Soc 225 Week Week 3

Front 1

Color-Blind Racism

Back 1

a new dominant racial ideology based on the notion that race no longer matters in determining life chances. It provides sophisticated tools to advance positions that protect racial privilege without sounding or appearing outwardly “racist.” (Bonilla-Silva)

Front 2

Color-Blind Racism

Back 2

1) Abstract Liberalism – combines the ideas of individualism and meritocracy. (“people shouldn’t be forced to integrate through bussing”, “why use discrimination to combat discrimination?”)

2) Naturalization of Racism - racial inequalities are naturally occurring phenomena (“People just prefer to be with people like themselves”)

3) Cultural Racism- explains the status of racial minorities as a product of their own cultural deficiencies. (”if they worked harder, they could make it just as high as anyone else.”)

4) Minimization Of Racism - suggests that discrimination is no longer a central factor affecting minorities’ life chances (“It’s better now than in the past”

Front 3

Racialized Social Systems

Back 3

- Societies that allocate differential economic, political, social, and even psychological rewards to groups along racial lines, lines that are socially constructed. (Bonilla-Silva)

Front 4

Ethnicity

Back 4

- Social groups with a shared history, sense of identity, geography and cultural roots which may occur despite racial difference

Front 5

Ethnic Group

Back 5

– Individuals who consider themselves, or are considered by others, to share common cultural characteristics that differentiate them from other groups in a society.

- Members of an ethnic group may be partially identifiable in terms of racial attributes, but they may also share other cultural characteristics such as religion, national origin, politics, and language.

- In contrast to race, ethnicity is often “optional” and “symbolic”

Front 6

Symbolic Ethnicity

Back 6

- Expressions of ethnicity involving symbols of one’s cultural heritage

Front 7

Panethnicity

Back 7

the development of solidarity between ethnic subgroups

Front 8

Ethnic “layering”

Back 8

Ethnic “layering” - choosing from a “portfolio” of available identities in different contexts. (e.g. one can be “Latino”, “Cuban-American”, “Marielito”, or “white” depending on the social utility or meaningfulness of each identification in specific social situations.)

Front 9

“The Model Minority: Asian American ‘Success’ as a Race Relations Failure”
(Frank Wu)

Back 9

The Myth of the Model Minority (“Praising the Victim”) – Although Asian Americans have experienced prejudice and discrimination in the past, they seem nevertheless to have succeeded in terms of socioeconomic status, without resorting to political protest or confrontations with whites.

The myth should be rejected for three reasons:
1) The myth is a gross simplification

2) The myth supports the colorblind view that if Asian Americans have succeeded, African Americans and Hispanics must be responsible for their own low socioeconomic status.

3) The myth denies that Asian Americans experience racial discrimination. (Because Asian Americans have achieved success, they have ceased to become a subordinate group and are no longer disadvantaged.)

- lower return on investments in education

Front 10

Dissimilarity Index

Back 10

A quantitative measure of racial residential segregation.

How many people would have to move from their current neighborhood in order for every neighborhood to replicate the racial composition of the whole city?

- An index of 100 indicates complete segregation
- An index of 0 indicates full integration.

Example: A percentage of 80% between two groups (“A” and “B”) means that 80% of group A would have to move to different neighborhoods to reduce the level of segregation to 0

30% and under low, 30-60 moderate, 60% and up high.

Measures the extent to which the percentages of two groups of people in a particular neighborhood are different from the percentages of those two groups in the city as a whole.

Front 11

Shelly vs. Kramer (1948) -

Back 11

racially restrictive housing covenants declared unconstitutional by the U.S Supreme Court

Front 12

Fair Housing Act (1968)

Back 12

prohibits racial discrimination in selling or renting of housing.

Racial residential segregation is the primary structural factor responsible for producing racial inequality, concentrated urban poverty, and the rise of the ghettoized urban “underclass.”

Front 13

Definition of the Ghetto

Back 13

set of neighborhoods exclusively inhabited by members of one racial group within which almost all members of that group live.

Front 14

The Underclass

Back 14

(“The Poorest of the Poor”) - The long-term poor who lack training and skills. Trapped in a cycle of persistent poverty and lack the resources to break free.

Front 15

The underclass

Back 15

Competing explanations of the “underclass”

1) The culture of poverty - Isolated ghetto environment gives rise to values that are at odds with those of the majority society.

2) Welfare dependency - The underclass results primarily from the policies of the welfare state

3) Economic forces (William Julius Wilson)
Class distinctions in the black community and changes in the inner city economy such as the decline of manufacturing and job migration to the suburbs

Front 16

Redlining

Back 16

the unwillingness to grant loans or insurance for property in poor and minority neighborhoods

Front 17

Racial Steering

Back 17

– the practice of directing potential homebuyers (and renters) to neighborhoods dominated by members of their own class, ethnic group, or race.

- behavior that directs a customer toward neighborhoods in which people of his or her racial or ethnic group are concentrated.
- constrains minorities’ housing choices particularly in white areas

- restricts whites’ housing choices as well