Sociology

This assignment is about the discrimination that a particular racial group faced or participated in. I have chosen the racial group European Americans to do research on. The assignment will identify the forms of discriminations that the whites or European Americans participated in.

Immigration to US
European Americans are the people who reside in the United States but are either the descendants of the European immigrants or they themselves have shifted to US from Europe or they were the founding colonists. They were given the label of white Americans and were thought of as the superior race. There are three different types of European American immigrants which are identified above. The first wave of immigration was witnessed in the period of 1820 and 1890. The second wave came from Eastern Europe mainly from 1870 to 1978.

Some of the immigrating groups did face prejudice and racism. In 1628, a group from Ireland was rejected by the English colonists and sent back to Ireland. The early immigrants from Britain in America were known as the colonists. The French groups, who immigrated to the US, created their own segregated colonies as they were rejected by the existing colonists and soon they began to expand. The Irish and the Italians were not accepted by the colonists already living in the US. The European immigrants who migrated in the years after 1800 were not considered as white. The natives who were born white were only defined as white. The immigrants, who did not fit in the definition of being white, did not get the citizenship of the US (Feagin, 2001).

There have been some classes of white who had racial privileges, although the Italians and the Irish were white skinned people, but still they were not considered in the definition of white. The laying of definition of white was purely in the hand of the supreme court of the US and the powerful people in the US who controlled the economy. However the Italians and the Irish immigrants were given the citizenship later and were accepted as whites.

Participation in Racial Discrimination
The whites were given high paying jobs, good working conditions and equity whereas the other ethnic groups were given lowly paid jobs in the secondary markets such as maids, hand workers and factory workers. All the management positions were taken by the whites this is because they thought of themselves as the superior race. The labor market was segmented on the basis of the color of the skin of workers. The white men had industrial authority and were given privileges over the other races present in the US. This is the reason high paid and management positions are called white-collar jobs, because they were only offered to the whites or the European Americans who were declared white. It was easy to identify a person who comes in the definition of white because he would have an American citizenship. Therefore the European Americans did participate in Dual Labor Market racism.

In the 19th century, the system of racism had been institutionalized in many parts on the society. The African Americans were no longer the slaves of individual whites and are not bound by chains in bondage. But they now are a slave of the society as they have to bear the racism in every aspect of their lives. Hatred against each other has been generated by the black and the European Americans because of the foundations that were laid down by the white elites. Racism in America has existed since centuries and has been practiced in a systemic and institutionalized way. The majority of the founders of the United States have been involved in enslaving black people. These slave owners were the ones who made the constitution and the convention agreed that economic inequality and slavery should be protected. The black population was considered as the property of the whites but it did not appear on the constitution. Many historians have commented that in the entire history of mankind, such an institution of human slavery and trade has not been formed as an integral part of politics as it did in the U.S.

Reverse discrimination has been practiced in the US in the past and is still prevalent in some parts of the country. The European Americans had a racial quota for admissions in colleges, universities and in high schools. In all the educational institutions, the races other than European Americans did not get an equal representation as the European Americans. The European Americans got the privileges to be white and there was unequal representation by different ethnic groups in educational institutions, highest by the European American.

Although participation in discrimination by the European Americans has always existed, the practice of redlining officially initiated in 1934 National Housing Act (Wilson, 1996). In this act, many ethnic minority neighborhoods were labeled as ineligible to receive financing. In the European American neighborhoods, many racial policies were devised which restricted the other ethnic groups such as African Americans to secure mortgage loans.

I culturally identify with the United States mainstream culture and a little with the European American culture too. The mainstream culture that is followed in the US is primarily the European American culture.