Sociology: Race and Ethnicity (Chapter Nine)

Vocabulary practice flashcards defining core sociological terms, concepts, and typologies of race, ethnicity, and discrimination from Chapter Nine.

Race

A group sharing apparent physical traits deemed by society to be socially significant; it is socially constructed rather than a scientifically valid system of biological types.

The One-Drop Rule

A historical U.S. racial classification rule that defined people with any known Black ancestry as Black, regardless of their appearance or proportion of ancestry.

The Brown Paper Bag Test

A discriminatory practice historically used in some Black communities and institutions to exclude individuals whose skin was darker than a brown paper bag, illustrating colorism.

Ethnicity

A socially meaningful identity based on shared cultural heritage, such as national origin, ancestry, language, traditions, and religious practices.

Minority Group

A group that experiences systematic disadvantage, exclusion, or unequal access to power and resources due to socially significant characteristics, defined by power rather than numerical size.

Thomas Theorem

A sociological principle stating: “If [people] define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”

Colorism

Unequal treatment based on skin tone, typically privileging lighter skin over darker skin, occurring both within and across racial or ethnic groups.

Racialization

The social process through which a person, group, or practice is assigned racial meaning and treated as belonging to a particular racial category.

Microaggressions

Common, seemingly innocent statements or questions that reflect racial biases and perceptions, including assumptions regarding intelligence and worth.

Double Consciousness

A term describing the sensation of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others and measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on with amused contempt and pity.

Dueling Consciousness

The internal experience of feeling twoness—two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, and two warring ideals held in one body.

Mechanical Solidarity (Durkheim)

Social cohesion found in groups held together by shared language, culture, religion, and collective history, making them durable and stable.

Cultural Pluralism

A social arrangement in which distinct racial and ethnic groups maintain their cultural identities while participating in society with equal rights, opportunities, and social standing.

Amalgamation

The blending of different racial or ethnic groups through intermarriage and other social integration, potentially producing new cultural identities and boundaries.

Assimilation

The process by which members of a minority group adopt the culture of the majority group.

Segregation

A pattern of social interaction in which distinct social groups are kept physically and socially separate and unequal.

Expulsion

The process of forcibly removing a population from a particular geographical area.

Internal Colonialism

A system in which a dominant group exploits and controls a marginalized group within the same country, maintaining unequal access to power, resources, and opportunities.

Genocide

The systematic attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.

Withdrawal

A minority group response to prejudice and discrimination involving physical escape from oppression, such as through migration or forming ethnic enclaves.

Passing

A response to discrimination wherein minority group members blend in with the dominant group by changing names or taking advantage of physical similarities.

Code-Switching

Complying with the social expectations of the majority group in public while not doing so in private.

Resistance

A minority response involving active assertion of oneself in direct defiance of majority discrimination.

White Privilege

Certain social or economic benefits and advantages that come with being white that go largely unrecognized by white individuals.

Prejudice

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

Stereotyping

Generalizing an oversimplified set of characteristics to all members of a group.

Discrimination

Unequal treatment of individuals on the basis of their membership in a group, whether targeted and intentional or unintentional.

Individual Discrimination

Overt and intentional unequal treatment directed from one individual to another, often based on prejudicial beliefs.

Institutional Discrimination

Unequal treatment enshrined in law, public policy, or common practice embedded in the routine operation of major social institutions.

Active Bigot

In Merton's typology, an individual who holds prejudiced beliefs and actively acts on them by discriminating against others.

Timid Bigot

In Merton's typology, an individual who holds prejudiced beliefs but avoids discriminatory behavior due to social pressure or fear of consequences.

Fair-Weather Liberal

In Merton's typology, an individual who rejects prejudice in principle but discriminates when it is socially acceptable, personally advantageous, or convenient.

All-Weather Liberal

In Merton's typology, an individual who rejects prejudice and consistently opposes discrimination, even when doing so is unpopular or costly.

Racism

A system of beliefs, practices, and arrangements constructing racial groups as unequal, or the belief that one's own racial group is naturally superior.

Individual Racism

Racial discrimination occurring from one person to another, which can be conscious or unconscious, active or passive.

Institutional Racism

A form of racism where public and private entities have built racial discrimination into their structural fabric, policies, and practices.

Internalized Racism

The acceptance and incorporation of negative racial messages regarding inferiority, superiority, and white privilege, often functioning as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Colorblind Racism

A form of racial passivity where an individual, by ostensibly failing to see race, fails to recognize systemic racism.

dejure segregation

segrigation from law

supreme court case that shows dejure segregation

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): Established the "separate but equal" doctrine, which legally permitted racial segregation in public facilities as long as the separate spaces were deemed equal

what law opposded said supreme court case

Brown v. Board of Education (1954): The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in public schools violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, declaring that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal"

defacto segregation:

segregation in fact