Deck 5: Race and Racism

Question 1

The current argument over whether to build a wall between Mexico and the United States reflects, in part, what long-standing aspect of how race is constructed and managed in the United States?

A) genotype
B) intersectionality
C) microaggression
D) nativism

Answer 1

nativism

Question 2

Chinese immigrants to the United States were quickly separated according to an arbitrary set of characteristics, including slight differences in skin color. The Irish immigrants were similarly segregated, despite having white skin. What was one of the bases on which the Irish were segregated and racialized?

A) intelligence
B) hypodescent
C) height
D) religion

Answer 2

religion

Question 3

What do we call the idea that government policies should favor people born in the United States over immigrants such as Mexicans or Canadians (legal or otherwise)?

A) genotype
B) racial ideology
C) nativism
D) microaggression

Answer 3

nativism

Question 4

Three hundred years of forced transport of millions of Africans to North and South America resulted in ________.

A) colonialism
B) The U.S. Census Questionnaire
C) a new race
D) white supremacy

Question 5

President Barack Obama's mother was a white woman from Kansas and his father was a black man from Kenya. What deeply embedded concept of racial division is revealed by the way people regard his race and even debate his birthplace?

A) hypodescent
B) genotype
C) civil rights
D) racialization

Question 6

A person may inherit a genetic pattern for above-average height, but may only reach average height due to poor nutrition. What is this an expression of?

A) genotype
B) phenotype
C) cline
D) poverty

Question 7

In the period between 1933 and 1936, the Nazi regime implemented laws that defined who was and was not Jewish according to ancestry. Any person with three or four Jewish grandparents was considered a "full-blooded" Jew. This approach to dividing and categorizing people relies on the assumption that:

A) phenotype determines race.
B) race is a cultural reality, but not a biological one.
C) Judaism is a religion, not a race.
D) race is a biological reality.

Question 8

What example does Jonathan Marks use as a useful way to consider the inherent problem of racially dividing people?

A) Doctors sorting according to brain size.
B) Children sorting according to block size.
C) Anthropologists sorting according to height.
D) Coaches sorting according to athletic prowess.

Question 9

What rule assigns the children of racially mixed unions to the subordinate group?

A) miscegenation
B) hypodescent
C) racialization
D) genotype

Question 10

All human beings of every race share what percent of their DNA?

A) 90
B) 95.5
C) 98.9
D) 99.9

Question 11

What comprises all of the inherited genetic factors that provide the framework for an organism's physical form?

A) genotype
B) race
C) gene pool
D) phenotype

Question 12

Which term refers to laws implemented after the U.S. Civil War to legally enforce segregation, particularly in the South after the end of slavery?

A) civil rights
B) discrimination
C) Jim Crow
D) racialization

Question 13

After the Civil War, many states passed laws mandating the segregation of American citizens of European and African descent. These laws were the result of what existing beliefs?

A) entrenched ideas about white superiority
B) strong feelings about the Civil War
C) strong anti-Lincoln sentiment
D) dislike of the Emancipation Proclamation

Question 14

What would physical anthropologists be more likely to consider in their work with the physical characteristics of Homo sapiens?

A) culture
B) genotype
C) phenotype
D) lineage

Question 15

If a person inherits genes for a dark complexion and blue eyes from his or her parents, what aspect of inheritance does this refer to?

A) RNA
B) phenotype
C) genotype
D) DNA

Question 16

Despite the initial racist attitudes directed toward Irish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants, these groups eventually "became white" through:

A) greater accuracy in the census.
B) intermarriage and upward mobility.
C) the elimination of ethnic categories.
D) legal changes.

Question 17

We can understand the observable differences in body ratios-height versus width-that anthropologists have documented as a matter of ________, or the way genes are expressed in an organism's physical form.

A) race
B) inheritance
C) ethnicity
D) phenotype

Question 18

For the seventy years leading up to 1860, the U.S. Census counted enslaved peoples as three-fifths of a person. This was done for what purpose?

A) to implement the process of racialization
B) as a means to maintain a strong economic system
C) in order to lay the groundwork for institutional racism
D) to uphold the idea of white supremacy

Question 19

What is the name for the flawed system of classification, with no scientific basis, that uses certain physical characteristics to divide the human population into supposedly discrete groups?

A) genotype
B) miscegenation
C) hypodescent
D) race

Question 20

A Saint Bernard and a Chihuahua are of the same species but look very different. It is possible to breed the two and get a puppy that might look like something else entirely but still be a dog. The study of dogs might be of interest to an anthropologist because it:

A) demonstrates the concept of intersectionality.
B) could help us understand the nature of ethnicity.
C) could help us better understand the relationship between genotype and phenotype.
D) provides a vital platform for the study of DNA.

Question 21

What do we call a set of popular ideas about race that allows the discriminatory behaviors of individuals and institutions to seem reasonable, rational, and normal?

A) white supremacy
B) racialization
C) nativism
D) racial ideology

Question 22

The right to own a gun is today considered fundamental to many people in the United States. While the Second Amendment to the Constitution is often considered the origin of this ideal, it actually was instituted by elites as one of many special "white rights" to ensure cooperation against rebellions. What concept is this an example of?

A) culture
B) intersectionality
C) white privilege
D) individual racism

Question 23

Leading up to the Civil War, many enslaved African Americans made the decision to escape their captors and flee to the North in hopes of securing personal freedom. The Underground Railroad is an example of what aspect of racism?

A) institutional
B) personal
C) racialization
D) resisting

Question 24

A person who believes that Italians are somehow inferior and therefore refuses to give an Italian person a job is demonstrating what kind of racism?

A) color-blind racism
B) individual racism
C) institutional racism
D) colonialist racism

Question 25

The failure of the New York State school system to create an annual school budget that would ensure all students received the same level of funding reflects what aspect of racism?

A) racialization
B) racial ideology
C) colonial
D) institutional racism

Question 26

In Brazil, race is not merely a matter of skin color but also includes consideration of what?

A) Age and marital status
B) marital status and children
C) job status and spousal status
D) wealth and education

Question 27

What continuing aspect of racism in the United States is illuminated by the Susie Phipps case?

A) genotype
B) microaggression
C) hypodescent
D) nativism

Question 28

What do societies do in order to make discriminatory ideas and behavior seem reasonable and normal?

A) rely on racial ideology
B) silently use racialization
C) enact legal support for nativism
D) publicly deny the existence of racial differences

Question 29

The process of categorizing, differentiating, and attributing a particular racial character to a person or group of people, is referred to as what?

A) discrimination
B) hypodescent
C) segregation
D) racialization

Question 30

Since racial categorization in Brazil is not exclusively a function of skin color, Brazilians can change their racial identity through a change in what characteristic?

A) political affiliation
B) hairstyle
C) kinship
D) affluence

Question 31

Patterns by which racial inequality is structured through key cultural institutions, policies, and systems are referred to as ________.

A) discrimination
B) racialization
C) institutional racism
D) racial ideology

Question 32

When an individual acts on personal prejudiced beliefs and discriminates against someone based on imagined differences between them, this is referred to as what kind of racism?

A) institutional
B) individual
C) colonial
D) profiling

Question 33

A set of ideas about a group of people, such as, "All Irishmen are drunks who beat their wives," or "All Arabs are terrorists," can make it seem natural and normal to discriminate against these groups. What kind of racism is this called?

A) color-blindness
B) institutional racism
C) racist ideology
D) individual racism

Question 34

What specific term do we use for the process of categorizing, differentiating, and attributing a particular racial characteristic to a person or group of people?

A) miscegenation
B) racialization
C) phenotype
D) hypodescent

Question 35

When did the cultural practice of the "one drop of blood" rule end in the United States?

A) 1865
B) 1970
C) It has not ended in practice.
D) 1982

Question 36

People from the Middle East have been considered "white" in the United States for some time, but since the terrorist attacks on September 11, anyone with brown skin who seems foreign is now considered "different" and possibly an enemy. What is this the result of?

A) discrimination
B) segregation
C) racialization
D) individual racism

Question 37

Until 1954, state-supported and sanctioned segregation along racial lines was completely legal, and school administrators often refused to allow black, Hispanic, or Asian American children to enter a school building. What is this an example of?

A) institutional racism
B) color-blind racism
C) individual racism
D) racialization

Question 38

What do we call laws in the United States that allowed such things as "white only" swimming pools, restaurants, schools, beaches, and the like, similar to apartheid in South Africa?

A) civil rights laws
B) Jim Crow laws
C) intersectionality laws
D) laws of hypodescent

Question 39

While health, education, decent housing, and employment are something that most of us would agree are fundamental to all people, what is a primary reason that these have historically been denied to many people in the United States?

A) white privilege
B) intersectionality
C) microaggressions
D) genotype

Question 40

Brazilians have hundreds of ways of categorizing people according to race. The particular system they use is based on a continuum of what?

A) language
B) ethnicities
C) genotypes
D) color shades

Question 41

The U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the subsequent war was the result of a long legacy of French and U.S. involvement in Vietnamese economic, military, and political life. Which term best describes that involvement?

A) democracy
B) colonialism
C) despotism
D) imperialism

Question 42

How does the U.S. census, taken every ten years since 1790, provide a window into the changing conception of "race"?

Question 43

Compare and contrast how races have been constructed in two different cultures discussed in the text. What similarities are there, and how are they different? What does this tell us about the concept of race in general?

Question 44

Explain how European colonial expansion gave rise to race and racism.

Question 45

Explain what is meant by a "racial democracy" in Brazil. What are the effects of this?

Question 46

In many countries, members of the dominant ethnic or racial group tend to favor other members of their own group, give them the benefit of any doubt, and take what they say more seriously. Minorities are often discounted as less important or even hostile for insisting on being treated fairly. In the United States, what do we call this discrepancy between the experiences of the dominant and the minority groups?

A) white privilege
B) segregation
C) racialization
D) resisting racism

Question 47

Explain what is meant by the concept of "white privilege."

Question 48

Maria Kromidas's work in New York City schools reveals that children are creating a "new" racial category based on the post-September 11 media stories they receive. In this particular category, people are categorized by what factors?

A) foreign, strange, and Muslim
B) dark-skinned, Muslim, and wealthy
C) Muslim, Arabic, and different
D) foreign, dark-skinned, and poor

Question 49

Explain the concept of racialization and how it applies to Middle Eastern people in the United States. Why is this process reflected in the New York school system as studied by Maria Kromidas?

Question 50

Explain how the idea of "white" or "whiteness" changed over time in the United States.

Question 51

What do we call the British Empire's military, economic, and political control over many regions including Canada, the Caribbean, Bahrain, Mandatory Palestine, and India?

A) colonialism
B) hypodescent
C) nativism
D) institutional racism

Question 52

The story of Shellcracker Haven and how the local white residents were gradually disenfranchised from their lives and work because of their class status is a strong reflection of the tendency to do what to others?

A) resist racism
B) colonize
C) racialize
D) stereotype

Question 53

Explain how and why the "one drop of blood rule" was traditionally used to determine race in American culture.

Question 54

Explain how and why Jim Crow laws came to the American South.

Question 55

Identify three reasons why anthropologists feel that the concept of "race" is a flawed system of classification, and give an example to support each reason.

Question 56

Compare and contrast the concepts of genotype and phenotype. How do you think these concepts help us understand race, and why?

Question 57

Compare and contrast the concepts of individual racism with institutional racism. Provide examples from class to support your points.

Question 58

What do physical anthropologists call the continuum of human variation that occurs in a particular geographic space?

A) an ethnicity
B) a racial group
C) a cline
D) a genetic family

Question 59

In Living with Racism: The Black Middle-Class Experience (1994), sociologist Joe Feagin and psychologist Melvin Sikes write about middle-class African Americans who, despite their class status, continue to face racial discrimination. What concept did this study serve to highlight?

A) intersectionality
B) color-blind racism
C) racialization
D) individual racism

Question 60

A primary difference between the early census process and the census of 2010 was the:

A) ability to self-select racial category.
B) inclusion of "blurriness" as a racial category.
C) elimination of the racial category.
D) number of racial category choices available.