Below are the family questions I accepted, with some editing. Remember these questions will be on the midterm exam coming up next Tuesday.
RED FAMILY (Lisa, Sheatial, Michael, Tim, Rachel) Earn 5 points + 1 bonus point
1. What is an ethnic group? And what is the most important distinguishing characteristic of different ethnic groups? (2pts)
ANSWER: An ethnic group is one that shares a cultural tradition and has some degree of consciousness of being different from other such groups. The most important distinguishing characteristic is language.
2. An important aim of the eugenics movement was to maintain racial purity. Why was this misguided? (1pt)
ANSWER: because "races" have been mixing forever and they continue to mix. We are all essentially mongrels.
3. What "paradigm shift" did biological anthropologist, Alan Goodman, advocate in the opening of part 1 of the video series? (1pt)
ANSWER: rejecting the notion of race as a valid biological distinction among humans.
4. How did the practice of "blockbusting" by real estate agents encourage residential segregation? (2pts)
ANSWER: Encouraging white flight when blacks began moving into an area by notifying white homeowners when a black family moved in and encouraging them to sell.
GREEN FAMILY ( Michaela, Jennifer, Jamar, Ross, Nathan) earn 5 points + 1 bonus point
1. What is the difference between prejudice and discrimination? (2pts)
ANSWER: While both often grow out of competition between groups of people, prejudice involves attitudes or beliefs while discrimination involves actual actions or practices.
2. Identify any TWO of the four ways that prejudice is learned? (2pts)
ANSWER: Any two of the following: (1) authority figures; (2) media images (especially negative portrayals of minorities); (3) negative experiences with members of a different racial or ethnic group; (4)discrimination.
3. Briefly explain the meaning of "the white man's burden" and its significance in the history of race relations. (2pts)
ANSWER: "The white man's burden" is the idea, which was popular during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that it is the duty of white Europeans (and Americans) to "civilize" the non-white world. This belief was used to justify taking the land of non-white peoples and imposing European culture and Christianity on them, as in the case of British and French colonies in Africa.
4. In the Bakke case, what did the court see as the principal flaw in the University of California - Davis Medical School's affirmative action program? (1pt)
ANSWER: that it used a QUOTA system, rather than goals or targets.
___________________________________
That's all folks. See you Tuesday.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Friday, October 8, 2010
King Passage & Family Activity - Making Up Midterm Exam Questions
Before I post that King passage I read yesterday at the end of class, let me note that next Tuesday I will wrap up the Basic Definitions by commenting on "discrimination." Then, we will get into Dr. Tatum's book. Please read through Chapter 1, which we will cover Tuesday & Thursday.
KING PASSAGE: In connection with my comments on the indirect role of law in overcoming prejudice, I quoted the following passage from Dr. King's first book, "Stride Toward Freedom": "Government action is not the whole answer to the present crisis, but it is an important partial answer. Morals cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. The law cannot make an employer love me, but it can keep him from refusing to hire me because of the color of my skin. We must depend on religion and education to alter the errors of the heart and mind; but meanwhile it is an immoral act to compel a man to accept injustice until another man's heart is set straight. As the experience of several northern states has shown, antidiscrimination laws can provide powerful sanctions against this kind of immorality. Moreover, the law itself is a form of education."
__________________
FAMILY ACTIVITY -- MAKING UP MIDTERM EXAM QUESTIONS:
I want each of the families to make up SIX short-answer midterm exam questions in preparation for our midterm exam on TUESDAY, OCT. 19TH. Remember, by short-answer I do NOT mean true/false or multiple choice questions. These should be questions that can be answered in a few sentences at most, and they can come from anything we've covered in class lecture, including of course my follow-up comments on the video series as well as the family points that were posted on the blog. The exam will also cover through Chapter 1 of Dr. Tatum's book. I will give the families time to concur on Tuesday (12th) and some time on Thursday (14th), if needed. You will need to determine the SIX BEST questions your family members came up with. I WILL NEED THESE QUESTIONS NO LATER THAN 4PM ON THURSDAY OCT. 14TH. You can email them to me or write them out on a sheet of paper and hand them to me. PLEASE REMEMBER TO ALSO INCLUDE THE ANSWERS. I will then select at least THREE questions from each family, and for each additional question I select, that family will get a bonus point, so it is possible to earn up to three bonus points for this activity. I will then post these questions and answers on the blog by Saturday (16th) so that you can have them to study from for the test. This activity is worth 5 points, and all family members must participate to earn those points.
KING PASSAGE: In connection with my comments on the indirect role of law in overcoming prejudice, I quoted the following passage from Dr. King's first book, "Stride Toward Freedom": "Government action is not the whole answer to the present crisis, but it is an important partial answer. Morals cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. The law cannot make an employer love me, but it can keep him from refusing to hire me because of the color of my skin. We must depend on religion and education to alter the errors of the heart and mind; but meanwhile it is an immoral act to compel a man to accept injustice until another man's heart is set straight. As the experience of several northern states has shown, antidiscrimination laws can provide powerful sanctions against this kind of immorality. Moreover, the law itself is a form of education."
__________________
FAMILY ACTIVITY -- MAKING UP MIDTERM EXAM QUESTIONS:
I want each of the families to make up SIX short-answer midterm exam questions in preparation for our midterm exam on TUESDAY, OCT. 19TH. Remember, by short-answer I do NOT mean true/false or multiple choice questions. These should be questions that can be answered in a few sentences at most, and they can come from anything we've covered in class lecture, including of course my follow-up comments on the video series as well as the family points that were posted on the blog. The exam will also cover through Chapter 1 of Dr. Tatum's book. I will give the families time to concur on Tuesday (12th) and some time on Thursday (14th), if needed. You will need to determine the SIX BEST questions your family members came up with. I WILL NEED THESE QUESTIONS NO LATER THAN 4PM ON THURSDAY OCT. 14TH. You can email them to me or write them out on a sheet of paper and hand them to me. PLEASE REMEMBER TO ALSO INCLUDE THE ANSWERS. I will then select at least THREE questions from each family, and for each additional question I select, that family will get a bonus point, so it is possible to earn up to three bonus points for this activity. I will then post these questions and answers on the blog by Saturday (16th) so that you can have them to study from for the test. This activity is worth 5 points, and all family members must participate to earn those points.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Passages on Race & Lecture Notes on Racism
Below are the passages I read in class yesterday regarding the concept of race. First, is the passage from an article entitled, "The Geometer of Race," by Stephen Jay Gould. It concerns Johan Friedrich Blumenbach and the origin of the term "Caucasian."
"...Blumenbach chose physical beauty as his guide to ranking. He simply affirmed that Europeans were most beautiful, with Caucasians as the most comely of all. This explains why Blumenbach,...linked the maximal beauty of the Caucasians to the place of human origin. Blumenbach viewed all subsequent variation as departures from the originally created ideal -- therefore, the most beautiful people must live closest to our primal home."
"Blumenbach's descriptions are pervaded by his subjective sense of relative beauty, presented as though he were discussing an objective quantifiable property, not subject to doubt or disagreement. He describes a Georgian female skull (found close to Mount Caucasus) as 'really the most beautiful form of skull which...always of itself attracts every eye, however little observant.' He then defends his European standard on aesthetic grounds: 'In the first place, that stock displays...the most beautiful form of the skull, from which, as from a mean and primeval type, the others diverge by most easy gradations...Besides, it is white in color, which we may fairly assume to have been the primitive color of mankind since...it is very easy for that to degenerate into brown, but very much more difficult for dark to become white.'"
And then excerpts from the American Anthropological Association's official statement on race (1997):
"Biophysical diversity has no inherent social meaning except what we humans confer upon it. The concept of 'race' is in reality a product of that process. 'Race' is a set of culturally created attitudes toward, and beliefs about, human differences developed following widespread exploration and colonization by Western European powers since the 16th century....'Race' was invented as a social mechanism to justify the retention of slavery. 'Race' ideology magnified differences among these populations, established a rigid hierarchy of socially exclusive categories, underscored and bolstered unequal rank and status differences and provided the rationalization that such differences were natural or God-given. The different physical traits became markers or symbols of status differences."
"As they were constructing this society, white Americans fabricated the cultural/behavioral characteristics associated with each 'race,' linking superior traits to Europeans and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians. Thus arbitrary beliefs about the different peoples were institutionalized and deeply embedded in American thought...."
"How people have been accepted and treated within the context of their society and culture has a direct impact on how they perform within that society. The 'racial' worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and welath. The tragedy is that it succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations. Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between human groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance; rather, these inequalities are products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational and political circumstances."
_________________________
LECTURE NOTES ON RACISM
Yesterday I began talking about the basic definition of racism, noting that most people would probably reject the idea that that definition applies to them. Racism today is more subtle than blatant, for the most part. Historian, George Frederickson, made this point, as I noted in class at the very end.
1. Frederickson goes on to talk about what he calls "cultural racism." For example, whites who believe that Latinos and or blacks in ghettoes are incurably infected by cultural pathologies such as lack of initiative, etc. Indeed, Frederickson contends that such cultural racism actually pre-dates the scientific theories of race in the late 18th century (Blumenbach).
B. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (who appeared in the video series) argues that a new form of racism has emerged, what he calls "color-blind racism." (which clearly seems to be an oxymoron or contradiction in terms). His idea is similar to cultural racism: a racism NOT based on a belief in inherent biological inferiority but based on or explained by nonracial factors such as market forces or cultural factors which explain inequalities.
C. Finally, there is INSTITUTIONAL RACISM (or institutional discrimination) which persists even though it has lost its legal basis (segregation laws of yesteryear). That is, there continue to be racial biases built into the operation and policy of various institutions. (We'll see more examples of this later on in the course.)
_____________________
That's all for now. We'll pick up with the next basic definition, ethnic group, next Tuesday 10/5.
"...Blumenbach chose physical beauty as his guide to ranking. He simply affirmed that Europeans were most beautiful, with Caucasians as the most comely of all. This explains why Blumenbach,...linked the maximal beauty of the Caucasians to the place of human origin. Blumenbach viewed all subsequent variation as departures from the originally created ideal -- therefore, the most beautiful people must live closest to our primal home."
"Blumenbach's descriptions are pervaded by his subjective sense of relative beauty, presented as though he were discussing an objective quantifiable property, not subject to doubt or disagreement. He describes a Georgian female skull (found close to Mount Caucasus) as 'really the most beautiful form of skull which...always of itself attracts every eye, however little observant.' He then defends his European standard on aesthetic grounds: 'In the first place, that stock displays...the most beautiful form of the skull, from which, as from a mean and primeval type, the others diverge by most easy gradations...Besides, it is white in color, which we may fairly assume to have been the primitive color of mankind since...it is very easy for that to degenerate into brown, but very much more difficult for dark to become white.'"
And then excerpts from the American Anthropological Association's official statement on race (1997):
"Biophysical diversity has no inherent social meaning except what we humans confer upon it. The concept of 'race' is in reality a product of that process. 'Race' is a set of culturally created attitudes toward, and beliefs about, human differences developed following widespread exploration and colonization by Western European powers since the 16th century....'Race' was invented as a social mechanism to justify the retention of slavery. 'Race' ideology magnified differences among these populations, established a rigid hierarchy of socially exclusive categories, underscored and bolstered unequal rank and status differences and provided the rationalization that such differences were natural or God-given. The different physical traits became markers or symbols of status differences."
"As they were constructing this society, white Americans fabricated the cultural/behavioral characteristics associated with each 'race,' linking superior traits to Europeans and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians. Thus arbitrary beliefs about the different peoples were institutionalized and deeply embedded in American thought...."
"How people have been accepted and treated within the context of their society and culture has a direct impact on how they perform within that society. The 'racial' worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and welath. The tragedy is that it succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations. Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between human groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance; rather, these inequalities are products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational and political circumstances."
_________________________
LECTURE NOTES ON RACISM
Yesterday I began talking about the basic definition of racism, noting that most people would probably reject the idea that that definition applies to them. Racism today is more subtle than blatant, for the most part. Historian, George Frederickson, made this point, as I noted in class at the very end.
1. Frederickson goes on to talk about what he calls "cultural racism." For example, whites who believe that Latinos and or blacks in ghettoes are incurably infected by cultural pathologies such as lack of initiative, etc. Indeed, Frederickson contends that such cultural racism actually pre-dates the scientific theories of race in the late 18th century (Blumenbach).
B. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (who appeared in the video series) argues that a new form of racism has emerged, what he calls "color-blind racism." (which clearly seems to be an oxymoron or contradiction in terms). His idea is similar to cultural racism: a racism NOT based on a belief in inherent biological inferiority but based on or explained by nonracial factors such as market forces or cultural factors which explain inequalities.
C. Finally, there is INSTITUTIONAL RACISM (or institutional discrimination) which persists even though it has lost its legal basis (segregation laws of yesteryear). That is, there continue to be racial biases built into the operation and policy of various institutions. (We'll see more examples of this later on in the course.)
_____________________
That's all for now. We'll pick up with the next basic definition, ethnic group, next Tuesday 10/5.
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