Chapter 10: Race and Ethnicity Flashcards

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering sociological concepts, key terms, theories, and historical milestones of race and ethnicity.

Genocide of Indigenous Americans

The systematic mass killing and decimation of the native population in the eventual United States, which shrank from an estimated $1\text{ million}$ people at European arrival to about $240{,}000$ by $1900$ due to white settlers, U.S. troops, and contracted European diseases.

An American Dilemma

A $1944$ book by Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal documenting widespread racial discrimination and highlighting the conflict between the American creed of equality, liberty, and justice for all and the reality of racial prejudice.

Kerner Commission

A $1968$ presidential commission appointed by President Lyndon Johnson that warned that the United States was 'moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.'

Race

A category of people who share certain inherited physical characteristics, such as skin color, facial features, and stature.

Social construction

A concept that has no objective reality but rather is what people decide it is.

Susie Guillory Phipps case

A $1977$ legal case in which a woman challenged the Louisiana Bureau of Vital Records to change her racial classification to white, but lost under a state statute classifying anyone with at least $\frac{1}{32}$ Black ancestry as Black.

Ethnicity

The shared social, cultural, and historical experiences, stemming from common national or regional backgrounds, that make subgroups of a population different from one another.

Ethnic group

A subgroup of a population with a set of shared social, cultural, and historical experiences; with relatively distinctive beliefs, values, and behaviors; and with some sense of identity of belonging to the subgroup.

Ethnic pride

The sense of self-worth that many people derive from their ethnic backgrounds.

Prejudice

A set of negative attitudes, beliefs, and judgments about whole categories of people, and about individual members of those categories, because of their perceived race and/or ethnicity.

Racism

The belief that certain racial or ethnic groups are inferior to one's own.

Stereotypes

Simplified, mistaken generalizations about people because of their race and/or ethnicity.

Authoritarian personality

A personality emphasizing obedience to authority, rigid adherence to rules, and low acceptance of people not like oneself, said to help account for racial and ethnic prejudice.

Frustration or scapegoat theory

The view that individuals blame the problems they experience on racial and ethnic minorities, scapegoating them instead of recognizing the real sources of their own misfortunes.

Symbolic (or modern) racism

A modern form of racial prejudice that has replaced traditional Jim Crow racism by emphasizing the alleged cultural inferiority of people of color rather than biological differences.

Discrimination

The arbitrary denial of rights, privileges, and opportunities to members of subordinate racial and ethnic groups.

Structural racism

A system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity.

Individual discrimination

Discrimination that individuals practice in their daily lives.

Microaggressions

Regarding racial/ethnic discrimination, the indignities and slights that people of color suffer in their everyday lives.

Institutional discrimination

Discrimination that pervades the practices of whole institutions, such as housing, medical care, law enforcement, employment, and education, even if such discrimination is not intended.

Implicit bias

Unconscious racial/ethnic bias among criminal justice professionals that may affect their decisions and behaviors regarding suspects and defendants.

Racial profiling

The stopping, questioning, and/or searching of Black and Latinx drivers and pedestrians, sarcastically known as 'DWB' (driving while Black).

Devah Pager's employment study

A $2003$ field study demonstrating that white job applicants with a criminal record were hired at the same rate as Black applicants without a criminal record.

White privilege

The advantages that white Americans enjoy in their daily lives simply because they are white, whether or not they are aware of these advantages.

Structural explanation of racial inequality

The sociological perspective attributing ongoing racial and ethnic disparities to structural obstacles, unequal opportunities, and discriminatory institutional practices rather than biological or cultural deficiencies.

Affirmative action

The preferential treatment of minorities and women in employment and education intended to compensate for past and continuing discrimination.

2045 Demographic shift

The projected population milestone when non-Latinx white individuals are expected to constitute less than half ($< 50\%$) of the total U.S. population.