Deck 8: Race and Ethnicity

Question 1

The Minuteman Project was originally designed to:

A)Defend the national border against illegal immigration between Mexico and the U.S.
B)Defend the constitution and Congress from British soldiers and the monarchy.
C) defend the U.S. -Canada border during times of war.
D) develop community resources to help immigrants adapt to life in the U.S.

Answer 1

Defend the national border against illegal immigration between Mexico and the U.S.

Question 2

U.S. House bill HR4437 was intended to create:

A) new restrictions on immigration to the U.S.
B) the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
C) more racially egalitarian access to community resources.
D) more stringent voting legislation.

Answer 2

new restrictions on immigration to the U.S.

Question 3

WASP as a racial category used in the 1970s stood for:

A) white Aryan-Saxony people.
B) Western-advanced Semitic people.
C) white Anglo-Saxon people.
D) Western and Asian special people.

Answer 3

white Anglo-Saxon people.

Question 4

Which of the following racial categories is no longer commonly used?

A) Whites
B) African Americans
C) Orientals
D) Native Americans

Question 5

Racial categories are best described as:

A)Biological constructions that reflect recent immigration into and out of a country.
B) adaptive to historical and cultural contexts and conditions.
C) naturally occurring and marked specifically across cultures.
D)Stable and fixed categories that serve to distinguish people within a society.

Question 6

All of the following had strong impacts on racial and ethnic categories in the U.S. after the 1970s except:

A) rise of the Black and Red Power movements.
B) the end of the Vietnam War.
C) new information technologies.
D) changing economic priorities.

Question 7

The Shining Path was a Maoist movement that capitalized on racial and ethnic divisions between highland and lowland peoples in:

A) Peru.
B) Brazil.
C) Austria.
D) China.

Question 8

In her study of highland people in Peru, Maria Elena Garcia found that:

A) the national government prohibited the use of racial terminology.
B) people used racial terminology to create social unity throughout the country.
C) people frequently had multiple racial labels and terms depending on context.
D) highland communities did not use racial terms to refer to each other.

Question 9

The social evolutionary framework for understanding race includes all of the following except:

A) a focus on understanding diverse peoples in the world.
B) stages based on perceived cultural and physical differences.
C) rigid hierarchy of evolutionary stages.
D) a perspective that assumed all people were basically the same.

Question 10

Johann Blumenbach devised an early racial typology based primarily on:

A) kinship.
B) geography.
C) skin color.
D) skeletal measurements.

Question 11

Which of the following is not a racial typology proposed by Blumenbach?

A) Mongolian
B) Hispanic
C) Caucasian
D) Malayan

Question 12

Carolus Linnaeus developed a racial classification scheme utilizing all of the following except:

A) skin color.
B) personality characteristics.
C) cultural practices.
D) languages.

Question 13

Which cultural anthropologist most profoundly changed the conversation about race in the United States?

A) Franz Boas
B) Bronislaw Malinowski
C) Leslie White
D) Ruth Benedict

Question 14

A paradigm shift is best described as a(n):

A) inversion of a social hierarchy that allows egalitarianism to emerge.
B) change in the perspective that a group of people takes on a social issue.
C) natural hierarchy that appears to be socially just and sensible.
D) means to re-educate all people on what it is that makes us human.

Question 15

Boas worked with a leading African American intellectual and sociologist of the 20^th century to turn the discussion from race to cultural difference. Who was this scholar with whom Boas collaborated on the study of race?

A) W.E.B. Du Bois
B) Martin Luther King, Jr.
C) Talcott Parsons
D) Malcolm X

Question 16

What is meant by the term "sound blindness"?

A)It is a perspective that anthropologists take in order to better understand and accept cultural differences in the field.
B) It refers to a condition that causes certain people to lose both hearing and sight simultaneously.
C)It referred to the inability to read and write Western languages and was assigned as a disability among immigrants.
D)It referred to the inability to distinguish linguistic sounds believed to be associated with primitive people by scientists in the early 1900s.

Question 17

Which of the following best describes U.S. immigration policy in the early 1900s?

A)The U.S. government was not involved in immigrants or immigration policy in the early 1900s and allowed scientists full access to do research on these populations.
B)The government set very specific quotas on immigrants in an attempt to encourage non-European immigration into the United States.
C) The government was sensitive to political struggles in eastern Europe and regularly invited highly diverse immigrants to settle in the U.S.
D)The government was interested in understanding the meaning of race in immigrants so that quotas could be set to limit what they perceived as inferior races.

Question 18

All of the following did early research on race and racism in the U.S. except:

A) Johann Blumenbach.
B) Zora Neale Hurston.
C) Hortense Powdermaker.
D) Horace Cayton.

Question 19

During the period known as the "Great Migration" (1919-1970):

A) Americans of all races explored and settled the American West.
B) businesses moved from U.S. and Western European countries into the displaced southern countries where labor was cheaper.
C)Six million African Americans migrated out of the South to the North and West of the U.S.
D)Thirty-three million immigrants were absorbed into mainstream U.S. culture coming from diverse cultures.

Question 20

Which anthropologist worked in Florida in the early 1900s collecting African American folklore?

A) Hortense Powdermaker
B) Zora Neale Hurston
C) Horace Cayton
D) St. Claire Drake

Question 21

According to the American Anthropological Association, which ancient theory most contributed to a racial (and hierarchical) worldview?

A) Great Chain of Being
B) Big Bang Theory
C) Darwinian Evolution
D) Heliocentric Theory

Question 22

Which of the following was a major difference between the 2000 Census and those which occurred at earlier historical periods?

A) For the first time respondents were allowed to self-identify.
B) Respondents were no longer allowed to choose their own race.
C) For the first time only one respondent answered the forms for the entire family.
D) Respondents were encouraged to choose multiple categories of affiliation.

Question 23

All of the following are considered aspects of ethnic identity by anthropologists except:

A) language.
B) intellectual ability.
C) religion.
D) food preferences.

Question 24

Ethnicity lies at the intersection of:

A) culture and history.
B) psychology and history.
C) biology and culture.
D) identity and culture.

Question 25

An ethnic identity is most based on:

A) psychological personality.
B) collective history.
C) economic well being.
D) educational accomplishments.

Question 26

When an individual is assigned ethnicity by outsiders, it is called:

A) ethnic ascription.
B) political ethnicity.
C) ethnic self-ascription.
D) blood quantum.

Question 27

In tense and very troubled political and economic times, ethnic boundaries tend to:

A) become blurred.
B) evaporate and disappear.
C) become more delineated and strict.
D) change.

Question 28

Political ethnicity is associated with all of the following except:

A) egalitarianism and social unity.
B) ethnic hierarchies.
C) relative economic power.
D) relative political power.

Question 29

Which ethnic group most commonly uses blood quantum as a measure of ethnicity?

A) All indigenous people
B) Native Americans
C) African Americans
D) Immigrants

Question 30

In the 21^st century, ethnicity has increasingly become:

A) a business enterprise.
B) a way to develop races.
C) synonymous with the nation-state.
D) a way of obtaining social relevance.

Question 31

The term "Third World peoples" was commonly used in the 1970s.

Question 32

In the early part of the 20^th century, Americans began using race as an adaptive and shifting category no longer considered ranked and hierarchical.

Question 33

Race does not play a significant role in the social life of Peru.

Question 34

The social evolutionary framework used to understand human diversity gave rise to several different racial typologies.

Question 35

Boas worked to turn the national conversation from cultural diversity to racial diversity.

Question 36

The cephalic index was a way to measure a human head.

Question 37

Boas encouraged early anthropologists to study African Americans as a way of understanding race.

Question 38

Hortense Powdermaker studied African American folklore in Mississippi and Louisiana.

Question 39

Today most anthropologists see race as biology-based and not trait-based.

Question 40

The social evolutionary framework continues to affect the U.S. census.

Question 41

The concept of ethnicity is no longer as significant as it was before WWI.

Question 42

Political ethnicity is extremely uncommon today.

Question 43

The Madurese in Indonesia are Muslim.

Question 44

Blood quantum is real and verifiable by all scientists.

Question 45

Today ethnicity is increasingly being used as a business enterprise.

Question 46

What are the primary historical and social forces that have shaped categories of race and ethnicity in the U.S. since the 1970s?

Question 47

Compare and contrast the racial typologies of Carolus Linnaeus and Johann Blumenbach.

Question 48

How did Boas's research undermine the validity of the primary measurements used in identifying race during the early 1900s?

Question 49

What is meant by the term "ethnic group"?

Question 50

What is the blood quantum measure and how does it relate to ethnic identity?

Question 51

Racial categories are cultural constructions. Explain this and gives examples as evidence.

Question 52

Discuss some of the earliest fieldwork on race in the United States. What were the primary contributions of this work?

Question 53

How are concepts of race and ethnicity different? Consider the historical trajectory of each. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using each concept?