1. Race (and biology)
- A cultural creation over time.
- Race is a concept that puts people into certain groups because of certain characteristics. The grouping of people is merely a creation of humans over time, and is not necessarily true or set in stone.
- In the Coronet film race was linked to biology because people assumed that race was a product of biology, and people are born with traits that fit them into a certain group. There is so genetic evidence whatsoever to support this claim.
- Hammonds said in the movie, humans created race and used it in so many negative ways, that we are the only ones who can unmake it.
- We classify people into races according to their physical attributes.
2. Ethnicity
- Refers to the representation of social groups who share a history, sense of identity, geography, and culture.
- Culture is a big part of ethnicity in that it defines it. How one culture acts and carries out their actions contributes to their ethnicity.
- Compared to race, it isn’t about the physical aspect of a person.
3. Ethnic Studies
- The study of many social and cultural issues that include social categories, race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexuality, nationality.
- A field that compares these issues to answer questions about how and why people in history evolved the way that they did.
- Provides alternative explanations to history and provides new ways of approaching a subject.
- Deals with many theories and research that are ongoing for many years.
4. History ((from Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States, pgs. 8-10)
- According to Zinn, history can be about omitting facts that can lead to unacceptable conclusions.
- History can also be about stating facts, but incorporating it into a mass of other information so that it gives the reader a calm reaction. Example: writing about how Rodrigo was the one that discovered land, but Columbus took credit for it. This information was mentioned, but not it great detail as all others.
5. Progress
- Development or growth
- Something like social construction is always progressing because each and every day people create significance for many things, and that then gives it some sort of importance.
- Definition of various races is always growing as the times change, and people’s ideas change.
6. Social Construction
- Johnson believes that socially constructed reality so powerful is that people rarely if ever experience it as that (from Johnson’s “Privilege, Oppression, and Difference”, pg. 20).
- Social construction makes people think that our culture defines a concept like race as if it were really how things are; in an objective sense (from Johnson’s “Privilege, Oppression, and Difference”, pg. 20).
- A part of social construction is when human beings give something a name, or importance, which then gives that concept a significance it wouldn’t have had previously.
- Let’s people believe that things like race or gender have clear-cut definitions, and cannot be changed.
7. Genocide (from Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States, pgs. 8-10)
- The term used by Samuel Eliot Morison when he wrote about Christopher Columbus and the mass murders he and his people committed.
- Zinn looks at this and says that Morison didn’t lie about the past or didn’t omit facts which might lead to unacceptable conclusions. He instead refused to lie about Columbus. He used the harshest word to describe these mass murders: genocide.
8. Ideological (as used by Zinn page 9)
- The telling of history is ideological because people choose what information to emphasize.
- The emphasized information that gives readers a common interest which serves to the best of their ability.
- Johnson says that when Morison chose to emphasize Columbus’ heroism, he made an ideological choice to justify what was done.
9. Privilege (from Johnson’s “Privilege, Oppression, and Difference”)
- According to Peggy McIntosh, “the idea that one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve done or failed to do” (Johnson 35).
- One’s access to privilege doesn’t determine their outcome, but it’s an asset that makes it more likely for someone to receive a beneficial result.
- It’s easy to not be aware of privilege (“the luxury of obliviousness”) because awareness requires effort and commitment, and to get the attention of people with lower status without giving it in return is one key aspect of privilege.
- There are two types: unearned entitlements (things of value all people should have, and gives dominant groups an edge) and unearned advantages (unearned entitlements restricted to certain groups).
- Conferred privilege then gives one group power over another.
- Privilege is seen in everyday life with all different groups, whether it is with sports, work, or school. Privilege allows certain people to move through life without being identified as an outsider, and increases one’s chances to have things go their way.
- Individuals get privilege because others see them as belonging to a group that is privileged.
10. Oppression (from Johnson’s “Privilege, Oppression, and Difference”)
- A social force that holds people back and keeps them down, blocking their pursuit of living a good life.
- Shares a relationship with privilege in that with every social group that is privileged one or more groups are oppressed. It is this relationship that allows for the variance in personal experiences of being oppressed.
- If a person has an experience of being oppressed, he or she has to belong to an oppressed group. So whites can’t be oppressed as whites and blacks can’t be oppressed as blacks because there needs to be another group that has more power to oppress them.
11. Racialization
- Racialization is the process by which race comes to have meaning as a category. It is also the process each one of us goes through in order to have a racial identity. In other words, we are not just born “white” or born “black” – what it means to us to be “white” or “black” changes in our social interactions with others throughout our lives. This means that race develops meaning through social interaction, instead of merely existing as concrete, independently verifiable fact.
