1. This chapter introduces students to the concepts of ethnicity and race
This chapter introduces students to the concepts of ethnicity and race. It discusses how both concepts are cultural constructions. It shows how the biological and social categories of race are largely unrelated, and demonstrates this by discussing the construction of race in Brazil, Japan, and the United States.

2. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity
Ethnic Markers, Identities, and Statuses
Ethnic groups are formed around virtually the same features as cultures: common beliefs, values, customs, history, and the like.
Ethnicity entails identification with a given ethnic group, but it also involves the maintenance of a distinction from other groups.

3. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Status refers to any position in a society that can be filled by an individual.
Ascribed status is status into which people enter automatically without choice, usually at birth or through some other universal event in the life cycle.
Achieved status is status that people acquire through their own choices and actions.

4. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Status Shifting
Adjusting or switching one's status in reaction to different social contexts is called the situational negotiation of social identity.
Within complex societies, ascribed status can describe large sub-groups: minority groups, majority groups, and races are all examples of ascribed statuses.
Differences in ascribed status are commonly associated with differences in social-political power.
When an ethnic group is assumed to have a biological basis, it is called a race.
Discrimination against a race is called racism.

5. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Race is a cultural category rather than a biological reality because it is based on contrasts perceived and perpetuated in particular societies, rather than from scientific classifications based on genes.
Most Americans fail to distinguish between races and ethnicities.

6. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Social Race
Wagley: social races are groups assumed to have a biological basis but that are actually defined in a culturally arbitrary, rather than scientific manner.
Hypodescent: Race in the United States
In the United States, race is most commonly ascribed to people without reference to genotype.
In extreme cases, offspring of genetically mixed unions are ascribed entirely to the lower status race of one parent, an example of the process called hypodescent.

7. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Not Us: Race in Japan
Despite the presence of a substantial (10%), minority population, the dominant racial ideology of Japan describes the country as racially and ethnically homogeneous.
Dominant Japanese use a clear us-not us dichotomy as the basis for their construction of race.
While dominant Japanese perceive their construction of race to be based upon biology, the burakumin construct provides evidence to the contrary.
Burakumin are descendants of a low-status social class.
Despite the fact that burakumin are genetically indistinguishable from the dominant population, they are treated as a different race.

8. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Phenotype and Fluidity: Race in Brazil
While it has some historical and social similarities with the United States, race in Brazil is very different from race in the United States and Japan.
The Brazilian construction of race is attuned to relatively slight phenotypic differences.
More than 500 distinct racial labels have been reported.
Brazilian race is flexible in that an individual’s racial classification may change due to achieved status, developmental biological changes, and other irregular factors.
The multiplicity and overlap of Brazilian race labels allows one individual to be more than one race.

9. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Stratification and “Intelligence”
There is no conclusive evidence for biologically based contrasts in intelligence between rich and poor, black and white, or men and women.
The best indicators of how any individual will perform on an intelligence test are environmental, such as educational, economic, and social background.
All standard tests are culture-bound and biased because they reflect the training and life experiences of those who develop and administer them.

10. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Jensenism asserts that African-Americans are hereditarily incapable of doing as well as whites.
Named for Arthur Jensen, the educational psychologist who observed that, on average, African-Americans perform less well on intelligence tests that Euro-Americans and Asian-Americans.
An environmental explanation acknowledges that for many reasons, both genetic and environmental, some people are smarter than others, however these differences in intelligence cannot be generalized to characterize whole populations or social groups.

11. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Intelligence tests reflect the experiences of the people who write them.
Middle- and upper-class children do well because they share the test makers’ educational expectations and standards.
The SATs claim to measure intellectual aptitude but they also measure the type and quality of high school education, linguistic and cultural background, and parental wealth.
Studies have shown that performance on the SATs can be improved by coaching and preparation, placing those students who can pay for an SAT preparation course at an advantage.

12. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Ethnic Groups, Nations, and Nationalities
Nation-States Defined
Nation and nation-state now refer to an autonomous, centrally organized political entity.
The majority of all nation-states have more than one ethnic group in their constituent populations, and the multiethnicity of all countries is increasing.

13. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Nationalities and Imagined Communities
Nationalities are ethnic groups that aspire to autonomous statehood.
The term imagined communities, coined by Benedict Anderson, has been used to describe nationalities, since most of their member populations feel a bond with each other in the absence of any real acquaintance.
Mass media and the language arts have helped to form such imagined communities by becoming the means of establishing a commonalty of values, motivations, language, etc.
Colonialism helped create imagined communities as different ethnic groups under the control of the same colonial administration often pooled resources in opposition to the colonial power.

14. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Ethnic Tolerance and Accommodation
Assimilation
Assimilation occurs when a minority group adopts the patterns and norms of a more powerful culture, as when a migrant ethnic group conforms itself to its host culture.
Assimilation is not uniform: it may be forced or relatively benign depending on historical particularities.

15. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
The Plural Society
Plural society refers to a multiethnic nation-state wherein the sub-groups do not assimilate but remain essentially distinct, in (relatively) stable coexistence.
Barth defines plural society as a society combining ethnic contrasts and the economic interdependence of the ethnic groups.
Such interdependence tends to be structured by ecological specialization.
Barth argued that cultural differences were part of the natural environment of ethnic groups, and thus peaceful, egalitarian coexistence was a possibility, particularly when there was no competition for resources.

16. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Multiculturalism and Ethnic Identity
Multiculturalism is the view of cultural diversity in a country as something good and desirable.
This is opposed to assimilationism, which expects subordinate groups to take on the culture of the dominant group while abandoning their own.
A number of factors have caused the United States to move away from an assimilationist model and toward a multicultural one.
Large-scale migration has brought in substantial minorities in a time span too short for assimilation to take place.
An ethnic consciousness may take root in reaction to consistent discrimination.

17. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Roots of Ethnic Conflict
Prejudice and Discrimination
Prejudice is the devaluation of a given group based upon the assumed characteristics of that group.
Stereotypes are fixed ideas about what members of a group are like.
Discrimination is de jure when it is part of the law.
Discrimination is de facto when it is practiced, but not legally sanctioned.

18. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Chips in the Mosaic
Despite the fact that the 1992 Los Angeles riot began as a reaction to the first Rodney King verdict, much of the violence played out along ethnic lines: prosperous, culturally isolated Korean merchants were targeted for looting and violence.
Subsequent public discussion indicated that much of the enmity was due to culturally based miscommunication.
There is some suggestion that miscommunication and noncommunication between successful Korean store owners and the surrounding African American population made it more likely that the Koreans would be subjected to such leveling mechanisms as looting and boycotts.

19. CHAPTER 10 Ethnicity and Race
Aftermaths of Oppression
The Politics of Cultural Oppression
Ethnic differentiation sometimes interferes with the dominant group's consolidation of power.
Such conditions, perceived or real, have resulted in brutal discrimination: forced assimilation, ethnocide, ethnic expulsion, and cultural colonialism.
Colonialism
Colonialism refers to the political, social, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power for an extended time.
Cultural colonialism refers to internal domination by one group and its culture/ideology over others.