Studied by 35 PeopleTags & Description
Survival of the fittest
"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. The biological concept of fitness is defined as reproductive success. however this has been used to justify racism and bigotry.
White Man's Burden
a duty formerly asserted by white people to manage the affairs of nonwhite people whom they believed to be less developed.
1917 immigrant act
The Immigration Act of 1917 was a United States Act that aimed to restrict immigration by imposing literacy tests on immigrants, creating new categories of inadmissible persons, and barring immigration from the Asia-Pacific zone.
1921 National Origins System
National Origins Formula is an umbrella term for a series of qualitative immigration quotas in America used from 1921 to 1965, which restricted immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere on the basis of national origin. These restrictions included legislation and federal acts.
1924 Exclusion Act
The Exclusion Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act, was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere.
Achieved status
Achieved status is a concept developed by the anthropologist Ralph Linton for a social position that a person can acquire on the basis of merit and is earned or chosen. It is the opposite of ascribed status and reflects personal skills, abilities, and efforts.
Ales Hrdlicka
He was a critic of hominid evolution as well as the Asia hypothesis, as he claimed there was little evidence to go on for those theories. He dismissed finds such as the Ramapithecus which were labeled as hominids by most scientists, instead believing that they were nothing more than fossil apes, unrelated to human ancestry. Hrdlička said that the cradle of man is not in Central Asia but in Central Europe, as Europe is the earliest known location where human skeletal remains have been found.
Anthropometry
Anthropometry refers to the measurement of the human individual. An early tool of physical anthropology, it has been used for identification, for the purposes of understanding human physical variation, in paleoanthropology and in various attempts to correlate physical with racial and psychological traits.
Arthur de Gobineau
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau was a French aristocrat who is best known for helping to legitimise racism by the use of scientific racist theory and "racial demography", and for developing the theory of the Aryan master race
Aryas
Aryan or Arya is a term originally used as an ethnocultural self-designation by Indo-Iranians in ancient times, in contrast to the nearby outsiders known as 'non-Aryan'
Ascribed status
Ascribed status is a term used in sociology that refers to the social status of a person that is assigned at birth or assumed involuntarily later in life. The status is a position that is neither earned by the person nor chosen for them
Atavisms
In biology, an atavism is a modification of a biological structure whereby an ancestral genetic trait reappears after having been lost through evolutionary change in previous generations.
Bio-determinism
Biological determinism, also known as genetic determinism, is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, whether in embryonic development or in learning.
Biological Concept of Race
In the biological and social sciences, the consensus is clear: race is a social construct, not a biological attribute. Today, scientists prefer to use the term “ancestry” to describe human diversity
Blood quantum
Blood quantum laws or Indian blood laws are laws in the United States and the former Thirteen Colonies that define Native American status by fractions of Native American ancestry. These laws were enacted by the American government as a way to establish legally defined racial population groups.
Brachycephalic
having a relatively broad, short skull (usually with the breadth at least 80 percent of the length).
Brown et. al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka et. al
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality
Buck v. Bell, 1927
Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, is a decision of the United States Supreme Court, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in which the Court ruled that a state statute permitting compulsory sterilization
Changes in Bodily Form
IN the year 1908 Prof. Boas, at the request of the United States Immigration Commission, began an investigation into the physical characteristics of immigrants. The volume under review contains an elaborate tabulation of the anthropometric data obtained, together with an analysis of the conclusions drawn from them. One of the most remarkable of the facts brought to light is the changes undergone in head form by the descendants of Hebrews and Sicilians. The cranial index of the former when born in Europe appears to be about 83; it sinks to 81 among those born in America. Among the latter, on the other hand, the index rises with the change of birthplace from 78 to more than 80.
Characteristics of a minority status
According to Charles Wagley and Marvin Harris (1958), a minority group is distinguished by five characteristics: (1) unequal treatment and less power over their lives, (2) distinguishing physical or cultural traits like skin color or language, (3) involuntary membership in the group, (4) awareness of subordination
Chattel slavery
Chattel slavery is the most common form of slavery known to Americans. This system, which allowed people — considered legal property — to be bought, sold and owned forever, was lawful and supported by the United States and European powers from the 16th – 18th centuries.
Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The law excluded merchants, teachers, students, travelers, and diplomats.
Construction of ethnic identity qualities
Ethnicity is the product of actions undertaken by ethnic groups as they shape and reshape their self-definition and culture; however, ethnicity is also constructed by external social, economic, and political processes and actors as they shape and reshape ethnic categories and definitions.
Craniometry
Craniometry is measurement of the cranium (the main part of the skull), usually the human cranium. It is a subset of cephalometry, measurement of the head, which in humans is a subset of anthropometry, measurement of the human body.
Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism is the idea that a person's beliefs and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture. Proponents of cultural relativism also tend to argue that the norms and values of one culture should not be evaluated using the norms and values of another.
Darwinian evolution
Darwinism is a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.
Dillingham Commission
Since the early 1890s, Congress had been seeking sufficient consensus and support to enact immigration restrictions that would decrease immigration from Europe. Repeated failures led it to authorize this high-level commission in 1907 to research the causes and impact of recent immigration, which had been increasing in numbers. Immigration had been surging since the 1880s, but it was largely comprised of eastern and southern Europeans such as Italians, Armenians, and Poles who settled in urban centers, rather than the English, German, and French associated with the early republic. Drawing on eugenics beliefs in racial hierarchies and extensive quantitative studies, the Commission sought to “scientifically” demonstrate that eastern and southern Europeans were not assimilating and degraded the quality of U.S. society and civilization. Echoing the recommendations of the Immigration Restriction League, the Commission issued a 41-volume report and recommended literacy tests as the means to reduce immigrant numbers by turning away low quality persons.
Discrimination
Discrimination is the act of making distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, religion, disability, or sexual orientation, as well as other categories.
Dolichocephalic
having a relatively long skull (typically with the breadth less than 80 [or 75] percent of the length).
Egypt
a country in Africa and the country that first to invent the association of race/ethnicity with a color white red brown yellow
Emancipation
Emancipation is a legal term to describe a minor's release from the custody and control of his or her parents or guardian. Emancipation automatically occurs when a person turns 18, but the Court can grant a limited emancipation order for individuals between ages 16 and 18.
Endogamous
endogamy, also called in-marriage, custom enjoining one to marry within one's own group. The penalties for transgressing endogamous restrictions have varied greatly among cultures and have ranged from death to mild disapproval. When marriage to an outside group is mandated, it is referred to as exogamy.
Essay on the Inequality of Races
Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines is a racist and pseudoscientific work of French writer Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau, which argues that there are intellectual differences between human races, that civilizations decline and fall when the races are mixed and that the white race is superior
Ethnic minority
a group that has different national or cultural traditions from the main population.
Ethnicity
the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition.
Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—means to apply one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead of using the standards of the particular culture involved
Ethnogenesis
Ethnogenesis (from Greek ethnos ἔθνος, "group of people, nation" and Greek genesis γένεσις, "beginning, coming into being"; plural ethnogeneses) is "the formation and development of an ethnic group". This can originate by group self-identification or by outside identification.
Eugenics
the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, eugenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century, especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups.
Evolution
evolution, theory in biology postulating that the various types of plants, animals, and other living things on Earth have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations.
Evolution and Human Equality
Using paleontology, evolutionary biology, genetics, history of science and social history as his tools, Gould tells the fascinating story of how racial differences have been misunderstood by scientists from pre-Darwinian days to the present and used to justify oppression, exploitation and persecution. He describes how new genetic research methods confirm the African origins of homo sapiens and the biological equality of the races. He concludes with a plea for students to understand the tremendous social and political power of scientific work, and scientists' responsibility to humankind.
Exogamous
Exogamy is the social norm of marrying outside one's social group. The group defines the scope and extent of exogamy, and the rules and enforcement mechanisms that ensure its continuity. One form of exogamy is dual exogamy, in which two groups continually intermarry with each other
Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton, FRS FRAI, was an English Victorian era polymath: a statistician, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician and a proponent of social Darwinism, eugenics, and scientific racism. He was knighted in 1909.
Francois Bernier
By virtue of being the first to propose a system of racial classification that extended to all of humanity, Bernier’s racial categories contributed to the genesis of scientific racism. Inherently, his classifications were based on physical and biological differences in human appearance, and thus sought to suggest a scientific basis for human racial variation. As previously mentioned, Bernier makes a distinction between physical variation due to environmental factors and racial factors. For instance, he classifies Indians that he is exposed to during his stint in the Mughal courts as part of the white race. He asserts that Indians, like Egyptians, have a skin color that is “accidental, resulting from their exposure to the sun”.[5] However, when it comes to categorizing Africans, he notes that “Blackness is an essential feature of theirs”.[5] Bernier evidences the fact that their color is not due to environmental factors by asserting that they will be Black even when living in colder climes. Bernier’s conception of biological or racial difference and variation due to climatic features is blurry, but contributed to the eventual development of theories of scientific racism. At the time that he published his work, it did not cause a splash: he founded no school of thought at the time. Scientific thinking, upon the time he wrote the text, had shifted from systems where evidence was based on analogies, like Bernier had used, to a system supported by fixed laws of nature. Thus, the context of scientific discourse at the time meant Bernier did not receive huge attention for his classification in the second half of the 17th century, and "he remained a man of the salons".[5]
Franz Boas
Through this methodology Boas established the theory of cultural relativism, which states there are no absolutes among cultures; the beliefs and practices of a culture can be examined only within the confines of that particular culture.
Great Chain of Being
The great chain of being is a hierarchical structure of all matter and life, thought by medieval Christianity to have been decreed by God. The chain begins with God and descends through angels, humans, animals and plants to minerals.
Hays Code (1930)
The major principles governing the code from 1930 onward: No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrong-doing, evil or sin.
Hereditary Genius
Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry Into Its Laws and Consequences is a book by Francis Galton about the genetic inheritance of intelligence. It was Galton's first major work written from a hereditarian perspective. It was later referred to as "the first serious study of the inheritance of intelligence" and as "the beginning of scientific interest in the topic of genius." In the book, Galton demonstrated that the sons of men who he considered "eminent" in a given profession were more likely to achieve such eminence themselves than if they were not closely related to eminent individuals. He interpreted this pattern as evidence for genetic transmission of human intelligence.
Hierarchy
a system or organization in which people or groups are ranked one above the other according to status or authority.
Historical particularism
Historical particularism is an approach to understanding the nature of culture and cultural changes of specific populations of people. Boas argued that the history of a particular culture lay in the study of its individual traits unfolding in a limited geographical region.
Human Genome Project
The Human Genome Project was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both a physical and a functional standpoint.
Hypodescent
In societies that regard some races or ethnic groups of people as dominant or superior and others as subordinate or inferior, hypodescent refers to the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union to the subordinate group.
Immutability
the state of not changing, or being unable to be changed: His poetry conveys a sense of the immutability of nature. The rock band's immutability is part of their appeal. See. immutable.
Indentured servitude
Indentured servitude is a form of labor where an individual is under contract to work without a salary to repay an indenture or loan. Indentured servitude was popular in the United States in the 1600s as many individuals worked in exchange for the price of passage to America.
Inequality of Races
Racial inequality is the unequal distribution of resources, power, and economic opportunity across race in a society
Major characteristics of a minority group
According to Charles Wagley and Marvin Harris (1958), a minority group is distinguished by five characteristics: (1) unequal treatment and less power over their lives, (2) distinguishing physical or cultural traits like skin color or language, (3) involuntary membership in the group, (4) awareness of subordination, and (5) high rate of in-group marriage. Additional examples of minority groups might include the LGBTQ community, religious practitioners whose faith is not widely practiced where they live, and people with disabilities.
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny, a phrase coined in 1845, is the idea that the United States is destined—by God, its advocates believed—to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent.
Materialism
Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions.
Materialistic psychology
the philosophical position that everything, including mental events, is composed of physical matter and is thus subject to the laws of physics. From this perspective, the mind is considered to exist solely as a set of brain processes
Mesocephalic
having a head of medium proportions, not markedly brachycephalic or dolichocephalic.
Miscegenation
Miscegenation is the interbreeding of people who are members of different races.
Mixed-blood Question
The question of what position in society should the mix blood people take.
Modal exemplar
Exemplar models are a successful class of psychological process models in which an inventory of stored examples is used to solve problems such as identification, categorization, and function learning.
Mongrelization
cause (a population or group of people) to become racially or ethnically mixed and thus inferior
Monogeny
origin of diverse individuals or kinds (as of language) by descent from a single ancestral individual or kind.
Narrowing of opportunities
having less and less opportunities because of your race or ethnicity
Nativism
1.the policy of protecting the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against those of immigrants.
the theory that concepts, mental capacities, and mental structures are innate rather than acquired by learning.
Natural Race Laws
Natural selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations
Negro Question
what to do about the black American in America
Norma verticulus
Nurture
The process of caring for and encouraging the growth or development of someone or something. Nature versus nurture is a long-standing debate in biology and society about the balance between two competing factors which determine fate: genetics and environment. The alliterative expression "nature and nurture" in English has been in use since at least the Elizabethan period and goes back to medieval French.
Old Americans
old people
Oppression
Oppression is malicious or unjust treatment or exercise of power, often under the guise of governmental authority or cultural opprobrium. Oppression may be overt or covert, depending on how it is practiced.
Origin of Species
On the Origin of Species (or, more completely, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life), is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin that is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. founded evolution and the origin man
Orthocephalic
having a head with a medium ratio of breadth to height.
Passing of the Great Race
book by American lawyer, self-styled anthropologist, and proponent of eugenics, Madison Grant (1865–1937). Grant expounds a theory of Nordic superiority, claiming that the "Nordic race" is inherently superior to other human "races". The theory and the book were praised by Adolf Hitler and other Nazis.
Phenotype
the set of observable characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the environment.
Phrenology
the detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities.
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal".
Polygeny
the theory (not now generally held) that humans evolved from several independent pairs of ancestors.
Privilege
a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.
Quota Act of 1921
The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 established the nation's first numerical limits on the number of immigrants who could enter the United States. The Immigration Act of 1924, also known as the National Origins Act, made the quotas stricter and permanent.
Race mixing
the idea of mix raced couples and having biracial kids.
Racial classifications
Most such racial classifications were based on visible characteristics, such as skin color, nose height, etc. Such characters are generally adaptive to environmental conditions. Further, such characters also influence mate choice. Has been problematic because they use it to set a hierarchy of racial groups