ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the emergence of racial/ethnic inequality. It provides the various power/conflict theories toward understanding the emergence of racial stratification in the United States. The chapter examines minority group resistance to racial inequality. The United States is a country with a long history of racial and ethnic conflict. European Americans "discovered" a populated continent and proceeded to lay claim to it, thus initiating hundreds of years of conflict with the various native tribes already inhabiting the country. However, mere contact between different racial/ethnic groups does not necessarily imply that one group will become dominant and the others subordinate. Sociologists focus on why racial/ethnic inequality emerges when two or more racial/ethnic groups come into contact with one another. The chapter also provides a sociological analysis of the early exploitation of Native Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans by European Americans as well as the dominant sociological explanations for such racial/ethnic conflict.
