SOC 202: Ethnic Race Minorities in the US

Scientific Racism

: using science to prove that innate racial inferiority of some groups and the superiority of others

Internal Colonialism Theory

.: the argument that colonialism, which is a process by which one country dominates another by stripping it of it's human and economic resources, can actually take place within one country..dominant racial groups establish a system of and exploitation of a subordinate racial group within their own nation in ways that benefit them

4 Stages of Assimilation

1. contatct ,2. conflict, 3, accomodation, 4. assimilation complete

Culture of meritocracy

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Miscegenation

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People of color vs. non-whites -Why do sociologists tend to prefer one term over the other?

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Social Construction of Whiteness: How did Whiteness come about (and examples)?

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Social location

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The US census and social constructions of race -outdated racial terms/ slurs that are now generally considered inappropriate

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Positive vs. Negative Eugenics

: -Eugenics: a now discredited scientific idea that the healthiest and ablest should encouraged to have more children for the betterment of society. A positive form of

Immigrant minorities v Colonized Minorities

: - immigrant minorities: subordinate groups who willingly choose to immigrate to a country -colonized minorities: groups that are forced to participate in another society; the opposite of an immigrant minority or voluntary minority. Generally, people of color in the United States can be understood as colonized minorities.

Colorblind Ideology & Colorblind Racism

: -colorblind ideology: racial ideology that has dominated US culture throughout the post-civil rights era; includes the ideas that we don't see race, that racism is a thing of the past, and that if racial inequality still exists, it must be due to other factors, such as culture or personal ineptitude -

Melting Pot vs. Salad Bowl

: -melting pot: the idea that diverse stream of immigrants come to America and eventually merge into another distinct group, that of the "American" -salad bowl:

Majority vs. Minority

: -majority (dominant group): a group with disproportionate share of society's goods, power, and resources. In terms of race, whites are the dominant majority group in the United States -minority (subordinate group): from a sociological perspective, a minority group does not refer to a statistical minority (a group smaller in size. Instead, sociologists are referring to a group that is cumulatively disadvantaged in proportion to their population size; they have less than their proportionate share of society's goods and resources

Sociological Imagination

: a concept introduced by C. Wright Mills to help us understand the way history, society, and biography intersect; in other words. the sociological imagination is a perspective that encourages us to understand our lives in as historically and culturally situated

Phrenology

: a now defunct branch of science that compared the skull sizes of various racial groups and used those data to try and determine intelligence, social and cultural characteristics, and the presumed innate group differences between the races

Racial Democracy

: a system in which all racial groups share in a democracy and thus hold at least a minimum of political power

Racial Dictatorship

: a system in which most or all racial minority groups are marginalized from the political process

Institutionalized racism

: a type of racism that is harder to identify than individual discrimination because it is not found in individual actions but in everyday business practices and policies that disadvantage minorities and offer advantages to dominant group members; it is often written off as "just the way things are"

White Racial Frame

: a worldview that includes racial beliefs and, racially loaded terms, racialized images, verbal connotations, racialized emotions, and interpretations as well as discriminatory actions that help justify ongoing racism, frames help us make sense of our world by structuring our thinking and influencing what we see, or fail to see, in our daily lives,

Discrimination vs. prejudice

: discrimination: the act prejudice: a belief that is not based upon evidence but instead upon preconceived notions and stereotypes that are not subject to change even when confronted with contrary evidence

Intersectionality

: focuses on the interactions between different systems of oppression and the fact that intersections of these different systems results in a new and different form of oppression ; instead of treating status hierarchies as separate and discrete phenomena, they are intertwined and relational

Hidden transcript vs. Public transcript

: hidden : a form of subordinate group resistance;the actions and

Symbolic Ethnicity

: individualistic expression of ethnicity that celebrate Americans' ethnic heritage through lesiure-time activities, such as St. Patrick's day celebrations for Irish Americans, and St. Joseph's day for Italian Americans; these claims to an ethnic heritage are merely symbolic because they do not challenge an individual's middle class, mainstream American status

Racial Challenge

: interactions that make whites account for their whiteness. A racial challenge can refer to a charge of racism, or it can be something more moderate, such as pointing out that on an otherwise multiracial campus, a campus organization is all-white or a syllabus for a class includes only white writers

Marxist Theory

: marxists generally view the world as stratified along class lines. when marxists look at racial inequality, they see it as an extension of capitalist exploitation; they view capitalists as benefitting from racial inequality as well as class inequality

Diversity Ideology

: notions of diversity were originally intended to advocate for racial and gender equality, instead they result in the maintenance of highly inequitable environment

Colorism

: practice whereby darker-skinned latinos, asian americans, and african americans are more negatively perceived and discriminated against by whites and within their own communities and lighter-skinned members are highly valued

Race vs ethnicity vs ancestry

: race: specifically refers to a group of people who share socially defined characteristics, for instance, skin color, hair texture, or facial features ethnicity: a group of people who share a culture, not nationality, ancestry, and /or language; physical appearance ancestry:

Structure

: refers to patterns of behavior and relationships between groups in a society the way norms and social institutions become embedded, and the ways these can begin to shape the behavior or individual actors within a social system

One-drop Rule

: social norm that a single drop of "black blood" made a person black

Critical Race Theory

: social scientific theoretical position that focuses on a critical examination of society and culture; is particularly interested in the intersection of race, law, and culture and the way ideaologies of assmiliation and color-blindless actually help perpetuate white dominance instead of eliminating it

Radicalized Space

: space generally regarded as reserved for one race and not another; most often, it is a space where whites feel comfortable and people of color do not feel welcome

Counterstories

: stories told by people of color (or members of nondominant groups) to reflect their view of the world from their particular social location Counterstories challenge the dominant narratives relayed through history textbooks

Split Labor Market Theory

: the belief that workers are split into 2 classes; higher paid workers, and lower paid workers. this is usually split across racial and ethnic lines

Agency

: the extent to which a group of people have the ability to act and define their own status. People are not simply pawns existing within a larger social structure; they have AGENCY

White Privilege

: the rights, benefits, and advantages enjoyed by white people, or people perceived as white, or the immunity granted to whites that is not granted to people of color; white privilege exempts white people from certain liabilities others are burdened with.

Radicalized Social Systems Theory

: the ways all aspects of society, from economy to politics, and ideaologies, are structured by the placement of individuals in racial categories. these categories are not simply different, they are hierarchical, and thus they inform social relations between groups

Racial Formation Theory

: the ways racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed over time.

Ethnicity Paradigm

: view that race is part of ethnicity -but a less important factor in people's live than ethnicity-and that ethnicity is equated with culture. this perspective shifted understandings of race from a biological to a sociological phenomenom, and so was considered progressive for it's time

Racial Socialization

: when we are taught in our families, in schools, and through the media that our race matters

Racialization of State Policy

:the way gov't policies have impaired the ability of blacks to accumulate wealth and facilitated white wealth accumulation, with slavery being the most blatant example

Functionalism vs Conflict Theory v Symbolic Interactionalism -What are the fundamental components of their perspectives? How do they differ from one another? -What are their general view points on race? -More specifically, what are each of these perspectives' important theories/ contributions to understanding race sociologically?

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