Chapter 3: Science and the Sociology of Race

Model Minority

A minority group that has succeeded in American society, specifically evidenced by their success in educational institutions.

Phrenology

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

Racial Orthodoxy

A set of beliefs, narratives, and practices within an organization, supported by discourse, that make up commonly recognized understandings of race.

Racialized Social Systems

A way to move sociology away from a focus on prejudice, social psychology, and the notion that racism amounted to a set of ideas, and toward a more structural understanding of racism.

Symbolic Interactionism

Argues that we can understand society and social structures through a focus on small-scale human interactions, the use of symbols in interaction, and the meanings we assign to symbols.

Split Labor Market Theory

Both race and class contribute to inequality.

Internal Colonialism Theory

Colonialism, the process through which one country dominates another by stripping it of its human and economic resources, can actually take place within one country.

Genetic Options Theory

Consumers choose which aspects of their ancestry to embrace and which to disregard.

Systemic Racism

Deeply rooted, institutionalized racial oppression of people of color by whites.

Status Inequalities

Differences in prestige and honor.

Conflict Perspective

Emphasizes conflict between dominant and subordinate groups over scarce and valued resources in a society.

Functionalist Perspective

Emphasizes social order over conflict: the value of consensus, harmony, and stability for a society, and the interdependence of social systems.

Critical Race Theory

Ideologies of assimilation and color-blindness actually help perpetuate white dominance rather than eliminate it.

Anglo-Conformity

Instead of becoming a melting pot, in which all groups come together and forge a new identity, all groups coming to the US are expected to drop their cultural identities in favor of an Anglo-American culture.

Antimiscegenation Laws

Laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

Colonized Minorities

Members of groups that are forced to participate in another society.

Immigrant Minorities

Members of subordinate groups who willingly choose to immigrate to a country.

Cultural Pluralism

Numerous ethnicities are capable of coexisting without threatening the dominant culture.

Genome Geography

Portions of a genetic sequence are associated with specific geographic locations.

White Racial Frame

Racial beliefs, racially loaded terms, racialized images, verbal connotations, racialized emotions and interpretations, as well as discriminatory actions that help justify ongoing racism.

Ethnic Stratification

The accommodation stage could result in a subordinate status for immigrants.

Canon

The body of knowledge considered fundamental to an academic discipline.

Human Genome

The genetic sequence of the human species.

Eugenics

The healthiest and ablest should be encouraged to have more children for the betterment of society.

Melting Pot

The idea that diverse streams of immigrants come to America and eventually merge into another distinct group, that of the "American".

Diversity Ideology

The institutional co-optation of notions of diversity that originally emerged out of the civil rights movement.

Intersectionality

The interactions between different systems of oppression.

Racial Formations

The way racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed over time.

Counterstories

Told by people of color to reflect their view of the world from their particular social location.

Scientific Racism

Using science to prove the innate racial inferiority of some groups and the superiority of others.

Marxist Theories

View the world as stratified along class lines.

Ethnicity Paradigm

Viewed race as part of ethnicity but as a less important factor in people's lives than ethnicity and equated ethnicity with culture.

Racialized Medicine

When race is treated as a genetic fact for medical purposes.