Conflict is the primary underlying facet of systems of ethnic inequality. Conflict is most likely to occur when unlike peoples meet. The dominant group may mobilize its power through force, ideology or both to assure its dominance, and minority groups will respond with counter force, accommodation or submission.

Assimilation: May be defined as a process of boundary reduction that can occur when members of two or more societies or of smaller cultural groups meet. It is the process that leads to greater homogeneity in society.

There are 4 distinct related dimensions of assimilation:

(1) Cultural Assimilation: The adoption by one ethnic group of another's cultural traits- language, religion, diet etc.. This may be referred to as acculturation.

(2) Structural Assimilation: Refers to a blending of behaviors, values, and beliefs. Structural Assimilation may occur at two distinct levels of social interaction

(3) Biological Assimilation (Amalgamation) represents the ultimate stage in the assimilation process.

(4) Psychological Assimilation: Members of an ethnic group undergo a change in self-identity. To the extent that individuals feel themselves part of the larger society rather than an ethnic group they are psychologically assimilated.

Two Theories of Assimilation

(1) Parks Race Relations Cycle: Park was the first in 1920s to suggest a cycle of race or ethnic relations through which groups would pass in a sequence of stages leading ultimately to full assimilation. (1) Contact through migration and subsequently engage in (2) competition often characterized by conflict, (3) Out of competition eventually emerges some form of accommodation among groups (4) finally assimilation.

Criticisms of Model
(1) Fails to explain the treatment of those groups of immigrants that are physically distinct from the dominant group. (2) another criticism is that these cycles are rarely complete, there are many truncated instances.

Gordons Stages of Assimilation: He explains assimilation as a series of steps through which various groups pass. But rather than following a straight line leading from contact to absorption, groups may remain indefinitely at one or another of these stages
Criticisms:
(1) Gordon's model does not consider the fact that cultural assimilation will not necessarily lead to structural assimilation.

(2)Gordon's model suggests that if minorities do not enter into primary relations with the dominant group it is because the dominant group has held them out. But such social segregation may be voluntary.

(3) His model implies a unidirectional movement whereby groups do not return to earlier stages they proceed in a linear manner.

Factors Affecting Assimilation

(a) Manner of Entrance

(b) Time of Entrance

(c) Demographic Factors

(d) Cultural Similarity.

(e) Visibility

Pluralism: is the opposite of assimilation. It is a set of social processes and conditions that encourages group diversity and the maintenance of group boundaries.

Ethnic Pluralism never entails an absolute separation of groups. In a pluralistic society there is always some common political or economic system that binds various ethnic groups together.

Dimensions of Pluralism

(a) Cultural Pluralism implies the maintenance of many varied cultural systems with the framework of a common economic and political system.

(b) Structural Pluralism: connotes not simply differences in culture but also the existence in some degree of segregated ethnic communities within which much of social life occurs for group members.

(c) Equalitarian: the group maintains cultural and structural autonomy but remain relatively equal in political and economic power, their separation is mainly voluntary.

(d) Inequalitarian pluralism: groups maintain structural segregation and cultural distinctness as well but are unequal in political and economic power.

Cultural Pluralism: The American Case
American society the persistence of ethnic groups over many generations after their immigration. There is a tendency for individuals to continue to conduct their primary group relations within an ethnic context. The choice of close friends or marital partners is strongly dictated by ethnicity.

Many have argued that in the USA the cultural pluralism rather than assimilation is the desirable end product of American inter ethnic relations.

Corporate Pluralism: Non-American Cases
In this pluralistic system ethnic units are formally recognized by the government, and political and economic power is allocated on the basis of an ethnic formula. In this type of pluralism, cultural and structural separation are emphasized

A. Competitive Race Relations
In equalitarian pluralistic relations are realized in full only in slave or classic colonial systems. These are competitive race relations. When the society's economic based changes from agrarianism to industrialization such competitive relations replace paternalistic relations.

B. Internal Colonialism
Is a type of inequalitiarian pluralism characteristic of societies like the United States where ethnic relations follow the assimilation model. Political and economic domination practised over the native, population. Here racial-ethnic groups are treated in a colonial fashion.

C. Annihilation or Expulsion
In equalitarian pluralism may reach an extreme form in the expulsion or even annihilation of minority ethnic groups.

The Variability of Ethnic Relations

(1) These models are better at predicting the outcomes of ethnic relations for white ethnic groups.

(2) Groups can move along two or more paths to assimilation concurrently.

(3) None of these conditions is irreversible.

(4) The degree of conflict is characteristic of all three general patterns

(5) Any of these processes or outcomes whether a form of assimilation or pluralism ultimately depends on the objective of both the dominant and minority groups.

Typologies of Multiethnic Societies

Colonial Societies
The dominant group has ordinarily entered as conqueror of physically distinct indigenous groups or has brought the minority groups to the society. Generally agrarian or pre-industrial, with labor intensive economies. This exploitative system is driven by a racist ideology. Social segregation is maximized, and the rules of interaction are explicitly defined and enforced. Members of the dominant group are afforded privileges. Little or no mobility for individuals or groups within this system.

Corporate Pluralist Societies
Characterized by cultural and physical separation of ethnic groups, but the key difference between these and colonial societies is the extent to which one group is dominant. Groups are relatively balanced in political and economic power, and no single one is able to exert all its will on all vital societal issues. Group segregation is voluntary. These societies founded on the basis that ethnicity is not to be to be discouraged.

Assimilations Societies
There is no obligation or objective protecting the retention of ethnicity. If ethnic groups survive they do so because of voluntary actions by the groups themselves. There is also a large number of minority ethnic groups in various stages of cultural and structural assimilation. Highly visible ethnic groups are most segregated in social relations and thus less structural assimilated. Those closer to the dominant group in terms of culture and physical appearance are more advantaged. Ethnic relations are competitive.