Weekly Discussion 1

Dimensions of Diversity

For years, the term diversity has been associated with specific parameters such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc. It is important that we continue to understand those dimensions of diversity to evolve our conversation to more global aspects of our cultural selves. The graphic (click to enlarge) illustrates many dimensions of diversity that you may or may not have thought about.

For your initial discussion post think of diversity in all of its dimensions and discuss the concept of “difference.” What does it mean to be “different”? How do you determine who or what is different? Be sure to address the following:

1. In your family (extended, or otherwise), community, and workplace, what dimensions do you think of when you think someone is “different” than you? Do you focus on different dimensions depending on those three contexts?
2. Of those dimensions you think of, which can be changed and which cannot be changed?
3. Of those dimensions you think of, which are visible and which are non-visible? What are the advantages and disadvantages to having non-visible dimensions of diversity rather than visible ones? 

Kaufman, E. (2015). Eyes on extension: A model for diverse advisory leadership [SlideShare Image, p. 9]. Retrieved from

http://www.slideshare.net/erickkaufman/eyes-on-extension-a-model-for-diverse-advisory-leadership (Links to an external site.)

Your initial post is due by Day 3 of the week. Before beginning, carefully read the Writing Center’s guide

Writing a Discussion Board Post

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Your initial discussion post should be at least 300 words (about three paragraphs).

Initial Post Checklist: 

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3 Dimensions of the Term Diversity

Blend Images–Jon Feingersh/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Analyze different concepts of the term diversity with regard to privilege, disadvantages, and prejudice, and
as a moral imperative.

• Expand on diversity’s positive and negative effects on a nation’s economy and the ways in which learning
about human diversity may be considered an economic imperative.

• Argue a position for or against diversity initiatives.

• Explain the historical evolution of diversity as a social and political concept.

• Distinguish between sex and gender and analyze the value of these terms in explaining diversity.

• Differentiate the terms gender expression, gender identity, and sexual orientation from one another and
evaluate their usefulness in understanding how sex and gender influence culture.

• Explain why race is a socially constructed category and how it differs from ethnicity.

• Argue the value, or lack of value, of generational cohorts in explaining cultural diversity.

• Explain the various societal structures that have been identified by scholars based on cultural norms
regarding the roles and duties of men and women.

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Section 3.1 A Conceptual and Theoretical Framework for Diversity

Introduction
In previous chapters we defined who we are by exploring the interrelated influences of genetic
inheritance, the external environment, culture, and social construction. We also examined the
impact of culture and subcultures on our attitudes, values, behaviors, and interactions with
others. As unique individuals with unique backgrounds, we must coexist in a society with
others who have characteristics and perspectives that can be widely divergent from our own.

We initially defined the term diversity in this text as the variety of ways in which humans are
similar and different—the amalgamation of factors that makes each of us who we are. Numer-
ous metaphors have been used to describe diversity. At one point in the United States, it was
common to use the melting pot metaphor to represent an idealized society in which people of
diverse backgrounds and characteristics could become one by harmoniously blending their
differences. That ideal has yet to be achieved in the United States; diversity continues to be a
major social and political issue here as well as in most societies around the world.

What do we mean by diversity? What constitutes a diverse society, and how does diversity
impact our interpersonal and group relationships and cultural uniqueness? We will explore
these questions in this chapter.

3.1 A Conceptual and Theoretical Framework for Diversity
Since the 19th century, the concept of diversity as the description of physical and cultural
variation has been an important basis upon which biologists, anthropologists, and medical
researchers have explored human similarities and differences. However, diversity as a social
and political concept—based on individuals’ identification with various groups or differing
demographic characteristics (statistics like age, race, religion, or ethnicity)—is relatively
new.

While the term diversity was not in widespread use until the 1970s and 1980s, issues of racial
diversity and inequality were in the American consciousness well before then, thanks in part
to the speeches and actions of Madam C. J. Walker, Susan B. Anthony, César Chávez, Abraham
Lincoln, Malcolm X, and of course, Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement. In
his speeches, King deplored the emphasis on racial differences and “separate but equal” facili-
ties for Blacks and Whites in many public places at that time.

King often used the phrase “a single garment of destiny” to describe his view of the connec-
tions that unify Americans. For example, in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963, he
wrote: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects
all indirectly” (King, 1963, para. 4).

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Section 3.1 A Conceptual and Theoretical Framework for Diversity

King’s view, however, is antithetical to
today’s concept of diversity, because
he emphasized our connectedness
and underlying unity rather than our
differences. In contrast, the contem-
porary application of the term diver-
sity calls attention to the fact that
Americans have an acknowledged,
and sometimes celebrated, range of
different characteristics such as race,
ethnicity, or gender. To reconcile the
contemporary concept with the seem-
ingly contradictory viewpoint in King’s
letter, and to engender recognition
and respect for differences, some have
interpreted King’s message to empha-
size the separateness of the threads
rather than the interweaving of the
entire garment (Wood, 2003).

The Practice of Inclusion

One of the concepts at the forefront of contemporary diversity studies is that of inclusion.
Although the term is controversial among scholars, it has nevertheless been embraced by
many practitioners to mean creating environments that support a wide variety of people and
are inclusive of all their diverse backgrounds. Throughout the literature of the 1990s, this
practice was referred to as diversity management. Diversity management and inclusion go
deeper than merely adding individuals with diverse characteristics to a group, organization,
or society; rather, the group, organization, or society must integrate, fully connect, engage,
and utilize people of all types.

The term inclusion is controversial because its meaning can be misunderstood. While the
focus of inclusion is to develop systems in which people feel appreciated, the colloquial mean-
ing of the word suggests to some that that people should be included in ways that are con-
trary to the hierarchical management system within which many organizations, groups, com-
munities, and institutions in the United States and abroad function. Leaders who choose to
embrace the term need to be prepared to respond to its colloquial meaning.

Leadership and organization development consultant Bernardo Ferdman differentiates
between diversity and inclusion by stating that, in most countries around the world, diversity
is often a fact of life today. Inclusion, on the other hand, is what we do with diversity when
we value and appreciate people because of their differences, not in spite of them (Ferdman,
2013).

Everett Collection/SuperStock

Martin Luther King Jr. often emphasized the many
similarities, rather than the differences, that unified
Americans.

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Section 3.1 A Conceptual and Theoretical Framework for Diversity

Diversity as Consideration for Disadvantages

Anthropological scholar Peter Wood (2003) argues that learning about diversity is more than
simply focusing on the social fabric’s separate threads and removing barriers among people.
In Wood’s view:

The ideal of diversity is that once individuals of diverse backgrounds are
brought together, a transformation will take place in people’s attitudes—pri-
marily within the members of the formerly exclusive group, who will discover
the richness of the newcomers’ cultural backgrounds. Diversity will breed tol-
erance and respect, and because it increases the pool of skills, will enhance the
effectiveness of work groups and contribute to economic prosperity. (p. 12)

This ideal has rarely been realized. Conflict, rather than cooperation, has more often charac-
terized the experience of diverse people living together. Around the world, prolonged conflict
among diverse people who live in close proximity to one another—such as the Shiites, Sunnis,
and Kurds in Iraq—testify to this fact.

Moreover, diversity has become a social and political doctrine in places where some groups
have historically been separated from or favored over others. This doctrine asserts that some
groups deserve consideration or compensation for the real or perceived ways in which their
predecessors or current members were disadvantaged in the past, ways that may even con-
tinue into the present. An example comes from the United States. In 1942—when the United
States was at war with Japan and other nations during World War II—the U.S. government
removed more than 100,000 Japanese immigrants and American citizens of Japanese descent
from their homes, confiscated their businesses and personal property, and incarcerated them
in internment camps. After the war this group spent several decades seeking reparations
for the injustice, which was finally addressed in 1992 when the U.S. government provided
$20,000 to each internee or a surviving heir (Robinson, 2001).

This view was also the impetus for launching equal employment opportunity and affirmative
action programs in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. The objective of these programs
is to help eliminate the historic barriers that favored certain groups (such as White males) in
colleges and workplaces, or to establish hiring or promotional quotas to minimize or elimi-
nate disparities in minority group representation in management positions. These programs
will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 7.

Diversity as a Moral Imperative

In philosophy, the term moral refers to individual and collective values and beliefs about what
constitutes good and bad, right and wrong. Moral values are often associated with religious
teachings, but many theorists believe that some moral values are universal. Scholar Barbara
Sundberg Baudot (2011) summarizes these as: “Do not lie. Do not cheat. Do not steal. Do not
murder. Do not do unto others what you would not like others to do to you. Treat all fellow
human beings with respect for their dignity” (pp. 11–12).

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Section 3.1 A Conceptual and Theoretical Framework for Diversity

Many theorists believe this last value constitutes a moral imperative for societies: to ensure
that all their members are treated fairly and equally. Doing so means recognizing and respect-
ing diversity, they say, and is simply the morally right course of action (Carnavale & Stone,
1994).

But what does it mean to treat people fairly and equally? Philosopher John Locke, whose work
in the late 1600s greatly influenced the framers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and
Constitution, suggested that rule of law and individual freedom are the defining character-
istics of a sound, free, and prosperous society. Locke believed that the rule of law involved
equally applying a single, fair standard to all people, and that individual freedom comes
directly from a creator. From these ideas, he concluded that all individuals have equal moral
rights, including life, liberty, and property, that cannot be taken away without the individual’s
consent.

In ancient Greece Plato said essentially the same thing—that fair rules must be applied equally
to all people. However, Plato also insisted that it is not enough to simply apply such rules; the
results must be fair, too. Locke and other scholars diverged from Plato on this point. They
argued that the rule of law produces the conditions for freedom, but to require that results
also be equal is actually inconsistent with that freedom.

It is this last point on which many people disagree today when they discuss diversity issues.
Those who believe that the rules and their results must be equal argue that the law should be
based on social reality and reason, as interpreted by legal authorities. It should be interpreted
over time, based on changing circumstances and on what would be good for the largest num-
ber of people in the society.

This view is often expressed through the term social justice, which refers to the creation of
social and political institutions that will ensure fair treatment and equal distribution of costs
and benefits to all people in a society. However, what constitutes “fair and equal” is debat-
able, and disagreements continually arise about which societal costs and benefits should be
equally distributed.

The term social justice was embraced by influential 19th-century English philosopher John
Stuart Mill in his book Utilitarianism. In Mill’s view, the ethical course of action is the one that
maximizes utility, which is defined as that which increases happiness and reduces suffering
for the greatest number of people. Mill believed that societies can be virtuous in the same way
as individuals, and he used his writings on this topic to influence social policy (Novak, 2000).

Contemporary social justice advocates often argue that in many societies, including the United
States, neither the rules nor the results are fair. Historical discrimination and tradition, along
with existing social institutions and power structures, make society inherently unfair. They
assert that fair treatment and equal distribution of society’s benefits are moral rights or enti-
tlements and, in keeping with Mill’s view, often think it is the government’s responsibility to
provide such benefits.

Ben O’Neill (2011) of the University of New South Wales disagrees with this assertion. In
his view, the argument for social justice is itself a flawed view of rights. A right, he asserts, is
a term that designates an actual moral principle that is validated by moral philosophy; it is
not a mere subjective construct. A person has a right to something—as opposed to merely a

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Section 3.2 Diversity’s Impact on Social and Political Policies in the United States

desire for something—if he or she has an actual moral prerogative to have that thing and is
prevented from having it. For example, we might say that a property owner has a moral right
to control his or her own property, and it is morally wrong for others to interfere with this
control.

O’Neill (2011) argues that rights refer to what is morally right—not a “shopping list” (para.
8) of things you desire or that the government or someone else should give to you or force
others to give to you. This type of right, says O’Neill, is akin to thievery, in which someone sees
something they want and uses that desire to justify taking it from others.

Other critics of social justice theory agree with Locke that the results of fair rules do not nec-
essarily have to be equal. One researcher used the game of baseball to illustrate this point. If
the rules are fair and do not favor one side over the other; if they are agreed upon beforehand
and equally enforced; then the result is fair, even if the result is a score of 20–0 (Devine, 2014).

3.2 Diversity’s Impact on Social and Political Policies
in the United States
Early inquiries into diversity issues began when women entered the workforce in the 1940s
to fill in for the vast numbers of men who left their jobs to fight in World War II. Although
some women worked outside the home prior to that point, the extreme shortage of workers
led large numbers of women to enter the workforce for the first time. Minorities were also
trained and hired to perform jobs that had previously been done primarily by White men.
These two demographic shifts created significant management issues. For example, in 1942
the National War Labor Board attempted to erase some of the long-standing pay inequalities
for women and minorities by adopting a policy of equal pay for comparable work (although
this policy was seldom enforced) (“Little Steel,” 2006).

While the 1960s civil rights movement may have made Americans more aware of racial issues,
the term diversity began to be used extensively in contemporary vernacular and became a true
social and political issue following the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Regents of
the University of California v. Bakke (1978). In this case, which questioned the constitutional-
ity of the university’s affirmative action policy, Supreme Court Justice Lewis Franklin Powell
Jr. stated that the goal of “attaining a diverse student body” was a “constitutionally permis-
sible” (as cited in Wood, 2003, p. 8) reason to consider racial preferences in admission to a
medical school. In other words, the goal of achieving diversity overrode the 14th Amend-
ment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.

Since that ruling, the concept of diversity has been controversial. As previously discussed,
some theorists argue that recognizing and including diverse groups in mainstream society is
a social good and should guide our thinking about who we are as a people and how we might
reconcile our differences. Others see diversity as the antithesis of inclusion and argue that
focusing on individual differences creates chaos and poor public policy and is an impediment
to unity and cooperation. Additionally, others argue that since the Regents decision in 1978,
the history of diversity has been marred by “opportunism, idealism, miscalculation, shrewd
maneuver, deception, self-deception, truth-telling and deceit” (Wood, 2003, p. 8).

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Section 3.2 Diversity’s Impact on Social and Political Policies in the United States

From the late 1950s through the 1980s, researchers such as psychologists Gordon Allport
(1958), Abraham Maslow (1971), Carl Rogers (1977), economist Thomas Sowell (1981), and
others focused on the complexity of human differences, the impact these have on society, and
the subject of prejudice. During the same time, some government agencies, organizations,
and businesses also began to take note of shifting demographics in the workplace; however,
the majority did not pay attention to this shift until 1987, when the Hudson Institute pub-
lished a report titled Workforce 2000, which correctly predicted many of the workplace demo-
graphic changes that would occur by the end of the century. The report was another factor
that brought diversity into the national consciousness (Johnston & Packer, 1987).

In the 1950s, Asians, Native Americans, Hispanics, and Blacks together represented only
7.6% of the U.S. population. However, by 2000 the total minority population had doubled to
16%. As of December 2012 the U.S. Census Bureau reported the total minority population had
reached 37% and is expected to make up 57% of the U.S. population in 2060 (U.S. Department
of Commerce, 2012).

The Hudson Institute’s report is often cited as the first to use the term diversity in a business
setting. The findings resulted in an escalation of articles on the topic published in journals
and magazines; meanwhile, American CEOs, trainers, and human resources directors began
to understand that new entrants to the workforce would be more ethnically diverse than in
the past and would significantly alter the work environment. Rather than meaning difference,
variation, or dissimilarity, the term diversity began to be used to refer to processes designed
to address the specific concerns of this growing demographic mix.

The Effects of Diversity on a Nation’s Economy

What is the effect of immigration and increased diversity on a society’s economy? Globally,
nations are becoming more diverse, so this question is under study by economists throughout
the world.

Diversity as an economic benefit was described by well-known diversity consultant Taylor
Cox Jr. in his 2001 book, Creating the Multicultural Organization. Cox stated:

Well-managed diversity can add value to an organization by (1) improving
problem solving, (2) increasing creativity and innovation, (3) increasing orga-
nizational flexibility, (4) improving the quality of personnel through better
recruitment and retention, and (5) improving marketing strategies, especially
for organizations that sell products or services to end users. (p. 6)

The nonprofit Denver Foundation also suggests that corporations have realized the buying
power of growing communities of color. They have also recognized that creating more inclu-
sive and diverse workforces and work environments has a business value. A more diverse
workforce, it is suggested, ensures that companies develop desirable and culturally appropri-
ate products and leads to greater job satisfaction and lower turnover rates among workers.
Such ideas encourage the moral imperative of diversity to shift to a strategic and economic
one (as cited in Katherine Pease & Associates, 2003).

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Section 3.2 Diversity’s Impact on Social and Political Policies in the United States

However, a comprehensive paper on the socioeconomic impact of cultural diversity prepared
by scholars at VU University Amsterdam (Dutch: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) reviewed
numerous studies on the topic and came to more mixed conclusions. The report found that
diversity has both positive and negative economic effects and reported on studies that showed
neutral effects and some that yielded contradictory empirical results (Baycan & Nijkamp,
2012).

On the positive side, research has uncovered many economic benefits of diversity, including
job creation, increases in customers and sales revenues, greater market share, and higher
relative profits for many companies. Studies have also shown that diversity stimulates cre-
ativity, innovation, productivity, and performance (Baycan & Nijkamp, 2012).

Additionally, immigration and multicultural diversity tend to have economic advantages for
both the sending and receiving countries. For example, immigration from Central and South
America to the United States and Canada has been shown not only to have some positive
effects on the U.S. economy, but immigrants often send money, or remittances, back to their
homelands, which stimulates the economy there as well. Immigrants are also likely to transfer
technology and new ideas to their home nations, which can benefit less developed countries.

The impact of immigration on welfare in the receiving and sending countries is difficult to
measure, however, because welfare is heavily dependent on the flexibility of labor markets
to absorb immigrant workers. In general, though, the impact of immigration on wages and
employment in the receiving nation is neutral.

On the other hand, diversity issues have also been shown to generate potential costs. They
may lead to racism and prejudices, resulting in open clashes, and can have detrimental effects
on economic health in Western societies. For example, as of October 17, 2014, costs for the
massive law enforcement presence to quell protests, rioting, and looting in Ferguson, Mis-
souri, that erupted after teenager Michael Brown was killed by a police officer on August 9,
2014, totaled $5.7 million. These costs include only the expenses for the state of Missouri
and St. Louis County. They do not include the cost to the city of Ferguson and to private busi-
ness owners whose stores were looted and/or damaged during the crisis. Public officials have
commented that these unexpected costs will have an impact on future city, county, and state
budgets, and they have begun to study what public services may have to be reduced to cover
these costs (Hettiger, 2014).

When we examine the impact of diversity on a nation’s economy, we must recognize that age,
ethnicity, and income appear to be important variables among individuals in this regard. Low
income and unemployment are associated with the perception of negative implications of
diversity. Additionally, poverty, crime, and diversity have been found to be interrelated in the
United States, which clouds the specific effects of diversity alone. Tables 3.1 and 3.2 summa-
rize the findings of both positive and negative effects discussed in the VU University Amster-
dam report (Baycan & Nijkamp, 2012).

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Section 3.2 Diversity’s Impact on Social and Political Policies in the United States

Table 3.1: Positive economic effects of cultural diversity

Jacobs (1961) • Diversity is the key factor for a city’s success: The
variety of commercial activities, cultural occa-
sions, inhabitants, visitors, tastes, abilities, needs,
and even obsessions constitute the engine of urban
development.

Sassen (1994) • A key characteristic of “global cities” is the cultural
diversity of their population.

O’Reilly, Williams, & Barsade (1998); Lazear
(1999); Ottaviano & Peri (2006a, 2006b)

• Diversity potentially increases the variety of goods,
services, and skills available for consumption, produc-
tion, and innovation.

Quigley (1998); Glaeser, Kolko, & Saiz (2001) • Diversity of available goods and services is an attrac-
tive feature of cities.

Florida (2002); Gertler, Florida, Gates, &
Vinodrai (2002)

• Diversity and difference in people’s working and liv-
ing environments stimulate innovation and economic
growth.

• Diversity helps attract knowledgeable workers, which
increases cities’ creative capital and long-term pros-
pects for knowledge-based growth.

GEM (2004); OECD (2006) • Migration and diversity contribute to job creation and
economic growth in many countries.

• Net job creation was more than 5 million in Spain,
2.5 million in France, 2.1 million in Italy, 1.9 million in
the United Kingdom, and 1.3 million in the Netherlands.

• In the United States net job creation from 1999 to 2004
was more than 15.5 million jobs, of which 9 million
were occupied by persons born abroad.

• Immigrants contributed to and benefited from more
than 30% of net job creation in the United Kingdom,
whereas the percentage was 20% in Spain, the Nether-
lands, Portugal, Italy, and Sweden.

Alesina & La Ferrara (2005) • Diversity has a negative effect on population growth in
initially poor counties and a less negative (or positive)
effect in initially richer counties.

Boeri & Brücker (2005) • International migration can significantly increase
income per capita in Europe; migration of 3% of the
eastern population to the west could increase total
European Union gross domestic product by up to 0.5%.

Ottaviano & Peri (2006a, 2006b ) • On average, U.S.-born citizens are more productive in a
culturally diversified environment.

• The effects of immigration on the average wages of the
native population are positive and rather large; effects
are particularly strong for the most educated (college
graduates) and negative for the least educated (high
school drop-outs).

• Richer diversity is indeed associated with higher wages
and productivity of the native population.

Manacorda, Manning, & Wadsworth (2007) • Diversity is positively correlated with productivity in
the United Kingdom.

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Section 3.2 Diversity’s Impact on Social and Political Policies in the United States

D’Amuri, Ottaviano, & Peri (2008) • Diversity is positively correlated with productivity in
Germany.

Bellini, Ottaviano, Pinelli, & Prarolo (2008) • Diversity is positively correlated with productivity
across European Union countries.

Herring (2009) • Diversity is linked to positive outcomes in business
organizations and associated with increased sales
revenues, more customers, greater market share,
and greater relative profits in many companies in the
United States.

Source: Baycan, T., Nijkamp, P. (2012). “A Socio-economic Impact Analysis of Urban Cultural Diversity: Pathways and Horizons”, in
Peter Nijkamp, Jacques Poot and Mediha Sahin (eds.), Migration Impact Assessment: New Horizons, Chapter 5, Cheltenham, UK
and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, Ltd, pp 186–187 and p 188. http://www.elgaronline.com.

Table 3.2: Negative economic effects of cultural diversity

Borjas (1995, 2003)
Borjas (1994, 2003)

• A negative impact of immigrants on the wages of natives.

Borjas, Freeman, & Katz
(1997)

• A negative impact of immigrants on the relative wages of less educated
workers.

Easterly & Levine (1997) • Richer diversity is associated with slower economic growth.

Collier (2001) • Diversity has negative effects on productivity and growth in nondemo-
cratic regimes.

Angrist & Kugler (2003) • Negative impact of migration on employment levels in the European Union.

Alesina & La Ferrara
(2005)

• Increases in ethnic diversity are associated with lower growth rates.
• Going from perfect homogeneity to complete heterogeneity would reduce

a country’s yearly growth performance by 2%.
• Diversity has a more negative effect at lower levels of income.
• Diversity has a negative effect on population growth in initially poor coun-

ties, and a less negative (or positive) effect in initially richer counties.

Source: Baycan, T., Nijkamp, P. (2012). “A Socio-economic Impact Analysis of Urban Cultural Diversity: Pathways and Horizons”, in
Peter Nijkamp, Jacques Poot and Mediha Sahin (eds), Migration Impact Assessment: New Horizons, Chapter 5, Cheltenham, UK
and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, Ltd, pp 186-187 and p 188. http://www.elgaronline.com.

Opposition to Affirmative Action and Inclusion

Attempts to increase diversity in some areas of U.S. society have not always been success-
ful. In addition to its supporters, there are also some who oppose inclusion and affirma-
tive action, the term used to describe initiatives intended to increase the representation of
certain groups in government, education, and business. Often they view such initiatives as a
euphemism for quotas that, in their minds, lower standards and create undeserved prefer-
ences. Or they may see affirmative action and inclusion initiatives as no longer necessary,
given the visible achievements made regarding diversity.

One such opponent is University of California Regent Ward Connerly, who in 1995 sought to
halt affirmative action admissions to the state’s university system. Although Connerly is Black

Table 3.1: Positive economic effects of cultural diversity

(continued)

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http://www.elgaronline.com

http://www.elgaronline.com

Section 3.2 Diversity’s Impact on Social and Political Policies in the United States

and his appointment to the Board of Regents in 1993 was hailed for the racial diversity it
brought to the board (Tammariello, 1997), Connerly believes that affirmative action is an
antiquated system that reinforces the perception that minorities need help to succeed. Con-
nerly argued for a color-blind system of public college admissions, saying, “We want every kid
to be treated without regard to race, color, creed or national origin” (as cited in Chea, 2012,
para. 21). Part of Connerly’s reasoning is that he sees the terms Black and White as superficial
descriptors. In his own case, he stated, the term Black is used to describe his French Canadian,
Choctaw, African, and Irish American heritage (“Black Businessman,” 2008, para. 22).

Connerly sought to halt the university’s affirmative action admissions and to resurrect a
nonpreferential policy through Proposition 209, a California ballot measure to amend
the state’s constitution. Dubbed the “California Civil Rights Initiative,” the amendment
read, “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any indi-
vidual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the
operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting” (Proposition
209, 1996).

In 1996, Proposition 209 was approved by 54% of California voters, including 30% of
Blacks. However, Connerly was publicly assailed by prominent pro-affirmative action
leaders such as then president Bill Clinton, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, and San
Francisco mayor Willie Brown; Representative Maxine Waters even denounced Connerly as
an “Uncle Tom” (as cited in Tammariello, 1997, para. 4) and a traitor to his race.
Opponents asserted that Proposition 209 was “the most far ranging attack on civil rights
legislation . . . in the history of the United States” (as cited in Tammariello, 1997, para. 6). They
argued that it dismantled all the gains made to end discrimination against minorities and
would move Whites “up to the front of the line” (as cited in Tammariello, 1997, para. 12)

—allowing continued discrimination against women, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians. Some
students, they asserted, would still be given preferences because their parents donated to
the school or were alumni or because the student had athletic prowess or musical ability.
However, taking race or gender into account would no longer be allowed.

California’s initiative, along with similar actions by other states, continues to be challenged
in the courts. For his part, Connerly continues to oppose racial and gender preferences and
promotes race-neutral policies through the American Civil Rights Institute.

The concept of inclusion is also controversial. Though not as prominent an issue as affir-
mative action, there is debate over the term inclusion. The term has been defined by some
to mean the practice of creating environments that support diverse populations; it implies
that workplaces and educational systems should be set up to include the backgrounds of all
people. It suggests that the appropriate way to respond to cultural diversity and individual

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Section 3.3 Demographic Characteristics of Diversity

differences is to create policies, practices, and procedures that include all. This has led to
challenges. It is difficult to include everyone in policies, and sometimes it is okay to make
decisions that exclude others. Schools and workplaces have wrestled with how to account for
varied cultures and religions for some time. In workplaces inclusion is often misunderstood
as requiring a diverse representation even when someone else may be more talented. This is
not the intention of the term, but it has been the impact of its use.

3.3 Demographic Characteristics of Diversity
One approach to studying diversity is to examine demographic information. Gender, race,
ethnic origins, age, income, religion, education, and spoken language are examples of demo-
graphic data. Gender, race, ethnicity, and age have been four particularly contentious areas in
the study of diversity that we will address in this section of the text.

Sex, Gender, and Culture

In colloquial language the terms sex and gender are often used interchangeably. However, in
academic literature they have distinctly different meanings. The term sex refers to biological
characteristics of male or female. Intersex, or intersexuality, refers to the anatomical pres-
ence of both male and female sexual features in one individual. These terms are controversial,
however. In 2006, the American and European endocrinological societies adopted the new
term disorders of sexual development (DSD) as a replacement for the term intersexuality and
an even older term, hermaphroditism.

Those who prefer the term intersexuality often criticize the use of DSD because it labels inter-
sexuality as a disorder. They counter that such a label will subject intersexed persons—par-
ticularly infants and children—to unwanted and perhaps harmful medical interventions.
They assert that many medical interventions to “normalize” intersex bodies are not medi-
cally necessary at all but are, in fact, conducted because these bodies violate social or cultural
rules. Additionally, they argue that the term intersexuality is preferable because it recognizes
that sexuality is not an either/or issue—that the concept of sex is flexible and bodies can be
arranged on a continuum from clearly male to clearly female (Cooley & Harrison, 2012).

The term gender, however, is a socially constructed term that refers to an individual’s iden-
tity in relation to a society or culture. In the academic literature the term gender refers not to
biological male or female characteristics, but to masculine or feminine qualities, behaviors,
tasks, roles, and responsibilities that a society considers appropriate for men, women, boys,
and girls. In its publication Definition of Terms: Sex, Gender, Gender Identity, Sexual Orienta-
tion (2011), the American Psychological Association defines gender as “the attitudes, feel-
ings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex” (para. 2).
If that behavior is compatible with cultural norms and expectations, it is considered gender
normative. Behaviors that are incompatible with the culture’s norms and expectations are
considered gender nonconformist.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) believes that gender
issues are important in rural development and affect the progress in agriculture around the

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Section 3.3 Demographic Characteristics of Diversity

world. The FAO argues that understanding gender terminology and perceptions of gender are
critical to resolving these issues. In 2014 the FAO wrote:

People are born female or male, but learn to be women and men. Percep-
tions of gender are deeply rooted, vary widely both within and between cul-
tures, and change over time. But in all cultures, gender determines power and
resources for females and males. (para. 2)

In other words, the meaning of the terms masculine and feminine are culturally determined.
So, too, are the roles women and men assume; their styles of dress; and the beliefs, attitudes,
and behaviors toward those who act, look, and think differently. As cultures change over time,
as subcultures develop, or as people from different cultural backgrounds interact with each
other, the intersection of gender roles and behaviors and issues regarding gender expres-
sion inevitably occur. Gender expression refers to the way in which we present ourselves;
it also is how we communicate gender within a given culture. As the Gill Foundation (n.d.), a
Colorado organization that advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues, puts
it, “Our appearance, speech, behavior, movement, and other factors signal that we feel—and
wish to be understood—as masculine or feminine, or as a man or a woman” (para. 1), which,
for some people, may not match their biological sex.

Gender has important legal, social, political, and personal ramifications. For the past 150
years or so, issues pertaining to gender and gender roles have been very controversial in
American society and scholarly research.

Historical Perspectives on Sex and Gender Issues
American sexual mores and behaviors were brought to the forefront of social consciousness
in 1948 and 1953 by two extensive surveys, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual
Behavior in the Human Female, popularly known as the Kinsey Reports. These surveys, com-
piled by Indiana University zoologist Alfred Kinsey and his research team, were the results of
interviews with thousands of American men and women about their first sexual intercourse,
number of partners, premarital and extramarital sexual history, incidence of homosexuality
and lesbianism, and other sexual statistics.

The findings of the Kinsey Reports shocked both experts and the public and spurred wide-
spread discussion of national sexual practices and ideologies. They were praised by some
experts for their breadth and dispassionate approach to human sexuality and virulently
criticized and condemned as immoral by others (Reumann, 2005). The reports also initiated
heated debates regarding the increasing depiction of sexual themes in popular media and
the future of the nuclear family and sparked campaigns that cast suspected homosexuals as
threats to American security who should be removed from military and government service
(Reumann, 2005). As one researcher noted, “Literally, sexuality was surveyed, mapped, and
theorized as never before. Metaphorically, sexual behavior was framed as a matter of politics,
cultural change, and public policy” (Reumann, 2005, p. 6).

The Kinsey Reports made quite an impact in post–World War II America, where the vast
majority of people chose wedlock over single life and marriage was central to national ide-
ology. Despite the prevailing view of marriage, however, experts noted that the divorce rate

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Section 3.3 Demographic Characteristics of Diversity

was climbing and single-parent households and alternative family living arrangements were
replacing the traditional nuclear family (Reumann, 2005). By the 1960s the slogans “The
times they are a-changing” and “Make love, not war” signaled the beginnings of a sexual revo-
lution that was marked by “free love” and communal living.

While some decried the breakdown of the traditional family in the 1960s and 1970s, others
saw it as a positive factor. Marriage had previously been based on economic need, conve-
nience, and reproductive imperatives, and some regarded the significant changes to it as evi-
dence that American society was embracing a more egalitarian viewpoint of gender. Sociolo-
gist David Riesman, for example, noted the emergence of a

total Gestalt [a synthesis where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts]
in which marriage itself is of a new sort: shared, communicative, emancipated,
in which the husband takes an active part as more than a mere breadwinner,
and the wife an active part as more than “the little woman” of traditional cul-
ture. (as cited in Reumann, 2005, p. 143)

The rise of contemporary feminism in Western society from the 1960s onward, plus the enor-
mous changes in women’s roles regarding work and home, inspired tremendous academic
inquiry into issues of gender. These events have also spurred changes to the way femininity
and masculinity are defined and to how these relate to societal functions in the family, politi-
cal institutions, work roles, and economic activities (Stearns, 2000).

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual/Transgender, and Questioning
Subculture (LGBTQ)
Other aspects of the relationship between sex, gender, and culture can be seen in the lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transsexual/transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) subculture. We use these
terms in this text because they are common in the LGBTQ community and in the academic
literature. However, it is necessary to clarify how these terms are generally used and to state
that they are not the only terms used to describe this subculture.

The terms lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) refer to sexual orientation—the direction of one’s
sexual interest. The terms transsexual/transgender and questioning (TQ—the Q also some-
times stands for queer) instead refer to a person’s gender identity—or “one’s sense of one-
self as male, female, or transgender” (American Psychological Association, 2011, para. 3). The
abbreviation LGBTQ is sometimes rendered as LGBTI by some advocates who believe that
intersexuality should be included in discussions about sex and gender issues.

Like other demographic characteristics, gender issues are social constructs that form an
important aspect of culture. In his 2010 book The Right to Be Out: Sexual Orientation and Gen-
der Identity in America’s Public Schools, UCLA professor Stuart Biegel acknowledges that he
felt tremendous pressure throughout his years as an educator not to reveal his sexual orienta-
tion. He wrote, “I came of age in an era when the legal terrain was so daunting and the stigma
attached to being openly gay so pervasive that being out was not even an option for most of
us” (Biegel, 2010, p. vii). He shares that when he “came out” in 2003, he became aware of the
extent to which LGBTQ issues were under-recognized in education policy.

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Section 3.3 Demographic Characteristics of Diversity

Biegel (2010) explains “coming out” as a communicative process that begins by recognizing
one’s sexual identity and then sharing this recognition with others. He asserts that the pur-
pose of this communication, however, may vary significantly from person to person and from
situation to situation: “For some people, it may have a developmental component, a social-
responsibility component, a political component, and even a religious component” (Biegel,
2010, p. xiv). According to Biegel, “the process of identity development . . . called ‘coming out’
has been found to be strongly related to psychological adjustment—the more positive the gay,
lesbian, or bisexual identity, the better one’s mental health and the higher one’s self-esteem”
(p. xiv).

At its most basic level, “being out” is a condition or state of genuine openness, and all per-
sons have a right to be open regarding fundamental aspects of their identity, personhood, and
group affiliations. From a legal perspective, Biegel (2010) argues it is a classic combination
of 1st Amendment and 14th Amendment principles. As a 1st Amendment right, Biegel argues
that all persons have the freedom to express an identity, and as a 14th Amendment right, they
have the right to be treated equally as a result of expressing that identity.

Among sociologists, psychologists, and legal experts who study LGBTQ issues, ongoing
debates ensue concerning terminology and definitions, tactics for ensuring equal protection
and freedom from discrimination, theories of identity formation, and whether and to what
extent there should be any identity categories at all.

Race as a Socially Constructed Category

Many people mistakenly assume that humanity is divided into biologically separate races,
descended from groups that evolved on different continents, with Black people originating in
Africa and Whites originating in Europe. They may also think of race in terms of skin color or
appearance and believe that races can be distinguished, genetically, by physical traits. Similar
to other terms discussed in this text, the differences between the term’s colloquial and aca-
demic meanings can often confuse students and scholars.

Race is recognized among scholars to be a socially constructed category that describes human
beings who share an arbitrary set of hereditary traits (Zack, 2012). This is in contrast to its
use in colloquial language, where race assigns a biological basis to groups. However, contem-
porary scientific researchers no longer believe that human beings are divided into a small
number of biological groups with shared and inherited traits.

DNA analysis of genetic material indicates that conventional geographic “racial” groupings
differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. Most physical variation—about
94%—actually lies within so-called racial groups. This means that greater variation is found
within “racial” groups than between them. Moreover, skin color, hair texture, eye shape, facial
features, and limb proportion vary considerably, even among members of the same family
(American Anthropological Association, 1998).

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Section 3.3 Demographic Characteristics of Diversity

Contemporary scientists attribute dif-
ferences in physical appearance to the
migratory and reproductive patterns
of people who bred mainly within
their own groups. In other words, such
distinctions resulted from the places
where different populations traveled
and with whom they mated. Some
anthropologists have speculated that
various traits, including skin color, hair
texture, tooth size, nose length, and
body size, reflect the adaptations of
populations to different environments
over long periods of time. For example,
small, elongated body shapes dissipate
heat better, whereas large, round bod-
ies conserve heat better.

This theory would account for observations that a small, thin stature is seen more frequently
in people who have lived for many generations near the equator, while a short, stout stature
is more common in people who have evolved over thousands of years in colder, northern cli-
mates. Such differences are not uniform and systematic enough, however, to support separate
categories of human race. All populations invariably have some small, thin people as well as
short, stout people (Zack, 2012).

U.S. Census Bureau Racial Categories
The U.S. Census Bureau collects racial data on individuals in the United States via question-
naires. These data are based on self-identification, in accordance with guidelines provided
by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The OMB guidelines require five minimum
racial categories: (a) White, (b) Black or African American, (c) American Indian or Alaska
Native, (d) Asian, and (e) Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. These categories, accord-
ing to the Census Bureau (2011),

generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not
an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In
addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item include racial
and national origin or sociocultural groups. (p. 2)

The racial categories on these surveys have undergone numerous changes over the years to
reflect changes in American society. In the 2000 census, for example, respondents could, for
the first time, check more than one box for race to reflect their identities. According to Census
Bureau authorities, that census yielded 63 possible racial combinations (Zack, 2012).

The 2010 census offered respondents a new category, “some other race.” When those cen-
sus data were compiled, respondents who selected the some other race category alone were
assigned to one of the five OMB-mandated racial categories. However, for respondents who
selected the some other race category and one or more of the other race categories, the some
other race selection was ignored. These changes and tabulating decisions make it impossible
to compare census racial figures over time.

Robert Churchill/iStock/Thinkstock

DNA analyses indicate that more variations occur
within groups rather than between groups.

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Caucasian Mongol

Negro

Section 3.3 Demographic Characteristics of Diversity

Historical Perspectives on Race
Contemporary views of race are in stark contrast to those of the 19th century. One method
used to document race and justify racial inequities during that period was to examine peo-
ple’s physical differences. Doing so categorized people into three primary racial groups: Cau-
casian, Mongol, and Negro. At the time, scholars believed that physical differences accounted
for mental differences, so intellectual differences between the races were studied simply by
documenting anatomical differences. The findings of such studies greatly influenced how
19th-century Americans viewed the issue of race (Eberhardt, 2005).

Prominent physician and scientist Samuel George Morton played a significant role in these
studies. Morton amassed more than 1,000 human skulls and used them to identify distinct
characteristics of various racial groups (as cited in Eberhardt, 2005). Morton calculated skull
size by filling the skulls with mustard seeds and, later, lead shot. Whatever the index of mea-
surement, he consistently found the skulls of White people to be significantly larger than
those of Black people. This finding was taken to legitimize the then commonplace view that
Whites were superior to Blacks. Although these findings have been thoroughly discredited,
the scientific community applauded Morton’s work at the time (as cited in Eberhardt, 2005).

Josiah Nott and George Gliddon published their book, Types of Mankind, in 1854. It became
the dominant book on race in American society at the time. In graphic form (as shown in Fig-
ure 3.1), they displayed their scientific evidence of racial differences. The following note on
their interpretation of their findings accompanied the illustration in the text:

The “Caucasian,” Mongol, and Negro, constitute three of the most prominent
groups of mankind; and the vertical views of the following crania . . . ( display, at
a glance, how widely separated they are in conformation. . . . Such types speak
for themselves; and the anatomist has no more need of protracted compari-
sons to seize their diversities, than the school-boy to distinguish turkeys from
peacocks, or pecaries from Guinea-pigs. (as cited in Eberhardt, 2005, para. 4)

Figure 3.1: Comparison of Caucasian, Mongol, and Negro skulls, 1854

Josiah Nott and George Gliddon used this illustration as scientific evidence supporting the idea of
differences between the races.

Source: Nott, J. C., Gliddon, G. R., Agassiz, L., Usher, W., & Patterson, H. S. (1854). Types of mankind: Or, ethnological researchers, based
upon the ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural, geographical, philological and biblical
history. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Grambo.

Caucasian Mongol Negro

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Greek

Creole Negro

Young Chimpanzee

Young Chimpanzee
Negro

Apollo Belvidere

Section 3.3 Demographic Characteristics of Diversity

In his 1996 book The Mismeasure of Man, S. J.
Gould noted that Nott, Gliddon, and other sci-
entists from a variety of disciplines used brain
measurements to rank racial groups along a
continuum of worth, which indicated the innate
inferiority of Black people and the superiority
of White people. Ultimately, the skull images
(see Figure 3.2) were used to dehumanize Black
people and support the view that Blacks fell
somewhere between humans and apes on the
animal spectrum.

Contemporary Views of Race
Much has changed since the days of Morton,
Nott, and Gliddon. On June 26, 2000, in a speech
related to the Human Genome Project, U.S.
president Bill Clinton stated, “I believe one of
the great truths to emerge from this triumphant
expedition inside the human genome is that in
genetic terms, all human beings, regardless of
race, are more than 99.9 percent the same” (as
cited in Bliss, 2012, p. 1). Some of the most pow-
erful scientists of the day joined Clinton in stat-
ing that scientific investigation into race would
go no further; genomics, the discipline within
the field of genetics that studies the structure
of genes in human chromosomes, had once and
for all closed the door on the idea of race as a
biological characteristic of humans.

It has therefore surprised many that since that
time racial research has reemerged and pro-
liferated, although with a decidedly different
tone than it had in the 19th century. Less than
a year after Clinton’s speech, newspapers began
to note a surge of race-based medical research.
Since that time, one researcher writes,

a discursive explosion, along with a
mushrooming of technologies devel-
oped in the service of testing, manipu-
lating, or capitalizing on race, has made
this decade of science [2010–2020] one of the most race-obsessed ever. Scien-
tists have scrambled to rewrite the book on race. (Bliss, 2012, p. 2)

One reason for the haste to apply emerging technologies to questions regarding race is that
science and politics have long intersected. Social policies and political systems based on racial
inequality have often been historically justified based on the findings of science—such as

Figure 3.2: Comparison of Greek,

Creole Negro, and young chimpanzee

head shapes, 1854

Josiah Nott and George Gliddon used this
illustration to support the belief in a hierarchy
among groups.

Source: Nott, J. C., Gliddon, G. R., Agassiz, L., Usher, W., &
Patterson, H. S. (1854). Types of mankind: Or, ethnological
researchers, based upon the ancient monuments, paintings,
sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural,
geographical, philological and biblical history. Philadelphia,
PA: Lippincott, Grambo.

Greek
Creole Negro
Young Chimpanzee
Young Chimpanzee
Negro
Apollo Belvidere

kah81790_03_c03_065-100.indd 82 4/2/15 1:46 PM

Section 3.3 Demographic Characteristics of Diversity

slavery debates in 19th-century Europe and linkages between evolutionary theory and Dar-
winism. What is particularly fascinating about contemporary racial science is that it comes
after three quarters of a century of U.S. policy designed to prevent research into biological
differences in race.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) statements
on race in the 1950s ushered in a series of collaborations between biological and social sci-
entists who worked to dispel notions of innate racial behavior or inferiority. To this end,
evolutionary biologists authored popular science books that abandoned the notion of bio-
logical racial differences. Powerful organizations such as the American Association of Physi-
cal Anthropologists, the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences,
the American Sociological Association, and the American Anthropological Association have
issued or updated their own statements on race, disavowing biological explanations of race
and arguments for racial inequality (Bliss, 2012).

American Anthropological Association Statement on Race

On May 17, 1998, the American Anthropological Association adopted a statement on
“race” that is excerpted below. The AAA said it did not believe that its statement reflected a
consensus of all its members but that it represented generally the contemporary thinking
and scholarly positions of a majority of anthropologists at the time:

Today scholars in many fields argue that “race” as it is understood in the United States
of America was a social mechanism invented during the 18th century to refer to those
populations brought together in colonial America: the English and other European set-
tlers, the conquered Indian peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in to provide
slave labor. . . . Ultimately “race” as an ideology about human differences was subse-
quently spread to other areas of the world. . . . “Race” thus evolved as a worldview,
a body of prejudgments that distorts our ideas about human differences and group
behavior. Racial beliefs constitute myths about the diversity in the human species and
about the abilities and behavior of people homogenized into “racial” categories. . . .
The “racial” worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status,
while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and wealth. The tragedy in the
United States has been that the policies and practices stemming from this worldview
succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations among Europeans, Native
Americans, and peoples of African descent. Given what we know about the capacity
of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that pres-
ent-day inequalities between so-called “racial” groups are not consequences of their
biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic,
educational, and political circumstances. (American Anthropological Association, 1998,
paras. 4, 8, 9, & 12)

Source: © American Anthropological Association. http://www.aaanet.org.

Catherine Bliss (2012) of the University of California–San Francisco writes that genomics has
become today’s new science of race. She asserts that people from distinct realms of science
and politics are now working together to establish a new research framework regarding what
it means to be human. The result, she claims, is a widely accepted system of shared values and
practices and a consensus that race is socially and biologically meaningful.

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http://www.aaanet.org

Section 3.3 Demographic Characteristics of Diversity

In her 2012 book Race Decoded: The Genomic Fight for Social Justice, Bliss argues that “concep-
tions of race are never a closed case of self-evident truths” (p. 19). Race, she states, now has
relational meanings—it is constantly being redefined to mean something different in different
cultures and at different moments of time. Bliss believes that there is now global interest in
recreating social bonds based on new biological evidence. For example, some diseases such as
sickle-cell anemia are more prevalent among Black people than other racial groups, and race-
based medicine has now emerged as a way to achieve more personalized medical health care.

Evidence of this shift comes from 1998, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
ruled that all new drug applications must “present effectiveness and safety data for impor-
tant demographic subgroups, specifically gender, age, and racial subgroups” (as cited in Bliss,
2012, p. 22). The FDA was motivated to make such a ruling because different subgroups
may respond differently to a particular drug, and differences in effectiveness and potentially
adverse reactions might occur among subgroups. Thus, biological conclusions are now being
drawn from socially defined U.S. Census Bureau racial classifications. The challenge, says Bliss
(2012), is “for scientists to create a biology of race that follows egalitarian and pro-diversity
goals, as opposed to colorblind or race-neutral goals, when that science is part of a larger
economy of identity-based goods and services” (p. 20).

Exploring Racial Preferences

Studies about racial preferences have been conducted for decades. In 1940 psychologists
Kenneth and Mamie Clark conducted what become known as the “doll study” to examine
the psychological effects of segregation on Black children (“Brown v. Board at Fifty,” n.d.).
Their study consisted of showing Black children aged 3 to 7 Black dolls and White dolls. The
children were asked questions to determine whether they had a preference for one race or
the other. The majority of the children selected the White dolls, to whom they attributed
positive characteristics. This study was referenced by the Supreme Court in its 1954 decision
in Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in which the court ruled that school
segregation was a violation of the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the 14th
Amendment (“Brown v. Board at Fifty,” n.d.).

Another influential study was conducted in 1968 by Jane Elliot, a teacher. She divided her
third-grade class into groups of blue-eyed and brown-eyed children. Each group was treated
differently—one day the brown-eyed children were told they were inferior to the blue-eyed
group. The results showed that doing so caused the blue-eyed children to outperform those
with brown eyes. When the experiment was reversed, the same results were found: When the
brown-eyed children were told they were superior, they did better than their blue-eyed peers.
The experiment can be seen at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided.

Both of these historic experiments showed that individuals have built-in racist beliefs; but
how exactly are these learned? In 2010 the cable news channel CNN replicated these studies,
asking Black and White children a series of questions to determine whether they preferred
white or black colors and also White or Black children. The results also indicated White bias.

(continued)

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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided

Section 3.3 Demographic Characteristics of Diversity

In 2003 California Newsreel, a nonprofit, social-issue documentary film center, produced and
distributed a video series that was televised on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) titled
Race—the Power of an Illusion. The purpose of the series was to highlight the underlying
social, economic, and political conditions that disproportionately channel advantages and
opportunities to White people and to shift the conversation from discussing diversity and
respecting cultural differences to building a more just and equitable society.

The series’ website includes an activity that explores traits such as skin color and illustrates
concepts regarding views of race and self-identification. The activity allows you to try your
hand at “sorting” individuals based on appearance and comparing your answers to how the
individuals identify themselves.

Critical Thinking Question

1. Explore these traits and do the sorting activity at http://www.pbs.org/race/002_Sorting
People/002_00-home.htm. After completing the activity, think to yourself: Where did I
learn that?

Sources: ©1995-2014 WGBH Educational Foundation; © 2003 California Newsreel.

Exploring Racial Preferences (continued)

Ethnicity as a Demographic Characteristic

While views of race as a biological construct are undergoing change today, scholars gener-
ally regard ethnic groups and ethnicities as valid societal demographic categories. Still, the
language used to frame ethnic groups is often contentious. While one person might embrace
a term for his or her group, another may dislike that term. People seem to embrace different
terms in different regions.

Defining Ethnicity
The word ethnicity has Greek origins and was originally used to describe pagans, or non-
Hellenic peoples. In sociology, however, the term was coined in 1953 by sociologist David
Riesman, who used it to describe cultural differences. Over time the word acquired different
meanings (Malesevic, 2004).

For example, in Europe, the word ethnic came to be associated with people who were viewed
as a separate group based on ancestry and geographic region and who constituted a separate
nation or were defined by descent or territory and retained a distinct cultural identity in a
larger nation. The Welsh in Great Britain and the Basques in southwestern France would be
examples of such ethnic groups. In the United States and Canada, however, the word came to
be commonly substituted for minority, and the terms minority group or ethnic group, particu-
larly when applied to an immigrant population, often led to categorizations of “us” and “them”
and served as a rationale for oppression or discrimination (Malesevic, 2004).

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http://www.pbs.org/race/002_SortingPeople/002_00-home.htm

Section 3.3 Demographic Characteristics of Diversity

Using a broad definition, ethnicity can generally be defined as the beliefs and practices of a
social group whose members share a national cultural or historical tradition. However, deter-
mining what constitutes an ethnic group and which cultural or historical traditions qualify is
difficult and controversial.

Hundreds of thousands of ethnic groups exist throughout the world. An ethnicity’s cultural
tradition shapes its language, religion, diet, clothing, habits, and values. Historically, members
of ethnic groups also often tend to share certain physical traits because they traditionally
married within their own groups. For example, blond hair and blue eyes predominate among
Swedish people, and brown hair and brown eyes predominate among Italians (Zack, 2012).
People who claim no particular ethnicity generally have a mixture of cultural traits that con-
stitute their family traditions.

Ethnic groups can be defined by certain traits, though not always. For example, consider lan-
guage: Speaking a common language defines some ethnic groups. Hispanics are often defined as
people who come from Spanish-speaking countries, though many second- and third-generation
Hispanics or Latinos do not speak Spanish. An ethnic group might also be defined as sharing a
national origin (such as Italian). However, many Italians who immigrated to the United States
did not identify with the nation they chose to leave but with specific regions in Italy. In other
words, they identified themselves as Tuscanos/Tuscans or Napolitani, for example, rather than
as Italians.

The 1980 Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups identified more than 100 ethnic
groups in the United States (see Table 3.3.). However, to emphasize how difficult it is to define
ethnicity, the Harvard Encyclopedia lists Africans as an ethnic group separate from African
Americans, or Afro Americans, because of their distinct cultural histories. The former individ-
uals or their ancestors voluntarily moved to the United States from Africa rather than arriving
against their will as slaves (Zack, 2012).

Table 3.3: Ethnic groups in United States

Groups, A–K Acadians, Afghans, Africans, Afro Americans, Albanians, Aleuts, Alsatians, American
Indians, Amish, Anglo Americans, Anglo Saxons, Appalachians, Arabs, Armenians, Aryans,
Asians, Assyrians, Australians and New Zealanders, Austrians, Azerbaijanis, Bangladeshi,
Basques, Belgians, Belorussians, Bosnian Muslims, British, Bulgarians, Burmese, Cana-
dians, Carpatho-Rusyns, Central and South Americans, Chinese, Copts, Cornish, Creoles,
Croats, Cubans, Czechs, Danes, Dominicans, Dutch, East Indians, Eastern Catholics,
Eastern Orthodox, English, Eskimos, Estonians, Filipinos, Finns, French, French Canadians,
Frisians, Georgians, Germans, Germans from Russia, Greeks, Gypsies, Haitians, Hawaiians,
Hispanics, Hungarians, Hutterites, Icelanders, Indochinese, Indonesians, Iranians, Irish,
Italians, Japanese, Jews, Kalmyks, Koreans, Kurds

Groups, L–Z Latvians, Lithuanians, Luxembourgers, Macedonians, Maltese, Manx, Mexicans, Mormons,
Muslims, North Caucasians, Norwegians, Orientals, Oriental Orthodox, Pacific Islanders,
Pakistanis, Pennsylvania Germans, Poles, Portuguese, Puerto Ricans, Romanians, Rus-
sians, Scots, Scots Irish, Serbs, Slovaks, Slovenes, South Africans, Southerners, Spaniards,
Spanish, Spanish Surnamed, Swedes, Swiss, Tatars, Teutonic, Thai, Triracial Isolates,
Turkestanis, Turks, Ukrainians, Welsh, Wends, West Indians, Yankees, Zoroastrians

Source: Based on Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Group, as cited in Zack, N. (2012). Race & ethnicity. San Diego, CA:
Bridgepoint Education.

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Section 3.3 Demographic Characteristics of Diversity

The Amish, a group of traditionalist Christian church fellowships that form a subgroup of the
Mennonite churches, qualify as an ethnic group based on a shared religion. However, other
Christian religions such as Catholics and Protestants are generally not considered ethnic
groups. Jews qualify as an ethnic group primarily because of heredity—because their parents
were Jews. Judaism is considered a race, religion, and culture, so even though they may be
born Jewish, some Jews may not necessarily have a shared religion, since many do not prac-
tice Judaism (Novak, 2000).

Racial groupings may often encompass several distinct ethnicities. For example, someone
may identify their race as Asian (one of the U.S. Census Bureau racial categories), but their
ethnicity as Japanese, Korean, or Chinese—separate ethnic groups that have significantly dif-
ferent ancestral national origins, cultural traditions and practices, and shared histories. To
complicate the issue further, many people use the terms race and ethnicity interchangeably.
They may, for example, call unjust treatment against themselves racial discrimination (Zack,
2012).

Historical Perspectives on Ethnicity
When the term ethnicity was first used, many scholars took care to differentiate it from the
word race, due to how it was used by Germany’s Nazi Party to systematically exterminate
Jews, Roma, homosexuals, the disabled, and other groups of so-called undesirable peoples in
the 1930s and 1940s. With the support of German scientists, the Nazis believed the human
race could be improved by eliminating races they considered inferior and encouraging the
development of a pure, superior German or Aryan “master race.”

After Nazi leader Adolf Hitler took
power, Nazi schoolteachers began to
apply what the Germans called the
“principles of racial science” (Nazi Rac-
ism, 2013, para. 3) in their classrooms.
They measured students’ skull size
and nose length and recorded the color
of their hair and eyes to determine
whether they truly belonged to the
Aryan race. The extermination of Jews
and other “undesirable” groups began
in 1933, as the Nazis viewed them as a
“poisonous ‘race,’ which ‘lived off ’ the
other races and weakened them” (Nazi
Racism, 2013, para. 3).

After the Nazis were defeated in World
War II, interest in ethnicity, national-
ism, and group identity grew, and it
continues into the 21st century. The
1990s particularly saw a renewed

Hanan Isachar/SuperStock

The Nazis believed that certain groups were inferior
and classified individuals according to preferred
physical characteristics. Such principles factored
into the extermination of 6 million European Jews
and other “undesirable” groups during the 1930s
and 1940s.

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Section 3.3 Demographic Characteristics of Diversity

interest in the study of ethnicity due to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and strong nation-
alist and separatist movements that resulted in the emergence of independent states (Barot,
Bradley, & Fenton, 1999). Wars and other armed conflicts in the 1990s and 2000s have typi-
cally been internal conflicts, and many of them—from Sri Lanka to Rwanda, Bosnia, and
Chechnya—can be described as ethnic conflicts (Eriksen, 2010).

Because U.S. Census data is self-reported, and individuals define ethnicity differently, it is
difficult to precisely determine ethnicity among the U.S. population. The U.S. Census Bureau
identifies individuals as Hispanic or Latino if they classify themselves as Mexican; Mexican
American; Chicano; Puerto Rican; Cuban; or of other Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin. Ori-
gin, however, may be viewed as heritage, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of
the person or that person’s ancestors before their arrival in the United States. Thus, as we
discussed previously, ethnicity is a challenging concept.

Age, Cultural Values, and Diversity

Another demographic characteristic of diversity is age, which recent research has examined
through the lens of culture. Through shared demographic characteristics and cultural symbols
such as music and fashion, individuals form what are called generational cohorts, popula-
tions that pass through time together with shared habits, styles, and tastes, which gives them
shared experiences, a collective memory, and a common culture. According to researchers
(Mannheim, 1952; Pilcher, 1994; Corsten 1999), these cohorts forge generational bonds and
craft a collective cultural milieu. However, timing is an important component in the formation
of generational attachment. Mannheim (1952) argued that a generation represents a unique
type of social relationship that is based on being born in a particular time and the sociopoliti-
cal events that occur throughout the life course of the birth cohort, particularly as that cohort
comes of age. Thus, members of a generation have a shared historical experience, distinctive
generational characteristics, and many common values (as cited in McMillin, 2011).

The generational bonds forged by these cohorts are usually created around events and expo-
sures during a period of life between early adolescence to early 20s, when people are “com-
ing of age” (McMillin, 2011). This period of life is crucial to the development of generational
attachments because of its large degree of contact with like-aged individuals and identity
formation (as cited in McMillin, 2011).

Although this generational bond, which Vincent (2005) dubbed “generational conscious-
ness,” is not limited to adolescence and young adulthood, experiences and exposures during
this point in a person’s life are thought to influence his or her social interpretations and reac-
tions for the rest of their lives (as cited in McMillin, 2011).

Although researchers disagree on the exact birthdates that define each generation, there is
general consensus that Americans born before 1946 belong to the traditionalists; those born
between 1946 and 1964 are baby boomers; persons born from about 1965 to the early 1980s
are considered generation X; and those born from the mid-1980s to the year 2000 are genera-
tion Y or millennials. Table 3.4 shows the characteristics and values that researchers Nancy
Sutton Bell and Marvin Narz (2007) have attributed to each of the generations.

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Section 3.4 Societal Structures

Table 3.4: Generational characteristics, as identified by Bell and Narz

Generation General characteristics

Traditionalists • hardworking conformists
• respect for authority
• put duty before pleasure
• workers spent most of their careers with one or two employers
• nonworking wives tended to family matters
• husbands typically spent long hours as breadwinners

Baby boomers • raised by traditionalists
• strong work ethics
• valued personal growth, hard work, individuality, and equality of the sexes
• had smaller families than traditionalists
• many enjoyed affluent lifestyles
• began a trend away from long-term relationships with multiple marriages
• multiple employers over a lifetime

Generation X • raised by baby boomers
• relatively small generation
• family oriented
• value education, independence, and parenting above work
• seek balance in their lives

Generation Y, or the
millennials

• also called the Internet generation
• exposed to diverse lifestyles and cultures in school at early ages
• tend to accept different races, ethnic groups, and sexual orientations
• one third are members of minority groups
• accustomed to technology, immediacy, and multitasking
• have short attention spans
• value professional development, creative challenges, and projects with deadlines
• want flexible jobs, with the ability to work part time or to leave the workforce

temporarily when they have children

Source: Based on Bell, N. S., & Narz, M. (2007). Meeting the challenges of age diversity in the workplace. CPA Journal, 77(2), 56–59.

3.4 Societal Structures
A society’s social order is complex; it involves tradition; political power; government, eco-
nomic, social, and civil behavior and rights; values and beliefs; even philosophy and religious
teachings. A society’s legitimate power and influence are not always vested in the same per-
son or group, and societal structures vary greatly among cultures. Of particular interest to
our study of cultural diversity is research into the ways in which gender roles and duties have
been historically defined. The findings have helped illuminate the various societal structures
in diverse cultures.

Patriarchal and Matriarchal Social Structures

Most anthropologists agree that human society originated from small groups of people who
were organized in nomadic bands of hunters and gatherers that migrated to habitable areas
of the world by 12,000 BCE. Around 10,000 BCE, the introduction of agriculture radically

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Section 3.4 Societal Structures

changed the economic and social framework for human life. As groups settled into geographic
regions and formed more stable residential patterns, inequality between men and women
increased in most societies, due to the development of gender roles based on the division of
labor. Men worked in the fields tending crops and handling large animals such as cattle, while
women generally maintained the household, raised children, and prepared food. Many of
these roles persist in the present day and have significant effects on lifestyle and opportunity.
The UN reports that rural women generally have less access than men to assets, resources,
and opportunities, such as land, livestock, financial services, and education (FAO, 2014).

Most agrarian societies develop patriarchal societies—with husbands and fathers domi-
nant—and these societies tend to deepen their patriarchal cultures over time. A patriarchy is
a society characterized by male domination or rule. In such societies men largely control the
sale of crops and animals and decide how income is used. Even in contemporary patriarchies,
particularly these in Africa, a husband’s family may take land and livestock from a woman
upon her husband’s death, leaving her destitute. According to the UN, the failure to value
women’s work limits their economic bargaining and decision-making power, their access to
credit, and the allocation of household resources (FAO, 2014).

A matriarchy—or society characterized by female domination and rule—is in direct contrast
to patriarchy. Some scholars believe that for hundreds of thousands of years, some groups
of humans worshipped a goddess and lived in peaceful societies headed by women—until
invaders banished the female deity, substituted a male god (to support the notion of male
dominance on earth), and instituted patriarchy as the predominant societal structure.

Historians and anthropologists have conducted exhaustive searches of human history to find
a matriarchy. Many argue that such cultures existed and even continue to the present day,
while others have concluded that a genuine matriarchy does not and may never have existed
(Kosty, 2002).

The Myth of Matriarchy?

Cynthia Eller (2011), professor of
women’s studies at Montclair State
University, has devoted much time and
effort to seeking out matriarchal soci-
eties. She credits the genesis of what
she believes to be the myth of matriar-
chal societies to Swiss lawyer Johann
Jakob Bachofen and his 1861 book,
Mother Right: A Study of the Religious
and Juridical Aspects of Gynecocracy in
the Ancient World. Drawing on Amazon
myths dating back to Greek antiquity
and stories of female-dominant soci-
eties popular through the mid-19th
century, Bachofen claimed that in its
infancy, humankind was a gynecoc-
racy (or gynarchy), in which political

Michael Nitzschke/imageBROKER /SuperStock
The Amazon’s mythological female warrior society
inspired Johann Jakob Bachofen’s belief that early
human society was gynecocratic.

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Section 3.4 Societal Structures

power and government is in the hands of women. Only later, he asserts, did men seize the
power that characterized most of recorded history.

Enthusiasm for Bachofen’s theory “spread quickly and was essentially adopted as historical
truth by the emerging discipline of anthropology” (Eller, 2011, p. 7). Then, beginning in 1884
with the publication of The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State by Friedrich
Engels, a Communist organizer and collaborator of Karl Marx, the idea of matriarchal prehis-
tory was taken up as effective political ammunition by both Communists and feminists such
as American Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Later, Eller (2011) asserts, Fascists and Nazis adopted the theory as well. They used it to
assert that the Aryan race was originally matriarchal and, under those previous matriarchal
conditions, proper “racial hygiene” (Bergmann, as cited in Eller, 2011, p. 8) was practiced.
Such hygiene allowed only certain groups of individuals to procreate, promote certain desir-
able biological characteristics (such as blond hair and blue eyes), and ensure racial “purity.”

The idea of matriarchal prehistory was largely set aside by anthropologists in the early 20th
century and did not resurface until the feminist movement in the 1950s. At that time it served
as a foundational myth for the emerging religion of Wicca in Britain and was discovered by
second-wave feminists in the 1960s and 1970s, who learned about the theories primarily by
reading the 19th-century anthropologists (Eller, 2011).

With her books The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won’t Give Women a
Future (2001) and Gentlemen and Amazons: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory (2011), Eller
was praised but also widely criticized when, after 18 years of research, she concluded the
existence of matriarchal societies to be a myth. She explains, “I do indeed mean that it [true
matriarchy] is not true, that it is fictional, that as an account of human social history, it fails
elementary evidentiary tests” (Eller, 2011, p. 13).

While many feminists would like to believe that women once held greater power and status,
and that male dominance is a relatively new invention, Eller ultimately (2011) concludes that
the belief is based more on modern social movements than historical evidence:

Anyone who lived through the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s
and 1970s knows that during those decades gender came, for a time, to be of
overwhelming cultural and political interest. We were collectively absorbed
in rethinking the rightful roles of women and men, from the kitchen to the
boardroom to the sanctuary. That imagined alternative histories of sex rela-
tions flowered as the women’s movement explored its contours in the 1970s
and 1980s is to be expected. (p. 6)

According to some scholars, the controversy surrounding the term matriarchy stems from the
expectation that matriarchies, where women dominate or rule over men, should be the oppo-
site of patriarchies. Many scholars believe that a true matriarchy would be a gynecocracy (or
gynarchy) in which political power and government is in the hands of women. However, most
matriarchal societies, explains Goettner-Abendroth (2008), are matrilineal (tracing ances-
tral descent through the maternal line), matrilocal (where the family resides with a wife’s
kin group or clan), matrifocal (with the mother functioning as the head of the household or
family), and egalitarian (where everyone has equal status and opportunities and equal politi-
cal, economic, social, and civil rights).

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Section 3.4 Societal Structures

Anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday disagrees with Eller’s conclusion and asserts that matri-
archies are not fictional; the belief that they have never existed is based on a flawed and
overly strict definition of matriarchy. Sanday reports that the word matriarchy evolved from
earlier uses of the words matriarch and patriarch to denote female or male elders—the older
women and men who are powerful within a family or group. In the 19th century, says Sanday,
evolutionists referred to “mother law or mother rule,” which paved the way for use of the
word matriarchy as the mirror image of patriarchy.

Sanday reports that the word was first used in an 1896 article by anthropologist Edward Bur-
nett Tylor titled “The Matriarchal Family System.” In it, Tylor cited evidence of both ancient
and contemporary peoples who traced their descent by their mother’s lineage, rather than
their father’s (Sanday, 2011, para. 6). Despite of the article’s title and Tylor’s descriptions of
a number of what he calls “matriarchal” family systems, Tylor rejects the term matriarchal
on the grounds that it takes for granted that women govern the family. Instead, in many such
societies the actual power is in the hands of brothers and uncles on the mother’s side. Thus,
Tylor preferred to use the term “maternal family” to describe the family structure (Sanday,
2011, para. 8).

After years of conducting research among the Minangkabau (or Minang) people on the Indo-
nesian island of Sumatra, Sanday accepts the term the group uses to identify itself: matriar-
chate. Sanday (2011) found that the term matriarchate means more than matrilineal descent
and women-centered households. It also refers to a system of symbols and to ceremonial
practices that place senior women, along with their brothers, at the social, emotional, aes-
thetic, political, and economic center of daily life.

Sanday asserts that some scholars’ reluctance to accept the term matriarchate or matriar-
chy lies in Western cultural notions that a matriarchy is essentially patriarchy’s female twin
(Kosty, 2002). As Sanday puts it:

Too many anthropologists have been looking for a society where women rule
the affairs of everyday life, including government. That template—a singu-
lar, Western perspective on power—doesn’t fit very well when you’re looking
at non-Western cultures like the Minangkabau. In West Sumatra, males and
females relate more like partners for the common good than like competitors
ruled by egocentric self-interest. Social prestige accrues to those who pro-
mote good relations by following the dictates of custom and religion. (as cited
in Kosty, 2002, para. 3)

Thus, Sanday (2011) proposes a new definition of matriarchy. She suggests that for societies
in which the social foundation is forged by maternal principles, we shift our attention from
forcible power to the persuasive force of tradition. In her view men and women share respon-
sibilities in all societies. The differences concern the degree to which the sharing is symmetric
and balanced. In societies such as the Minangkabau, Sanday believes, both men and women
exert influence by upholding tradition. Thus, matriarchy should not be viewed as a system
of governance of the family or a society associated with exclusive female rule. Instead, she
proposes this revised definition:

Matriarchy is a balanced social system in which both sexes play key roles
founded on maternal social principles. As the symbolic originators, women, in
their roles as mothers and senior women, are the performers of practices that

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Section 3.4 Societal Structures

authenticate and regenerate or, to use a term that is closer to the ethnographic
details, nurture the social order. By this definition, the ethnographic context of
a redefined matriarchy does not reflect female power over subjects or female
power to subjugate, but female responsibility . . . to conjugate—to knit and
regenerate social ties in the here and now and in the hereafter, through their
leadership in upholding tradition. Thus, power conceived in this way is bal-
anced in the sense that it is diffused among those who work in a partnership
to uphold social rules and practices. (Sanday, 2011, para. 2)

German scholar Heide Goettner-Abendroth’s view is similar to Sanday’s. Her work organiz-
ing two World Congresses on Matriarchal Studies and editing a 2009 book of essays on the
subject led her to list the Minangkabau, as well as the Mosuo in southwestern China; the Khasi
and Garo in Meghalaya, India; the Akan peoples in West Africa; the Kabyle in North Africa; and
the Iroquoian (Haudenosaunee) people in North America as reflecting matriarchal societies.

The Mosuo
The Mosuo are a Chinese ethnic group with an estimated 40,000 members in the
Himalayas. While women in this group do not have political power, the society is
woman-centered in all other respects. The Mosuo religion involves worship of ancestors
and a mother goddess. Through oral histories, anthropologists have determined that
theirs is both a matrilineal culture and a matrifocal one.

Of great interest to anthropologists is the Mosuo cultural practice of “walking
marriages” (or zou hun in Chinese), so called because the Mosuo do not formally marry.
Instead, a woman who is interested in a particular man will invite him, usually secretly, to
spend the night in her room. The man walks to her house at night and returns to his own
home early in the morning (Lugu Lake Mosuo Cultural Development Association, 2006).

The Mosuo generally live in large extended family clans, with most family members
residing in communal quarters. However, when a woman “comes of age” between 12
and 14, she can have her own private bedroom; once past puberty, she can begin to invite
partners in for walking marriages. While it is possible for a Mosuo woman to change
partners as she likes, and a single partner is not expected or common, the majority of
such couplings are long term, and many last a lifetime. Even when a pairing is long term,
however, the man will not go to live with the woman’s family, or vice versa, and no
property is ever shared (Lugu Lake Mosuo Cultural Development Association, 2006).

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Section 3.4 Societal Structures

Most significantly, when children are born, the father may have little or no responsibility for
them. If a father wants to be involved with his children, he will state his intention to do so
and will bring gifts to the mother’s family. This gives him a kind of official status within that
family but does not make him part of it. Though children are usually aware of their biological
father’s identity, this fact is not considered significant (and some children do not know at all).
Additionally, as one researcher noted, “There are no illegitimate children and female sexuality
does not have to be controlled to ensure that a man’s children are ‘his.’ . . . Sexual partnership
is based upon . . . attraction which does not get mixed up with parenting roles or economic
provision” (Christ, 2012, p. 109).

Regardless of a father’s involvement, the child will be raised in the mother’s family (mak-
ing the society matrilocal), and take her family name. It is not necessary to be a biological
mother; each sister is a “mother” to the children that any of them have. Within a household,
a woman will consider her sisters’ children to be equally her own. Because male children
continue to live with and be responsible to their own mothers’ extended family, they play a
significant role in the lives of their cousins and nieces, and both male and female members of
the extended family help support and raise the children (Lugu Lake Mosuo Cultural Develop-
ment Association, 2006).

The Mosuo also lack preference for a particular gender. Since neither male nor female children
ever leave home, there is no particular preference for one over the other. The focus instead
is on maintaining gender balance. To maintain this balance, it is not uncommon for Mosuo
to adopt children of the appropriate gender or even for two households to “swap” male and
female children.

The result is that the Mosuo enjoy an extremely stable family structure, one that is absent of
child custody battles and features a large and close-knit network of caregivers. The Mosuo
culture is changing, however, thanks to increased contact with the outside world.

The Minangkabau
The Minangkabau, also called Minang, are another example of a matrilineal society. Today
nearly 4 million Minangkabau, one of the largest ethnic groups in Indonesia, live in the high-
lands of West Sumatra. Their society is founded on matrilineal customs and a religion that
blends Islamic principles with a traditional nature-based religion, adat, which glorifies a
semihistorical queen mother who was thought to have lived in the 14th century and empha-
sizes the maternal principles of human growth rather than the competitiveness found in
many Western cultures.

When performing their ceremonial functions, senior women are referred to as bundo kan-
duang, which means “our own mother.” The term acknowledges one’s own biological mother
as well as the common ancestress of each clan, the queen mother. To the Minangkabau, the
maternal carries sovereign authority. However, wielding power by force or exerting domi-
nance is foreign to Minang men and women; their culture emphasizes politeness and main-
taining peaceful relations. In fact, Sanday (2011) describes the Minang culture as peaceful
and nearly violence free.

Minangkabau women’s power extends to the economic and social realms. Women control
land inheritance, and husbands move into their wives’ households when they marry. In the
case of a divorce, the husband collects his clothes and leaves the house.

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Summary and Resources

Despite the central status that women are afforded, the Minangkabau matriarchy is not the
equivalent of female rule. Decisions are made by consensus. When Sanday repeatedly asked
members of the society “who rules?,” she was told that she was asking the wrong question. No
one rules, she was told; women and men work together, “[l]ike the skin and nail of the finger-
tip” (as cited in Kosty, 2002, para. 5).

The Iroquois
The Iroquois or Haudenosaunee Confederacy is another interesting example of a contem-
porary matriarchal society. The six Haudenosaunee Native American nations consist of the
Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Mohawk, and Tuscarora. They once stretched from north-
eastern New York and Canada to western New York and northeastern Ohio. Today they exist
primarily on small reservations in Canada, New York, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma.

The Haudenosaunee have male leaders, but the chiefs are chosen by the women, usually from
among their sisters or their female children. The Haudenosaunee society is matrilineal and
matrifocal. Women own all the land, crops, and any food the men obtain through hunting
and fishing. Women serve as judges and mediators, and they play a major role in the political
culture. They also distribute goods and play a central role in religious services (Eller, 2011).

Summary and Resources

Chapter Summary
• Diversity as a social and political concept entered the American consciousness in the

1960s during the civil rights movement and through the actions and words of Martin
Luther King Jr., among others.

• Equal employment opportunity and affirmative action programs were launched in
the 1960s and 1970s as a result of diversity’s growing prominence as a societal value
and the interest in considering or compensating for past and current injustices or
prejudices.

• More recently, diversity as a moral imperative has been expressed through the term
social justice and the creation of social and political institutions that attempt to treat
all members of the culture fairly and to equally distribute society’s costs and
benefits.

• Many organizations have embraced the concept of diversity for economic reasons—
to ensure that a variety of viewpoints, styles, and relationships are leveraged to
expand into new markets.

• Diversity actions such as affirmative action and efforts toward inclusion are contro-
versial; some view them as a euphemism for quotas and claim they lower standards
and create undeserved preferences, or contend they are not reflective of nor needed
in contemporary society. Four of the most contentious dimensions of diversity con-
cern gender, race, ethnicity, and age.

• A culture’s social order and societal structures are complex and vary greatly. How-
ever, cultural studies have uncovered interesting findings regarding the roles and
duties of men and women in diverse cultures.

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Summary and Resources

Reflections on Diversity

Hijra: The Third Sex

Sex has been primarily described in terms of female or male, a dichotomy that can be attrib-
uted to people’s needs to clearly identify sex and gender for their own comfort. On April 15,
2014, however, the Supreme Court of India declared “transgender” to be India’s third sex. This
recognition provides the transgender community, or Hijras, with legal rights, including access
to government jobs and colleges (Khaleeli, 2014).

Hijras, who reside mostly in northern India and Pakistan, are “transgender male-to-female
transitioned individuals” (Patel, 2010, p. 836). Although there is no specific count of Hijras,
it is estimated there are more than 50,000, and some estimates reach as high as 2 million
to 3 million (McCarthy, 2014; Patel, 2010). They are considered a part of Indian culture and
have a long history, which some claim goes back at least 4,000 years (Singh, 2012). They are
referred to in religious Hindu texts such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana, which considers
Hijras “neither male nor female, [but] as individuals who the Lord Rama blesses” (Patel, 2010,
p. 840). The Hijra follow strict codes of conduct through their devotion to the Hindu mother
goddess Bahuchara Mata, whose ancient stories made a spiritual connection between Hijras
and their feminine identity (Patel, 2010). Bahurchara Mata’s stories helped legitimize the
Hijra population (Patel, 2010).

Although living as a Hijra is socially acceptable, over time they have become the “invisible
minority” who have been “chosen by God” with a “curse that cannot be revoked” (Singh, 2012,
p. 106). For the Hijras, the successful and complete transformation from male to female is
seen as reaching “nirvana” or their “rebirth” (Patel, 2010, p. 835). Regardless of being socially
accepted, Hijras have been unable to work, receive health care, or education. They have often
been relegated to living as socially marginalized, second-class citizens who suffer violence
and abuse, and many turn to prostitution and begging as a means of survival (McCarthy, 2014;
Patel, 2010). Until the supreme court ruling, they were not covered by human rights laws
(McCarthy, 2014). Article 15 of India’s constitution prohibits discrimination based on reli-
gion, caste, race, or sex (McCarthy, 2014), and, as of the court ruling, now transgender.

In its ruling, the court stated that “it was the right of every human being to choose their gen-
der” (as cited in McCarthy, 2014, para. 10). Critics of the law believe it has too loosely defined
these concepts, however. Different states are allowed to make different interpretations of the
transgender identity. States are also allowed to modify medical procedures so they are less
safe and to create “bureaucratic mechanisms” to determine who can be considered part of the
third gender (Dutta, 2014). India’s government filed an application asking the supreme court
to clarify the term transgender, claiming that part of the law equates eunuch with transgen-
der, which the state argues are not equivalent (National Legal Services Authority v. Union of
India and Ors, 2014). Other arguments claim that the court’s definition of transgender does
not align with that of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (“Social Defence,” n.d.),
part of which discusses “transgender people and their problems” (“Social Defence,” n.d., p. 1).

Despite the controversy, establishing civil rights for Hijras was a landmark moment for India.
Doing so acknowledged an otherwise marginalized population and provided measures for
their welfare and inclusion into Indian culture.

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Summary and Resources

Ask Yourself:

1. The United States is currently struggling to accommodate individuals who choose
not to identify as a specific sex. For example, architects and general contractors are
being increasingly asked to create gender-neutral bathrooms in office buildings.
Gender-neutral bathrooms appeal to some because of their inclusive nature but
offend others because of privacy, convenience, and safety concerns. Some women
do not want to go into a bathroom where men might be present. How would you
feel about sharing a bathroom with someone of another sex? How do you feel about
sharing a bathroom with someone who has another sexual orientation? What are
some ways to mitigate individuals’ fears over this issue?

2. Should laws regulate gender issues? What are the advantages of doing so? What are
the disadvantages?

3. Discuss the seeming contradiction between the Hijras being an accepted but mar-
ginalized part of Indian culture. Why accept a group if its members are to be mis-
treated? Are there any groups that experience such treatment in your country?

Discussion Questions

1. The term color blind was used extensively when diversity first began to be discussed.
It suggested that individuals see everyone the same, not by race or sex. It coincided
with the term melting pot, which was discussed earlier in the chapter. In your opin-
ion, should we turn a blind eye to gender, race, ethnicity, and age differences? Does
doing so inject fairness and equity into our college admissions and business hiring
practices? Or should we reach out to diverse populations to better ensure their rep-
resentation at all levels of an organization?

2. What might happen if society stopped identifying individuals by gender? How might
we design clothing, divvy up bathrooms, respect religious practices that have differ-
ent guidelines for men and women, or establish relationships? Describe a society in
which everyone was gender neutral.

3. Believers of matriarchy claim that if a country transitioned from a patriarchal soci-
ety to a matriarchal one, the nation would be less aggressive and become involved in
fewer wars, and that people would be more willing to help each other reduce pov-
erty and hatred. Do you think this is true? Why or Why not?

Additional Resources

Web Links

http://www.apa.org/research/action/gender.aspx
American Psychological Association information related to gender issues

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/07/introduction_tolinks.html
Background facts and links related to Mosuo culture from Frontline/World

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http://www.apa.org/research/action/gender.aspx

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/07/introduction_tolinks.html

Summary and Resources

Key Terms

affirmative action Policies or initiatives
that seek to redress past discrimination of
minority populations in some social arenas
such as government, education, or employ-
ment through actions to ensure equal
opportunity and to increase representation
of these groups.

demographic characteristics Statistical
characteristics of human populations such
as age, race, religion, gender, and ethnicity.

diversity Physical and cultural variation;
demographic differences in members of
groups in race, ethnicity, gender, social class,
religion, nationality, or other dimension of
social identity that are often marked by a
history of prejudice, stigma, discrimination,
or oppression.

diversity management The term used in
the literature of the 1990s to describe what
is known today as the practice of inclusion.

egalitarian A social system in which every-
one has equal status and opportunities and
equal political, economic, social, and civil
rights

ethnicity The beliefs and practices of
a social group whose members share a
national cultural or historical tradition.

gender A socially constructed term that
refers to an individual’s identity in relation
to a society or culture. In academic litera-
ture, the term does not refer to biological
classification of organisms as either male or
female but to gender roles, the masculine
or feminine qualities, culturally determined
qualities, behaviors, tasks, and responsibili-
ties a society considers appropriate for men,
women, boys, and girls.

gender expression The way in which we
present ourselves and communicate gender
within a given culture.

gender identity One’s sense of self as male,
female, or transgender.

generational cohorts Populations who
pass through time together with a shared
culture, habits, styles, and tastes, which
gives them shared experiences and a collec-
tive memory.

genomics The discipline within the field of
genetics that studies the structure of genes
in human chromosomes.

gynecocracy A society in which political
power and government is in the hands of
women.

inclusion The act of integrating, fully con-
necting, engaging, and utilizing people in
groups, organizations, and societies who
have all types of differences.

intersex Along with intersexuality and
disorders of sexual development, a term used
in academic and medical literature to refer
to the anatomical presence of both male and
female sexual features in one individual.

matriarchy A society in which women
dominate or rule.

matrifocal A society in which the mother
functions as the head of the household or
family.

matrilineal A society that traces ancestral
descent through the maternal line.

matrilocal A society in which the family
resides with a wife’s kin group or clan.

patriarchy A society in which men domi-
nate or rule.

race A socially constructed category that
describes human beings who share an arbi-
trary set of hereditary traits.

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Summary and Resources

sex The term used in academic and medical
literature to refer to biological character-
istics of male or female or the anatomical
presence of both male and female sexual
features in one individual (intersexuality/
disorders of sexual development).

sexual orientation The direction of one’s
sexual interest toward members of the same,
opposite, or both sexes.

social justice The creation of social and
political institutions in a society that will
ensure fair treatment and equal distribution
of costs and benefits to all people.

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