Race and ethnicity

One- Drop rule: A custom that a person who had any African ancestry was classified as Black 

Race: System humans created to classify groups of people mostly based on skin tone 

Ethnicity: Common culture, religion, history, or ancestry shared by a group of people  

Eugenics: The idea hat we can actively improve the genetic profile of humans  

Implicit bias: associations out minds make between seemingly unrelated things 

Explicit bias: bias that we are openly and conciously aware of  

Internalized bias: When a person belonging to a marginalized racial group associates their own group with negative evaluations 

Stereotypes: Widely-shared perception about the personal characteristics, tendencies, or abilities of individual members of a particular group 

Prejudices: Preconceived beliefs, attitudes, or opinions about members of another group 

Group Threat Theory: Argues that prejudices grow stronger if we begin to think of another group as an economic, political, or cultural threat  

Ultimate attributions error: Psychological phenomenon in which undesirable characteristics exhibited by members of another group as perceived as innate and attributing positive behaviour to luck  

Cognitive dissonance: Psychological state in which preconceived ideas do not allign with what we see with our own eyes 

Contact theory: Helps explain how interactions with members of other groups affects prejudicial beliefs  

Positive discrimination: Efforts to rectify historical and current forms of negative discriminations  

Reparations: Compensation, usually financial, for and recognition of past harm against specific people 

Institutional racism: Ideas that our nation’s core institutions are embedded with racial biases and preferences that recreate and maintain racial inequality  

Affirmative action: Policies or programs that seek to rectify past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal oppurtunity now  

Immigrant selectivity: Process whereby people who immigrate to the US from certain countries have a unique demographic profile compared to people who stay behind in their home country