chapter 3: midterm 1 & 2

Question 1

race

Answer 1

refers to people’s assumed but socially significant physical or genetic characteristics

Question 2

ethnicity

Answer 2

refers to social distinctions and relations among individuals and groups based upon their cultural characteristics

Question 3

social construction of ‘race’ - robert miles

Answer 3

• the meaning of race has changed over time/place
• most scientists today call for an abandonment of the term ‘race’
• lack of scientific evidence that humans can be divided into mutually exclusive ‘racial groups’ based on phenotype or genotype
• reification

Question 4

reification

Answer 4

abstract concepts become real through social processes

Question 5

race as a ‘social construction’

Answer 5

• ’races’ of people are not real in the biological sense;
• what we refer to as race is the result of social processes
• racialization

Question 6

racialization

Answer 6

• how people’s physical, biological traits (like race or gender) are used to group people into different social categories
• these groups then affect how people relate to each other in society.

Question 7

concept of race

Answer 7

• calls to maintain race as a category of sociological analysis
• most people (outside academia) believe that clearly defined races exist
• abandoning the term could lead to conservative misinterpretation

Question 8

visible minority

Answer 8

• this category includes persons who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour and who do not report being Indigenous

Question 9

criticism and limitations of visible minority category

Answer 9

• self-report measure; unreliable
• homogenizes the visible minority group
• establishes Caucasians as the standard

Question 10

canadas development through immigration

Answer 10

• rules were aimed at restricting immigration
• immigration act (1910)
• 1919 amendment
• idea of a “non-preferred” persons
• introduction of points system

Question 11

immigration act (1910)

Answer 11

prohibited people deemed “mentally defective, idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded, epileptics, insane, diseased, the physically defective, the dumb, blind, or otherwise handicapped”
- 1919 amendment also excluded those “of dubious political loyalties” (aka communists at that time)

Question 12

desired vs. non-desired

Answer 12

• desired: Northern/Central Europeans and Americans
• “non-preferred”: Indians, Chinese, African Americans, Eastern/Southern Europeans

Question 13

points system

Answer 13

• to deal with discrimination
• more objective selection criteria
• more weight to age, education, job skills, work experience, knowledge of English or French to determine eligibility