and ethnic minorities assimilated to the Americana culture then they would not face discrimination and narrowed opportunities to become successful.