Race and ethnicity

One-Drop Rule

A custom that a person who had any African ancestry was classified as Black.

Race

System humans created to classify groups of people mostly based on skin tone.

Ethnicity

Common culture, religion, history, or ancestry shared by a group of people.

Eugenics

The idea that we can actively improve the genetic profile of humans.

Implicit Bias

Associations our minds make between seemingly unrelated things.

Explicit Bias

Bias that we are openly and consciously aware of.

Internalized Bias

When a person belonging to a marginalized racial group associates their own group with negative evaluations.

Stereotypes

Widely-shared perception about the personal characteristics, tendencies, or abilities of individual members of a particular group.

Prejudices

Preconceived beliefs, attitudes, or opinions about members of another group.

Group Threat Theory

Argues that prejudices grow stronger if we begin to think of another group as an economic, political, or cultural threat.

Ultimate Attributions Error

Psychological phenomenon in which undesirable characteristics exhibited by members of another group are perceived as innate, and positive behavior is attributed to luck.

Cognitive Dissonance

Psychological state in which preconceived ideas do not align with what we see with our own eyes.

Contact Theory

Helps explain how interactions with members of other groups affect prejudicial beliefs.

Positive Discrimination

Efforts to rectify historical and current forms of negative discrimination.

Reparations

Compensation, usually financial, for and recognition of past harm against specific people.

Institutional Racism

Ideas that our nation’s core institutions are embedded with racial biases and preferences that recreate and maintain racial inequality.

Affirmative Action

Policies or programs that seek to rectify past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity now.

Immigrant Selectivity

Process whereby people who immigrate to the US from certain countries have a unique demographic profile compared to people who stay behind in their home country.