Topic Summary and Three Important Facts
This article “Dominant & Minority Groups” by R. Dunn highlights society’s attitude toward various types of minorities. The author claims that society has a social stratification that divides people by age, gender, race, ethnicity, and other characteristics (Dunn, 2021). Furthermore, a negative attitude towards minorities has always existed in society; for example, a man have always dominated a woman and the old over the young. Moreover, the author demonstrates that the stereotypes and discriminatory actions that have developed in society are based on the perception of groups of people about social stratification (Dunn, 2021).
Significant Elements & Discussion Questions
The most intriguing part of the article is the section on reducing stratification and its negative impact. In this case, the interest is because the prevalence of stratification is related to the position in the social class and hierarchy a person occupies. If a person is rich but does not want to use all the opportunities of a comfortable life, but wants to live in proportion to the middle class, how will society treat him? How can the level of social stratification be reduced in modern times? Is there any way to reduce society’s negative impact on minorities?
Examples of Bias or Faulty Reasoning
The author’s bias is that all people are prone to stereotypical thinking, that is, discrimination. This is biased because not every person evaluates another on specific data, and therefore not everyone is prone to stereotypical thinking.
Unfamiliar or Special Words/Phrases
A new word for me was “unstigmatized”, which was used in the sentence characterizing the dominant group in modern society (Dunn, 2021, p. 3). Unstigmatized is a characteristic of a person who does not have a negative attitude towards a group of people based on some psychological, physical, intellectual, and other characteristics (Collins, n.d.a).
“Stratification” was also a new word, and it was used in the context of the stratification of society (Dunn, 2021, p. 4). Stratification is a system of social inequality consisting of hierarchically arranged social strata (Collins, n.d.b). This choice is associated with the complex topic of social stratification, leading to societal discrimination.
Take-Home Message
The main idea of this article is that society in the past and present is influenced by stereotypes and hierarchy. People tend to discriminate against others on social status, gender, race, and other grounds. Certain classes have formed in society, which are distributed according to the hierarchy and subsequently actively participate in belittling class minorities.
References
Collins. (n.d.a) Web.
Collins. (n.d.b) Web.
Dunn, R. (2021). Dominant & minority groups. OpenStax. Web.