Racialized Social Systems

Flashcards on Racialized Social Systems and Racism

According to the author, what has hindered the study of race and ethnic conflict?

Inadequate and simplistic theories.

How should racism be understood, according to the main thesis?

As part of a larger racialized social system.

What is the traditional view of racism rooted in?

Individual attitudes.

According to Orthodox Marxists, how is racism used?

Bourgeoisie uses it to divide the working class.

What is the Institutionalist Perspective on racism?

The perspective where racism as a combination of prejudice and power that allows the dominant race to institutionalize its dominance at all levels in a society

What is the Internal Colonial Perspective on racism?

Views racism as an institutional matter based on a system where the White majority enhances its social position by exploiting, controlling, and suppressing other groups categorized by race or ethnicity.

What is racial formation?

Process by which racial categories are created, transformed, and destroyed.

According to the text, how is racism excluded from social structure?

Racism is seen as a baseless ideology.

How is racism often treated as a psychological phenomenon?

Racism is reduced to individual attitudes measured through surveys.

According to the text, where do perspectives treat racism as originating from, before it spreads to institutions?

Individual or group ideologies.

How is racism often seen as a static phenomenon?

Racism is seen as unchanging, with the same ideas persisting over time.

What elements does viewing racists as irrational miss?

Rational elements on which the racialized systems were originally built.

What is racism often associated with, ignoring more subtle forms?

Overt hostility.

How is racism often seen as a legacy of the past?

A remnant of historical racial situations like slavery.

What is a racialized social system?

Societies in which economic, political, social, and ideological levels are partially structured by the placement of actors in racial categories or races.

Are Racial categories socially constructed or biologically determined?

Socially constructed.

What does a racialized system involve?

Hierarchy where the dominant race receives greater rewards.

What constitutes the racial structure of a society?

Totality of racialized social relations and practices.

What do races develop, shaped by power struggles?

Objective interests based on their position in the racial hierarchy.

How is race defined?

The extension of racial meaning to a previously racially un-classified relationship, social practice or group.

What does the invention of racial categories entail?

Dialectical process of construction, “that is, the creation of a category of "other" involves the creation of a category of "same.””

Is race biological or socially constructed?

Socially constructed but very real.

What is the function of racism as a racial ideology?

Racial notions and stereotypes.

What is the segment of the ideological structure that crystallizes racial notions and stereotypes?

It provides rationalizations for interactions between the races.

How should racism be studied, according to the conclusion?

Racism should be studied from the viewpoint of racialization.