Exam 1

Question 1

Differentiation

Answer 1

Unranked or categorical differences. These people are different and here is how, etc.

Question 2

Inequality

Answer 2

Disparities in the distribution of valued resources. Some groups have more resources than others. It’s about prestige, what kind of job you end up with and how well it pays.

Question 3

Stratification

Answer 3

Institutionalized inequality. The state of being divided into social classes. Multidimensional.

Two main processes:

1) Distribute individuals into groups
2) Make access to resources unequal

Class, Status, and Party

Question 4

Intra-generational Mobility

Answer 4

Your ability to have upward mobility on your own within your generation; do better than your parents did.

Question 5

Troubles vs. Issues

Answer 5

Troubles are personal and private in nature. Issues are social and effect a community.

Question 6

What is race?

Answer 6

Modern idea. Not genetic. Skin deep. Not determinative of hair form, eye shape, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability, or intelligence.

Question 7

Two views of race

Answer 7

1) Primordial: race is natural and durable. Race implies behavioral and attitudinal differences.
2) Circumstantial: race is mutable. Races are interest groups that adapt to changing social circumstances.

Question 8

Where does the term “Caucasian” come from?

Answer 8

Caucasus Mountains

Question 9

Thomas theorem

Answer 9

“It is not important whether or not the interpretation is correct - if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”

Question 10

Class

Answer 10

Economic. Defined by objective relationship to markets.

• Credit
• Commodities
• Labor
• “Opportunities for income”
• Rooted in production and acquisition
• Does not by itself, for a community
• Determines “life chances”

Question 11

Status

Answer 11

The Sneetches

• Defined by social esteem, honor, or prestige
• Expressed as “lifestyles”
• Rooted in consumption
• Form distinct and subjective communities, upheld through social closure and rituals

Question 12

Middleman Minorities

Answer 12

• Sojourners.
• Host societies have large status gaps.
• Not “hung up” on the status distinctions of the host society.
• Concentrate in certain occupations.

Question 13

Sojourners

Answer 13

A necessary but not sufficient condition. A temporary immigrant. They found a niche in between the dominant and subordinate groups.

Question 14

Social Capital

Answer 14

The expected collective or economic benefits derived from the preferential treatment and cooperation between individuals and groups.

Question 15

Mississippi Chinese

Answer 15

• Chinese entered Mississippi to work on plantations.
• Soon became merchants.
• Occupied an economic “niche” by serving black customers.
• As the Chinese became upwardly mobile their status began to change.

Question 16

Plessy v. Ferguson

Answer 16

“Separate but equal”

Question 17

Loving v. Virginia

Answer 17

Overturned anti-miscegenation.

Supreme Court: “There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.”

Question 18

What was the end of the Chinese’s niche?

Answer 18

1) Desegregation - Civil rights legislation put an end to the structural conditions that made Chinese grocery stores successful.
2) Farm mechanization - Sharp reduction in the agricultural workforce, Chinese grocers’ primary customer base.
3) Black migration - African Americans move to Southern cities and the North.
4) Chinese acculturation - Chinese immigrants begin to adopt new racial norms.

Question 19

How were Mississippi Chinese successful?

Answer 19

• They became middleman minorities, benefiting from an economic niche that whites were prevented from exploiting.
• The shift from sojourner to immigrant status changed their orientation, goals, and especially their views about race.
• They used their economic success to change their collective image and “styles of life”.
• Their efforts to become “white” found support locally, but met with opposition among white aristocrats.
• Discrimination originated from upper-class whites, who exercised hegemony in the society.
• When segregation ended, so too did the economic niche that was responsible for Chinese success.
• Bottom line: Be able to explain “Mississippi Chinese” in terms of Weber and Bonacich.

Question 20

Mississippi Chinese vs. West Indians

Answer 20

Similarities

• Distancing from African Americans
• Sojourner mentality
• Occupational concentration
• Had to work separate themselves from African Americans

Differences

• Distancing strategies
• Appearance
• Occupational niches
• Patterns of hostility
• Timing and geography
• Emphasize their accents

Question 21

Old money vs. New money

Answer 21

Old money is prestigious. New money takes time to reach the same status as old.

Question 22

Emmitt Till

Answer 22

African-American boy who walked into a store and whistled at a white woman. The woman’s husband and another guy beat the boy, gauged out an eye, shot him in the head and threw his body in a river.

Question 23

Strategies for crossing over (Mississippi Chinese)

Answer 23

1) Image change
2) Strategic mimicry
3) Persuasion, negotiation, ingratiation

Question 24

Isomorphism

Answer 24

“Iso” = equal “Morph” = form

Created schools that looked like white school, etc.

Question 25

In which area did the Chinese integrate first?

Answer 25

• Status groups restrict social intercourse, “that is, intercourse which is not subservient to economic or any other of business’s ‘functional’ purposes” (Weber)
• Tried to enter the business area before anything else.

Question 26

Why didn’t blacks and working-class whites band together on behalf of their class interests?

Answer 26

• Extreme status pressure. Everyone does all they can to not associate themselves with the lower-class blacks.
• Whites were covering their own asses.

Question 27

Who is most prejudiced in the Delta’s class/caste system?

Answer 27

Upper-class whites

Question 28

Hegemony

Answer 28

“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”

Question 29

Anti-miscegenation

Answer 29

Laws that prohibit interracial marriages.

Question 30

Pace v. Alabama

Answer 30

“If any white person and any negro, or the descendant of any negro to the third generation…intermarry with each other, each of them must, on conviction, be imprisoned in the penitentiary or sentenced to hard labor for not less than two nor more than seven years.”

Question 31

More inequality =

Answer 31

Less upward mobility!

Question 32

Ozawa v. United States

Answer 32

Americanized lifestyle doesn’t equal white. Mongolian, not Caucasian.

Question 33

United States v. Thind

Answer 33

Asian Indians are Caucasian but not white. “Common man” standard.

Question 34

Pygmalion Effect

Answer 34

Phenomenon whereby the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform.

Question 35

Why didn’t the Mississippi Chinese have any competition from whites?

Answer 35

• Segregation prevents whites from serving blacks.

* “Status groups hinder the strict carrying through of the sheer market principle”

Question 36

Why didn’t the Mississippi Chinese have any competition from blacks?

Answer 36

• Can’t afford to open stores; unable to get loans.
• Only successful in businesses shunned by whites.
• Path dependence; no experience.