PHIL004 Midterm

Racialism

• “Belief that there are human races or that humankind is divided into races” (zack, glossary ch1)

  • Pg. 52 - thought or action based on the belief that human races are real & the differences among races are important 

Polygenism

• Doctrine that different human races have different evolutionary orgins

Monogenism

• Monogenism (Race view), belief that all human groups, including races, had the same origins

Systematics

• “Biological naming and classifying living things as individuals and groups, in relation to one another” (zack ch1)

Eugenics

• “Practice and ideology of improving the quality of humanity by regulating who can have children, and with whom”

Philosophy of Race

• Descriptive and normative philosophical inquiry into racial differences and injustice related to them

Biological Racial Determinism

• Idea that inherited human racial traits determine social, psychological, physical, and cultural traits

Egalitarianism

• view that human beings are equal in important ways

cosmopolitan

• a perspective on other individuals and groups that is tolerant of personal and cultural differences and is not restricted by political borders, language, morals, beliefs, or customs

Intellectual History

History of ideas, chronological accounts of the thoughts of major thinkers & their intellectual influences

Sociology of Knowledge

Study of the societal context of ideas and the influence of ideas in society?

Population

Term for a group used by evolutionary biologists & anthropologists for a group of people in the same geographical area who breed mainly among themselves. (ch3, zack)

Social Construct

and idea, thing, or practice that is created in society and not the result of anything natural or self-evident.

The “Common View/Argumment”

1. Race is based on certain biological differences

2. There are certain biological differences between “us”

3. Therefore race exists

Racialized Groups

groups “thought” to be races; groups characterized by intergenerational collective, socio/historical & current social locations

Biological/genetic ancestry

proportion of recent ancestry displayed in an individual via genetic material inherited from one ancestral geographic origin.

Social/Cultural ancestry

origin of attitudes, beliefs & behaviors displayed by an individual

Subspecies

• Isolated breeding population within a species whose members could still breed with the members of the larger species population & produce fertile offspring 

Universal Human Racial Taxonomy

• 2 Parts

  • 1. Assignment of individuals to racial categories

  • 2. Value assessments of different racial groups, & their members

Caste

• system that divides society into a hierarchy of hereditary groups, based on occupation

Ethnic Enclaves

• neighborhoods where ethnic groups predominates, in residence & small service businesses.

  • EX. Little Italy, China Town, Spanish Harlem, Little Persia,

Diaspora

• Scattered ethnic or racial groups with a shared homeland or geographical origin. 

Assimilation

• Learning and adoption of the language and customs of the country to which a group immigrates.

Primordial / primordialist

View of ethnic groups as having fixed biological traits or deeply historical cultural traits

Constructivist

view of ethnic groups as having characteristics resulting from social factors external to those groups

Racial eliminativism

position that the idea of race should be discarded based on what is known about its lack of a foundation in the human biological sciences.