SOCI 1501 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Quadroon, Melanin, Pigment
Exam format: 40 multiple choice questions, 4 short answer questions (NO long essays). Short
answer responses should take up about half a page, and may sometimes involve listing things
in bullet point format. No need for introduction sentences in short answer responses.
Why Study Inequality
What is the matrix of domination?
● Race, class and gender are overlapping, cumulative, and interconnected
● Race, class and gender “historically grounded”
Which group was most heavily impacted by Hurricane Katrina?
● African American people
What is Race?
What is race?
● Race is a worldview ideology
● A system of ideas and beliefs that govern society
● Organizes social thought
● View through prisms
● Folk concept - it is a social construction that has emerged from people
And what is NOT race?
● Race is not biological
What does it mean to say race is a social construct or a “folk concept”?
● Society created the idea of race / We were not born with it
● It is socially constructed and thrives in society
What is the evolutionary reason people have different skin colors?
● Pigment called melanin - people have different amounts and kinds
What percent are humans of different races genetically similar?
● 99.9%
What is ethnicity?
● It is when a group of people share customs, beliefs, practices, geographic location.
Culture is learned not innate.
What is polygenesis?
● Multi origin
● Came from Christianity
● The idea that human-beings originate from not a single origin, but multiple
● Fixed and unalterable traited
(Using “Race on the Move” reading by Tiffany Joseph) How were racial categorizations in
Brazil different from the U.S.?
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● People who are considered white in Brazil are considered black in the U.S.
● Outdated census categories in U.S.: mulatto, quadroon, octoroon
● Brazilian racial scheme: phenotype
How does she describe the way the U.S. thinks about racial classification?
● The U.S. relate racial to ancestry and purity
How do “chance, context, and choice” (from Haney-López reading) shape race?
● Chance – how you are born, appearance, ancestry
● Context – context; Available social options (black or white); social meaning of race
● Choice – passing; conforming to category
What does Piri Thomas’s story (from Haney-López reading) teach us about Puerto Rican
racial experience?
● Chance: how he looks different from his family. He was born with a dark skin to a Puerto
Rican family of mixed ancestry
● Context: social options provided were black or white; he went from being Puerto Rican to
being Black; darker than siblings
● Choice: his dad distanced himself from blackness by exaggerating his accent
How did his father distance himself from Blackness?
● His father intentionally exaggerating his accent
What is Gender?
What is gender?
● What is considered masculine/ feminine. Traits and expectation that society has based
on your sex (sex: something you can consider biologically)
● Gender is not something we are born with, and not something we have, but something
we do
What is the difference between sex and gender?
● Gender will be traits and expectation that society has based on your sex and sex is
something you can consider biologically.
● Sex might be biological, but gender expectations are socially constructed and have little
or nothing to do with biology.
● Sex is a biological categorization based primarily on reproductive potential, whereas
gender is the social elaboration of biological sex.
● Sex = biology, genitalia, chromosomes, hormones, secondary sex characteristics
What does it mean to say gender is an “accomplishment”?
● You are constantly acting to perform your gender to try to be perceived as fitting into that
gender
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Exam format: 40 multiple choice questions, 4 short answer questions (no long essays). Short answer responses should take up about half a page, and may sometimes involve listing things in bullet point format. No need for introduction sentences in short answer responses. Race, class and gender are overlapping, cumulative, and interconnected. A system of ideas and beliefs that govern society. Folk concept - it is a social construction that has emerged from people. Society created the idea of race / we were not born with it. It is socially constructed and thrives in society. Pigment called melanin - people have different amounts and kinds. It is when a group of people share customs, beliefs, practices, geographic location. The idea that human-beings originate from not a single origin, but multiple. Fixed and unalterable traited (using race on the move reading by tiffany joseph) how were racial categorizations in. People who are considered white in brazil are considered black in the u. s.
