Sociology Chapter 10: Race and Ethnicity

Vocabulary flashcards covering key sociological concepts, historical legislation, and analytical frameworks related to race, ethnicity, prejudice, and inequality.

Affirmative action

A method for opening opportunities to women and minorities that specifically redresses past discrimination by taking positive measures to recruit and hire previously disadvantaged groups.

Anti-Semitism

The belief or behavior that defines Jewish people as inferior and that targets them for stereotyping, mistreatment, and acts of hatred.

Assimilation theory

The process by which a minority group becomes absorbed into a host society.

Audit study

A research technique that poses at least two people, identical in nearly all respects, to test whether discrimination occurs when one of the pair (or teams) present themselves as potential tenants or employees.

Aversive racism

Subtle, nonovert, and nonobvious racism.

Colorblind racism

Ignoring legitimate racial, ethnic, and cultural differences between groups, thus denying the reality of such differences.

Cultural pluralism

A situation wherein different groups in society maintain distinctive cultures while coexisting peacefully with the dominant group.

Discrimination

Overt negative and unequal treatment of the members of some social group or stratum solely because of their membership in that group or stratum.

Dominant group

The group that assigns a racial or ethnic group to subordinate status in society.

Ethnic group

A social category of people who share a common culture, such as a common language or dialect, a common religion, or common norms, practices, and customs.

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one's in-group is superior to all out-groups.

Hypersegregation

A pattern of extreme racial, ethnic, and/or social class residential segregation, such that nearly all individuals in an area are of one such group.

Immigration Act of 1924

A law passed in 1924, also known as the National Origins Act, that established ethnic quotas allowing immigrants to enter the United States only in proportion to their numbers already existing in 1890.

Immigration and Nationality Act

A 1965 law, also known as the Hart Celler Act, that eliminated the national origins quota of the Immigration Act of 1924.

Implicit bias

A nonconscious form of racism where individuals unconsciously associate negative characteristics with racial-ethnic groups.

Institutional racism

Racism involving notions of racial or ethnic inferiority that have become ingrained into society's institutions.

Intersectional theory

An analytical framework that interprets race, class, and gender as simultaneously overlapping social factors.

Laissez-faire racism

Maintaining the status quo of racial groups by persistent stereotyping and blaming of minorities for achievement and socioeconomic gaps between groups.

Minority group

Any distinct group in society that shares common group characteristics and is forced to occupy low status in society because of prejudice and discrimination.

Nativism

Extreme beliefs and policies that establish citizens of one nation over all others.

Naturalization Act of 1790

The first law that established rules about who could become a citizen of the United States.

Panethnicity

The process when multiple ethnic groups come together to forge a new, collective identity out of some common purpose.

Prejudice

The negative evaluation of a social group, and individuals within that group, based upon conceptions about that social group that are held despite facts that contradict it.

Race

A social category, or social construction, that we treat as distinct on the basis of certain characteristics, some biological, that have been assigned social importance in the society.

Race-immigration nexus

A pattern whereby racial divisions both shape and are shaped by immigrant arenas and experiences.

Racial formation

The process by which groups come to be defined as a "race" through social institutions such as the law and the schools.

Racial stratification

A system of inequality in which race and ethnicity mark differential access to economic, social, political, and cultural resources.

Racialization

A process whereby some social category, such as a social class or nationality, is assigned what are perceived to be race characteristics.

Racism

The perception and treatment of a racial or ethnic group, or member of that group, as intellectually, socially, and culturally inferior to one's own group.

Residential segregation

The spatial separation of racial and ethnic groups in different residential areas.

Salience principle

Categorizing people on the basis of what initially appears prominent about them.

Segregation

The spatial and social separation of racial and ethnic groups.

Stereotype

An oversimplified set of beliefs about the members of a social group or social stratum that is used to categorize individuals of that group.

Stereotype interchangeability

The principle that negative stereotypes are often interchangeable from one racial group (or gender or social class) to another.

Stereotype threat

The effect of a negative stereotype about one's self upon one's own test performance.

White privilege

The ability for Whites to maintain an elevated status in society that masks racial inequality.

White space

The perception Black people have of places where they are typically absent, not expected, or marginalized when present.

Steering

The practice of real estate agents showing people of color housing properties only in neighborhoods that are already predominantly inhabited by other people of color.

Urban underclass

A group consisting of those who are at the bottom of the class system, are more or less permanently out of good jobs, and are subjected to social problems such as poverty and crime.

Satyagraha

A philosophy meaning "soul firmness and force" developed by Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi, which informed the passive resistance strategy of the early civil rights movement.

Brown v. Board of Education

The 1954 landmark Supreme Court decision that ruled "separate but equal" in education was unconstitutional.