Race, Racism, & Ethnicity
This sociological theory, introduced by Michael Omi and Howard Winant, explains race as a socially constructed identity shaped by social, economic, and political forces.
What is racial formation theory?
This discriminatory practice, named for the literal maps used by the government and banks, involved denying loans and insurance to people in minority neighborhoods.
What is redlining?
This practice involves blaming an ethnic, racial, or minority group for wider societal problems, often as a misguided attempt to explain complex issues.
What is scapegoating?
This term refers to a preconceived belief, thought, or feeling about a group that is not based on actual experience.
What is prejudice?
This belief, debunked in the documentary, Race the Power of Illusion, claimed that races could be ranked by inherent biological superiority and was used to justify slavery and colonialism.
What is scientific racism?
This term refers to unfair treatment of individuals or groups based on race, which can occur on both individual and institutional levels.
What is racial discrimination?
This form of car culture, rooted in Chicano communities, was heavily criminalized through laws like California’s anti-cruising ordinances, which targeted gatherings of customized cars and their drivers.
What is lowriding?
This form of integration suggests mutual respect among diverse groups, maintaining their cultural distinctiveness while coexisting in society.
What is pluralism?
When prejudiced beliefs lead to actions that deny rights, privileges, or opportunities to members of a particular group, it is called this.
What is discrimination?
The documentary Ethnic Notions explores how media and cultural representations perpetuate harmful racial stereotypes. One prominent stereotype examined in the film is this caricature, often used to justify the mistreatment of Black individuals.
What is the Sambo?
This legal and theoretical framework, often applied in discussions of race, critiques how laws and policies perpetuate systemic inequalities, even when they appear neutral on the surface.
What is critical race theory (CRT)?
This 1947 federal court case successfully challenged the segregation of Mexican American students in California schools, setting a legal precedent that influenced the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.
What is Mendez et al vs Westminster?
This term refers to the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.
What is colonialism?
Unlike individual prejudice, this form of racism involves established laws, policies, and practices that systematically disadvantage marginalized groups.
What is systemic racism?
This federal act, passed in 1968, was a legislative response to practices like those documented in Dayton and Springfield, aimed at eliminating housing discrimination.
What is the Fair Housing Act?
In the context of sociological theory, these large-scale theories analyze societal structures and the overarching systems that influence behavior.
What are macro-level theories?
This case in 1943 successfully challenged racially restrictive housing covenants, allowing this Mexican American family to move into a previously segregated neighborhood in Fullerton California.
What is Doss v. Bernal?
Sociologist Michael Burawoy argued that theories serve both scientific and political purposes. According to him, theories can act as ideologies that justify existing institutions and power structures or inspire this type of collective action.
What is social or political activism?
This sociological concept examines how discrimination is not only based on race or ethnicity but can be compounded by factors like gender, class, or sexuality.
What is intersectionality?
This term describes the process aimed at erasing Native American children's identities and cultures in boarding schools, as depicted in the documentary.
What is assimilation?
Racial formation theory posits that race is not a fixed biological fact but is instead shaped by social, political, and economic forces. This concept describes the process by which racial categories are created, transformed, and destroyed.
What is racialization?
This federal program, established during the New Deal, implemented redlining policies by grading neighborhoods based on racial composition, contributing to long-term housing segregation.
What is the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC)?
A complex interaction where the distinctions within power dynamics can either blur, disappear, or, paradoxically, intensify. What do we call this sociological process that involves such shifting boundaries between groups of unequal status?
What is assimilation?
This legal and political concept argues that laws and policies, even when written in race-neutral language, often reinforce existing racial disparities.
What is structural racism?
The documentary The Difference Between Us, Race: The Power of an Illusion highlights that humans are approximately this percentage genetically identical, emphasizing how race has no scientific basis.
What is 99.9%?