Sociology of Race, Ethnicity, and Social Inequality

Flashcards covering core sociological concepts from the lecture, including race, ethnicity, racism, minority group dynamics, and prejudice.

Race

A socially constructed category of persons who are linked together on the basis of shared external physical characteristics, such as skin color, facial features, eye shape, and nose shape.

Social Construction of Reality

The principle that categories and their meanings are not scientifically fixed but vary from culture to culture, determining how individuals are categorized in different locations.

To Make Someone Racially

The act of assessing an individual's external physical appearance and placing them into a specific racial category or box.

Ethnic Group

A group of people bound together by culture and nationality who share a common historical community, language or traditions, and typically maintain a specific territory.

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one's own culture is superior to others, serving as the standard measure against which other cultures are judged.

Racism

The belief that one particular racial category is superior while all other racial categories are inferior.

Ideology

A justification or legitimacy created for an existing or desired set of power relations.

Minority Group

Any group within a society that is characterized and defined exclusively by possessing less social power relative to the dominant group.

Dominant Group

The group in a society that possesses greater social power, serving as the proper sociological counter-concept to minority groups rather than a 'majority group'.

Largest Minority Group in the United States

Women, who constitute $51\%$ of the population but are defined as a minority group because they hold less social power than men, earning on average about $20\%$ less.

Prejudice

A negative attitude directed toward a particular category of persons based on faulty generalizations.

Prejudgments

General cognitive categorizations used to simplify and make sense of social data, which transform into prejudices when they become rigid, inflexible, and irreversible.