SOCI 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Essentialism, Imagined Community, Visible Minority

• School: UBC
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOCI 102
• Professor: Katherine Corrigall- Brown

Document Summary

Race: social distinctions based on physical or biological characteristics; hair, skin color, etc. Ethnicity: social distinctions based on cultural characteristics; accent, religion, customs, etc. Race and ethnicity are essential part of an individual and unchanging over time. Belief that race & ethnicity are socially constructed. Within-group variation is greater than between-group variation. Definition of race varies across history & cultures. Us: based on physical characteristics, black, white, asian, hispanic, american indian, hispanic spans different physical characteristics. Brazil: based on both physical characteristics and social class, white, brown, black, yellow, indian/aboriginal, elite nonwhite and interracial parents are more likely to call their children white than non-elites. Racism: an organized system of race-based group privilege that operates at every level of society and is held together by a sophisticated ideology of color/race supremacy. Privileges and favors attached to racial and ethnic categories. Optional ethnicities: ethnicity that is individualistic and has no real social costs for individual.