Sociology Chapter 9 Vocab

Discrimination

An action - unfair treatment directed against someone based on certain characteristics.

Popular transfer

Direct and indirect. The direct kind occurs when the dominant group expels a minority. Indirect occurs when life is so miserable for a minority that they leave "voluntarily."

Prejudice

Discrimination is often a result of an attitude called ______ - a prejudging of some sort, usually in a negative way. Although there is positive prejudice.

Authoritarian personality

Highly prejudiced people are often those with deep respect for authority and are submissive to authority figures. Adorno called this ______.

Split labor market

The division of workers along racial-ethnic and gender lines.

Compartmentalize

Labels are powerful, dehumanizing ones even more so. They help people to ________ - to separate their acts of cruelty from their sense of being good and decent people.

Selective perception

Labels cause this. They lead us to see certain things while they blind us to others.

Racism

When the basis of discrimination is someone's perception of race, it is known as this.

Multiculturalism and pluralism

A policy of this permits or even encourages racial-ethnic variation. The minority groups are able to maintain their separate identical, yet participate freely in the country's social institutions, from education to politics. Switzerland is a great example. (no group can properly be called a minority there)

Rising Expectations

African Americans experienced what sociologists call this ____ After the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They expected that these sweeping legal changes would usher in better conditions in life. Little changed until 1968.

Reserve labor force

Another term for the unemployed. "Owners" use this tactic.

Internal colonialism

Conflict theorists use this term to describe the way in which a country's dominant group exploits minority groups for its economic advantage. The dominant group manipulates social institutions to suppress minorities and deny them full access to their society's benefits.

White ethnics

Immigrants from Europe whose language and other customs differed from theirs (WASPs).

Minority group

People who are singled out for unequal treatment and who regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination.

Scapegoat

Someone who is blamed for something unfairly. Often a racial-ethnic or religious minority.

Ethnicity and ethnic

Refers to cultural characteristics not biological. Two words.

Ethnic work

Refers to the way people construct their ethnicity. Clothes, food, and language, etc. How people with a strong ethnic identity enhance and maintain their group's distinctions.

Dominant group

Regardless of their numbers, this is the group that has the greater power and privilege.

Institutional discrimination

Sociologists encourage us to examine this, with their focus on a broader picture. This is how discrimination is woven into the fabric of society.

Genocide

The attempt to destroy a group of people because of their presumed race or ethnicity.

Individual discrimination

The negative treatment of one person by another. Sociologists stress that we move beyond this.

Assimilation

The process by which a minority group is absorbed into the mainstream culture. Two types. Permissible (adopts at it's own speed and in its own way) and forced (when the dominant group refuses to allow a minority to speak it's language, practice it's religion, etc).

Segregation

The separation of racial or ethnic groups.

Pan-indianism

This emphasis on common elements that run through their cultures is an attempt to develop an identity hat goes beyond tribes for Native Americans.

WASPs

White Anglo Saxon Protestants