SOC 105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Mulatto, Bourgeoisie, Operation Wetback
3 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
Like gender, race and ethnicity are key anchors for people"s social- and self-identities. Ethnicity = cultural values and norms that distinguish the members of a given group from others. Common modes of distinction: language, dress, shared history, religion, ancestry. Race (differences in human physical characteristics used to categorize large numbers of individuals) is a subset of ethnicity. In other words: variations in how groups look is one way to divide, but its use this way works just like variation in dress, language, and so on. Race is special in that (in the contemporary world) it most commonly implicitly or explicitly fits into a strong hierarchy. At a minimum, one race is usually at the top of the social hierarchy by status and economic measures. When groups are relatively disadvantages economically and socially (even though they may be numerically largest), we call them a minority group.
