Exam 1 Flashcards
According to the class lecture, what percentage of the US population is Hispanics?
18.7%
According to the class lecture, what percentage of the US population is Asian Americans?
6.0%
How many % of the U.S. population is Jewish?
2%
Joe, a white man, works at a restaurant. He does not have negative feeling toward black people. But a restaurant manager ordered his employees to refuse to serve black customers, and Joe followed the order because he needed this job. Sociologically, Joe is an example of:
Fair-weather friend
- In an article “Getting Under My Skin” (How Race is Lived in America, Article #15), Don Terry, who had a black father and a white mother, started taking a course on black nationalism to learn more about his heritage. This best describes which of William Cross’s four stages of racial identity development?
Immersion
Because our ability to process information is limited, we tend to use categories and oversimplify the available information about ethnic groups, which leads to biased judgments. According to the class lecture, this theory of prejudice is called:
Cognitive theory
Which of the following descriptions about Irish and Italian immigrants is correct?
The Irish came to the U.S. with the intention to stay permanently, while most Italians came without such a commitment
The period of “Old Immigration” is characterized by the immigration of which ethnic group?
Irish
Which of the following is NOT among social contexts that facilitated the inclusion of new immigrants into a white identity, according to the class lecture?
Relative satisfaction
Which amendment officially proclaimed the equal protection of the laws in the United States
14th Amendment
Segregation by law such as Jim Crow System of Segregation is called:
De jure segregation
Which of the following best describes the Gentleman’s Agreement of 1907?
Japan and the U.S. reached an agreement that while the U.S. would end discrimination against Japanese Americans, Japan would stop the flow of Japanese immigration to the United States.
Why are Asian Americans labeled as “a model minority”?
Because they attained educational and economic success similar to the level of non-Hispanic whites.
True or False
Sociologically speaking, a group with the largest number of members in a society is a “majority group.”
False
True or False
A person who discriminates a certain group of people always has prejudice against them.
False
True or False
The 1965 immigration Act established an unequal quota system based on national origins.
False
The number of slaves peaked 1830 with 3.9 million, and then decreased gradually down to 2 million in 1860.
False
A program of intergroup education through the use of films, novels and TV shows that present the members of different groups in a positive way is called________ [Note that “educational approach” is not acceptable for this blank. Name a specific type of educational approach as introduced in class.]
Vicarious Experience Approach
A ranking of an individual’s various social identities in order of their importance is called_______
Identity Salience Hierarchy
Established practices (such as standardized tests) that result in unequal treatment of a certain category of people without conscious bigotry are sociologically called_______
Institutionalized discrimination
According to the lecture,
________ is a term that signifies the robust presence of five major panethnic categories (whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asian Americans, Native Americans) in the U.S.
Ethnoracial pentagon
The U.S. Supreme Court decision of_______ in 1967 ruled that the legal ban on interracial marriage was unconstitutional.
Loving v. Virginia
On the issues of interracial dating and marriage, it is often the case that people approve interracial relationships in surveys,
but disapproves when their family members actually date or marry interracially.
According to the class lecture, this gap is sociologically conceptualized as_______
Disconnected approval
According to the class lecture,_______ is a system of penal labor practiced in the South from 1865 to 1928 which provided prisoner labor to private parties.
Convict leasing
Attitudes or judgments (usually negative) about an entire category of people
Example: all Asian people are good at math, not true, Tamura is not
Prejudice
actions that treat categories of people unequally
Discrimination
acts by individuals that harm others or property
Individual discrimination
an ethnic category that contains multiple ethnic identities
Example: Asian Americans
Pan-ethnicity
Primordialist (Essentialist) View
Race and ethnicity are determined by birth and unchangeable
Constructionist View
Race and ethnicity are situationally created or imposed, and thus changeable
Instrumentalist View
Race and ethnicity are created and utilized strategically based on cost/benefit analysis
Stages of Racial Identity Development
Pre-encounter
Encounter: Racial incidents (action,oral), tends to occur at schools; anger characterizes this stage
Immersion: Characterized by a strong desire to learn about one’s own history and to surround oneself with those who share it
Internalization: Characterized by a sense of security about one’s racial identity
What are the relationships between prejudice and discrimination?
Bigot = prejudice & discriminatory
Timid bigot = prejudice
Fair weather friend = discriminatory
Friend = neither
Why do people have racial and ethnic prejudice?
Cognitive theory = categorization, the aggrandizement of difference
Social learning theory = socialization
Conflict theory = competition, exploitation
a stereotype held among a group of people that another group of people have a stereotype about them
Meta-stereotype
People are more likely to approve interracial conditions in general, while they tend to disapprove if it takes place within their own family (or affects their own family)
Disconnected approval
a widely held, overgeneralized, and oversimplified idea about a particular category of people
Stereotype
“The more education people receive, the less likely they are to accept ethnic stereotypes”
Cognitive Approach
Contact hypothesis: “contact, particularly close and sustained contact, with members of different racial and ethnic groups promotes positive, tolerant attitudes toward those groups”
Intergroup contact
Colonial Immigration
(17th-early 19th cent.)
Overwhelmingly English, Dutch, German
Conflict between English and German
1790: US population was 4 million (1930: approx 123 million)
Old Immigration
(1820-1890)
Still from Northern and Western Europe
English, German: continuously migrated
Irish: increasing especially since the 1840s
New Immigration
(1890-1914[1929?])
Almost 70% of immigrants were from Southern and Eastern Europe
1896, # of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe exceeded over Northern and Western Europe
Hiatus
Between 1930 and 1965, immigration into the U.S. declined significantly
Chinese Exclusion Act
1882
Gentlemen’s Agreement
1907 - no more Japanese immigrants
Immigration Act of 1924
(National Origins Quota Act) = specific number assigned to each county will accept that many immigrants each year, an unequal number
Number of enslaved people in 1790:
700,000
Number of enslaved people in 1830:
2 million
Number of enslaved people in 1860:
3.9 million
Bloc voting
led by local leaders, Irish people voted for candidates who were more understanding about their life experiences
13th Amendment
The Abolition of Slavery - 1865
14th Amendment
The Equal Protection of the Laws - 1868
15th Amendment
The Right to Vote - 1870
What was the problem of the 13th Amendment that led to continuous exploitation of Black people during
late 19th and early 20th centuries?
This amendment left room for the continuation of slavery. All the authority had to do was create the legal codes to criminalize them. And once convicted, those “criminals” were placed into Convict Leasing System.
What were the effects of the Great Migration of Black people to the north?
- With Jim Crow system of segregation and continuing “slavery by another name”, it is not surprising that many Black people felt hopeless in the South
- During this “great migration”, six million Black people migrated from the South to the North
- It led to heightened competition and conflict between races in the North
Compromise of 1877
the end, created compromise decision that republican candidate gets white house but northern troops are removed from southern states and returns southern control to segregationists, then became more expansive after that
With the removal of northern troops, the southern states were left in the hands of former Confederates
More and more Jim Crow codes were adopted and implemented in the South
Plessy v. Ferguson
1896
The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed racial segregation as constitutional, if equal facilities were provided. Thus, the doctrine of “Separate but Equal” became the law of the land.
Of course, “separate” was never “equal.”
Immigration Act of 1965
‘first come first serve’ basis became eliminated
Model minority
concept that signifies the minority group’s high educational and
economic achievement
What effect did their perceived (and more or less real) success have on 1) Asian Americans in general and
2) on other minorities?
Many Asian Americans do not fit into this stereotype.
This concept is used to deny the significance of structural racism in the U.S. “Asian Americans can achieve in the U.S., so why can’t Black people? Certainly, that’s not because of racism today.” This type of rhetoric is constructed and expressed.
Consequences = Prejudice about Asians
Prejudice about other minorities
What are some characteristics of the Irish Americans that facilitated a high level of assimilation into the United States?
Their immigration was not forced
(opportunity structure)
Their familiarity with Anglo-Saxon culture, including language (imposed upon them under the British rule)
Relative Satisfaction
Many were destitute in Ireland, so the bottom is still better in the US (not too much threat to the dominant group)
Permanent commitment: Irish immigrants came as a family, with an intent to stay in this country
Emphasis on their whiteness: The Irish emphasized how similar they were to white people and how different they were from black people
They were loud and demanding
Also, two social contexts of 19th century were significant for Irish Americans to achieve advancement
Political mobilization
Bloc voting: led by local leaders, Irish people voted for candidates who were more understanding about their life experiences
Convince, then entire flock or community vote for that candidate, their kind, can’t ignore if they are the ones of the district
Industrialization
The US economy was expanding in the 19th century due to industrialization, and the opportunities for upward mobility were abundant
How do the characteristics of the Italian immigration compare with those of the Irish?
(Similarity)
Not forced migration
Relative satisfaction
Most were unskilled laborers or peasants
Mobilization of ethnic network politically and economically
(Difference)
The level of familiarity with Anglo-Saxon culture, especially language
Most came without permanent commitment, thus influencing the willingness to assimilate, the choice of occupations and the educational achievement motivation
More negative reactions
“Guinea” label, “white Chinese”, “mafie” image (viewed as possessing criminal mind)
The five central arguments of this book:
- the idea of race was invented
- Human biological variation is real, obvious, wonderful, and necessary
- The idea of race does not explain human variation
- Race is both stable and protean
- We own the future of race
Loving v. Virginia (1967)
Background: In 1883, the US Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s anti-miscegenation law was constitutional because it punished Black people and white people equally
Case: In 1967, in a unanimous decision, the justices found that Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage violated the 14th Amendment to the Constitution
Du Bois’ explanation of the origin and usefulness of racial whiteness
Neither natural nor a foregone cultural conclusion in the United States, even in the context of slavery. Instead, whiteness defined through European ancestry was a calculated racial solution developed by colonial leaders to control the economic and physical threat of laboring-class solidarity.
(Marxian view of racial whiteness
Racial whiteness is not biological or cultural
“A calculated solution to the physical and economic threat of laboring-class solidarity”
By creating racial solidarity along racial lines, the powerful white people prevented the white working class to develop solidarity with Black people)
US population
336 million
% of US population that’s Native American
1.1%
% of US population that’s non-hispanic white
57.8%
% of the US population that’s African American
12.4%
In 1860 (right before the civil war, what % of the Black population was free?
11%
