Theories of Race & Ethnicity

Question 1

How is democratic racism mainly expressed?

Answer 1

Through the discourse of domination.

Question 2

What is included in the discourse of domination used to express democratic racism?

Answer 2

Myths, meanings, explanations, codes of meaning, rationalizations

Question 3

List the 3 discourses of domination discussed in class.

Answer 3

Discourse of colour-blindness
Discourse of equal opportunity
Discourse of blaming the victim

Question 4

List the three similarities between race and ethnicity discussed in class.

Answer 4

Both assume human origins are powerful shapers of difference.
Both claim to be natural categories
Both are socially constructed (but constructed differently)

Question 5

List the two differences between race and ethnicity discussed in class.

Answer 5

Race is more exclusive and less flexible than ethnicity
Race typically involves differential valuation on one’s moral worth

Question 6

In what field was primordialism developed?

Answer 6

Anthropology

Question 7

Define primordialism.

Answer 7

Ethnic membership derived at birth and represented a “given” characteristic of the social world

Question 8

How does primordialism view racial and ethnic identities?

Answer 8

They are essentially fixed

Question 9

What does primordialism believe about behaviours and attitudes?

Answer 9

They are tied to ethnicity or race.

Question 10

What is a basic assumption of primordialism?

Answer 10

Assumes that it is natural for hostility to exist between different ethnic groups.

Question 11

What does primordialism posit as the basic mechanism of racial solidarity?

Answer 11

Nepotism

Question 12

Why might a primordial perspective be insufficient as a racial/ethnic theory?

Answer 12

Doesn’t explain how ethnic groups coexist in peace
Conflict may not be borne simply from physical differences (conflicting groups are often physically indistinguishable)

Question 13

What was a focus of study for Robert Park?

Answer 13

Studied the processes through which racial groups come into contact and interact

Question 14

What was a prediction of Robert Park?

Answer 14

Predicted that racial bonds would disappear because of modernity and globalization

Question 15

Outline the race relations cycle

Answer 15

Contact; competition, accommodation; assimilation

Question 16

What did Marx believe about capitalism as it related to race and ethnicity?

Answer 16

Capitalism would break ties of nationality and tribe. People would be connected based on their class position.

Question 17

What did Marx believe would happen as capitalism continued to develop?

Answer 17

Other sources of identity would become less and less significant, eventually, the only defining character would be class position.

Question 18

Describe circumstantialism.

Answer 18

Ethnic groups arise from social and historical situations

Question 19

According to circumstantialism, what is the rationale for group formation?

Answer 19

Largely utilitarian

Question 20

How do circumstantialists view group ties?

Answer 20

Group ties are instrumental and convenient
They are largely a matter of circumstance and choice.

Question 21

Describe the theory of constructionism as it relates to race/ethnicity.

Answer 21

Focuses on the ways ethnic and racial identities are built, rebuilt, and sometimes dismantled over time.

Question 22

What is assumed about race and ethnicity in constructionism?

Answer 22

Assumes that ethnic and racial identities vary across space and change across time.
Assumes societal conditions and social change - the circumstances groups encounter - drive much of that dynamic.

Question 23

What is ethnicization?

Answer 23

The process by which groups of persons come to see itself as a distinct group linked by bonds of kinship or their equivalents by a shared history and by cultural symbols.

Question 24

What does social-psychological approaches to race and ethnicity focus on?

Answer 24

How prejudice and racism satisfy the psychic needs of certain people.

Question 25

What is the frustration-aggression thesis?

Answer 25

Prejudice and racism as forms of hostility arising from frustration. Racial and ethnic groups become safe targets (scapegoats) of displaced aggressions.

Question 26

What do normative theories posit about prejudice?

Answer 26

Prejudice is transmitted through socialization and the social circumstances that encourage discriminatory behaviour.

Question 27

Describe how a normative approach would describe race/ethnicity.

Answer 27

Ethnic and racial stereotypes and prejudices are taught by families, peer groups, and mass media.
Ethnic and racial prejudices and attitudes are learned through social interaction.

Question 28

Generally, how does the political economy approach perceive race and ethnicity?

Answer 28

As relational concepts;
Individuals belong to inherited social structures that enable but also contsrain their social actions

Question 29

How does class relate to race according a political economists?

Answer 29

Race and ethnicity have historically been defined as and often overlapped with class.
Class is both a fundamental relationship between groups and a structural condition within which these relations take place.

Question 30

What do many political economists argue about the origins of race problems?

Answer 30

Race problems begin as labour problems

Question 31

What do some versions of political economy focus on?

Answer 31

The specific issue of the relationship between racism and slavery.

Question 32

Why do some political economists focus specifically on the issue of race and slavery?

Answer 32

Racial ideologies served as justification for the allocation of one group of people (Africans) to positions of unfree labour in the capitalist system

Question 33

What do some political economists argue about slavery?

Answer 33

That slavery emerged not because of the belief a superior white “race” and inferior black race, but rather because of the need for cheap laboour.

Question 34

What is post-colonialism?

Answer 34

A continuous process of resistance to European hegemonic cultural ideas and practices while at the same time reconstructing local and more authentic identities of the colonized.

Question 35

Who are two important scholars of post-colonial studies?

Answer 35

Frantz Fanon
Edward Said

Question 36

What was Fanon’s position about race from a post-colonialist stand point?

Answer 36

Argued that colonization itself was a violent process with very traumatic effects on the colonized.

Question 37

What did Said say about post-colonialism?

Answer 37

Orientalism was a discourse and a powerful political tool in the hands of the West used to misinterpret Arab cultures.

Question 38

Describe what we mean by whiteness as a frame work?

Answer 38

Increased attention has been paid to “whiteness” as both a socially constructed ID, a structure of domination and as a condition that shapes the ways that urban environments are built and social relations are understood.

Question 39

What is white gaze?

Answer 39

Refers to a white way of looking at the world and often is the refusal to recognize the reality of racism and privilege.

Question 40

Who coined white privilege?

Answer 40

Peggy Mcintosh

Question 41

Describe the process of whiteness.

Answer 41

Process whereby power is attained and exercised and sustained in a society that is divided by colour.

Question 42

How does whiteness relate to systems?

Answer 42

Whiteness is about systems of domination that perpetuate forms of structural inequality.