Deck 14: Race and Ethnicity

Question 1

Based on research using the social distance scale, you can correctly say that U.S. college students today:

A) are less prejudiced than their counterparts fifty years ago.
B) see less difference between various minority categories.
C) express greater prejudice towards Arabs than African Americans.
D) All of the above are correct.

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Which of the following is the largest minority category within the U.S. population?

A) people of Asian descent
B) people of African descent
C) people of Hispanic descent
D) people of Native American descent

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Scapegoat theory states that prejudice is created by:

A) culture beliefs.
B) high levels of immigration.
C) frustration among disadvantaged people.
D) people with rigid personalities.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Which of the following statements about prejudice is True?

A) Prejudice involves prejudgments.
B) Prejudice treats everyone in some category in the same way.
C) Prejudice can be positive or negative.
D) All of the above are correct.

Question 5

A family leaves Russia and takes up residence in the United States, where they gradually lose cultural traditions. Doing so, these people have modified their:

A) race.
B) ethnicity.
C) ancestry.
D) religion.

Question 6

Race refers to _____ considered important by a society ethnicity refers to _____.

A) cultural traits biological traits
B) biological traits cultural traits
C) differences what we have in common
D) what we have in common differences

Question 7

Human beings are all:

A) members of a single biological species.
B) members of various species, depending on color.
C) members of various species, depending on cultural background.
D) members of various species, depending on where in the world they live.

Question 8

In the United States, minorities typically have less:

A) income.
B) occupational prestige.
C) schooling.
D) All of the above are correct.

Question 9

According to the most recent data, African Americans accounted for about what percentage of the U.S. population?

A) 42.3 percent
B) 32.3 percent
C) 22.3 percent
D) 12.9 percent

Question 10

Why do sociologists consider the "scientific" racial types of Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negroid to be misleading and even harmful?

A) Every society's population contains a lot of genetic mixture.
B) Various racial categories are genetically very much alike.
C) The skin color of Caucasian people ranges from very light to very dark.
D) All of the above are correct.

Question 11

This chapter's "Seeing Sociology in the News" describes:

A) everyone as bigoted.
B) that when Blacks and Whites have children, the child will most likely be White.
C) the concerns of biracial parents regarding their children's racial identity.
D) discrimination as inevitable.

Question 12

Which of the following concepts refers to a shared cultural heritage?

A) race
B) minority
C) ethnicity
D) stereotype

Question 13

A minority is defined as a category of people who are:

A) small in numbers and disadvantaged.
B) less than half the society's total population.
C) set apart by that society and disadvantaged.
D) born in some other country.

Question 14

The chapter-opening story about the class at New York's Bronx Community College explains that:

A) race is a simple matter of color.
B) many people have mixed racial and ethnic ancestry.
C) race is not important to most people in the United States.
D) All of the above are correct.

Question 15

Which of the following concepts refers to a category of people, distinguished by physical or cultural traits, who are socially disadvantaged?

A) minority
B) ethnic category
C) racial category
D) out-group

Question 16

The concept of "race" refers to:

A) people who fall into any minority category.
B) a person's skin color.
C) a cultural heritage shared by a category of people.
D) a socially constructed category composed of people who share biologically transmitted traits that members of a society consider important.

Question 17

Four states currently have a "minority majority." Which are they?

A) Texas, New Mexico, California, and Hawaii
B) South Carolina, New York, Florida, and California
C) New Jersey, Georgia, Mississippi, and California
D) Louisiana, Alabama, Arizona, and California

Question 18

Typically, people who live in _____ perceive fewer racial categories than people who live in _____.

A) the United States Brazil
B) Brazil the United States
C) the Northeast the Midwest
D) the West the Northeast

Question 19

You would be expressing a "stereotype" if you:

A) made any generalization about people.
B) stated an exaggerated description and applied it to everyone in some category.
C) held an opinion about someone based on personal experience.
D) treated everybody in an unkind way.

Question 20

Authoritarian personality theory states that extreme prejudice is:

A) built into culture itself.
B) a trait of certain individuals.
C) found among poor and disadvantaged people.
D) found among most people in all societies.

Question 21

The United States is not truly pluralistic because:

A) some people live in "ethnic enclaves."
B) many people value ethnic diversity.
C) racial and ethnic categories do not have roughly equal social standing.
D) All of the above are correct.

Question 22

The claim that defining members of some minority as inferior will make them inferior is one application of:

A) social distance research.
B) the iron law of oligarchy.
C) the Thomas Theorem.
D) authoritarian personality theory.

Question 23

Institutional prejudice and discrimination refers to the fact that:

A) some people hold rigid and unfair attitudes.
B) bias was more pronounced in this nation's history.
C) bias is built into the operation of social institutions.
D) many people still hold prejudiced opinions.

Question 24

Conflict theory states that prejudice is:

A) used by powerful people to justify oppressing others.
B) built in to culture itself.
C) common among immigrants.
D) common among certain people with rigid personalities.

Question 25

When the first Europeans arrived in the Americas in the fifteenth century, Native Americans:

A) followed shortly thereafter.
B) had just migrated to North America from Asia.
C) came with them from Europe.
D) had inhabited this land for 30,000 years.

Question 26

Which of the following concepts refers to biological reproduction by people of different racial categories?

A) assimilation
B) racial typology
C) pluralism
D) miscegenation

Question 27

Assimilation refers to the pattern by which:

A) people become more tolerant of minorities.
B) minorities gradually adopt patterns of the dominant category.
C) all minority categories become more equal in social standing.
D) people regain their lost cultural heritage.

Question 28

Which of the following concepts refers to the physical and social separation of categories of people?

A) pluralism
B) assimilation
C) segregation
D) miscegenation

Question 29

Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton documented which of the following patterns in U.S. inner cities?

A) hypersegregation
B) the absence of racial segregation
C) de jure segregation
D) declining segregation

Question 30

The ancestors of which of the following first settled the lands of the Western Hemisphere?

A) WASPs
B) European Americans
C) African Americans
D) Native Americans

Question 31

While prejudice is a matter of _____, discrimination is a matter of _____.

A) biology culture
B) attitude action
C) choice social structure
D) abnormality what a society considers normal

Question 32

The idea that prejudice and discrimination form a vicious cycle means that:

A) prejudice is more common than actual discrimination.
B) it is easy to prove that most stereotypes are wrong.
C) most people will act on their prejudices.
D) bias is easily continued over time.

Question 33

Which of the following concepts refers to a state in which racial and ethnic minorities are distinct, but have social parity?

A) genocide
B) segregation
C) assimilation
D) pluralism

Question 34

In the United States during the 1930s and 1940s, the existence of the "Negro leagues," with all African-American players, is an example of:

A) assimilation.
B) segregation.
C) pluralism.
D) miscegenation.

Question 35

The adoption of the English language by Mexican immigrants to the United States is an example of:

A) genocide.
B) segregation.
C) assimilation.
D) pluralism.

Question 36

The Matsui family came to the United States from Japan thirty years ago. They now speak English at home and the Matsui children date non-Japanese students at college. This family's story is closest to which of the following concepts?

A) pluralism
B) segregation
C) assimilation
D) miscegenation

Question 37

A good example of the culture theory of prejudice is:

A) T. W. Adorno's research on prejudiced people.
B) Emory Bogardus's research on social distance.
C) W. I. Thomas's vicious cycle theory.
D) All of the above are correct.

Question 38

According to T. W. Adorno's authoritarian personality theory, prejudiced people:

A) view society as naturally hierarchical.
B) reject ethnocentrism.
C) cannot easily see actions as either right or wrong.
D) tend to reject any conventional cultural values.

Question 39

Thomas Sowell studied the scores of categories of people in intelligence tests and concluded that:

A) people's culture explains much variation in intelligence test scores.
B) all individuals have the same intelligence.
C) all categories of people have the same average test performance.
D) All of the above are correct.

Question 40

The killing of people in the Darfur region of Africa is a recent example of:

A) assimilation.
B) genocide.
C) miscegenation.
D) hypersegregation.

Question 41

Which category of Asian Americans has average income above the national average?

A) Filipino Americans
B) Chinese Americans
C) Japanese Americans
D) All of the above are correct.

Question 42

The overall social standing of Native Americans is:

A) above the national average.
B) about the national average.
C) below the national average.
D) mixed, with families found equally at all class levels.

Question 43

The Hispanic population of the United States is:

A) spread evenly across the country.
B) concentrated in the West and also in southern Florida.
C) concentrated in industrial cities of the Northeast.
D) concentrated in the Deep South.

Question 44

Read the following statements. Which one is True?

A) Some Arab Americans are recent immigrants some are not.
B) Some Arab Americans speak Arabic some do not.
C) Some Arab Americans are Muslims some are not.
D) All of the above are correct.

Question 45

Which of the following categories of Hispanics in the United States is largest in terms of population size?

A) Cuban Americans
B) Mexican Americans
C) Puerto Ricans
D) Bolivians

Question 46

Each year, about how many immigrants came to the United States, both legally and illegally?

A) 150,000
B) 1.5 million
C) 15 million
D) 150 million

Question 47

Which of the following categories of the U.S. population is most likely to own and operate a small business?

A) Native Americans
B) African Americans
C) Korean Americans
D) Mexican Americans

Question 48

The largest category of Asian Americans in the United States is people of _____ ancestry.

A) Korean
B) Japanese
C) Chinese
D) Vietnamese

Question 49

Arab Americans are a U.S. minority that:

A) is increasing in population size.
B) has ancestors from many different nations.
C) has Islam as the dominant religion.
D) All of the above are correct.

Question 50

From which world regions do most of today's immigrants come?

A) Latin America and Asia
B) Asia and Africa
C) Africa and Latin America
D) Africa and Europe

Question 51

Native Americans gained the right to U.S. citizenship in:

A) 1865.
B) 1924.
C) 1965.
D) 1990.

Question 52

What Gunnar Myrdal called the "American dilemma" was:

A) the denial of basic rights to African Americans by a so-called "democratic society."
B) the placing of Native Americans on reservations.
C) the restriction of immigration by a nation that was built by immigrants.
D) the refusal of many minorities to improve their social standing.

Question 53

For Chinese immigrants, one consequence of living in Chinatowns was _____.

A) maintaining traditional culture.
B) forming kinship networks, or clans.
C) reducing their chance to learn English, which limits job opportunities.
D) All of the above are correct.

Question 54

The concept "white ethnics" refers to:

A) people of Hispanic ancestry who are light skinned.
B) people of any ethnicity who are light skinned.
C) biracial or multiracial people.
D) non-WASPs of European ancestry.

Question 55

Historically, WASPs dominated the United States until about:

A) 1860, with the election of Abraham Lincoln.
B) 1932, with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
C) 1960, with the election of John F. Kennedy.
D) 1992, with the election of Bill Clinton.

Question 56

A national civil rights movement, which ended most instances of lawful discrimination, took place during:

A) World War II.
B) the 1950s and 1960s.
C) the 1970s.
D) the 1990s.

Question 57

Read the following statements. Which one is correct?

A) Half of the ten largest U.S. cities have elected black mayors.
B) After the 2006 elections, just one senator was African American.
C) Median income for African American families is 56 percent of the amount for non-Hispanic white families.
D) All of the above statements are correct.

Question 58

Significant immigration of Asian Americans to the United States was sparked by:

A) laws regulating Chinese immigration enacted in 1882.
B) the California Gold Rush in 1849.
C) the need for labor during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
D) World War II.

Question 59

Japanese immigrants differed from earlier Chinese immigrants by:

A) favoring living in rural areas.
B) coming to this country in larger numbers.
C) knowing less about the United States before they got here.
D) All of the above are correct.

Question 60

People who are called "WASPs" have ancestors from which country?

A) England
B) Scotland
C) Wales
D) All of the above are correct.

Question 61

Scapegoat theory holds that the most powerful people in a society are the most likely to be prejudiced.

Question 62

All members of a minority typically share a distinctive identity.

Question 63

In most cases, race and ethnicity refer to the same thing.

Question 64

Sociologically speaking, a minority is any category that is numerically less than half of a society's population.

Question 65

Scientific research shows that there are three biologically pure races.

Question 66

All members of a minority category are poor.

Question 67

Some "white" people actually have darker skin than some "black" people.

Question 68

Prejudice and discrimination are found in not just individuals, but in the operation of society's institutions.

Question 69

Prejudice is a rigid and unfair generalization about an entire category of people.

Question 70

Being Greek, Italian, or Vietnamese involves a distinctive ethnicity.

Question 71

Although based on physical traits like skin color, the concept of "race" is constructed by society.

Question 72

Culture theory states that prejudice remains widespread despite the fact that our culture defines all prejudice as wrong.

Question 73

There is a trend in the United States toward more common interracial marriage and multiracial children.

Question 74

Prejudice and discrimination can be either positive or negative.

Question 75

T. W. Adorno linked extreme prejudice to a certain personality type.

Question 76

Half of the states in the United States now have a "minority majority."

Question 77

Thomas Sowell demonstrated the importance of culture in shaping the IQ test performance of various categories of the U.S. population.

Question 78

Ethnicity is harder to change than racial identity.

Question 79

Discrimination is an unfair belief about an entire category of people.

Question 80

Research with the social distance scale among U.S. college students scale shows increasing social acceptance of people of various racial and ethnic categories over time.