Chapter 9 - Recognizing the Importance of Race

Question 1

Ethnic group

Answer 1

Share the same cultural heritage Ex. African American, Jamaican American, Cucan American, Irish American, etc.

Question 2

Race

Answer 2

Wisely recognized as a social construction that varies over time and from one society to another.

Today, sociologists define race as a group of people perceived to be distinct because of physical appearance (not genetic makeup). Typically based on skin tone and facial features.

Question 3

Human Genome Project

Answer 3

“There us only one race - the human race”

Made it clear that there are more genetic differences within racial groups than between them.

All humans share common ancestors and 99.9% of the same genetic makeup.

Differences in “racial” appearance result from adaptations to different environmental conditions.

Question 4

The “One-Drop Rule.”

Answer 4

In the early twentieth century, as states began to codify practices of segregating the races, many states began to distinguish Whites and Blacks using the “one-drop rule,” meaning that if you had any trace of Black racial heritage, you were Black. Starting with the 1930 U.S. census, census workers were instructed to categorize anyone with any “Negro” blood as Negro, and they continued to do so until individuals began to categorize themselves in 1970.

Question 5

The Act to Preserve Racial Integrity in 1924

Answer 5

All residents of Virginia were required to complete this form. Acts like these worked to uphold the “one-drop rule.”

The 2000 U.S. census was the first to allow respondents to identify with more than one race.

The state of Louisiana officially modified its one-drop rule, albeit just slightly, in 1970, when it passed a law that declared that anyone 1/32 or more Black (meaning that they had one Black great-great-great-grandparent) was Black.

Question 6

Susie Guillory Phipps

Answer 6

In 1977, Phipps, a seemingly White homemaker married to a wealthy White man, applied for a passport for an upcoming trip her husband had planned for them. To her horror, she was told that she would not be granted the passport because she had indicated that her race was different from that listed on her birth certificate. Phipps learned that she had been classified as “colored” on her birth certificate.

Frightened at the thought of what his reaction might be if he found out her birth certificate identified her as colored, Phipps told her husband she couldn’t travel because she was ill. She then proceeded (secretly at first, using her “wife allowance” and writing cashier’s checks) to sue the state, asking it to change her race on her birth certificate. When she finally did tell her husband—after five years—he supported her efforts, arguing that she was White and that her birth certificate should indicate it.

Ultimately, Phipps lost. The state traced her lineage back 222 years and discovered that one of her great-great-great-great-grandmothers was a Black slave and that some more recent ancestors had some Black ancestry. The court determined that she was 3/32 Black and ruled against her request.

Question 7

Prejudice

Answer 7

Irrational feelings toward members of a particular group

Question 8

Discrimination

Answer 8

Unfair treatment of groups of people

Question 9

Racism

Answer 9

Not to be confused with racial prejudice.

Encompasses historical, cultural, institutional, and interpersonal dynamics that create and maintain a racial hierarchy that advances whites and hurts people of color.

People of all races can hold racial stereotypes and be prejudiced against individual members of racial groups.

Only members of dominant racial groups can be racist. Racism requires prejudice and institutional power.

Question 10

Institutional discrimination

Answer 10

Happens as a result of how institutions operate.

Can exist even if the people who run them do not feel negatively toward the group(s) hurt. For example, school funding that relies on local taxes may be based on the desire for community control of schools. The result, however, is that schools in poor communities, which are disproportionately attended by students of color, receive less funding than wealthier schools with more White students. The intent to discriminate many not be present; nonetheless, the discrimination (more money for wealthier and Whiter schools) and its negative repercussions exist.

Question 11

Three-fifth compromise

Answer 11

Treated slaves as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives and taxation.

Question 12

Thirteenth amendment

Answer 12

Abolished slavery after the Civil War

Question 13

Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877

Answer 13

1876 presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican (northern) presidential candidate, and Samuel J. Tilden, the Democratic (southern) presidential candidate, was deadlocked, with Tilden receiving more of the popular vote but neither receiving enough electoral votes to win the presidency.

A committee in Congress assigned to break the impasse voted narrowly—the day before the new president was to take office—to give the election to Hayes. The Democrats agreed to go along with the decision if Hayes promised to withdraw federal troops from the former Confederacy and allow Whites to once again dominate political power in the South. Hayes agreed, and Southern states began to establish Jim Crow laws that legally established a racially segregated society.

The Supreme Court upheld these measures with the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, which ruled that “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional.

Question 14

Brown v. Board of Education

Answer 14

1954 that the Supreme Court overruled Plessy v. Ferguson

2012). Even after that decision, interracial couples were not allowed to marry. It took another Supreme Court ruling, the Loving v. Virginia decision in 1967, to abolish state laws banning interracial marriage.

Question 15

Immigration Legislation

Answer 15

Racism also influenced.

Chinese and Japanese immigration were halted, respectively, through the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907.

Then, a series of laws curtailed immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans (at the time, they were considered “less than White”), culminating in the Immigration Act of 1924, which established 2 percent immigration quotas per nation, on the basis of the 1890 U.S. census (when relatively few Southern and Eastern Europeans were in the United States).

So, for example, if there were 100,000 Italians residing in the United States in 1890, each year only 2,000 new migrants from Italy would be granted entry.

Question 16

The Immigration Act of 1965

Answer 16

Abolished national quotas (replacing them with quotas for the Eastern and Western Hemispheres) and did much to increase immigration and alter the racial makeup of the United States. The foreign-born population rose from 5.4 percent in 1970 (Gibson and Lennon 1999) to 13.5 percent in 2016

Racist restrictions on immigration came back into force with President Trump. The Muslim ban and the attempt to deter Central American families seeking refuge in the United States by separating refugee children from their parents provide two examples of discriminatory immigration policies enacted under the Trump administration. Facing an enormous public outcry against the family separation policy, Trump rescinded it, but not before thousands of children were held in facilities away from their parents—and hundreds deported without them.

Question 17

Immigration Assimilation and Conflict Perspectives. Robert Park

Answer 17

The first sociological theories that tried to explain what happens after immigrants reach a new land described a process of assimilation wherein the new arrivals (and their descendants) would gradually become a part of the dominant group. Robert Park’s classic work in the early twentieth century described a four-step assimilation process:

Contact (when the groups meet)
Conflict (they compete for goods and power)
Accommodation (one group establishes dominance)
Assimilation (the minority groups embrace the ways of the dominant group and become accepted into it)

This describes the experience of some European immigrant groups, it does not apply to all racialized minority groups in the United States. For example, although Irish, Italians, and other Europeans were eventually able to “become White” and assimilate into the dominant culture and structure of U.S. society, Black Americans and many American Indians, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans were not

Question 18

Immigration Assimilation and Conflict Perspectives. W.E.B Du Bois

Answer 18

A conflict theorist and contemporary of Park’s

Rejected Park’s theory of assimilation, noting that it did not explain the experience of African Americans. A prolific writer, activist, and sociologist, Du Bois spent much of his life proving, through sociological studies, that the key factor behind the relatively low socioeconomic level of Black Americans was the discrimination they faced. Like Marx, he looked at the economic basis for racial hierarchies. In doing so, he described how capitalism produces a dominant group exploiting minority groups for private profit. Assimilation is not possible when the dominant institution sets groups against one another.

The only solution to such group conflict and exploitation is to overthrow the oppressive system, replacing it with one establishing public ownership of all resources and capital

Question 19

Internal colonialism

Answer 19

One ethnic or racial group (White Americans) subordinating and exploiting the resources of other racial and ethnic groups

In the United States, both government and business leaders took land from Mexicans and American Indians and labor from African Americans. These leaders worked in tandem to create a capitalist society with a White-dominated racial hierarchy by killing or moving American Indians off their land, enslaving Africans, and annexing much of Mexico after the Mexican War.

Question 20

Fair Housing Act of 1968

Answer 20

Prohibited discrimination by landlords, property owners, and financial institutions on the basis of race and national origin (except “owner-occupied buildings with no more than four units, single-family housing sold or rented without the use of a broker, and housing operated by organizations and private clubs that limit occupancy to members”)

Question 21

Ethnocentrism

Answer 21

The belief that one’s own culture is superior to others.

Question 22

Durkhein Social Inequities

Answer 22

Divided social inequalities into internal (based on people’s natural abilities) and external (those forced upon people).

He argued that the existence of external inequality in an industrial society indicates that its institutions are not functioning properly. Because an industrial society needs all its members doing what they do best to function most effectively, external inequality—like racial discrimination—that prevents some people from using their innate talents damages all of society.

Question 23

Diversity Programs that dont work

Answer 23

Diversity training to reduce bias on the job - mandatory leading to resentment

Hiring tests and performance ratings to limit it in recruitment and promotions - used selectively and in a biased manner, working to limit rather than increase diversity

Grievance systems - tend to set up adversarial relations between supervisors and workers, leading to retaliation and fewer workers willing to challenge discrimination.

Question 24

Diversity programs that work

Answer 24

Rather than using tactics that combine force and coercion, companies should ask managers to help address the problem, give them opportunities to work with people from minority groups, and promote transparent communication of the results of diversity efforts. These tactics lead to a positive cycle in which managers feel like they are part of an effort in which they are invested.

Voluntary training, self-managed teams (which allow people in diverse roles to work together as equals), cross-training (which, like self-managed teams, increases exposure of people to different races and genders), college recruitment efforts targeting women and racial and ethnic minorities, mentoring programs, diversity task forces, and diversity managers increase diversity.

Companies that implement “a college recruitment program targeting female employees” see about a 10 percent increase in “white women, black women, Hispanic women, and Asian-American women in management.”

Question 25

Colorblind ideology

Answer 25

Maintains that if we ignore race and racial issues racism will not exist. In reality, this ideology has worked to support, rather than reduce, racial inequality.

Question 26

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva - four themes, or frames, of the color-blind perspective on race

Answer 26

Abstract liberalism: agreeing that everyone should have equal rights but opposing policies that will help achieve equality

Minimization: believing that race does not matter anymore and that racism is no longer a problem

Naturalization: maintaining that racist practices like segregation and opposition to interracial marriage are simply natural and part of human nature rather than based on racism

Culturalization: arguing that it is their inferior culture that has hurt Black people rather than racism