"Of the challenges confronting the United States today, those relating to diversity continue to be among the most urgent and the most daunting. Americans value equality, freedom, and justice. However, discrimination, rejection of "others," racism, and sexism are also part of our national heritage. Every part of our society, and virtually every item on the national agenda-"welfare" and health care, policing, crime and punishment, family, education, defense, foreign policy, and terrorism-have some connection with dominant-minority relations. This textbook contributes to our ongoing national discussion by presenting information, raising questions, and deeply examining relevant issues. Our goal is to help you increase your knowledge, improve your understanding of the issues, and clarify your thinking about social inequalities related to race, ethnicity, gender, class, and other inequalities. We've written for undergraduate students-sociology majors and non-majors alike. We make few assumptions about students' knowledge of history or sociological concepts, and we try to present the material in a way that you'll find relevant and easy to understand. For example, we use a unified set of themes and concepts throughout the book. Our analysis is consistent and continuous, even as we examine multiple sociological perspectives and different points of view. We introduce most of the conceptual framework in the first four chapters. Then, in Chapters 5 through 8, we apply these concepts and analytical themes to a series of minority groups (e.g., African Americans, Native Americans). Chapter 9 examines immigrant groups that are relatively new to the United States. Finally, in Chapter 10, we review and summarize our main points, conclude our analysis, and speculate about the future. Thus, this text follows an explicit structure: introduction (Part 1), application and development (Parts 2 and 3), and conclusion (Part 4). We hope that this organization will help you follow the thrust of our analysis and recognize the complexity of group relations, inequality, and conflict. Our analysis is, generally, macro and comparative. That is, we focus on large groups and social structures-such as social institutions and stratification systems. We systematically compare the experiences and situations of America's many minority groups over time. The book follows in the tradition of conflict theory, but it isn't a comprehensive statement of that tradition. We introduce and apply other perspectives, but we don't attempt to give equal attention to all current sociological paradigms, explain everything, or include all possible analytical points of view. It couldn't be done! Rather, our goals are (a) to present the sociology of minority group relations in a way that's understandable and intellectually challenging and (b) to address the issues (and tell the stories behind the issues) in a way that is interesting and that shows the power and importance of sociological thinking"-- Provided by publisher.
|
