| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Minority Group | A subordinate group whos members ahve significantly less control or power over their won lives than do the members of a dominant or majority group |
| Racial Group | A group that is socially set apart because of obvious physical differences |
| Ethnic Group | A group set part from others because of its national origin or distinctive cultural patterns |
| Biological Race | The mistaken notion of a genetically isolated human group |
| Intelligence Quotient | The ratio of a person's mental age (as computed by an IQ test) to his or her chronological age, multiplied by 100 |
| Racism | A doctrine that one race is superior |
| Racial Formation | A sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhibited, transformed, and destroyed |
| Stratification | A structured ranking of entire groups of people that perpetuates unequal rewards and power in society |
| Class | People who share similar levels of wealth |
| Functionalist perspective | A sociological approach emphasizing how parts of a society are structured to maintain its stability |
| Dysfunction | An element of society that may disrupt a social system or decrease its stability |
| Conflict Perspective | A sociological approach that assumes that the social structure is best understood in terms of conflict or tension between competing groups |
| Blaming the victim | Portraying the problems of racial and ethnic minrities as their fault rather than recognizing society's responsibilities |
| Labeling Theory | A sociological approach introduced by Howard Becker that attempts to explain why certain people are viewed as deviants and others engaging in the same behavior are not |
| Stereotypes | Unreliable, exaggerated generalizations about all members of a group that do not take individual differences into account |
| Self-fulfilling prophecy | The tendency to respond to and act on the basis of stereotypes, a predisposition that can lead one to validate false definitions |
| Migration | A general term that describes any transfer of population |
| Emigration | Leaving a country to settle in another |
| Immigration | Coming into a new country as a permanent resident |
| Globalization | Worldwide integration of government policies, cultures, social movements, and financial markets through trade, movements of people, and the exchange of ideas |
| Colonialism | A foreign power's maintenance of political, social, economic, and cultural dominance over people for an extended period |
| World Systems Theory | A view of the global economic sstem as divided between nations that control wealth and those that provide natral resources and labor |
| Internal colonialism | The treatment of subordinate peoples as conlonial subjects by those in power |
| Genocide | The deliberate, systematic killing of an entire people or nation |
| Ethnic Cleansing | Policy of Ethnic Serbs to eliminate Muslims from parts of Bosnia |
| Segregation | The physical separation of two groups, often imposed on a subordinate group by the dominant group |
| Fusion | A minority and a majority group combining to form a new group |
| Amalgamation | The process by which a dominant group and a subordinate group combine through intermarriage to form a new group |
| Melting Pot | Diverse racial or ethnic groups or boh, forming a new creation, a new cultural entity |
| Assimilaiton | The process by which a subordinate individual or group takes on the characteristics of the dominant group |
| Pluralism | Mutual respect between the various groups in a society for one another's cultures, allowing minorities to express their own culture without experiencing prejudice or hostility |
| Bilingualism | The use of two or more languages in places of work or education and the treatment of each language as legitimate |
| Panethnicity | The development of solidarity between ethnic subgroups, as reflected in the terms hispanic or asian american |
| Marginality | The status of being between two cultures at the same time, such as the status of Jewish immigrants in the United States |
| Afrocentric Perspective | An emphasis on the customs of African cultures and how they have pervaded the history, culture, and behavior of Blacks in the United States and around the world |
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