Terms of the Trade - Flashcards

Terms of the Trade

Terms

  • Ethnic Group:

    • Historical or national origin.
    • Distinctive cultural traits and practices.
    • A sense of community.
    • Focus of the class is on racialized ethnic groups, though European ethnics exist.

  • Ethnocentrism:

    • Intense commitment and preference for one’s own ethnic group.
    • Tendency to:
      • View one’s own group as superior.
      • Judge others by the standards and values of their own group.
      • Deny others the rights and equal access to wealth, power, and status one claims for one’s own group.
    • Not inherently negative. Positive ethnocentrism involves:
      • Centering or grounding oneself in one’s own culture/community.
      • Assuming one's culture is not better, but preferred for non-prejudicial reasons.
      • Being open to mutually beneficial relations and exchanges with others.
      • Heightened sense of solidarity under conditions of isolation, oppression, and resistance to oppression (e.g., Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, "Not a country of Immigrants", "Si se puede").

  • Eurocentrism:

    • Thought and practice rooted in the assumption that the greatest relevance and value are centered in European peoples and culture.
    • Other peoples are considered marginal or irrelevant.

  • Race:

    • Has both social and biological dimensions.
    • Social meaning attributed to one’s physical appearance.
    • Sociobiological concept constructed to assign human worth and social status, using Europeans as the paradigm.

  • Prejudice:

    • Hostile or negative attitude towards others based on faulty assumptions about them or their culture.

  • Racism:

    • System of denial, deformation, and destruction of a people’s history, humanity, and human rights based exclusively/primarily on the concept of race.
    • Systemic and institutionalized.
    • Requires and implies hierarchy in which white is placed above all else (racialization).
    • Used to benefit the dominant culture/group.
    • The ability to and desire to turn a prejudice attitude into action/policy.

  • Expressions of Racism:

    • Imposition – Violence, conquest, annexation, enslavement, occupation segregation, subjugation, deculturalization etc.
    • Ideology – The use of pseudo-science and pseudo-intellectual assumptions to justify oppression and unequal treatment.
    • Institutional arrangement – structures and practices designed to perpetuate the imposition and ideology. Includes: educational systems, legal systems, the media, the economy, the political system, basically the entire social system.

  • Stratification evolves from Contact

    • Forms of contact:
      • Imperialistic Conquest (Native America, Africa, Asia).
      • Annexation (Mexican territory).
    • Contact options:
      • Genocide (Native Americans).
      • Enslavement (Native Americans and Africans).
      • Racial Stratification (All peoples of color).
      • Egalitarian co-existence (Not taken).
    • Movement of people
      • Migration – Transfer of populations.
      • Immigration – Coming to a different country.
      • Emigration – Leaving a country.

Theories

  • Functionalist Perspective:

    • Views the essential function of society as maintaining order, stability, and balance between competing groups so that they act in non-disruptive ways.
    • Characteristics:
      • Conflict viewed as abnormal.
      • Poverty and inequality attributed to unequal ability/effort (Meritocracy).
      • Change is designed to be slow rather than quick and radical as to not disrupt stability.

  • Conflict Theory:

    • Understands conflict, disagreement, and struggle as central to societal life and functioning.
    • Characteristics:
      • Focuses on inequities of power, wealth, and status.
      • Focuses on antagonism (race, class, gender, etc.) which act as the center of conflict and struggles to resolve them.
      • Sees power struggles and change as normal and necessary.
      • Addresses the question: who benefits from the current nature of society and who seeks to maintain it?

  • Race as Practice Theory:

    • Viewing race as practice: what we say and what we do, which can be negative (acts of discrimination/racism) or positive (acts and language of solidarity and unity) (Croom 2020a).
    • Genres of Race:
      • Refers to recognizable forms of racialization with or without race-obvious words
      • Labeling – common racial classification terms of equivalents.
      • Social Classing – Racializing by using income, economic, or other money related rankings.
      • Vindicating – Questioning racial common sense, countering notions white racial superiority, regarding human plentitude.
      • Ranking – Implicit or explicit racial hierarchy that goes beyond social classing.
      • Placializing – Equating place and racialized people (inner city, urban, suburban, Westside etc.).

Perspectives

  • Modes of Domination:

    • Race – sociobiological concept made to assign human worth and social standing with Europeans as the paradigm.
    • Class – socioeconomic group with reflect equal possession of and access to wealth and power/status.
    • Gender – a socio-biological category used to impose, explain and justify unequal, exploitative and oppressive relations between males, females, and non-binary individuals.
    • Racism – system of dominance based on race.
    • Classism – system of dominance based on class.
    • Sexism – system of dominance based on gender.

  • Modes of Response:

    • Submission – Accepting domination.
    • Accommodation – Internally reject inequities and oppression of the system but externally work within its framework, seeking gradual change.
    • Resistance – Rejection of the system and confronting it on every level possible. Cultural struggle, armed struggled, economic struggle, political struggle.
    • Method and intensity of the struggle determined by the extent and pace of change of sought after.

  • Racial Orientation

    • White/Anti-POC Orientation
      • Based on a deficiency philosophy
      • White > Everything else
    • Post-Racialization Orientation
      • Denial of racialization
      • Practice of colorblindness
    • Post-White Orientation
      • Outright denial of racial stratification and notions of white supremacy