Deck 16: Ethnicity

Question 1

African-Americans are descended from a single African ethnic group.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

Racial categories persist in popular culture because they have a strong basis in scientific fact.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Ethnic boundary markers include religion, dress, and language.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

"Nuyoricans" are Cuban immigrants who fled the Castro regime and settled in Florida.

Question 5

Until the 1950s, it was illegal to give a blood transfusion from a black person to a white person in some parts of the United States.

Question 6

Folk models of race vary cross-culturally.

Question 7

WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) culture is predominant in the United States.

Question 8

More than half of Hispanic/Latino Americans live below the poverty level.

Question 9

Cases of ethnic cleansing and genocide have been eliminated since World War II.

Question 10

The end result of intermarriage between members of different ethnic groups is cultural pluralism.

Question 11

Multiculturalism means that a person can easily switch between two or more cultures without getting confused and frustrated.

Question 12

Assimilation does not occur between ethnic groups with similar physical or cultural characteristics.

Question 13

In common usage, the word "race" can be used to refer to physical features as well as styles of music and dance.

Question 14

The "Know-Nothings" political party was an attempt to promote Irish culture and Roman Catholicism in the United States.

Question 15

The descendants of German immigrants outnumber all other ethnic groups in the United States.

Question 16

The confusion between the concepts of "race" and "culture" has been a fundamental misconception in the Western worldview.

Question 17

"Jim Crow" laws are credited with beginning the process of school desegregation.

Question 18

Anthropologist Franz Boas discovered a link between physical characteristics and culture.

Question 19

Ethnicity is not innately determined by biology or purported racial characteristics.

Question 20

Anthropologists have helped dismiss the notion of clearly bounded, racially distinct populations of humans.

Question 21

Which of the following is an example of a subjective aspect of ethnicity?

A) observing religious holidays
B) believing in a shared homeland
C) wearing certain styles of clothing
D) sharing a spoken language

Question 22

Modern anthropological concepts of ethnicity take into consideration both __________.

A) physical and mental aspects
B) objective and subjective aspects
C) external and internal aspects
D) racial and cultural aspects

Question 23

Which anthropologist is associated with the primordial model of ethnicity?

A) Clifford Geertz
B) Franz Boas
C) Fredrik Barth
D) E. B. Tylor

Question 24

How did German immigrants initially respond to cultural differences in the United States?

A) They resorted to violent confrontations and protests.
B) They required their children to attend public schools and spoke only English at home.
C) They rapidly assimilated to the dominant WASP culture.
D) They attempted to retain their ethnic identity and cultural practices.

Question 25

"Scientific racism" was used to do which of the following?

A) implement multicultural education
B) justify the annihilation of millions of Jews
C) identify human genetic codes
D) categorize norms, values, and mores

Question 26

The famous American anthropologist __________ subjected scientific racist beliefs to rigorous testing and evaluation; he found that there are no superior or inferior races.

A) Johann Blumenbach
B) Joseph Arthur de Gobineau
C) Carolus Linnaeus
D) Franz Boas

Question 27

Which of the following describes the difference between "race" and "racism"?

A) "Race" refers to a typology, while "racism" refers to beliefs that some races are superior.
B) "Race" refers to the belief that some races are inferior, while "racism" refers to the belief that some races are superior.
C) "Race" refers to discriminatory belief systems, while "racism" is a means of classifying people.
D) "Race" refers to physical features, while "racism" refers to both physical and behavioral aspects.

Question 28

The fact that European Jews and so-called Aryans shared similar physical characteristics illustrates which of the following?

A) Anthropologists disagree with biologists in terms of how racial categories should be defined.
B) Racism has a strong foundation in biological categories.
C) Racist beliefs are not scientifically valid.
D) Despite cultural differences, European Jews were actually of "Aryan" descent.

Question 29

What is ethnogenesis?

A) a Biblical explanation for race
B) a theory of racial origins that anthropologists no longer accept
C) a scientific justification for racism
D) an ongoing sociocultural and political process of ethnic group formation that began in prehistory

Question 30

When minority ethnic groups want to resist cultural hegemony by the dominant ethnic group, they often try to secede and develop their own nation states. What is this called?

A) a pluralist movement
B) a multicultural movement
C) an ethnonationalist movement
D) a colonialist movement

Question 31

According to John Hartigan's research, racial categories in Mexico are based on __________.

A) genetic differences
B) skin color
C) nationalist traditions
D) the concept of hypodescent

Question 32

Which term refers to the systematic attempt to kill and totally eliminate a particular ethnic group?

A) apartheid
B) fratricide
C) ethnocide
D) genocide

Question 33

Since the nineteenth century, there has been a tendency in the United States to classify offspring of racially mixed couples as belonging to the race of the parent with the lowest racial status. What is this called?

A) the multiculturalist concept
B) the circumstantialist model
C) the primordialist model
D) the hypodescent concept

Question 34

Mohandas Gandhi in India, Jomo Kenyatta in East Africa, and Simón Bolívar in Latin America all mobilized new forms of __________.

A) ethnonationalism
B) assimilation
C) circumstantialism
D) primordialism

Question 35

Which of the following is an example of biological assimilation?

A) school segregation
B) ethnic intermarriage
C) ethnic cleansing
D) immigration quotas

Question 36

Which of the following forms of ethnic interaction was characteristic of many colonial situations?

A) forced cultural assimilation
B) voluntary cultural assimilation
C) forced biological assimilation
D) voluntary biological assimilation

Question 37

The delineation of an ethnic group may include which of the following?

A) measurements of intelligence
B) genetic similarities
C) biological adaptation
D) a shared historical past

Question 38

Why was the "one-drop rule" of racial categorization never used to classify Native Americans?

A) They received legal entitlements.
B) They inhabited North America first.
C) There were too many different tribes.
D) There was never prejudice against them.

Question 39

Racist views during World War II were responsible for which of the following?

A) the arrest of Communist Party members
B) the renaming of towns with German names
C) the deportation of Italian Americans
D) the internment of Japanese Americans

Question 40

The primordialist model of ethnicity is particularly helpful for understanding which of the following?

A) the formation of new ethnic groups
B) folk categories of race and culture
C) changes in ethnic boundary markers
D) the persistent attachment to ethnic identity

Question 41

What is racism? How has "race" come to mean different things in the spheres of biology, popular perception, and anthropology? Illustrate with specific examples.

Question 42

Japanese immigrants who came to the United States in the 1880s frequently took jobs as __________.

A) railroad builders
B) miners
C) agricultural laborers
D) cattle herders

Question 43

Discuss the processes that affect the ethnic composition of a society, including ethnic violence, segregation, assimilation, and stratification. Explain the philosophy behind each approach and describe a circumstance under which each has occurred.

Question 44

How has the multiculturalist movement influenced life in the United States?

A) It has fostered increasing conflict among competing ethnic groups.
B) It has reduced the cultural differences between ethnic groups.
C) It has revised educational content to include the historical contributions of non-European ethnic groups.
D) It has had little impact on life in the United States.

Question 45

Which of the following was used to support the idea that early Italian and Polish immigrants to the United States were racially inferior?

A) the inability of "Know-Nothing" political candidates to get elected
B) IQ and literacy test scores
C) measurements of cranial capacities
D) the fact that immigrants often found themselves in low-wage occupations

Question 46

Which of the following countries has the highest percentage of ethnic homogeneity?

A) China
B) Japan
C) Mexico
D) the United States

Question 47

Define the circumstantialist and the primordialist models of ethnicity. Apply one of these models to an ethnic group with which you are familiar. How does it help you understand the concept of ethnicity?

Question 48

The influx of Irish and German immigrants in the nineteenth century caused __________.

A) a rise in xenophobia and nativistic movements among the WASP population
B) a realization that racist beliefs were wrong
C) a decline in forced assimilation
D) promotion of the idea that America is a "melting pot"

Question 49

Compare and contrast folk categories of race in the United States and Mexico. What criteria are used in each society? What effects have concepts of race had on how people are treated? How have advances in scientific technology been used to challenge or support popular concepts of race?

Question 50

Compare and contrast two culturally pluralistic societies. What is the basis of cultural pluralism and how is it fostered and maintained in each of these societies? Do you think the United States is a culturally pluralistic society? Why or why not?

Question 51

The model of ethnicity in which boundary markers such as language, clothing, or other traits are fluid and vary over time is called the __________.

A) ethnogenesis model
B) biological assimilation model
C) circumstantialist model
D) primordialist model

Question 52

The Hispanic and Latino populations of the American Southwest became minorities when __________.

A) Anglos rushed into the newly annexed territories in search of economic opportunities
B) Mexicans moved north fleeing the Spanish conquistadors
C) Native Americans intermarried with Spanish settlers
D) Anglos pushed the Hispanic and Latino populations west of the Mississippi River

Question 53

Why do many Asian Americans resent being labeled the "model minority"? Do you think this stereotype is unfair? Why or why not?

Question 54

Discuss the multicultural movement in the United States. How did it start? What are its goals? How is it connected to forces of globalization?

Question 55

Nonvoluntary or forced cultural assimilation of a minority group by a government is termed __________.

A) genocide
B) ethnocide
C) the "melting pot" approach
D) segregation

Question 56

Compare and contrast the experiences of the German and Irish immigrants to the United States in the nineteenth century with immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century. Why did they immigrate? What reception did they receive? How did they react and adapt?

Question 57

Select an ethnic group with which you are familiar and describe the objective and subjective aspects of its ethnic identity. How does distinguishing between subjective and objective aspects help in understanding ethnicity? Be sure to define each concept in your response.

Question 58

Today, the ethnic landscape in the United States is changing in part due to __________.

A) growing economic opportunities outside of the United States
B) immigration quotas
C) growing family size among white people of European descent
D) higher birth rates among ethnic minorities

Question 59

What are ethnonationalist movements? How do they develop? Support your answer with at least two examples.

Question 60

The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in __________.

A) the loss of all ethnic distinctions in the region
B) the emergence of a new pan-Soviet ethnic identity
C) the formation of independent countries based on ethnonational ideals
D) the ultimate rejection of capitalism