Cultural Diversity Final Exam Study Guide

Body Rituals Among the Nacirema

A satirical anthropological essay illustrating cultural relativism by describing ordinary American practices as exotic rituals.

Japan as a Modern Construction

The idea that the concept of "Japan" is a historically produced, modern identity rather than an unchanging entity.

Shift from Geographical to Temporal Otherness

Change in how foreignness is conceived—no longer only about distant places but also about societies viewed as existing in a different historical time.

Ainu

Indigenous people of northern Japan who have been marginalized and othered within Japanese society.

Ryukyu Kingdom

Historically independent kingdom (modern Okinawa) annexed by Japan, highlighting internal cultural diversity.

Microaggression

Subtle, often unintentional discriminatory remarks or behaviors that communicate bias toward marginalized groups.

Zainichi Koreans

Ethnic Koreans residing long-term in Japan, often facing legal and social discrimination despite generational roots in the country.

Formation of Zainichi Identity

Processes through which Zainichi Koreans negotiate belonging, heritage, and exclusion in Japanese society.

1923 Great Kanto Earthquake

Catastrophic quake in Tokyo-Yokohama that triggered scapegoating and massacres of Korean residents.

Passing

Adopting the appearance or identity markers of another social group to avoid prejudice or gain privilege.

Myth of Homogeneity

The belief that Japan is ethnically and culturally uniform, masking internal diversity and minority experiences.

The Cats of Mirikitani

Documentary about artist Jimmy Mirikitani linking WWII incarceration, homelessness, and resilience.

World War II Internment Camps (U.S.)

Government-run facilities that forcibly confined Japanese Americans during WWII on the basis of ancestry.

9/11 and Islamophobia

Post-September 11 climate marked by heightened suspicion and prejudice toward Muslims, used as a comparative frame for past injustices.

Framework of Nation

Conceptual lens that shapes who belongs, who is excluded, and how identities are constructed within national boundaries.

George Takei

Japanese American actor and activist celebrated for Star Trek’s Hikaru Sulu and outspoken social-justice advocacy.

Hikaru Sulu

Helmsman character played by George Takei on the original Star Trek TV series (1966-1969).

Allegiance (Musical)

Broadway production starring George Takei dramatizing the forced internment of Japanese American families during WWII.

Forced Internment of Japanese Families

WWII policy that removed over 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and confined them in camps.

LGBTQ Rights Advocacy

Public support and activism for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer equality—central to George Takei’s online presence.

Open-Book Exam

Test format permitting use of course materials and dictionaries while prohibiting internet sources or collaboration.

One-Attempt, Timed Exam Policy

Assessment rule allowing a single 60-minute attempt; students must start only when prepared to finish.

Anthropology’s “Savage Slot”

A conceptual space in which non-Western peoples were cast as primitive, timeless Others whose cultures served as either the West’s past or its utopian future.

“Noble Savage”

An imagined figure able to speak between “primitive” and “modern” worlds, providing mystical or utopic insight for the West.

“Suffering Slot”

A later anthropological frame that centers marginalized Others through their wounds and misrecognition, replacing the civilizing narrative with a liberating one.

Project of “the West”

A managerial and imaginative enterprise that defined itself through progress and by contrasting itself with a constructed idea of savagery.

Always-Already Related

The principle that peoples deemed discrete are in fact historically intertwined with Western economic, racial, and military domination.

Buraku (部落)

Literally “people of the neighborhood”; a Japanese social minority historically tied to stigmatized labor such as leather tanning and meat processing.

Burakumin

Individuals identified—by genealogy, residence, occupation, or rumor—as belonging to Buraku communities and subject to discrimination.

Genealogy → Residence → Gossip

The historical shift in how Buraku identity is determined: from lineage records to neighborhood address to informal labeling.

Opacity of Stigmatized Markers

Post-war social and legal reforms that made Buraku indicators (job, neighborhood, family registry) harder to see, yet still potent.

Special Measures Law

Japanese legislation (late 1960s–2002) that supported stigmatized industries; its expiration harmed domestic leather production.

Buraku Liberation League (BLL)

Japan’s main Buraku political organization aiming to end discrimination and cultivate Buraku cultural pride.

Zenkoku Suiheisha

Founded in 1922, the first nationwide Buraku liberation movement advocating equality and human rights.

Monoethnic Ideology

The belief that Japan is ethnically homogeneous, often endorsed by both majority and minority groups for different ends.

Lie’s Labor-Based Identity

Theory that Buraku and Korean minority identities mirror Japan’s monoethnic myth by tying difference to labor or origin.

Multiculturalism (in Japan)

Governance approach that lists multiple minorities together, assumes an authentic cultural core, and highlights shared woundedness.

Four Patterns of Multiculturalism

Enlistment, Equilibration, Authenticity, and Vulnerability—the recurring demands placed on minority groups.

Enlistment

The act of recruiting and listing minorities as evidence against the myth of national homogeneity; lists lengthen endlessly.

Equilibration

The process that renders diverse minorities equivalent under the single standard of ‘otherness’ and human rights.

Authenticity (Demand)

Expectation that a minority present a recognizable, fixed cultural essence to gain recognition.

Vulnerability (Demand)

Requirement that a minority display its wounds or suffering to be acknowledged within multicultural frameworks.

Additive Model of Identity

A “multiple discriminations” view in which layers of oppression are simply added together without probing dominant norms.

Default Group / “Just Human”

The unexamined norm—often white or majority—against which multicultural ‘others’ are contrasted and managed.

Labor of Multiculturalism

Hankins’s idea that both NGO and tannery workers reshape recognition criteria and are themselves transformed in the process.

Leather Tannery

Stigmatized Buraku-linked industry whose environmental regulations and economic shifts illustrate changing markers of identity.

Contagious Category

Hankins’s description of Buraku status: easily transferred via job, residence, or marriage and hard to shed once labeled.

Human Rights NGO Strategy

BLL tactic of appealing to international bodies to pressure Japan for anti-discrimination legislation.

Slander via Buraku Lists

Modern discrimination using online or printed neighborhood lists to expose and target Buraku individuals.

Multicultural Slide-Show

Dyer’s critique that diversity displays can entertain the dominant group without challenging its power.

Equality vs. Equity

Distinction between treating everyone the same and providing fair opportunities/results, illustrated by tilted-world examples.

Sloped Fairness

Kim Ji-hye’s notion that concepts of fairness often ignore structurally tilted systems benefiting the dominant.

GLIDE (Global Leaders in International Disability Education)

A 501(c)(3) organization that funds disabled university students’ international exchange so they can promote accessibility worldwide.

Mark Bookman

Late disability historian whose research on Japan’s disability politics and personal advocacy inspired the documentary “Mark – A Call to Action.”

“Mark – A Call to Action” (2024)

An 87-minute documentary by Ron Small highlighting Mark Bookman’s life, activism, and the need for global accessibility.

Medical Model of Disability

Oldest framework; treats disability as an individual pathology that limits economic productivity and must be cured.

Social Model of Disability

1970s framework; holds that disability is created when impaired people face social and architectural barriers, not by their bodies alone.

Political/Relational Model of Disability

Bookman’s framework focused on how shifting coalitions and social judgments decide who is considered disabled and with what rights.

Architectural Barriers

Physical obstacles (e.g., stairs without ramps) that the social model targets for removal to enable disabled access.

Assistive Devices

Technologies or tools (e.g., ramps, tactile paving) intended to aid disabled people—often poorly placed when users aren’t consulted.

Able-Bodied

A socially constructed category describing people assumed to have no impairments that limit everyday activities.

Emergency Support Systems

Government or community plans that protect disabled and elderly people during disasters or pandemics while preserving dignity.

Epistemic Ignorance

Willful lack of knowledge described in David Leonard’s question: “Why do you not know, and what have you done to make sure that you continue to not know?”

Accessibility

The degree to which environments, services, or information are usable by disabled people without additional adaptation.

Inclusive Society

A community vision promoted by GLIDE where everyone, regardless of ability, can lead an independent, self-determined life.

Architects & Policy Makers

Key stakeholders whom the GLIDE Fund urges to consider disabled perspectives when designing built environments.

Disability Coalitions

Alliances that form and dissolve around shared experiences or policy goals, central to the political/relational model.

Whiteness

A socially constructed racial position that is treated as the invisible norm or default human standard, granting power and privilege.

Othering

The process of socially marginalizing people by attributing negative characteristics to those perceived as different from the dominant group.

“Other” (capital O)

A term that signals subjects of Othering; highlights their constructed difference from the presumed norm.

Default Human

The assumption that the dominant group (often white) represents ordinary humanity, while all others are deviations.

Invisibility of Whiteness

The condition in which whiteness is so normalized it escapes scrutiny, shielding it from critique.

Normalcy (Ian Hacking)

A 19th-century concept that judges people against statistical or cultural ‘norms,’ now a powerful ideological tool.

“Making Whiteness Strange”

Dyer’s call to render whiteness visible and questionable rather than an unmarked norm.

Multiculturalism as a Slide-Show

Dyer’s critique that multicultural displays can serve as entertainment for whites without challenging white dominance.

Hybridity (Dyer)

A hoped-for future condition of genuine multiplicity without white hegemony.

Biological Racist

Someone who claims races are biologically different and hierarchically ordered.

Biological Antiracist

Someone who asserts that races are biologically the same and rejects genetic racial differences.

Cultural Racist

A person who sets cultural standards that rank racial groups hierarchically.

Cultural Antiracist

A person who rejects cultural hierarchies and equalizes cultural differences among racial groups.

Colorism

A system of policies and ideas that produce inequities between light-skinned and dark-skinned people within a group.

Color Antiracism

Policies and ideas striving for equity between light and dark complexions.

Colorblind Ideology

The belief that ignoring race ends racism; critiqued as a form of willing ignorance that upholds systemic inequality.

Routine Racism

Everyday, normalized racist practices embedded in social life.

“Loving” Racism

Seemingly affectionate or benign practices that nevertheless reinforce racist stereotypes or hierarchies.

Racial Representation

How racial groups are depicted in media; shapes perceptions of who counts as human.

Racial Taxonomy

An ordering of races into a hierarchy, such as placing whites at the top and blacks at the bottom.

Japanese Whiteness

The idea that light Japanese skin symbolizes national identity and purity, marginalizing darker Japanese and others.

Bihaku

Japanese term for ‘beautiful white’; refers to skin-whitening ideals and products.

Suppin

Literally “unpainted face”; an ideal of natural, light, makeup-free Japanese skin.

Hada iro → Pale Orange

The renaming of the crayon color once labeled ‘skin color’ to recognize diverse complexions.

Racial Profiling

Police or authorities targeting individuals for scrutiny based on race rather than behavior.

Meaning and Absence (Stuart Hall)

The idea that what is missing from an image or text is as significant as what is present, revealing default assumptions.

Default Position

Taken-for-granted standards (e.g., whiteness) against which differences are measured.

“Just Human” Position

The powerful stance of claiming universality while others are marked as raced or different.

Racial Hierarchy

An ordering of races that assigns differing value, status, or power.

Skin-Lightening Products

Cosmetics marketed to whiten or brighten skin, reflecting colorist beauty standards.

Tanning Products

Goods that darken skin tone, illustrating skin color as modifiable and commodified.

Okinawan Difference

Japanese perception that Okinawans are culturally and physically distinct from mainland ‘us,’ revealing internal racism.

Hafu (half)

Japanese term for mixed Japanese and non-Japanese individuals, often placed between white and Japanese in social hierarchies.