Module 7: Race and Ethnicity

Question 1

census

Answer 1

a count of the population every 10 years as required by the Constitution

Question 2

race

Answer 2

system that humans created to classify and stratify groups of people based mostly on skin tone

Question 3

ethnicity

Answer 3

common culture, religion, history, or ancestry shared by a group of people

Question 4

one-drop rule

Answer 4

laws that used to be in many states, which said that any person with any African ancestry at all was Black, a custom that hasn’t gone away (Obama)

Question 5

social construct

Answer 5

a concept that humans invented and gave meaning to in order to understand or justify some dimension of the social world

Question 6

Eugenics

Answer 6

idea that we can actively improve the genetic profile of humans, and it led to the forced sterilizations of groups of people labeled as unfit to reproduce

Question 7

phenotype

Answer 7

set of visible features or characteristics, like the color of our skin, hair, and eyes

Question 8

Bias

Answer 8

tendency to view things in a particular way, regardless of the details of the specific situation

Question 9

implicit bias

Answer 9

association our minds make between seemingly unrelated things

Question 10

explicit bias

Answer 10

bias that we are openly and consciously aware of, has declined over time

Question 11

stereotypes

Answer 11

widely-shared perceptions about the personal characteristics, tendencies, or abilities of members of a particular group, like intelligence, personality, physical features, preferences, aggressiveness, or criminality

Question 12

prejudices

Answer 12

preconceived beliefs, attitudes, and opinions about members of a group

Question 13

group threat theory

Answer 13

argues that prejudices grow stronger if we begin to think of another group as an economic, political, or cultural threat

Question 14

ultimate attribution error

Answer 14

tendency to perceive undesirable characteristics or behaviors exhibited by members of another group as an innate or inherent part of their personality or essence - negative behavior is seen as just who they are, and positive is attributed to external factors

Question 15

cognitive dissonance

Answer 15

psychological state in which our preexisting ideas do not match what we see with our own eyes - seeing positive behaviors from people we think of negatively

Question 16

Gordon Allport’s contact theory

Answer 16

helps explain how interaction with members of other groups affects prejudicial benefits. interaction and exposure can be beneficial but only under conditions: interactions has to occur in collaborative, voluntary, and non-competitive space, multiple times, personal informal one on one interactions, legal, and setting allows participating as equals

Question 17

audit study

Answer 17

Sociological method in which applicants are matched according to all characteristics that would make them more or less attractive and then sent out as pairs to apply for various services or products

Question 18

discrimination

Answer 18

unjust treatment of different groups of people

Question 19

racism

Answer 19

set of beliefs, ideologies, or institutional practices that are based on the idea that one racial group is biologically or culturally inferior to another group

Question 20

institutional racism

Answer 20

the ways that core institutions, like the legal, educational, and criminal justice systems, are embedded with racial biases and practices that reproduce racial inequality

Question 21

affirmative action

Answer 21

policies or programs that seek to address past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity now

Question 22

life expectancy

Answer 22

statistical measure of how long people can expect to live, on average

Question 23

social concept of “minority group”

Answer 23

universal
visibly different (physical appearance, language, dress)
lacking power
subject to prejudice
subject to differential treatment (discrimination)

Question 24

structural power differences

Answer 24

unequal treatment at the hands of institutions

Question 25

cultural power differences

Answer 25

physical or cultural traits of the minority group are defined as inferior to those of the dominant group

Question 26

Critical Race Theory

Answer 26

race engrained in the fabric of US society
institutional racism is pervasive
power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalization of POC

Question 27

racially-inclusive sociological imagination

Answer 27

shift discourse past Black/White narrative to highlight processes and
mechanism of racial inequality that affect ALL racial/ethnic minorities

transfer victimization into empowerment (agency, BLM)

focus on what race does, how it is used and operates through social
interaction and how institutional conditions maintain racial inequality