SOC Chapter 8
Structural Functionalism
- Functionalism sees any kind of persistent social phenomenon through the lens of its contribution to social stability. - Focuses on social solidarity and group cohesion - Positive feelings about one's group are strong ties that bind people together but this can cause negative feelings toward other groups.
Affirmative Action
- Policies, programs, and practices were established to help create opportunities for underrepresented minorities in housing, education, and employment. - Goals : promote diversity and inclusion, provide equal access, and reduce effects of historical discrimination.
Symbolic Interactionism
- focuses on how we perceive and interpret race in everyday life - The definition of race is not stable but rather changes over time as racial categories are contested and developed. - Race is not a preexisting biological category; it is a social one that is framed in terms of biological features. - Our identity is constructed in the negotiation between what we project and what others recognize.
Critical Race Theory
- the study of relationship among race, racism, and power. - Focus on intersectionality, or taking into account how race is also modified by class, gender, sexuality, or other social status. - Commitment to challenging racist laws and policies ands promoting social justice
Antiracist Allies
- whites and others working toward the goal to end racism - Gain greater awareness of how racism works and what they can do about it
Conflict Theory
Focuses on the struggle for power and control over scarce resources
What race has the highest life expectancy?
Hispanics
Double Consciousness
W. E. B. DuBois's term for the divided identity experienced by blacks in the United States
Pluralism
a cultural pattern of intergroup relations that encourages racial and ethnic variations and acceptance in a society.
Assimilation
a pattern of relations between ethnic or racial groups in which the minority group is absorbed into the mainstream or dominant group making society more homogenous.
Color-bind Racism
a set of beliefs that we live in a society where racial prejudice and discrimination no longer exists
Race
a socially defined category based on real or perceived biological differences between groups of people
Discrimination
an action or behavior that results in the unequal treatment of individuals because of their membership in a certain racial or ethnic group.
Race Consciousness
an awareness of the importance of race in our everyday lives and our dealings with social institutions.
Racism
an ideology or set of beliefs about the claimed superiority of one racial or ethnic group over another, provides this support; it is used to justify unequal social arrangements between the dominant and non-dominant groups.
Prejudice
an inflexible attitude about a particular group of people that is rooted in generalizations or stereotypes; very unlikely to change.
Implicit Bias
attitudes or stereotypes that are embedded at an unconscious level and may influence our perceptions, influences, and actions.
Internal Colonialism
describes the exploitation of a minority group within the dominant group's own borders.
Institutional Discrimination
discrimination carried out by institutions that effects all member of a group that come in contact with it.
Individual Discrimination
discrimination of one person to another
Symbolic Ethnicity
ethnic identity that occur only on special occasions.
Miscegenation
he romantic, sexual, or martial relationship between people of different races
Cultural Appropriation
occurs when members of the dominant group adopt, co-opt, or otherwise take cultural elements from a marginalized group and use them for their own advantage.
Minority Group
people who are recognized as belonging to a social category and who suffer from unequal treatment as the result of that status.
Segregation
physical and legal separation of groups by race or ethnicity
Passing
presenting yourself as a member of a different group than the stigmatized group to which you belong.
colonialism
refers to a policy whereby a stonier nation takes control of a weaker nation in order to extend the stronger nation's territory
Microaggressions
small-scale racial slights, insults, and misperceptions that play out in everyday interactions between people.
Ethnicity
social category that is applied to a group with a shared ancestry or cultural heritage.
White Nationalism
the belief that the nation should be built around a white identity that is reflected in religion, politics, economics, and culture.
Reverse Racism
the claim that whites can also suffer discrimination based on their race and thus can experience the same kinds of disadvantages that minority groups have regularly encountered.
Genocide
the deliberate and systematic extermination of a racial, ethnic, national, or cultural group.
Population Transfer
the forcible removal of a group of people from the territory they have occupied.
Cultural Assimilation
the process by which racial minority groups are absorbed into the dominant group by adopting the dominant group's culture.
Racial Assimilation
the process by which racial minority groups are absorbed into the dominant group through marriage.
Embodied Identity
the way we are perceived in the physical world
Multiculturalism
tolerance of racial and ethnic differences.
Privilege
unearned advantage according to members of dominant social groups
Situational Ethnicity
when we deliberately assert our ethnicity in some situations while downplaying it in others.