Chapter 8: Race and Ethnicity as Lived Experience

Which term refers to romantic, sexual, or marital relationships between people of different races?

miscegenation

an inflexible attitude about a particular group of people that is rooted in generalizations or stereotypes

prejudice

A teenager acknowledges her Irish heritage by wearing green, participating in a parade, and eating corned beef and cabbage only on St. Patrick's Day.

symbolic ethnicity

race

Someone assumes a man is Jewish because of his last name and physical appearance, A Hindu man of the Shudra caste seeks a Shudra bride.

Which of the following statements about minority groups are correct?

A minority group is a social group that is systematically denied the same access to power and resources available to society's dominant groups, Membership in a minority group may serve as a kind of "master status" that overrides any other status, such as gender or age.

Ireland

Eleven percent of the U.S. population claims heritage from this country.

Which of the following immigrant groups were once not considered white but are now?

Italians, Irish, Jewish

merging into the larger culture and shedding one's separate identity

assimilation

engaged coexistence of distinct racial or ethnic groups

pluralism

In what year do demographers predict that the white non-Hispanic population will fall below 50 percent?

2042

religion

A Hindu woman wears a bindi (dot) on her forehead, A Jewish man wears a kippah (skullcap) to work.

Race is more meaningful to us on a social level than it is on a biological level.

True

Which statements about race are correct?

Race is a social construct. race is about bloodlines.

The term "double-consciousness" was coined by which famous sociologist?

W.E.B. Du Bois

the belief that all Jewish people are cheap

prejudice

the belief that Asians are inherently better than whites

racism

In what year did the Supreme Court rule that laws against interracial marriage were unconstitutional?

1967

Which of the following statements regarding differences between race and ethnicity are correct?

African American and Asian are considered races in the United States, while Hispanic or Latino are considered ethnicities, Race is typically associated with physical differences, while ethnicity is associated with language, religion, or other cultural factors.

After "White, non-Hispanic" (62.6 percent of the U.S. population) which is the next-largest ethnic category in the United States?

Hispanic or Latino

What is the definition of pluralism?

a cultural pattern of intergroup relations that encourages racial and ethnic variation and acceptance within society.

Which of the following is an example of passing?

A college student works hard to change her accent, style of dress, and even purchases a "miracle skin-whitening cream" in attempt to disguise her ethnic origin.

As your textbook indicates, a number of scholars have written about racial privilege including W. E. B. Du Bois and Peggy McIntosh. McIntosh likens white privilege to a(n) invisible knapsack; it is something that one group benefits from while mostly being unaware of it. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva suggests that colorblindness, or the attempt to make race invisible and inconsequential, is just a new form of racism.

Correct

Surveys conducted in 2013 and 2014 found that 20 percent of Americans believed that race relations had gotten better since the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, while 38 percent said they had gotten worse. Additionally, 39 percent of whites and 49 percent of blacks believed that race relations will always be a problem in the United States.

Correct

Sociologists accept the notion that race has an objective or scientific meaning but also seek to understand why race continues to play such a critical role in society.

False

Israel

Free ten-day educational trips are available to this country for certain eighteen- to twenty-six-year-olds, Certain American families are encouraged to travel to this country for celebrations.

During what month and year did the United States have a majority of births made up by Latino, African American, Asian, and mixed-race babies during the previous twelve-month cycle?

July 2011

Place the events in chronological order.

Native Americans follow the Trail of Tears, The G.I. Bill of Rights provides funding for college or vocational education and home loans to returning World War II veterans, Jackie Robinson breaks Major League Baseball's color barrier, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlaws racial discrimination, In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court strikes down anti-miscegenation laws.

Marco is a fourth-generation Mexican American. Both his grandparents and parents were born in the United States. Neither he nor his parents have learned Spanish and he does not often think of his heritage. Most of his friends do not think of him as Hispanic or Latino. However, on Cinco de Mayo, Marco likes to go out and celebrate by eating Mexican food and wearing a sombrero. Marco's relationship with his ethnicity can be described as what?

Symbolic

ethnicity

The parents of a Hindu girl in Chicago send her to Hindu language school, A college student loves to cook using her Jewish grandmother's recipes.

What have modern scientists discovered about race?

They have discovered that the lines among race are blurry, rather than fixed.

Ghana

This country offers heritage tours of forts and issues special visas for certain visitors.

Place each author's major book about race in order of publication from first to last.

William Julius Wilson wrote about the importance of economic factors in maintaining racial inequality in The Declining Significance of Race, Michael Omi and Howard Winant wrote about the social construction of race in Racial Formation in the United States, Tomas Almaguer wrote about historical race relations in California in Racial Fault Lines.

Which three beliefs characterize racism?

a belief that bloodlines or physical characteristics are linked to distinct cultures, behaviors, and intellectual abilities, a belief that certain groups are, by virtue of their bloodlines or physical characteristics, superior to others, a belief that humans are divided into distinct bloodlines and/or physical types

Racial and ethnic differences create intergroup conflict; minority and majority groups have different interests and may find themselves at odds as they attempt to secure and protect their interests.

conflict theory

A very tanned white businessman in Texas adopts a stereotyped Hispanic persona to help him sell used cars. He creates commercials in which he speaks in an accent, wears a sombrero and a poncho, and plays "Jarabe Tapatío," or "The Mexican Hat Dance" song in the background. What is this an example of?

cultural appropriation

Rachel Dolezal's story highlights which aspect(s) of race?

cultural appropriation, passing, the social construction of race

A white man places a rental property he owns on Craigslist to rent it out for the next year. He receives two very promising applications from individuals who both are college educated and hold well-paying jobs. He decides not to rent his house to the first applicant simply because he is Arab American and rents it to the second applicant, who is white. What is this an example of?

discrimination

consistently refusing to rent an apartment to Arab Americans who are financially qualified

discrimination

unequal treatment of individuals based on their membership in a social group

discrimination

Which factors contributed to the decline and near-disintegration of Native American cultures in North America following the arrival of European explorers in the late fifteenth century?

disease, military technology, forced relocation, forced assimilation

Members of minority groups tend to practice high rates of in-group marriage. What is this practice known as?

endogamy

The 1994 treatment of the Tutsis by the Hutus in Rwanda was an example of what?

genocide

individual discrimination

giving a student a lower grade on a paper because he is Hispanic

A young man moves with his family to the United States from Ecuador. They continue to participate in traditional Ecuadorian cultural activities at home (food, dress, language, etc.) but also try to assimilate in the community. However, they have no intentions of hiding their heritage from anyone.

neither symbolic nor situational ethnicity

a set of beliefs about the claimed superiority of one racial or ethnic group

racism

institutional discrimination

redlining, legal segregation

involuntary separation of groups by legal or social means, based on race or ethnicity

segregation

A woman's grandparents were immigrants from Syria to the United States. She used to live in rural Oklahoma where she worked hard to disguise her ethnic heritage for fear of negative attitudes toward her. She recently moved to Dearborn, Michigan where there is a large population of Arab Americans and she has now begun taking pride in her ethnic heritage.

situational ethnicity

Racial and ethnic differences are a necessary part of society. Even racial inequality has functions that help maintain social order.

structural functionalism

Race and ethnicity are part of our identity as displayed through our presentation of self.

symbolic interactionism

Which of the following is the definition of cultural appropriation?

the adoption of cultural elements belonging to an oppressed group of members of the dominant group, without permission and often for the dominant group's gain.