Race, Colonialism and Gender Definitions

Flashcards about race, colonialism, and gender for exam review.

Race

A system of classification with no biological basis that uses certain physical characteristics to divide the human population into supposedly discrete groups.

Race in Brazil

Considers more than just skin color; racial identity can change through a change in appearance or socioeconomic status.

Colonialism

When one country exerts military, economic, and political control over another.

Nativism

Government policies that favor people born in the United States over immigrants.

Jim Crow Laws

Laws implemented after the U.S. Civil War to legally enforce segregation, particularly in the South.

Hypodescent

The rule assigns the children of racially mixed unions to the subordinate group.

Karen Brodkin's Study

Demonstrates that race is culturally constructed, as Jewish Americans' racial categorization changed over time.

Individual Racism

Personal prejudiced beliefs and discrimination against someone based on imagined differences.

Institutional Racism

Patterns by which racial inequality is structured through key cultural institutions, policies, and systems.

Microaggression

Common, everyday slights that communicate hostile, derogatory, and negative messages about someone's race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion.

White Privilege

The 'invisible package of unearned assets' inherited by white people.

Intersectionality

Analytic framework for assessing how factors such as race, gender, and class interact to shape individual life chances and societal patterns of stratification.

Sex

Observable, culturally agreed upon physical and biological differences between the male and female human reproduction systems.

Gender

Expectations of thought and behavior that each culture assigns to people of different sexes.

Cisgender

Gender identity and performance correspond with their birth sex.

Intersex

Individuals born with a combination of male and female genitalia, gonads, or chromosomes; sex can occur on a continuum.