Deck 10: Race, Ethnicity, and Class: Understanding Identity and Social Inequality

Question 1

Which of the following groups were considered nonwhite racial groups?

A) Jews, Italians, and Finns
B) Brazilians, New Zealanders, and Jews
C) Irish, Jews, and Egyptians
D) Italians, Madagascans, and Brazilians

Answer 1

A

Question 2

The "natural" order represented in social hierarchies of any society is supported by

A) Biology
B) Truth
C) Social institutions
D) Historical facts

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Race is a

A) social distinction that classifies people according to descent.
B) social distinction that classifies people according to poverty and wealth.
C) social distinction that classifies people according to symbolic purity.
D) concept that organizes people into groups on the basis of specific physical traits that are thought to reflect fundamental and innate differences.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

The social processes that make race part of the natural order of things-by producing theories, schemes, and typologies about human differences is

A) stereotyping.
B) hegemony.
C) structural violence.
D) the naturalization of race.

Question 5

A gradual change across groups, in which traits shade and blend into each other is

A) race.
B) clinal variation.
C) racialization.
D) hegemony.

Question 6

The social, economic, and political processes of transforming populations into races and creating racial meanings is called

A) racism.
B) ethnocentrism.
C) prejudice.
D) racialization.

Question 7

In Latin America, "blackness" and "whiteness" are based on

A) skin color.
B) eye color.
C) social behaviors.
D) genetic markers.

Question 8

In Latin America, social behaviors are what distinguishes

A) class.
B) symbolic purity.
C) "blackness" and "whiteness."
D) caste.

Question 9

One way slave owners expanded their workforce was to include their mixed-race children under the

A) Jim Crow laws.
B) one-drop rule.
C) Emancipation Proclamation.
D) U.S. census.

Question 10

In early public records, the word Christian commonly appeared next to the names of Europeans but was later replaced by

A) black.
B) white.
C) nouveau riche.
D) poor.

Question 11

What is an important factor in making race real?

A) Genetic markers
B) Disease
C) Segregation
D) Racism

Question 12

What social distinction classifies people according to descent?

A) Class
B) Race
C) Ethnicity
D) Caste

Question 13

A preformed, usually unfavorable, opinion about people who are different is

A) discrimination.
B) prejudice.
C) racism.
D) stereotyping.

Question 14

When Americans recognize that people are born into a particular social position due to the economic situations of their families, they are recognizing the existence of

A) prejudice.
B) discrimination.
C) class.
D) equality.

Question 15

There is a biological connection between the trait of skin tone and other "racial" traits, such as certain facial features and bodily shapes.

Question 16

The Irish and a few other groups became white during the past century, but the phenomenon of groups becoming white appears to have stabilized.

Question 17

Jim Crow laws in the US South after the Civil War are a good illustration of explicit discrimination.

Question 18

Anthropologists agree that, in addition to prejudice and discrimination, unearned privilege upholds social inequality.

Question 19

Why would English colonial leaders portray Africans as uncivilized heathens?

A) To justify African slavery
B) To get elected to local government
C) To follow religious doctrine
D) To illustrate the intersectional nature of identity

Question 20

The "one drop rule" enlarged the slave population by

A) making skin color the chief marker of status and difference.
B) including the mixed-race children of slaveholders in the enslaved population.
C) separating the poor European farmers and the poor African farmers.
D) linking blood type with racial difference.

Question 21

German scientist Johann Blumenbach developed

A) racism.
B) the trait-based approach to classifying humans.
C) division of people into six racial categories.
D) the cephalic index.

Question 22

How does race become biology?

A) Because we are born with different skin tones
B) Because of the effects of discrimination and racism on people's health
C) Because of clinal variations
D) Because there is more variation between groups than within them

Question 23

An example of disguised discrimination is when

A) the police do racial profiling.
B) a teacher divides her or his class into brown eye and blue eye groups.
C) formal laws prevent certain social groups from being full citizens.
D) shopkeepers or security guards follow black customers through stores.

Question 24

Censuses interest anthropologists because they

A) reveal the government's role in classifying and categorizing people.
B) are stable over time.
C) indicate the permanence of social categories.
D) specialize in quantitative data collection and analysis.

Question 25

A key difference between caste and social class is

A) class divides people in terms of biological relatedness, caste in terms of social relatedness.
B) class divides people in terms of moral purity, caste in socioeconomic terms.
C) caste divides people in terms of moral purity, class in socioeconomic terms.
D) irrelevant, there are no differences between caste and social class.

Question 26

The most important thing about "the invisible knapsack" idea is that

A) pretty much everybody wears one.
B) these privileges exist whether or not the person carries racial supremacist ideas.
C) most whites have learned to resist it.
D) it is an illustration of explicit discrimination.

Question 27

Anthropologists are interested in a situation like the way the new heart drug BiDil was created and approved because

A) it illustrates clearly how different racial groups have different biology.
B) it illustrates how government agencies like the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fight racism.
C) it shows how social classifications like ethnicity are normalized.
D) it shows how cultural, political, and economic processes can work together to promote the idea that race is biologically based.

Question 28

Which of the following is not true about ethnicity?

A) It can serve powerful interests.
B) It is dynamic.
C) Anthropologists agree on the theory to explain it.
D) It tends to organize people in terms of common descent.

Question 29

One of Hortense Powdermaker's key insights about prejudice is that

A) it is based on flawed logic.
B) people are born with prejudices.
C) it is based on generalizations that are generally correct.
D) once learned, prejudices are impossible to give up.

Question 30

What was so difficult about Japanese American anthropologist Tamie Tsuchiyama's fieldwork in a World War II internment camp?

A) She had to manage a lot of research assistants because it was such a large project.
B) She had to navigate complicated dynamics of prejudice and resentment.
C) She was forced to openly challenge her research sponsors, which ruined her career.
D) She was short-staffed and forced to abandon her research plan.

Question 31

For antidiscrimination activists and educators, it is usually enough to simply demonstrate the existence of prejudice and discrimination.

Question 32

A key feature of the theory of primordialism is that ethnic groups are created by powerful interest groups in a society.

Question 33

Racialization has identified different markers of racial identity in Latin America than in the United States.

Question 34

An anthropologist who uses instrumentalist theories of ethnicity would explain the rise of "Latino" food distributor Goya as

A) a response to the demands Latin American immigrants have for tastes from home.
B) a reflection of the heterogeneity of Latino groups.
C) the creation of a special market segment by a food company to enhance its profitability.
D) an effort by a large company to welcome people to the United States.

Question 35

An anthropologist who studies unearned privilege would be most interested in which of the following?

A) Racial profiling of blacks by a security officer
B) A situation in which an upper-class man gets accepted at an Ivy League university because his father and grandfather went there
C) A fieldwork situation like the one involving Tamie Tsuchiyama, in which she clearly got privileges other internees did not get because of her involvement with the government
D) The path that U.S. presidents pursue to earn the votes necessary for a successful election

Question 36

If you wanted to study ongoing racialization processes in the United States, you would most likely focus on

A) new ideas emerging about the moral purity and pollution of black people.
B) new patterns in which people are dropping ethnic identification in favor of whiteness.
C) the creation of new products for Latinos by companies like Goya foods.
D) the ways whites use their unearned privileges.

Question 37

What special insights do you think an anthropologist who studies racial relations in Latin America would have about US race relations?

Question 38

One of Hortense Powdermaker's major insights about prejudice is that it is based on poor reasoning. Explain a historical process wherein "poor reasoning" led to prejudice. What were the radiating outcomes of the prejudice?

Question 39

What are the primary strengths of viewing racial and ethnic identities as naturalized? Give an example of a project in which you might use it.

Question 40

If you were an antiracism educator in an elementary school in the United States, what role do you think anthropological insights about prejudice and discrimination should play in your work?

Question 41

Is instrumentalism, the theory about how ethnic identities are formed, applicable to explaining the formation of groups and identities based on socioeconomic class? Explain your answer.

Question 42

How would you apply the insights about biological variability in human populations described in the textbook in a public service announcement promoting racial equality?

Question 43

What does it mean that race does and does not exist?

Question 44

How did Africans become "black" and Europeans become "white"?

Question 45

How does racialization occur?

Question 46

How do market forces shape ethnicity?