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.