Chapter 9: Race and Ethnicity

Flashcards covering the sociological concepts of race and ethnicity, including historical legal cases, theories of racial formation, and types of discrimination.

Race as an essence

An understanding of race as something that is fixed, concrete, and objective.

Race as an illusion

An understanding of race as an ideological construct that does not exist and is not real.

Race as a social construct

An understanding of race as something created, meaningful, real, and changing, as defined by Omi and Winant ($1994$).

Human Genetic Similarity

Modern humans are one of the most genetically similar of all species; of the small variation ($0.5\%$) among humans, $85\%$ exists within any local population and $94\%$ can be found within any continent.

Ethnicity

Characteristics of groups associated with national origins, languages, and cultural and religious practices.

Symbolic Ethnicity

A concept developed by Mary Waters ($1990$) regarding ethnic identity.

Race

A group of people who share characteristics (usually physical characteristics) deemed by society to be socially significant.

Racial formation

The sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed.

$1790$ Congress Declaration

A law declaring that only white immigrants could become citizens.

Thirteenth Amendment

A constitutional amendment passed in $1865$ that abolished slavery.

Fourteenth Amendment

A $1868$ amendment declaring all persons born or naturalized in the United States as citizens; it granted rights to African Americans but excluded Indians not taxed.

Reconstruction

A period from $1865-1880s$ where legal rights and protections were granted to African Americans, including citizenship, equal protection, and the right for males to vote.

Jim Crow Laws

Local and state laws that limited rights and protections through de jure segregation.

Plessy v. Ferguson ($1896$)

A U.S. Supreme Court case that legitimized the separation of races through the "separate but equal" doctrine for facilities like schools and parks.

Chinese Exclusion Act of $1882$

A ban on Chinese immigration that affected citizenship, immigration, and deportation, which remained in effect until WWII.

Gentleman’s Agreement ($1907$)

An agreement associated with the Anti-Japanese Campaign and Japanese immigration in the early $1900s$.

Alien Land Acts

Laws passed in $1913$, $1920$, and $1923$ targeting Japanese immigrants.

Immigration Act of $1917$

Legislation that led to the exclusion of Asian Indians from the United States.

Ozawa v. United States ($1922$)

A Supreme Court case that ruled against Japanese naturalization.

Thind v. United States ($1922$)

A Supreme Court case that ruled against Asian Indian naturalization.

Immigrant Act of $1924$

Legislation that resulted in the exclusion of Japanese immigrants.

Tydings-McDuffie Act ($1934$)

Legislation that resulted in the exclusion of Filipinos.

Bracero Program ($1942$)

A U.S.-Mexico guest worker program.

Minority group

A group whose members experience disadvantage/inequality, share a visible trait, are a self-conscious social unit, have membership determined at birth, and tend to marry within the group.

Prejudice

A belief about an individual or group that is not subject to change based on evidence.

Stereotyping

The generalization of a set of characteristics to all members of a group.

Discrimination

The unequal or unfair treatment of a person or persons based on their group membership.

Racism

The idea that one racial group is inherently superior to another, often creating structures of economic, social, and political inequality.

Racialist Doctrine

Defined by Todorov ($2009$) as involving the existence of races, continuity between physical type and character, group action on the individual, unique hierarchy of values, and knowledge-based politics.

Ideological Racism

A belief system or set of ideas that asserts group inferiority to legitimize stratification.

Institutional Discrimination

Patterns of unequal treatment based on group membership that are built into the daily operations of societal institutions.

De jure discrimination

Discrimination that is built into the law or explicit organizational policies.

De facto discrimination

Discrimination that is not legal or explicit, but results from policies that have consequences favoring one group over another.

Past-in-present institutional discrimination

Current practices that have discriminatory consequences because of patterns of discrimination or exclusion in the past.