Chapter 7 Flashcards

(26 cards)

1
Q

Circumstantialist Model

A

In the circumstantialist model, ethnicity is seen as a rather fluid category that is employed differently under different circumstances.

One example is Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the 2016 democratic presidential primaries. She was the Senator from New York, but had lived in Arkansas for many years as wife of then Governor Bill Clinton, and was originally from Chicago. Depending on the context, she played on her personal history as a Southerner, New Yorker, or Chicagoan. This is not to imply that Hillary Clinton is dishonest, we all do the same thing. Depending on circumstances we may identify as a member of a neighborhood or region, the citizen of a particular country or state, or as an American. But we might also identify as a member of a group based on our descent (on St. Patrick’s Day you are Irish), or the high school or university you attended, or even as a member of your profession or social group (such as an anthropologist or Rotarian).

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2
Q

Clincal Trait

A

Traits such as skin color and height are clinal traits which means they exist on a continuum called the gradient of change and do not have distinct boundaries.

The American historical “black” and “white” division based on skin tone in part represents geographic differences between colonizing populations from northern climates in Europe and enslaved Africans from populations near the equator. The skin tone differences between the two original populations were pronounced, but that is not the case in looking at skin tone across all human groups, which is much more variable.

 Because skin tone is a clinal trait, this means there is a continuous gradation of the trait moving from one geographic region to another. On the Eurasian and African landmasses, skin tone varies in relation to distance from the equator.
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3
Q

Degenerationism

A

Blumenbach believed Caucasian to be the original and most beautiful group, and considered the other varieties to be degenerations from the original White variety. Scientists like Linnaeus and Blumenbach recognized that physical characteristics between groups overlapped and they understood it was impossible to draw definitive lines separating groups of people. Yet they still supported the notion that there were separate geographical varieties of humans. Further, Blumenbach’s notion that these other varieties were degenerated copies of an original White model provided a “scientific” justification for slavery, which at the time was an extremely profitable business for European merchants.

Early anthropologists (such as Morgan and Tylor) challenged the previous idea of degenerationism with a model of cultural evolution that proposed humans had developed through the stages of savagery, barbarism, and civilization. As we have discussed, this was also a racist scheme. In this system, Europeans were assumed to be at the height of civilization, while those in the stages of savagery and barbarism were considered to represent the way Europeans lived in the past. Like the degenerationist model, this evolutionary scheme, unfortunately, was still employed to exploit non-Western cultures.

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4
Q

Ethic Group

A

An ethnic group refers to people who view themselves as sharing a common history, common origins, and often common cultural traits such as language, religion, dress, foods, and a variety of other traditions.

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5
Q

Ethnicity

A

Ethnicity is not something that one is born with. It is not a biological or genetic trait. Ethnicity involves enculturation and the behavior an individual accepts as markers of their identification with a particular group of people. Language and dress for example, are common markers of ethnic identity.

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6
Q

Gene Flow

A

Humans originated in Africa, but different populations have been mixing since Neanderthals encountered modern humans 30,000 years ago. Further, gene flow is also clearly illustrated by the differences between siblings. Each child is a different mix of their ancestor’s genes. Consequently, a child may look strikingly different than their parents, and siblings will express different combinations of their parents’ genes. In the photo above, for example, the two young women are sisters with the same parents. However, the woman on the left is typically identified as Latina while people think her sister is white.

The greatest degree of inter-group genetic diversity exists in Africa. Thus, two members of the same African village may exhibit more genetic diversity than any two Europeans anywhere. This is a product of the founder effect. Modern humans evolved in Africa and spread northward to Eurasia, and then westward to the New World. The migrating population of Africans were a subset of all Africans, thus Eurasian peoples are less genetically diverse from one another than are Africans. By the same token, Native Americans represent a migrating subset of Asian peoples, and were originally less genetically diverse. However, subsequent interbreeding in the New World following colonization (European, African, Native American, and multiple other peoples) has created flow of genetic material among populations making the concept of pure “race” particularly meaningless in places such as the U.S.

This can perhaps be confusing in light of recent advertisements of genetic tests that can reveal ancestry. First, what we can describe among human populations is a statistical pattern of the cumulative relative frequency of particular genes. To illustrate this very simply, say that in population A, we find that 75% of the people have gene X and 25% of the people have gene Y. In population B, the frequencies are reversed, 25% of the people have gene X and 75% of the people have gene Y. If you have gene X, the odds are that you belong to group A rather than group B. But it does not prove you belong to group A, for 1 in 4 of the people with the gene belong to group B. If you can look at the frequencies of multiple genes, then it strengthens the likelihood of being able to trace ancestry.

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7
Q

Genotype

A

Genotype refers to an organism’s actual genetic code

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8
Q

Gradient of Change

A

The traits such as skin color and height are clinal traits which means they exist on a continuum called the gradient of change and do not have distinct boundaries

clinal traits,

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9
Q

Hierarchically Nesting of Identities

A

As you can see above, we all have different identities that are hierarchically nested. For example, English and African ancestry is common in the American South, but there are also areas with heavy Scots-Irish ancestry (such as in Appalachia) or French ancestry (Cajuns in parts of Louisiana). Consequently, a person may speak French and identify as Cajun, but also identify as “Southerners” as contrasted with “Northerners.” Another higher-level contrast would involve nationalism, so Southerners and Northerners may view themselves as Americans in contrast with other nations. On the other hand, McGee has always found it curious that his Texas State University study abroad students almost always identify themselves as Texans rather than American when they meet people in Europe. To get a sample of Cajun culture watch the short Louisiana Cajun video featuring Elgin Thibodeaux talking about growing up in rural Louisiana.

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10
Q

Hypodescent

A

The American cultural mathematics of calculating racial purity employs the concept of hypodescent. Hypodescent refers to cases where if a child is born to parents from two different social statuses, the child is considered to belong to the lower status.

. In the South it became known as the “one-drop rule,’’ meaning that a single drop of “black blood” makes a person a black. It is also known as the “one black ancestor rule,” some courts have called it the “traceable amount rule,” and anthropologists call it the “hypo-descent rule,” meaning that racially mixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group

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11
Q

Imagine Communities

A

The political scientist Benedict Anderson (1936-2015) used the term imagined communities to describe national identity, but it applies to almost any group. He wrote that even though members of a community may not actually know everyone in that community, they view themselves as having the same interests and a common identity. For example, the population of the United States is an incredibly diverse mix of people. Spanish-speaking Americans living in a border town like Laredo lead very different lives than a person of Irish descent who lives in South Boston. They may speak different languages, like different foods, and listen to different music. Yet they share a common identity as Americans, even though they may lead very different lives.

 An ethnic community also exists because its members contrast themselves to other groups. The African American community for example, is composed of a large and diverse group of people who do not necessarily have a lot in common, but are bonded by their contrast to the “white” community. In fact, black and white people probably have much more in common than they are different, which allows for common identification at different levels, as Americans for example. Imagined communities can also involve groups that share identity based on characteristics other than ethnicity. For example, the term “homosexual community” or the “LGBTQ community” suggests a sense of shared identity based on sexual orientation. But even these groups are composed of people from different backgrounds and walks of life.
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12
Q

Manifest Destiny

A

European colonization of the U.S. was justified by the doctrine of manifest destiny. Manifest destiny refers to the belief that the white citizens of the United States were divinely ordained by God to expand across the continent to the Pacific Coast.

In effect, European colonists formulated a religious rationale for their genocide of indigenous Native Americans. They believed it was their right, and part of God’s divine plan, for European colonists to have possession of the land they colonized. Native Americans were largely viewed as savages, and were considered to be in the way of God’s plan for European colonists in the “New World.”

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13
Q

Mulatto

A

“mulatto” (meaning one white and one “negro” parent)

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14
Q

Non-Concordant Traits

A

The final piece of biological evidence for the invalidity of American race beliefs is the fact that the traits that Americans typically associate with race are non-concordant.

However, when traits are non-concordant, like skin color and height, they are independent of one another. The traits that white Americans typically associate with black people are skin color, hair texture, and wide nostrils and lips. These are all non-concordant, occurring independently throughout the human population. In other words, there are plenty of people with dark skin who have straight hair and narrow noses while at the same time if you look around your classroom you will notice people with lighter skin who have curly hair and wide lips.

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15
Q

Octoroon

A

“octoroon” (meaning one-eighth “negro”)

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16
Q

Phenotype

A

phenotype refers to physical appearance and involves the interaction of one’s genotype with the environment. The basis for one’s skin tone, for example, is based on your genotype but this is also influenced by the environment.

17
Q

Polymorphism

A

That there is physical variation within any group (polymorphism)
Another dimension of the impossibility of drawing racial “lines” is polymorphism, which means simply that there is physical variation within members of a population. Human beings differ from one another in their DNA only by 0.1% (see Wooding and Jorde in suggested readings). That means that any human being anywhere is at least 99.9% similar in genetic material to any other human being on the planet. Within that 0.1% of variation, if we compare people on the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, 85-90% of the genetic variation occurs within the population of these continents and only 10-15% occurs between them. Human populations who come in contact with each other tend to interbreed, which increases the genetic variation of those groups. That means, if you look at any of the so-called “racial groups,” the individuals comprising any given group will exhibit a great deal of genetic diversity within that group, which far exceeds the genetic differences between any two groups. This is true whether one looks at villages, regions, nations, or continents. In part, this is due to the fact that human populations in close geographic proximity tend to interbreed

18
Q

Primordialist Model

A

The primordialist model of ethnicity that draws on ethnic identity, related to individuals who view themselves as having a common descent, a language, a history, and/or a religious heritage. Members of the same region may share this type of identification, or it can be manifested in subcultural differences in large scale societies. Primordialist and circumstantialist models are not necessarily mutually exclusive, for both may come into play.

19
Q

Quadroon

A

“quadroon” (meaning one-fourth “negro,”)

20
Q

Race

A

Race is an ethnocentric classification system that has been supported in Western societies over the last several hundred years by spurious pseudo-scientific studies that suggest humankind is made up of biologically distinct types of people. This is not scientifically valid. As discussed in Chapter Two, all living human beings are descended from the same woman who lived in Africa about 150,000 years ago, so there is only one human race. Nonetheless, race is a powerful social category that is real to the extent that the concept influences human interrelations. Moreover, while race may not be real, racism is.

21
Q

Racism

A

Discrimination against different human groups has been based on the belief that we inherit biological traits that make us unequal in morality, intelligence, personality, propensity to crime, or generally, in our ability to acquire culture. In the United States, these beliefs have been used to justify the enslavement or extermination of indigenous peoples and the purchase of people brought from Africa (and their children) to be used as if they were livestock. Unfortunately, 150 years after the end of our Civil War, we are still fighting human trafficking and discrimination in all aspects of U.S. society that is a legacy of this concept of biological race.

22
Q

Rule of Hypodescent

A

The American cultural mathematics of calculating racial purity employs the concept of hypodescent. Hypodescent refers to cases where if a child is born to parents from two different social statuses, the child is considered to belong to the lower status. In the U.S., the rule of hypodescent has operated so that if a child is born to a parent of two different “races,” the child is automatically assigned to the “race” that is considered inferior.

One case in point is Barack Obama, who was elected president of the United States in 2008. His mother was a white woman from Kansas and his father was an African man from Kenya. President Obama is classified as our first African American president; which is how he self-identifies. However, apart from the rule of hypodescent, there is no justification for classifying President Obama as African American rather than white. He is just as much a white person as black. Outside of the American notions of race, the rule of hypodescent is also found in the caste system of India. If a child is the product of a union between members of different castes, the child is considered to belong to the lower caste (as discussed in Chapter 6).

23
Q

Sickle Cell Trait

A

Sickle cell trait is a biological adaptation to malaria. In the U.S., populations of immigrant Europeans, ancestors of the Central and West African slaves, and various other populations (including the original Native American inhabitants and multiple other groups) have the sickle-cell trait; however, it is most prevalent among African Americans.

 The sickle cell trait is also found in Mediterranean areas, including Greece and Sardinia, and not all African populations have high frequencies of the sickle-cell trait. The American-European slave trade was concentrated in Central and West Africa. Those Africans and their descendants do have a higher frequency of sickle cell, but it is certainly not characteristic of all Africans. Sickle cell anemia is a severe disease. Its effects can be mitigated with modern medical technologies, but in many non-Western cultures, individuals with the disorder might not survive childhood. While the “sickling” of red blood cells makes them harder to invade by falciparum malarial parasites, individuals with normal red blood cells have no protection. Individuals with the sickle cell trait produce both normal red blood cells and a percentage of sickled red blood cells. 

The sickle cell trait/anemia is not a genetic trait of “Africans,” but of Africans, Europeans, and Asians living in areas where falciparum malaria thrives. The rate of random mutation that creates sickle cell trait is the same as it is in any human population. Because this mutation provides an advantage in areas where falciparum malaria is a significant health threat, over time, that random mutation has been selected and become more pronounced. In American society, those uninformed of biology and history have used sickle cell trait as genetic “proof” of black/white racial differences, but the major European colonizers of America are of British, Scottish, and Irish descent, and from ecological areas where falciparum malaria did not take a firm hold. Europeans from Greece, Italy, and other Mediterranean areas, as well as peoples with ancestry in Southern Asia (such as India) demonstrate selection for sickle cell trait. Africans do not uniformly have a higher incidence of sickle cell trait, but only those who are from regions where falciparum malaria is prolific.

24
Q

Structural Violence

A

Another tactic was for state legislatures to simply declare that the Federal government and courts did not have jurisdiction over states. Mississippi for example, declared the Brown vs Board of Education decision unconstitutional. Georgia’s legislature passed a resolution to repeal the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments and impeach the members of the Supreme Court. The Texas White Citizens Council vowed to prevent the integration of blacks into white schools, and in Louisiana the governor gave state police the power to arrest any judge or U.S. Marshall who tried to implement the Brown decision.

 The concept of structural violence (discussed in detail in Chapter 6) refers to a system that is set up to deny a particular group access to basic needs. The discussion above is just a sample of how the Jim Crow laws and the opposition of states to the Brown vs Board of Education decision have denied black people access to a quality education and equality under the law for over 100 years.
25
WIthin Group Diversity and Between Group Diversity
Another dimension of the impossibility of drawing racial “lines” is polymorphism, which means simply that there is physical variation within members of a population. Human beings differ from one another in their DNA only by 0.1% (see Wooding and Jorde in suggested readings). That means that any human being anywhere is at least 99.9% similar in genetic material to any other human being on the planet. Within that 0.1% of variation, if we compare people on the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, 85-90% of the genetic variation occurs within the population of these continents and only 10-15% occurs between them. Human populations who come in contact with each other tend to interbreed, which increases the genetic variation of those groups. That means, if you look at any of the so-called “racial groups,” the individuals comprising any given group will exhibit a great deal of genetic diversity within that group, which far exceeds the genetic differences between any two groups. This is true whether one looks at villages, regions, nations, or continents. In part, this is due to the fact that human populations in close geographic proximity tend to interbreed. These may involve peaceful and mutually beneficial trade relations and intermarriage, or warfare and abduction or rape. Either way, genetic material flows between human populations. Thus, there is no “gene” that exists in one human population and not in another. There is no gene that can prove ancestry to a given population or culture. The genetic relationship between humans is dramatically illustrated by the film clip What Genetic Thread Do These Six Strangers Have in Common. The film is also a good illustration of the next topic on human genetics and race: gene flow.
26
Zoonotic Diseases
Diseases that are transferred from animals to humans are called zoonotic diseases. Many human influenzas, for example, originated in swine and birds; other diseases such as smallpox, measles, chickenpox, tuberculosis, HIV, and today's COVID-19 also originated in animals and were transferred to humans due to the close association between humans and animals. Over time, humans developed resistance to these diseases and were more likely to survive them. Less virulent pathogens also were better able to survive because their hosts survived. Thus, although multiple animal viral and bacterial pathogens infected Old World peoples, over time, peoples and pathogens evolved so that these diseases became less life-threatening.