SOC 153 Lecture Notes - Lecture 37: Jesse Owens, Infant Mortality, Social Stratification

• School: Miami University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 153
• Professor: Steven Nelson

Document Summary

Race and ethnicity make the lines that separate groups and create group identities. Race: is a categorical social classification based on physical features and presumed biological kinship. Races is a means of categorizing the world population into a small number of fundamental subcategories that suggest basic differences. Race is a means of social stratification. Race is socially constructed as biological, but this is an unworkable idea scientifically. Race does not exist on a biological basis, it was socially invented and given meaning. In the u. s. we used to categorize people as mulattos and octoroons. We use visual differences to classify people into 4 or 5 groups, that we call races. We think race thinks internal complex differences such as athleticism and intelligence. Students start the workshop with similar assumptions as everyone else. People of similar races believe they are most alike. Need an absolute paradigm shift for people to understand that race is an idea that we contribute to biology.