Lecture 14 Flashcards
What is Race?
A system of classification based on people sharing specific physical traits,
which people in society treat as socially important and understand to be
biologically transmitted.
What is Ethnicity?
Important category of group membership, which is based on a shared cultural
heritage and a common identity held together by shared language, traditions,
rituals, and behaviours
How do we deal with human variety ?
When facing a great gradation of physical
difference we magnify and stereotype certain traits
● People have a built in tendency to simplify and make distinctions
How do we treat racial categories? (how do we rank them)
But we historically ranked races
Separate and Unequal
What is Essentialism?
tendency of some to see the ideas of
race and ethnicity as permanent, natural human categories.
- Fixed and hereditary
How does Symbolic Interactionism look at race?
Our basic Knowledge comes from reinforced information from interactions.
When people interact, they do so with the understanding that their respective
perceptions of reality are related to one another. And, when we are interacting
together, our common knowledge of reality becomes reinforced.
So, Race would be a result of building up these categories and how we treat those in the categories in interactions with others
Summarize “How Race Was Made”/ John Biewen:
He explains how “whiteness” appeared
- In early days, slavery wasn’t based on skin tone
Gomes de Zurara = Guy who kicked off race, by saying disrespectful shit about african ppl (like they lived like beasts)
When in History was “Whiteness Invented”
● Enlightenment
● Racial science
1750’s ish
What is the colonial context to racism?
Colonial expeditions by the British, French, and others
Introduction to New Peoples (Indigenous Groups)
- People in positions of power define those who they exploit define them as essentially different
Indigenous peoples
Enslaved populations
Explain the three justifications of the colonial project?
- Terra Nullius
- Claiming land for God (The “burden of white man”)
- Dehumanization
Terra Nullius
View of land without settlement or active cultivation as empty
Claiming land for God (The “burden of white man”)
Duty to “uncivilized” people to teach about true religion and proper society
Dehumanization
Conceptualization of non-European populations as less than human
What is Racial determinism?
The human species are divided into biologically distinct races,
● Fundamental differences in abilities and characters between the different racial groups.
What were Race categories used to justify? (2 things)
● Used to justify slavery and colonial genocide
● To execute physical and cultural genocide and to take over
lands and resources
How is America a “Slave Society”
much of the western world was organized around slavery and colonial conquest
● Economy based on slavery
textile mills in the “free” North were fed by cotton from the South collected by slaves
What is Elizabeth Key story?
White dad, black mom
- Usually what u are is determined by dad
- He demanded she be freed
- Court changed it so the mother counts (she not freed)
What is the story of John Punch?
Punch (black man) and two other men (a Dutchman and a Scotsman) run away.
- Two men given four years
- Punch given lifetime enslavement
