Cultural Anthropology Exam 2 SG

Race

A flawed system of classification with no biological basis that uses physical characteristics to divide humans into supposedly discrete groups.

Racism

Individual thoughts/actions and institutional patterns/policies that create or reproduce unequal access to power, privilege, resources, and opportunities based on imagined group differences.

Intersectionality

A framework for understanding how factors such as race, gender, and class interact to shape life chances and patterns of stratification.

Genotype

The inherited genetic factors that provide the framework for an organism's physical form.

Phenotype

The way genes are expressed in an organism's physical form through interaction between genotype and environment.

Colonialism

The practice of extending political, economic, and military power beyond a state's borders to obtain resources, labor, and markets.

Miscegenation

A historical, demeaning term for interracial marriage.

White supremacy

The belief that white people are biologically different from and superior to people of other races.

Whiteness

A culturally constructed category that establishes boundaries of who is considered white and who is not.

Jim Crow

Laws implemented after the Civil War that legally enforced racial segregation, particularly in the South.

Hypodescent

The assignment of children from racially mixed unions to the socially subordinate racial group.

One-drop rule

The historical rule that assigned people to the Black racial category if they had a specified amount of Black ancestry.

Nativism

Favoring certain long-term inhabitants, particularly white people, over newer immigrants.

Racialization

The process of categorizing and attributing a racial character to a person or group.

Individual racism

Personal prejudiced beliefs and discriminatory actions based on race.

Microaggressions

Common everyday verbal or behavioral slights that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages about someone's identity.

Institutional racism

Patterns through which racial inequality is structured through institutions, policies, and systems.

Structural racism

A system in which policies, institutional practices, and cultural norms combine to perpetuate racial inequality.

Racial ideology

A set of popular ideas about race that makes discriminatory behavior seem reasonable, rational, or normal.

Are humans divided into biologically distinct races?

No. Human genetics does not support biologically distinct racial groups.

How much DNA do humans share?

Humans share more than 99.9% of their DNA with one another.

Why does human genetic variation not support racial categories?

Genetic variation changes gradually across geographic space rather than forming discrete racial groups.

What is a cline?

A gradual difference in the distribution of genes across geographic space.

Why is skin color not evidence of separate races?

Skin color reflects adaptation and involves a relatively small number of genes; it does not divide humans into biological races.

What is melanin?

A pigment involved in determining skin color; more melanin generally produces darker skin.

Why did skin pigmentation vary as humans spread from Africa?

Populations adapted to different environments, producing changes in melanin production over time.

How can biology become an excuse for social differences?

People can incorrectly treat visible biological variation as proof of meaningful social or racial differences.

Why is race considered a cultural reality rather than a biological reality?

Although biological races do not exist, societies create racial categories and people act according to them.

How does race vary across cultures?

Racial categories and definitions differ across cultures and historical periods.

How is race constructed differently in Brazil and the United States?

Brazil historically lacked US-style legal segregation and developed a more continuous range of racial categories, while the US emphasized more discrete categories.

What is Brazil's "racial rainbow"?

A description of Brazil's historically broad range of racial identities resulting from extensive population mixing.

Does racism exist in Brazil?

Yes. Even without the same legal segregation system as the US, racial inequalities in income, wealth, education, and social status persist.

How were racial categories originally assigned in the US Census?

Early census workers assigned racial categories to people rather than allowing people to self-identify.

How can people identify race on the modern US Census?

People can self-identify and select multiple racial identities.

Why do census racial categories matter?

Census data help track inequality, enforce civil rights laws, draw congressional districts, and allocate federal aid.

What is racialization in the US?

The historical process through which groups have been categorized and assigned racial meanings that changed over time.

When did enslaved Africans first arrive in the English North American colonies?

1619, in Virginia.

How was slavery connected to white supremacy?

White supremacy provided an ideological justification for treating Africans as biologically distinct and inferior.

What did the Naturalization Act of 1790 establish?

It limited naturalized US citizenship to free white people of good moral character.

What did the 14th Amendment establish?

It established birthright citizenship for people born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction.

What did the 15th Amendment address?

It prohibited denying voting rights on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

What was the Chinese Exclusion Act?

The 1882 law that barred Chinese immigration and declared Chinese immigrants ineligible for naturalization on racial grounds.

How did whiteness change over time?

Groups such as Irish, Italian, Greek, Jewish, and some Eastern and Southern European immigrants were eventually incorporated into the white category.

What did the Dillingham Commission report claim?

The 1911 report characterized immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe as racially inferior.

How did some European immigrant groups become classified as white?

Upward class mobility and intermarriage with white families contributed to their incorporation into whiteness.

What is an unmarked category?

A category treated as the assumed norm, so it is often not explicitly identified; whiteness can function this way.

How does whiteness intersect with other identities?

Whiteness can be stratified by class, region, gender, and sexuality.

What is the difference between individual and institutional racism?

Individual racism involves personal beliefs/actions, while institutional racism involves patterns and policies embedded within institutions.

Can structural racism exist without individual racism?

Yes. Structural inequality can persist through systems and institutions even without conscious individual prejudice.

What is ethnicity?

A sense of historical, cultural, and sometimes ancestral connection to a group imagined as distinct from outsiders.

What is an ethnos?

A group of people who share a culture and history.

What is an ethnic boundary marker?

A practice or belief used to signal who belongs to an ethnic group and who does not.

What is situational negotiation of identity?

The process through which a person's self-identification with a group can shift depending on social location and context.

What is an origin myth?

A story about the founding and history of a group that reinforces a shared identity.

What are identity entrepreneurs?

Political, military, or religious leaders who use ethnicity, propaganda, war, and state power to mobilize people against perceived threats.

What is genocide?

The deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic or religious group.

What is ethnic cleansing?

Efforts by representatives of one ethnic or religious group to remove or destroy another group from a particular geographic area.

What is a melting pot?

A metaphor describing immigrant assimilation into the dominant US culture.

What is assimilation?

The process in which cultural minorities adopt the dominant culture's norms and patterns and cease to exist as separate groups.

What is multiculturalism?

A pattern in which immigrants adopt the dominant national culture while retaining elements of their ethnic culture.

What is a state?

An autonomous regional political, economic, and military structure with a central government authorized to make laws and use force.

What is a nation?

A group of people historically understood as sharing a place of origin; the term is also commonly used for a nation-state.

What is a nation-state?

A political entity within geographic territory and enforced borders whose population shares a sense of culture, ancestry, and destiny.

What is citizenship?

Legal membership in a nation-state.

What is nationality?

Identification with a group thought to share a place of origin.

What is nationalism?

A strong identification with and commitment to a nation or state; more specifically, the desire of an ethnic community to create or maintain its own nation-state.

What is ethnic nationalism?

The desire of an ethnic community to create or maintain its own nation-state.

What is an imagined community?

A sense of connection and shared traditions among members of an ethnic group or nation who will likely never all meet.

What is a diaspora?

A group living outside its ancestral homeland while maintaining emotional and material ties to it.

How are national identities socially constructed?

Nations can be built through invented traditions, national languages, holidays, education, transportation systems, and shared histories.

What did Hobsbawm and Ranger argue about nations?

They argued that nations are relatively recent constructions supported by invented traditions.

How did national education and transportation help create national identity?

They helped connect diverse populations and promote shared languages, histories, and traditions.

How did colonial borders affect ethnic groups?

Colonial borders often ignored existing ethnic boundaries, placing multiple groups within states or dividing ethnic groups between states.

Why can anti-colonial nationalism be complicated?

New states may contain multiple strong ethnic identities that make national unity difficult.

Can ethnic nationalism be positive?

It can create solidarity, identity, and political mobilization, but it can also exclude outsiders and contribute to conflict, ethnic cleansing, or genocide.

How can ethnicity be a source of opportunity?

People can mobilize ethnic identities through businesses, food, fashion, music, festivals, and tourism.

What is the Indian American example of ethnic identity construction?

Indian immigrants in the US have developed an Indian American identity through consumption, festivals, media, and communities such as Little India.

How did Puerto Rican farmworkers use ethnicity?

Some created ethnic-based businesses to respond to prejudice and racism and to keep money within their communities.

What happened in Rwanda in 1994?

Extremist Hutu forces carried out genocide against Tutsi people and moderate Hutu people.

How did Belgian colonialism contribute to the Rwandan genocide?

Belgian policies intensified ethnic divisions by favoring Tutsi people, using pseudoscientific racial ideas, and issuing identity cards identifying ethnicity.

How were Hutu and Tutsi distinctions understood before colonial rule?

They were more closely associated with occupations such as farming and cattle herding rather than fixed racial categories.

What is sex?

Culturally agreed-upon physical differences between males and females, especially biological differences related to reproduction.

What is gender?

The culturally assigned expectations for thought and behavior associated with different sexes.

What is sexual dimorphism?

Phenotypic differences between males and females of the same species.

What is gender identity?

A person's internal experience and understanding of their own gender.

What is gender expression?

How a person expresses or presents gender through behavior, appearance, name, pronouns, and other forms.

What does transgender mean?

Describes people whose gender identity or expression does not correspond with the sex category assigned at birth.

What does cisgender mean?

Describes people whose gender identity and expression correspond with the sex category assigned at birth.

What is the cultural construction of gender?

The ways people learn to perform and recognize behaviors as masculine or feminine within a cultural context.

What is masculinity?

The ideas and practices associated with manhood.

What is femininity?

The ideas and practices associated with womanhood.

What is gender performance?

The way gender identity is expressed through actions and behavior.

What is intersex?

A naturally occurring state in which a person is born with a combination of sex characteristics that do not fit typical male or female patterns.

Why is biological sex more complex than external genitalia?

Sex involves multiple factors, including genitalia, gonads, hormones, chromosomes, and other characteristics.

What are gonads?

Internal reproductive organs, such as testes and ovaries, that produce sex hormones and reproductive cells.

What are chromosomes commonly associated with females and males?

XX is commonly associated with females and XY with males, although naturally occurring variations exist.

What is XXY?

A chromosomal variation commonly assigned male at birth that can involve lower testosterone production and differences in reproductive development.

What is XO?

A chromosomal variation commonly assigned female at birth that can involve atypical ovarian development and lower estrogen production.

What is XYY?

A chromosomal variation commonly assigned male at birth; many people have typical testosterone and fertility levels.

What is mosaicism?

A condition in which an individual has different chromosome patterns in different cells, such as a mixture of XX and XY cells.