Test 1 Flashcards
What is Sociology?
The academic discipline that studies group life: society, social interaction and human social behavior.
What do sociologists who study race and ethnicity focus on?
Historical and current conflicts between racial/ethnic groups, the emergence of racial and ethnic identities, racial/ethnic inequality, and priovellage, racial ideologies
What does Race Specifically refer to?
A group of people that share some socially defined physical charecteristics.
What are some example of racially defines physical charecteristics?
skin color, hair texture, or facial features
What is Ethnicity?
A group of people that share a culture, nationality, ancestry, and or language. Physical appearance is not associated.
What do social scientist think about race and ethnicity as?
A social construction, rather than biological reality
What is a social construction?
A term that describes how something has come to be through a social means uch as reinforcement through an instituion like education media etc
Are race and ethnicity mutually exclusive?
No. Think of frican american or an afro-latinx person
Why does the text use the term Racial/ethnic?
to acknowledge that race and ethnicity overlap. Black person who ientifies with latinx community. that are not exclusive terms
What dos the terminology People of Color represent?
Groups of color/ racial ethnic minority groups that have been subject to racial or ethnic discrimination in the US
Why would using the term non white be a form of benevolent racism.
It reinforces white as the norm to which all other groups are defined. Putting whittness at the front of things
Sociologists use the term minority or subordinate group to express what?
patterned inequality along group lines
What does a minority group refer to?
a group that is cumulitavely disadvantaged in proportion to their population size,
What is an example of a minority group?
Native americans because they are dispro portiantely impovershed-
What is a Majority or Dominant group?
A group that holds a disproportiante share of society’s power and resources. IE White people in US
What does Racism refer to?
Any attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, whether intentional or unintentional, which threaten, harm, or disadvantage members of one racial/ethnic group, or the group itself over another.
What is prejudice?
A belief that is not based upon evidence but instead upon preconceieved notions and stereotypes that are not subject to change even with contrary evidence.
What do most people think of when they hear racism?
Individual discrimination
What is individual discrimination?
discriminatory actions taken by individuals against members of a subordinate group
What is an example of individual discriinatiion?
not hiring people because they are black
What is institutional racism?
found in everday business prctices and polcies that disadvantage minorities and offer advantages to dominant group members
What is an example of institutional racism?
schools relying on personal property taxes for majority of funding but this system disadvantages poor communities and communities of color which translates into underfunded schools.
Race and racism are constantly changing, wht are some influences?
changing social contexts, societal dmands, social movements, varying political climates, etc
What is a color blind ideology?
dominates us culture// the idea that we don’t see race that racism is a thing of the past and if racial inequality exists it must be due to other factors such as cukture or personal ineptitude.
What is color consciousness?
Recognizing race and difference rather than pretending we din’t allows us to celebrate difference without implying difference is equivilent tinferiority
What is standpoint perspective?
The way we view the world is influenced by our particular soial statuses such as race class gender and sexuality
What is the emphasis and focus of socilogy on?
Patterns, not outliers or the expeptuons to the rules, but rather the groups and patterns of behaviors that exist as the majority for that group
When is it that we truly grow?
Through some discomfort
What is Self reflexivity?
examining our conscious and unconscious beliefs about race
what does it mean to be self reflexive?
to engage in ongoing convrsation wity ourselcves concerning what we are learning about race and to reflect on how it irrors our experiences or challenges our long held assumptions.
What does self reflexivity allow us to do?
recognize that we ar all oppressors. recognize not only societal racism but the inevitable racism within us.
What does paul Kivel argue we must do when engaging in anti racist work?
Trust the stories told by people of color concerning their experiences with racism and discrimination rather than disregarding them.
White people’s racism get’s reinforced by what institutions?
media, family, educational
racism backed by institutions can be understood as?
Prejudice plus power
What are cultural norms?
are unquestioned practices or beliefs and thus are invisible and taken for granted.
Racism manifests itself not only in attitudes, but in..?
cultural belief systems, individual actions, and institutional practices.
Because POC do not collectively hold enough ppositions of power they tend not to..?
have a smuch influence in creating cultural belief systems known as raciaal ideologies or institutional practices.
What is Racial Justice activism?
or antiracist activism, groups who actively engage to bring racism to an end.
What is Race Privilege?
The advantages associated with being amember of a society’s dominant race. Gives yout he privilege to think or even question race.
What people tend to be most inclined to question the validity of race?
Those who are in the racial margins, for example, biracial multiracial individuals.
Why do bi, and multi racial tend to question the valididty of race more?
Their very exsistence challenges our societal racial catergoraztion system, that you are or can be apart of one racial group. However, many are apart of more,
What do bi/ multiracial people expose in our society?
That race is not real in a biological sense
What does it mean to say that race is a Socially Constructed phenomenon?
Race is not biologically or genetically determined, racial categories, groupos of people differentiated by their physical characteristics, are given particular meaning by particular societies.
What is colorism?
lighter skinned citizens hold a higher social status.
When we think about race as a socail construction, what is an example from peru and brazil that backs up this notion?
Peru: race determined by educational attainment, social class, and certain cultural markers, fluid, can change
Brazil:colorism, lighterskinned people hold higher social status
Race changes across what?
Time and space.
In our society what do we attach to race?
Specific salient meaning toward physical charecteristics, that can result in some serious consequences
What are some examples of white groups that were once considered nonwhite
greek americans, italian americans, irish americans, and jewish americans. appearance never changed but their social status did.
In relation to Race Geneticists have not found what?
A gene that is strictly found in one racial group and not in another
In the US what is a major example of race as a social construction.
The cenus. Since the 1790’s the census catergraztion system has changed extisiveleyover time reinforcing tgat race is socially constructed.
What is a Quadroons?
The child of a white person and a mullatto.
What is a octoroon?
The child of a white person and a quadroon, thus someone having one black grandparent.