Race & Ethnicity (Ch. 9-11)

The practice known as a "Mississippi appendectomy" is best described by which of the following?

a forced sterilization performed on a poor black woman in the South as practice for medical residents at teaching hospitals

Color Blindness

A society in which racial differences exist but no one pays them heed, a world in which race no longer serves as the basis for social stigmatization, discrimination, inequality, or injustice. (page 395)

When we say that interactions operate at the "mezzanine level of social structure," what does that mean?

Interactions between people and the styles of interactions others observe of people in groups are patterned, reflect social structure, and are sometimes generalized into racial assumptions.

Which of the following organizations referenced in the text is most similar to the Mardi Gras balls introduced in the clip?

Jack and Jill of America

Homophily

Literally meaning "love of the same," homophily refers to the practice of associating with people like you. (page 327)

According to sociologist Kenneth Clark, for some inner-city African American and Latina women, an out-of-wedlock birth is:

a symbol of their womanhood

In the 1800s, immigration rates among Asian men to the West Coast were much higher than immigration rates among Asian women. Many Asian men remained single due in part to a combination of these differential rates of immigration and:

antimiscegenation laws criminalizing interracial marriage and sex

Because many American Indians are married to non-American Indians, they often find themselves looking through the cultural lens of their partners and expanding their perspective. This type of emotional work is called:

cultural labor

In 1930s America, economic pressures resulted in which of the following impacts for nonwhite families?

efforts to force repatriations of Mexicans and Mexican Americans to Mexico

A cultural legacy of devaluing black women's beauty, external control of black women's sexuality, and the historical impact of patterns of mating and family formation between black men and women are possible explanations for which of the following contemporary trends?

exclusion of black women as potential mates (as compared to white, Latina, and Asian women) on Internet dating sites

Formalized legal restrictions against interracial marriages during the 1950s was a type of:

external sanction

According to the clip from White Like Me, unemployment insurance, the GI bill, and FHA loans all disproportionally benefited

middle-class whites

When people argue that race is marked, or socially constructed, what are they referring to?

the way that race "imposes itself on you" through America's racial taxonomy

The "cool pose" of many young black men; the overt sexism and machismo of some Latino young men; and the in-your-face sexual bravado of some young white fraternity brothers are all examples of:

the ways in which performances of masculinity vary by race

Because of many factors—including, but not limited to, the history of male and female roles under slavery and the interaction patterns between men and women in families—black men and women tend to differ in their views of gender roles and expectations. In terms of the meaning of race and/or gender in understanding this difference, we might say that:

to fully appreciate the nuance of these differences, we have to take into account both gendered and racial aspects of identity

Double Consciousness

An insider's vantage point, which suggests that nonwhites have a double vision as part of a racial survival strategy used to navigate white America. (page 378)

Based on what you know from the clip, what would most likely be Tim Wise's perspective on the color-blind racial ideal described in the text?

He would argue that the color-blind perspective ignores the many ways that white people are privileged.

Marriage and Divorce

If the U.S. has a fairly high marriage rate, it has an enormously high divorce rate, ranking second only to Aruba in the number of divorces per 1,000 people. Divorce rates have risen since the 1970s, but like marriage rates, they fluctuate widely across race. (page 355)

Cultural Labor

Interracial relationships require each person to engage in a fair amount of cultural labor, which involves learning the history and culture of one another's racial and ethnic identities. Cultural labor requires broadening your cultural competence, stepping out of your comfort zone, and trying as much as possible to adopt another perspective on the world. (page 369)

Changing Institutions

It is difficult to imagine changing patterns of racial interaction in any far-reaching way without also reconstructing the institutional frameworks within which they unfold. (page 416)

Multiculturalism

Much like color blindness, multiculturalism aspires to a world in which all persons' inherent dignity as human beings is recognized. But in contrast to color blindness, which hopes to abolish race as a relevant criterion in law, public policy, and everyday social practices, multiculturalism envisions a society in which racial diversity is taken fully into account and valued for its own sake. (page 398)

Hate Groups

Racist hate groups present a threat to a multiracial democratic society and are often closely tied with white nationalist organizations, which believe whites to be superior to African Americans and Hispanics and vie for a separate, exclusively white country. (page 336)

Political Correctness

Some commentators have suggested that American civil society is now guided by an ethic of "political correctness," which discourages free thought and honest debate, because people are afraid to offend their fellow citizens or, worst of all, to be labeled as "racists." In its most recent incarnation, political correctness usually refers to discourse that, while designed to minimize offense to marginalized groups, ends up censoring certain speech or attitudes deemed off-limits. (page 334)

Ethnic Nationalism

When racial integration did not lead to liberation but only to more oppression for many nonwhites, racial segregation and complete independence from whites was the only answer. Ambassadors of ethnic nationalism resist cultural and social assimilation and instead champion self-determination, race pride, separatism, and, in some cases, the creation of an independent nation based on racial identity. (page 322)

Which of the following is an accurate explanation for why homosexuality is viewed by some African Americans as a predominantly "white" phenomenon?

because the social construction of black sexuality precludes the possibility of homosexuality

Sheila is a black executive at a company that is almost entirely all-white. She jokes with her mother that when she goes to work she "checks her blackness at the door." Erving Goffman might say that at work she is her _________ self.

front stage

Data from a study of contemporary Internet (online) dating showed that the group of women most likely to exclude men from their own racial category as potential mates was:

heterosexual Asian women

A form of black communication style involves indirect questioning and acknowledgement of information. For example, Sharon offhandedly and jokingly comments about her sister Dee's weight gain rather than asking Dee outright if she is pregnant. This communication style is called:

signifying

Alabama did not remove language from its state constitution prohibiting interracial marriage until 2000. Though not legally binding, the language operated as a powerful

symbol

One claim about the phenomenon referred to as the "new black nativism," a practice of limiting entry into the legitimate ranks of being black in America primarily to those descendent from American slavery, is:

that it is responsible for a tendency to define blackness in mostly negative terms (for example, as opposed to being white)

The process of immigration can be a great stressor for families coming to the United States. For example, in the United States, Hmong kinship networks of extended family relationships are limited as Hmong people are expected to adopt the nuclear family model. This pressure demonstrates that:

the definition of family is not the same across racial-ethnic groups, and the expectation to conform can take a toll on families

A white woman is driving through an unfamiliar neighborhood and becomes frightened when she sees black people on the street corner waving and gesticulating at her. They are trying to signal to her that she is going the wrong way on a one way street, but she thinks they are threatening her. What dynamic does this example display best?

the need for vigilant reflexivity when it comes to cross-racial communication

Interaction Order

The face-to-face domain of social life, the mezzanine level between large-scale structure and individual psychology. (page 377)

Single Motherhood

A mother not living with a spouse or partner, who has most of the responsibilities in raising her child or children. At least since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, single mothers have been stereotyped as immoral delinquents who have more children in order to collect bigger welfare checks. But the truth is that single mothers are "a remarkably diverse group who have arrived at single parenthood through divergent, and often class-segregated paths." (page 375)

Identity Politics

Arising in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, identity politics refers to political action intended to address the unique interests and hardships of groups (such as nonwhites, women, and gays) who historically have faced oppression and who continue to be excluded from mainstream society. (page 332)

Collective Action

As history attests, bold reform and transformative social change also are brought about (perhaps most consequentially) through public protest: through strikes, sustained boycotts, public demonstrations, civil disobedience, and racial uprisings. To participate in collective political action—to employ the time-honored methods of public protest—is to engage as fully and completely as possible in civil society and to refuse to "become victims in a democratic society." (page 418)

Authenticity

Being true to one's ethnic or racial heritage, including in that discussion the choice of some whites to reject whiteness for an alternative ethnic identity. (page 382)

Religious Associations

By and large, religious associations do not overcome racial divides; in fact, the opposite is true. Religious life is racialized to a high degree. Certain religions, denominations within religions, and places of worship within denominations correspond to certain racial and ethnic groups. (page 344)

Out-of-Wedlock Births

Children who are born to parents who are not married at the time of the birth. In 2011, out-of-wedlock births accounted for 41% of all births in the United States. Out-of-wedlock births have increased steadily over the last few decades. In fact, the number of American children living in single-parent homes nearly doubled between 1960 and 2010. In 1970, only 12% of all children lived with one parent; in 2000, 25% of children did. Today, a third of all American children are not being raised by two parents, the majority of whom live in single-mother households. (page 371)

Southern whites, like those described in the clip, were prolific in creating associations and organizations in the postwar era (compared to northern whites and blacks), motivated in large part by their desire to exclude African Americans and reestablish the racial order.

False

Brave New Families

In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled antimiscegenation laws unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia, marking a significant civil rights victory. Today the United States is home to over 4.8 million interracially married couples; that's one in twelve. (page 358)

Racial Democracy

In the abstract, racial justice means that persons of all racial groups draw returns on societal resources commensurate with the value they themselves have added to them; moreover, all are recognized in their full humanity as contributors to the social whole. (page 403)

Reflexivity

The defensive reaction many privileged whites have to being confronted with societal racism. (page 409)

Interracial Unions

Marriages between individuals of different racial or ethnic groups. Racism can shape-shift and adjust to demographic changes. It can make—and has made—room in its wide enterprise for degrading multiracial people. Some parents, white and nonwhite alike, actively discourage their children from interracial dating, many times cloaking their own prejudices or ethnic chauvinism in a concern over mixed-race children or "other people's" racism. (page 358)

Black women are the least likely group in American society to marry. Some analysts even estimate rates as low as what?

One in three black women will marry in her lifetime.

Because of how out-of-wedlock birthrates are calculated, what would the impact be on out-of-wedlock birthrates if the number of children born to unmarried black women stayed the same but the number of children born to married black women increased?

Rates of out-of-wedlock births would decrease

Civil Society

Some critics believe identity politics is responsible for splintering civil society, but in post-Civil Rights America, civil society has widened to include a cacophony of voices and opinions. (page 332)

During and after World War II, some social constraints and pressures toward conformity and adherence to the white middle-class norms were relaxed. Which of the following was an example from the textbook that demonstrates how events during World War II challenged American's ideas about race and families?

Some straight soldiers of color, having dated white European women and experienced interracial relationships abroad that were forbidden in the United States, desired the same equality at home.

Digital Divide

Studies have shown that nonwhite citizens disproportionately are less likely to own computers and to have regular access to the Internet than their white peers, which results in many nonwhites being excluded from virtual associations, on account of them not having regular access to the Internet. (page 340)

Associations are essential to a healthy democracy. However, as the text points out, associations can also work to exclude people. Which of the following best describes how the association detailed in the clip from By Invitation Only is exclusionary?

The organization was based in racial exclusion and that legacy lives on.

According to the textbook, what is the relationship between societal attitudes about interracial marriage and raising the question, "What about the children?"

The question is often positioned as a rationalization for being opposed to interracial marriages and comes frequently as a way to package that disapproval without being forthright.

Which of the following did Edward Morris find in his ethnography of white students in a majority black school in Texas?

The white students used the term "white" to insult one another for personality traits such as being nerdy.

Based on what you learned from the clip and the text, which of the following most accurately describes the response to the increase in black political power after the fall of slavery?

Whites often responded with fear and violence with the goal of returning the racial order to one based on white supremacy

Andi, a twenty-three-year old white woman, hesitated to introduce her African American boyfriend to her parents, who are both white. All of her friends from college have already met her boyfriend. According to the textbook, what might this decision say about attitudes toward interracial dating?

Younger people tend to be more accepting of interracial dating than older people are

Because in many cases a man who lived as a slave could not stop his master from beating his son or raping his daughter, fatherhood under slavery was denied in a way that:

all but completely eliminated the role of husband and father for most enslaved black men

The "ghetto pass" in Ice Cube's song "True to the Game" is:

an implied right to authentic blackness that can be taken away if one acts outside of race norms

When people examine the overlap of their own intersecting identities, they may be likely to overlook the impact of their privileged identities, as described in which of the following examples?

an upper-middle-class black woman who minimizes the role of her economic position

The clip from White Like Me delineates several government policies that have been instrumental in giving white people opportunities for advancement. To address those types of privileges and attempt to even out the "playing field" would require change at what level?

institutional

Based on what you learned from the clip from White Like Me, Tim Wise's reflections on whiteness align most closely with which "racial ideal" discussed in the chapter?

racial democracy

Couples who are dissimilar from one another may have a lower probability of staying married; black couples show greater spousal dissimilarity than nonblack couples. One reason for this may be that:

the relatively small size of the marriage pool for blacks limits choices for potential mates, increasing the chance of incompatibility

When a native-born, third-generation Chinese American woman encounters repeated interactions with others where she is asked, "Where are you originally from?," what aspects of her identity are being highlighted?

the way that many native-born Asian American citizens remain in a position symbolically tied to an assumed immigrant status