This chapter introduces students to the concepts of ethnicity and race. It discusses how both concepts are cultural constructions. It shows how the biological and social categories of race are largely unrelated, and demonstrates this by discussing the construction of race in Brazil, Japan, and the United States.

Understand the difference between ascribed and achieved statuses.

Understand what hypodescent is, how it operates, and why it exists in the United States.

Understand the Japanese concept of race and how it differs from how race is constructed in the United States and Brazil.

Understand how race is constructed in Brazil and how it differs from how race is constructed in the United States and Japan. In particular, you need to understand the fluidity of Brazilians’ concept of race: how it changes and what makes it change.

Understand that most behavioral variation among human groups is due to cultural not biological differences. Most attempts to measure behavioral differences, like IQ tests are cultural biased and reflect the experiences and values of the people who created them and not the experiences and values of the group taking them.

Know the roles that migration, conquest, and colonialism have played in ethnically homogenizing most nation-states and creating nationalities and imagined communities.

Know the different ways in which a peaceful coexistence of ethnic diversity can be achieved. You should know how these differ and the important attributes of each.

Be able to identify the aftermaths of ethnocide, forced assimilation, and cultural colonialism.