1. Ethnic groups are formed around virtually the same features as cultures: common beliefs, values, customs, history, and the like.

2. Ethnicity entails identification with a given ethnic group, but it also involves the maintenance of a distinction from other groups.

3. Status refers to any position in a society that can be filled by individuals.

1. Most status is susceptible to change, particularly through the influence of social contexts.

2. Adjusting or switching one's status in reaction to different social contexts is called the situational negotiation of social identity.

3. The application of a social category label, such as an ethnic label, to a particular individual depends on perception by others of that person's status, as well as that person's own assertions of status.

4. Within complex societies, ascribed status can describe large sub-groups: minority groups, majority groups, and races are all examples of ascribed statuses.

5. Differences in ascribed status are commonly associated with differences in social-political power.

6. The definitive feature of a minority group is that its members systematically experience lesser income, authority, and power than other members of their society; a minority group is not necessarily a smaller population than other groups.

7. When an ethnic group is assumed to have a biological basis, it is called a race.

8. Discrimination against a race is called racism.

1. In the United States, race is most commonly ascribed to people without reference to genotype.

2. In extreme cases, offspring of genetically mixed unions are ascribed entirely to the lower status race of one parent, an example of the process called hypodescent.

3. In the U.S., there is a growing number of interracial, biracial, or multiracial individuals who do not identify themselves with one racial identity.

1. Despite the presence of a substantial (10%), minority population, the dominant racial ideology of Japan describes the country as racially and ethnically homogeneous.

2. Dominant Japanese use a clear us-not us dichotomy as the basis for their construction of race.

3. While dominant Japanese perceive their construction of race to be based upon biology, the burakumin construct provides evidence to the contrary.

4. The mixed Japanese-Koreans are treated as wholly foreign, despite otherwise complete cultural and linguistic assimilation.

1. While it has some historical and social similarities with the United States, race in Brazil is very different from race in the United States and Japan.

2. The Brazilian construction of race is attuned to relatively slight phenotypic differences.

3. The complex flexibility of Brazilian race categories has made racial discrimination less likely to occur on the same scale as in the United States and Japan.

1. The best indicators of how any individual will perform on an intelligence test are environmental, such as educational, economic, and social background.

2. All standard tests are culture-bound and biased because they reflect the training and life experiences of those who develop and administer them.

1. Named for Arthur Jensen, the educational psychologist who observed that on average African-Americans perform less well on intelligence tests that Euro-Americans and AsianAmericans.

2. An environmental explanation acknowledges that for many reasons, both genetic and environmental, some people are smarter than others, however these differences in intelligence cannot be generalized to characterize whole populations or social groups.

3. Psychologists have come up with many ways to measure intelligence, but there are problems with all of them.

4. Intelligence tests reflect the experiences of the people who write them.

5. Cultural biases in testing affect performance by people in other cultures as well as different groups in the same nation.

1. Nation and nation-state now refer to an autonomous, centrally organized political entity.

2. Ethnic groups are not necessarily so formally politically organized.

3. The majority of all nation-states have more than one ethnic group in their constituent populations, and the multi-ethnicity of all countries is increasing.

1. Nationalities are ethnic groups that aspire to autonomous statehood (regardless of their political history).

2. The term imagined communities, coined by Benedict Anderson, has been used to describe nationalities, since most of their member populations feel a bond with each other in the absence of any real acquaintance.

3. Mass media and the language arts have helped to form such imagined communities by becoming the means of establishing a commonalty of values, motivations, language, and the like.

4. Colonialism helped create imagined communities as different ethnic groups under the control of the same colonial administration often pooled resources in opposition to the colonial power.

1. Assimilation occurs when a minority group adopts the patterns and norms of a more powerful culture, as when a migrant ethnic group conforms itself to its host culture.

2. Assimilation is not uniform: it may be forced or relatively benign depending on historical particularities.

1. Plural society refers to a multiethnic nation-state wherein the sub-groups do not assimilate but remain essentially distinct, in (relatively) stable coexistence.

2. Barth defines plural society as a society combining ethnic contrasts and the economic interdependence of the ethnic groups.

3. Such interdependence tends to be structured by ecological specialization (use of different environment resources).

4. Barth argued that cultural differences were part of the natural environment of ethnic groups, and thus peaceful, egalitarian coexistence was a possibility, particularly when there was no competition for resources.

1. Multiculturalism is the view of cultural diversity in a country as something good and desirable.

2. This is opposed to assimilationism, which expects subordinate groups to take on the culture of the dominant group while abandoning their own.

3. Basic aspects of multiculturalism at the government level are the official espousal of some degree of cultural relativism along with the promotion of distinct ethnic practices.

4. A number of factors have caused the United States to move away from an assimilationist and toward a multicultural model.

1. Prejudice is the devaluation of a given group based upon the assumed characteristics of that group.

2. Stereotypes are fixed ideas about what members of a group are like.

3. Discrimination is de jure when it is part of the law.

4. Discrimination is de facto when it is practiced, but not legally sanctioned.

1. Despite the fact that the 1992 Los Angeles riot began as a reaction to the first Rodney King verdict, much of the violence played out along ethnic lines: prosperous, culturally isolated Korean merchants were targeted for looting and violence.

2. Subsequent public discussion indicated that much of the enmity was due to culturally based miscommunication.

3. There is some suggestion that miscommunication and non-communication between successful Korean storeowners and the surrounding African American population made it more likely that the Koreans would be subjected to such leveling mechanisms as looting and boycotts.

1. The Politics of Cultural Oppression

2. Colonialism