Midterm exam

Question 1

Critical Thinking

Answer 1

• Critical thinking – intellectual skill of analysis; think with complexity
o Acquisition of new information
o Understand meaning given to information (socially constructed, progress, positivism)
o Sometimes counters common sense

Question 2

• Types of Knowledge

Answer 2

1) Personal and cultural: personal experiences with family and community
2) Popular: facts and beliefs perpetuated by media
3) Mainstream academic: concepts, paradigms, theories established in higher ed; “objective truth”
4) School knowledge: facts and concepts in textbooks, curriculum, pedagogy
5) Transformative academic knowledge: challenge mainstream academic knowledge and expand cannon

Question 3

Socialization

• As a process

Answer 3

o Systematic training into norms of society through social messages produce ideas, views, opinions, and values
 Make sense of the world
 Act appropriately
o Interplay between individuality and group membership;
o unique cocktail based on group memberships

Question 4

Socialization beliefs

Answer 4

• Believe we are impervious to socialization, objective, free
o Penalties for not conforming
• Socialization trains us into norms—don’t have to be inherently true to have real consequences
• Dominant groups:
o group at top of social hierarchy;
o valued more highly;
o set norms by which minoritized groups are judged;
o greater access to resources of society and benefit from inequality

Question 5

• Prejudice

Answer 5

• Prejudice is learned prejudgment toward social others
o Product of socialization; everyone has it; unavoidable
o Refers to internal feelings, attitudes, and assumptions (positive and negative)
o Based on limited knowledge, simplistic judgements applied to entire group
 product of segregation

Question 6

Stereotypes

Answer 6

•
o How prejudice begins as simplified characteristics attributed to entire group
o Our selective interpretation as “true” examples vs “exceptions” to the rule

Question 7

• Discrimination

Answer 7

o Prejudice + Action = Discrimination
o Action = ignoring, avoiding, excluding, ridicule, jokes, slander, threats, and violence
o Occurs at individual level

Question 8

Oppression and Power

Answer 8

• Prejudice and Discrimination + Power = Oppression (isms)

o Power – how those in power impose ideas and interests

Question 9

• Oppression:

Answer 9

set of policies, practices, traditions, norms, definitions, explanations which systematically exploit one social group to benefit another; unequal access to power
• A social group’s prejudice backed by historical, social and institutional power
• Automatic, built into society because dominant groups control institutions, prejudice magnified
• Consequence is social stratification

Question 10

• Oppression in four catergories

Answer 10

o Historical
o Ideological
o Institutional
o Cultural

Question 11

Internalized Oppression

Answer 11

• Internalized . . .
o Dominance: acting out (unintentionally) superiority
 Rationalizing it as natural or earned
 Segregating self
 Lack of interest in minoritized groups experiences
o Oppression: acting out (unintentionally) inferiority
 Believing others are more qualified
 Seeking approval/pleasing behaviors
 Enduring macroaggressions
 Low expectations
 Believing struggles are your fault

Question 12

Privilege

Answer 12

• Systematically conferred dominance and the institutional processes by which the beliefs and values of the dominant group are “made normal”
o Privilege key aspect of the dominant vs. minoritized groups relationship
o Rights, advantages, and protections enjoyed by some at expense of others

Question 13

Cultural Deficit Theory:

Answer 13

• explanation that minoritized groups do not achieve because they lack the appropriate cultural values

Question 14

Aspects of privilege

Answer 14

•
o External/structural dimensions: integration of dominant group norms into structures of society; definition of normal; invisibility of privilege
o Internal/attitudinal dimensions: belief that your group has the right to its position; internalization of messages of superiority; lack of humility about minoritized groups’ knowledge

Question 15

• Why is oppression it invisible?

Answer 15

o Focus on individual obscures group-level patterns
o Corporate-produced pop culture
 Simultaneously reinforces and denies the oppressive structures
 Trying to portray consumer choices as a source of uniqueness and freedom of choice, while actually reinforcing narrow choices
o Ideology of West as liberated
 Based in notion of progress

Question 16

Invisibility of Oppression

Answer 16

• Oppression is adaptable; hegemony- ideology and symbolic power
o Is morphs and changes its work to adapt to changing political, economic, social, cultural context
o Becomes invisible to us through its adaptation; only obvious in historical context

Question 17

Oppression as invisible sexism?

Answer 17

• Oppressive sexist discourses in advertising/media
o Sports, advertising, film, pornography, music
o Women’s subjugation is represented as empowerment, liberation, and control; actually setting strict parameters of acceptable sexuality
 E.g. 50 Shades of Gray,
• Direction of power flows in same direction
• Important to recognize the symbolic power of sexism that naturalizes misogyny and therefore neutralizes it.

Question 18

Racism

• Background

Answer 18

• Background
o White and “people of Color” – simplistic term; conflates complex dynamics of identity
o Race is not biological; it is a social idea or social construct
 race turned to as a scientific way to reconcile ideology of equality with reality of genocide and enslavement

Question 19

Rasism as a form of oppression

Answer 19

• Racism: form of oppression in which one racial group dominates over others.
o In US, Whites dominate
 Racism is white racial and cultural prejudice and discrimination, supported intentionally or unintentionally by institutional power, used to advantage White and disadvantage people of Color.
o Based in historical and institutional power (economic, political, social)

Question 20

• Challenges to Understanding Racism

Answer 20

o Binary: racist/not racist; focus on individual acts of meanness rather than structural systems that uphold racism
 False division (individual incidents vs. system) – if people do not recognize overtly racist acts in themselves, then they believe racism is not an issue for them
 Binary thinking absolves White people of action to challenge racist structures- No critical thinking about racism or use of position to challenge inequality
 Binary also personalizes racism and when White people acknowledge it, it and puts us on the “wrong side”

Question 21

White Racial Superiority

Answer 21

o White people receive countless messages that they are superior is subtle and obvious ways
 Beauty, “nude” or “flesh” color, goodness , over-representation
o Unnamed, neutral

Question 22

Internalized Racial Oppression

Answer 22

o Result of messages of White superiority are also received by people of Color
o Internalized racial oppression: occurs when a person of Color, consciously and subconsciously, accepts the negative representation or invisibility of people of Color in media, education, medicine, science, and all other aspects of society

Question 23

Intersectionality

Answer 23

o The reality that we simultaneously occupy both oppressed and privileged positions and these positions intersect in complex ways

Question 24

White supremacy

Answer 24

• White supremacy illustrates the ways oppression adapts to changing circumstances (like in the invisibility of oppression); within White supremacist systems, co-opts strategies to challenge racism
o E.g. multicultural education vs antiracist education

Question 25

Whiteness

Answer 25

• Whiteness refers to specific dimensions of racism that elevate White people over people of Color
o Basic rights, resources, and experiences assumed to be shared by all, only held by White people
•

Question 26

whiteness globally

Answer 26

Globally- White supremacy is obvious in colonial patterns of domination

Question 27

Mispercepetions about whiteness

Answer 27

o	Temporary “minority” status of White people
o	People of Color are too sensitive
o	Political Correctness
o	People of Color are just as racist
o	Racism is a thing of the past