Race, Ethnicity, Nationality, and Social Status

Vocabulary flashcards covering race, ethnicity, nationality, social status, and related anthropological and sociological concepts.

Race

A socially constructed category that classifies people using perceived physical traits (such as skin color) and ideas about ancestry; racial categories vary across societies and history and do not map neatly onto discrete biological human subspecies.

Ethnicity

Identification with a group based on shared cultural practices, history, language, ancestry, or a homeland.

Nationality

Legal or political membership in a nation-state, usually connected to citizenship; nationality does not necessarily equal ethnicity.

Eugenics

A movement and set of practices aimed at controlling reproduction to shape the population's inherited traits, historically used to justify coercive and discriminatory policies.

Ascribed status

A social position assigned at birth or acquired involuntarily, such as age category or family background.

Achieved status

A social position gained through actions, choices, or accomplishments, such as becoming a student leader or earning a degree.

Hypodescent

A culturally specific rule in some societies that assigns a person of mixed ancestry to the socially subordinate or minority group, rather than a universal biological rule.

Minority group

A group with less social, political, or economic power in a particular context; the term does not always mean numerically smaller.

Race as a cultural construction

The idea emphasized in class notes and the book "Mixed Blood" that racial categories are created and maintained through social and cultural systems rather than being straightforward divisions of human biology.