Chapter 8 Sociology

self-fulfilling prophecy

Finally, stereotypes flourish through a process knows. People behave as if their definitions are true. The misguided behavior produces responses that confirm the false definition. parents move there child to a category of sports that is connected to their childs race.

Choice

Is the act of choosing from a range of possible behaviors or appearances. Wheather to identify or present oneself as a particular racail or ethnicity

individual discrimination

Occurs when one person behaves negatively toward another because of that person's membership in a specific social group or category

Belonging in a minority group are treated as members of a category

People focus on those physical and cultural characteristics are considered so important to the individuals identity that they overshadow other characteristics that person might possess

desegregation

the process of ending legally sanctioned racial separation and discrimination. by removing legal barriers to interaction and offering legal guarantees of pretection and equal opportunity

Scientific Racism

the use of scientific theories to support or validate racist attitudes or worldviews; also, to support classification of human beings into distinct biological races. Racism helped justify this exploitatoin of nonwhite people and their resources by pointing to the so-called superiority of the white race.

Discrimination

intentional or unintentional is the unequal treatment of racial or ethnic groups without considering merit, ability, or past performance. Sociologist Robert if youre prejudice does not mean you'll be discriminate.

Panethnicity

is a process by which various people with distinct histories, cultures, languages, and identities are lumped together and viewed as belonging to one catchall category, such as Hispanic/Latino. Government does this for adminstrative, statistacal, surveillance, and other purposes.

Prejudice

is a right and, more often than not, unfavorable judgement about a category of people that is applied to anyone who belongs to that category.

Racism

is a set of beliefs that uses biological factors to explain and justify inequalities between racial and ethnic groups. By physical traits and physcial attributes.

Racial Formation

theory as way to understand the social importance of race. Omi and Winant argue that for race to exist in its present form, people must learn to see race that they must learn to give arvitrary biolgical features such as skin color and hair texture social significance.

prejudiced nondiscriminator

timid bigots. Reject the creed of equal opportunity but refrain from discrimination, primarily because they fear possible sanctions or being labeled as racists.

ethnic cleansing

is an extreme form of forced segregation. Dominant group uses force and intimidation to remove people of a targeted racial or ethnic group from a geographic area, leaving it ehtnically pure, or at least free of the targetd group. involves the destruction of cultural artifacts associated with the target groups, such as monuments, cemeteries, and churches.

Chance

is something not subject to human will, choice or effort. We do not choose our biological parents, or can we control the physical characteristics we inherit from the.

Genocide

is the calculated and systematic large-scale destruction of a targeted racial or ethnic group. The destruction can take the form of killing an ethnic group.

instituionalized discrimination

is the established, customary way of doing things in society the unchallenged laws, rules, policites, and day-to-day practices established by a dominate group that keep minority groups in disadvantaged positoins.

Segregation

is the physical and/or social separation of people by racr or ethnicity. May be spatial or hierarchical. Spatial segregation: When racila or ethnic gropus attend differetnshcool, live in different neighborhoods. Segregation hierarchical: when people in advantaged categories occupy the most prestigious positions whioel those in the disadvantaged categories are concentraed in the least prestigious posiions.

absorption assimilation

members of a subordinate ethnic, racial, and/or cultural group adapt to the ways of the dominant group, which sets the standards to which they must adjust. 1. Abandons by force or voluntarily its culture for that of the dominant group, enters into the dominat groups social networks and institutions, intermarries and procreates with the dominant group, encoutners no widespread prejudice or discrimination. no value conflicts.

Civil Rights movements

movement in the United States beginning in the 1960s and led primarily by Blacks in an effort to establish the civil rights of individual Black citizens. The systematic discrmination, not just in the south but across the nation. Black churches palyed a key role in the civil right movement as well as a support group, worship, center of political activism.

Integration

occurs when two or more racial groups interact in a previously segreagated setting. Crossing the color line once legal barriers have been removed.

Colonialism

which occurs when a foreign power uses superior military force to impose its political, economic, social , and cultural institutions on an indigenous population in order to control its resources, labor, and markets.

Race in the Context of Brazil

• Holds that Africans, indigenous peoples, and Europeans had mixed to the point that race was no longer important. • The Brazilian government uses three broad categories to describe the continuum between white and black. -Branco (white) -Pardo (brown) -Preto (black) • Two additional categories -Amarelo (yellow) -Indigena (indigenous)

Race in the Context of the United States

• The U.S. government recognizes five official racial categories (these are census categories) -American Indian/Alaskan Native -Asian -Black or African American -Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander -White (plus "some other race")

Minority Groups

Are populations within a society that are regarded and treated as inherently different form those in the mainstream.

Characteristics of Minority Groups

1. Members share physical and cultural characteristics which distinguish from the dominant group 2. Members experience unequal treatment 3. Membership is an ascribed status (religion can be ascribed) 4. Members have a sense of solidarity 5. Members typically practice endogamy depends on the context anyone can hold minority status. Sociologists evaluates minority status as involuntary status, lack of control of valued resources, exclusion from societal advantages, isolation from the dominant group, and minority group status overshadowing personal charactersistics.

Ethnic Renewal

A prices by which people take it upon themselves to find, learn about , and claim an ethnic heritage. Occurs when people discover a once-hidden ethnic past, as when an adopted child learns about and identifies with newly foudnbiological parents or when someone learns they have ancestors.

Non-prejudiced nondiscriminatory

Accept the creed of equal opportunity and their conduct conforms to that creed. They take actoin against discrimination and believe in equal opportunity.

Race

As human-created or constructed categories that have come to assume great social importance​. do with skin shade, hair texture, eye shape, ad geographical origins of ancestors. When sociologist stud race, they study its social importance the meanins assingned to physical traists, racial categories, and the effect race has on opportunities in life. Variation suggests that it si people who determine what the categories will be fill them up with human beings and attach consequences to membership

Dominant Group Ethnic Identity

As the most advantage ethnic groups in a society; it is the ethnic gorup that possesses the greatest access to valued resources, including the power to creat and maintain the system that gives it these advantages. European americans in america. It does not mean eeryone who is apart of the dominat ethinc group holds a pwerful or advantaged status

stereotypes

Generalizations about people who belong to a particular category that do not change even in the face of contradictory evidence. Supported by Selective perception, sulf-fulfilling prophecy

Racial common sense

Ideas people share about race that they believe to be so obvious that they do not even think to question their validity. Omi and Winant maintain that racial common sense informs our expectations and interactions that involve race and that this commonsense understanding of race persists even when it is challenged. Sociologist sees race as socially constructed. Means that characteristics we have come to believe define race are products of social beliefs and values imposed by those who had or have the power to create the labels and categories. Once it was created it was easy to Reify means to treat them as if they are real and meaningful and to forget that they are made up. When people do things or appear in ways that don't fit their assigned category we act as if something is wrong with them or as if they are exceptions to the rule rather than questioning the category scheme.

Minority Groups are excluded from full participation

In the larger society. As a group minorities do not enjoy the advantages that members of a dominant group take for granted. Advantaged refers to symbolic support and access to valued resources taht give one group more opportunities relatie to another, including the opportunity to live a long life tom ake a good income, to survive the first year of life.

Virtual integration

In which simply seeing other racial groups on televison and in advertisements gives the sensaton of having meaningful repeated contact with other racial groups without actually have it.

Redlining

Insitutionalized practices that deny, limit, or increase the cost of services to neighborhoods because residents are low-income and/or minority. Can effet access to financial services

Context

Is the social setting in which racial and ethnic categories are recognized, created and challenged

Minorities are socially and spatially isolated from those in the dominant group

Isolation manifest itself in segregated residential arrangements (ethnic neighborhoods). Portrayals of specific minorities as particulary dangerous, laws prohibiting cerain raical/ethinc gropu from marrying those in dominant groups

Selma to Montgomery March

Memorial event originally stopped by police, it eventually led to the Voting Rights Act of '65.

Minority status is not based on size

Minority may be a numerical majority in a society.

Origins of Racism

Modern racism emerged as a way to justify European exploitation of people and resources in Africa, Asia, and the Americas

The term Hispanic

Most hispanics reject that label because it forces them to identify with conquistadors and settlers from spain who imposed their culture, language, and religoin on their ancestors.

Minorities do not enjoy the freedom or the privilege to move within the society the way those in the dominant group do.

Privileges special take-for-granted advantages and immunities or benefits enjoyed by a dominat group relative to minority groups.Ex. I can do poorly on a test without worrying that my classmates or professor will attribute it to my race or ethnicty

Assimilation

Process by which people of one culture merge into and become part of another culture. sometimes by force, into another groups culture or because two cultures blend to form a new culture.

Racial Formation Theory

Sociologists are interested in how something that cannot be supported by logic has come to assume such great importance. They are intereted in the stratgies people use to make people exist in the same racial categories

Race as Illusion

Sociologists mean that the most basic assumptions we hold about race what we believe to be true are in fact distorted. First, there are no sharp dividing lines specifying the physical boundaries that distinguish one racial category from another. Second, trying to place people in racial categories is that millions of people in the world are products of sexual unions between people of different races. The offspring of such unions cannot be one biological race. The biological reality does not support a clear-cut classification. Third the diversity of people within any one racial category is so great that knowing someones race tells us little about that perosons.People exprected to identify as Asian include those who have roots in very different places like cambodia, india, japan, korea, Malaysia, Pakistan. Finally the assumptions about race and ideas about racial categories and who belongs in each vary by time and place.

Changing Contexts and Race

The United States allowed people to indentify with tow or more of its official racial categories. Has yet to decide what to call people who do so. That movement seeks to dismantle ideas of race as a continuum to destigmatize blackness and to challenge the unspoken assumption that browns and blacks from mobilizing to giht well documented discrimination and prejudices.

involuntary minorities

They were forced to become part of it through enslavement, conquest, or colonization.

Involuntary minority groups

Wirth, membership. People are generally born into them. He argues taht as long as people are free to join or leave a group, they do not constitute a minority. The idea that one cannot be free to join or leave a group to qualify for membership in a minority group raises questions about the meaning of being free to join or leave.

Selective Perception

a prejudiced person notices only the behaviors that suppor their stereotypes. These people use sterotypes as facts supported by their own observations. Second stereotypes persist in another way: when a prejudiced person encounters someone who contradicts a stereotype associated with their race, the former seees the latter as teh exception to the rule such a conclusion serves to support stereotpes. Third: prejudiced individuals keep sterotypes alive when they evaluate the same behavior differently depending on the race or ethnicity of those involved.Ex Imcompetent behavior of racial and ethnic mnority members is often attributed to their race contrast to advantage group.

Selective forgetting

a process by which people forget, dismiss or fail to pass on a connection to one or more ethnicities. Like black people forgetting that their ancetors came from africa

melting pot assimilation

a process by which previously separate groups accept many new behaviors and values from one another, intermarry, procreate, and identify with a blended culture. Blackanese

hidden ethnicity

a sense of self that is based on no awareness of an ethnic identity because its culture is considered normal, normative, or mainstream. The dominant group's culture is considered normal, normative, or mainstream. Because it means that European Americans are culturalist because of being dominant and not feeling any racism, discrimination, or prejudice

Pluralism

a situation in which of different racial and ethnic groups coexist in harmony, have equal social standing, maintian their unique culturla ties, communities, and identities, and particiapate in the economic and politial life of the larger society. Culturla differnce are respected and valued.

involuntary ethnicity

a situation where a government or other dominant group creates an umbrella ethnic category and assigns people from many different countries and cultures to it. People are identified by, and forced to identify with, this label.

Ethnic Group

consists of people who share, believe they share , or are believed by others to share a national origin, a common ancestry, place of birth, or distinctive social traits such as religion style of dress or language that set them apart from other ethnic groups. Ask the person ethnicity instead of assuming. Self-identification is problematic from no awareness to awareness. People embrace. the most visible and recognizable symbols that are esily express and felt.

prejudiced discriminator

does not believe in the values of freedom and equality and consistently discriminates against other groups in both word and deed (Active Bigots)

nonprejudiced discriminators

fair-weather liberals or people who accept the creed of equal opportunity but discriminate because they simply fail to consider discriminatory consequences or because discriminating gives them some advantage

Flaws in Racist Arguments

focus on 'natural' aptitude for sports, math, or other abilities ignores or downplays the social processes that channel behavior into expected directions. That blacks are superior athletes. Sociologitsts look to the social processes that channel athletes of a certain racial classification into a sport considered the domian of that race