Deck 6: Ethnicity and Race

Question 1

Race, like ethnicity in general, is

A) a cultural category rather than a biological reality.
B) a biological reality as much as a cultural one.
C) used by social scientists to classify humans based on their genes and shared blood.
D) poorly understood by geneticists and is therefore considered a cultural category.
E) a meaningless concept to people living day to day.

Answer 1

a cultural category rather than a biological reality.

Question 2

What term refers to an organism's evident traits, or its "manifest biology"?

A) manifest destiny
B) genotype
C) biological circumscription
D) phenotype
E) hereditary inequality

Answer 2

phenotype

Question 3

An anthropological understanding of ethnicity and race requires exploring how people and institutions define, negotiate, and even challenge their identities in society. One way anthropologists-and social scientists in general-do this is by studying status, which refers to

A) a mutually exclusive social identity that is set by others and has little to do with the actions of an individual.
B) any position, no matter what its prestige, that someone occupies in society.
C) one's biologically determined identity within a hierarchical society.
D) one's socially negotiated identity, which always changes throughout a person's lifetime.
E) an identity determined by the state through census practices.

Answer 3

any position, no matter what its prestige, that someone occupies in society.

Question 4

In 1998, the American Anthropological Association issued a statement on race. This statement makes all of the following points EXCEPT that

A) there is greater variation within "racial" groups than between them.
B) although the continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained all of humankind as a single species, some scientists suggest that current racial divisions in society that keep certain groups from interbreeding might lead to a true separate species.
C) physical variations in any given trait tend to occur gradually rather than abruptly over geographic areas.
D) physical variations in the human species have no meanings beyond the social ones that humans put on them.
E) race evolved as a worldview, a body of prejudgments that distorts our ideas about human differences and group behavior.

Question 5

Which of the following statements about human skin color is NOT true?

A) Skin color varies because of differences in ultraviolet radiation between different regions of the world.
B) The amount of melanin in the skin affects the body's production of vitamin D.
C) The amount of melanin in the skin affects the body's ability to process lactose.
D) Light skin is at a selective advantage outside the tropics, because it admits ultraviolet radiation, which causes the body to manufacture vitamin D and thus prevents rickets and osteoporosis.
E) Light skin is at a selective disadvantage in the tropics, because it is more susceptible to the destruction of the folate that is needed to produce folic acid to protect against neural tube defects in human embryos.

Question 6

What is the term for the arbitrary rule that automatically places the children of a union between members of different socioeconomic groups into the less-privileged group?

A) hypervitaminosis
B) polygyny
C) polyandry
D) hypodescent
E) hypogamy

Question 7

Which of the following is a reason why dark skin color is adaptive?

A) dietary adaptation
B) admission of UV rays
C) reducing the frequency of rickets
D) preventing the destruction of folate
E) malarial resistance

Question 8

Which of the following statements about ethnicity is true?

A) Ethnicity is one's identification with a group that shares a common set of beliefs, values, customs, and norms.
B) Americans maintain a clear distinction between ethnicity and race.
C) Ethnicity is based on common biological features.
D) Ethnicity is the politically correct term for race.
E) Ethnicity and race are synonyms.

Question 9

Depending on the situation, the same man might declare "I'm Jimmy's father"; "I'm your boss"; "I'm African American"; or "I'm your professor." This phenomenon, whereby a person's claimed or perceived identity varies depending on context, is called

A) ethnicity.
B) hypodescent.
C) a situational negotiation of social identity.
D) ethnic tolerance.
E) rotating core personality traits.

Question 10

An examination of racial taxonomies from around the world indicates that

A) all cultures classify races similarly.
B) the classification of racial types is an arbitrary and culturally specific process.
C) classifying racial types can best be done by considering only phenotypic traits.
D) classifying racial types can best be done by considering only the genotype involved.
E) the best classification of racial types considers genotype as well as phenotype.

Question 11

In theory, a biological race is a geographically isolated subdivision of a species. Humanity (Homo sapiens) lacks such races because

A) although humans exhibit biological differences, these are only skin deep.
B) human populations have experienced a type of controlled breeding that is distinct from that experienced by dogs and roses.
C) human populations have not been isolated enough from one another to develop such discrete groups.
D) they are politically incorrect.
E) humans are less genetically predictable than the animals and plants that are susceptible to domestication.

Question 12

Traditional racial classification assumed that biological characteristics such as skin color were determined by heredity and remain stable over many generations. We now know that

A) skin color is actually determined throughout child development.
B) skin color is determined by sun exposure and the amount of melanin in our diets.
C) a biological similarity such as skin color is also the result of natural selection working among different populations that face similar environmental challenges.
D) skin color is determined by a single gene that is prone to mutations over many generations.
E) a biological similarity such as skin color is always the result of both a common ancestry and natural selection.

Question 13

East Asians who have emigrated recently from India and Pakistan to northern areas of the United Kingdom have a higher incidence of rickets and osteoporosis than the general British population. This phenomenon illustrates that

A) natural selection continues today.
B) genetic adaptation of environmental stressors can occur within one generation.
C) cultural adaptation provides effective shortcuts to those that are genetically disadvantaged in a foreign environment.
D) because of global warming, the lack of sunlight that people are exposed to in the northern regions is made up for by the intensity of the sunlight.
E) natural selection's role in determining skin color is a thing of the past, relevant only prior to the 16th century, when massive population migrations altered the geographic distribution of dark-skinned people.

Question 14

Ethnicity means identification with

A) the cultural values of the dominant culture.
B) and feeling part of a biologically racial group.
C) your neighbors in a multicultural society.
D) and feeling part of a cultural tradition and exclusion from other cultural traditions.
E) and feeling part of two or more groups in a plural society.

Question 15

Which of the following statements about purported attempts to assign humans to discrete racial categories based on common ancestry is true?

A) They are applied to endogamous breeding populations.
B) They are based on genotypic rather than phenotypic characteristics.
C) They are based on global racial categories that vary little among societies.
D) They are a recent phenomenon brought on by globalization.
E) They are culturally arbitrary, even though most people assume them to be based in biology.

Question 16

Organizations in the United States such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group, have opposed adding a "multiracial" census category. This suggests that

A) both organizations need to hire anthropologists.
B) classification is a political issue-these groups fear that their political clout will decline if their numbers go down.
C) racial classification is all about cultural pride.
D) racial classification can become more scientifically accurate, people's ignorance to the contrary.
E) racial classification matters only to Hispanic minorities in the United States.

Question 17

Which of the following statements about U.S. racial categories is true?

A) They are applied to endogamous breeding populations.
B) They are biologically valid, as demonstrated by the Phipps case in 1970s Louisiana.
C) They are based on global racial categories that vary little among societies.
D) They are based on genetics, whereas Japan's are based upon undemonstrated descent.
E) They are culturally arbitrary, even though most people assume them to be based in biology.

Question 18

In the early 20th century, the anthropologist Franz Boas described changes in skull form among the children of Europeans who had emigrated to North America. He found that the reason for these changes could not be explained by genetics. His findings underscore the fact that

A) phenotypic similarities and differences don't necessarily have a genetic basis.
B) even though the environment influences the phenotype, genetics is a more powerful determinant of racial differences.
C) diet affects which genes are turned off and which get turned on, resulting in a particular phenotypic characteristic.
D) describing changes in skull form is the most accurate way to study the impact of migration on traveling populations.
E) observing changes over one generation is not enough to make conclusions about changes in the genotype and phenotype.

Question 19

An ascribed status is a status that

A) people have little or no choice about occupying.
B) you choose for yourself.
C) you earn, as when a successful law student becomes a lawyer.
D) has a position of dominance in society; for example, that of a king.
E) is based on standardized test scores.

Question 20

In understanding the problems that have arisen in attempts at human racial classification, why is it important to understand the difference between genotype and phenotype?

A) The phenotypical traits typically used to classify humans into races go together as genetic units.
B) Phenotypical similarities and differences always have a genetic basis.
C) Attempts at human racial classification have typically used genotypic traits like blood type as markers of common ancestry, and these traits pass on from generation to generation in discrete bundles.
D) Although phenotypic characteristics may change, the genetic material of populations stays the same for a long time.
E) Attempts at human racial classification typically used phenotypic traits like skin color as markers of common ancestry, but many such traits do not reflect the existence of shared genetic material. Instead, they are often the result of different populations biologically adapting to similar environmental stressors in similar ways.

Question 21

An achieved status is not automatic. It comes through choices, actions, efforts, talents, or accomplishments, and is always perceived as positive by a society.

Question 22

What is the term for policies and practices that harm a group and its members?

A) colonialism
B) racism
C) prejudice
D) ethnocentrism
E) discrimination

Question 23

Ascribed statuses are based on an individual's talents, abilities, and actions.

Question 24

What is the term for the use of force by a dominant group to compel a minority to adopt the dominant culture?

A) attitudinal discrimination
B) genocide
C) forced assimilation
D) ethnocentrism
E) environmental racism

Question 25

The Basque people, one of Europe's most distinctive ethnic groups, have maintained a strong ethnic identity and a language that is unrelated to any other known language. Which of the following was a result of the forced assimilation campaign to ban speaking and using Basque in print?

A) Ethnic pride in the Basque people is now diminished.
B) Basque parents, ashamed of their ethnicity, are refusing to teach their children their language, opting for their full immersion in schools that teach in the national language.
C) Speaking Basque became taboo among the Basque people.
D) Strong nationalist sentiment and Basque terrorist groups were created in the Basque region.
E) Basque is now an extinct language.

Question 26

What is the term for ethnic groups that once had, or wish to have or regain, autonomous political status?

A) ethnicities
B) captive nations
C) nations
D) nationalities
E) ethnic avengers

Question 27

What term refers to a culture that shares a single language, religion, history, territory, ancestry, and kinship?

A) monoculture
B) country
C) nation
D) society
E) homeland

Question 28

What term describes a complex sociopolitical system that administers a territory and populace having substantial contrasts in occupation, wealth, prestige, and power?

A) state
B) ethnic group
C) nationality
D) bureaucracy
E) culture

Question 29

What term does anthropologist Fredrik Barth use to refer to a society that combines ethnic contrasts, ecological specialization, and the economic interdependence of those groups?

A) pluralism
B) broad-spectrum subsistence
C) plural society
D) multicultural
E) assimilationist

Question 30

There is no difference between the biological and cultural definitions of race.

Question 31

According to Fredrik Barth's theories about ethnic identity, ethnic boundaries most stable when

A) ethnic groups share a common ancestor.
B) ethnic groups occupy different ecological niches.
C) ethnic groups share the same nation-state.
D) the members of the ethnic groups are highly educated, as with postcolonial states.
E) ethnic groups are culturally very similar and tend to pursue the same goals.

Question 32

Nation-states

A) are defined by their lack of ethnic identity.
B) are ethnically homogeneous.
C) are the same as tribes and ethnic groups.
D) are parts of other states.
E) sometimes encourage ethnic divisions for political and economic ends.

Question 33

The presence of ethnic neighborhoods indicates what kind of coexistence?

A) assimilation
B) acculturation
C) enculturation
D) colonialism
E) multiculturalism

Question 34

In Japan, the burakumin

A) are perceived as pure Japanese even though one of their parents is not Japanese.
B) are Japanese citizens of mixed ancestry who face discrimination.
C) are the cream of Japan's racial categories, having the purest blood.
D) no longer face discrimination.
E) constitute a numerical majority in Japan.

Question 35

Which of the following statements about the concept of race in Brazil is NOT true?

A) Racial classification in Brazil is built around the concept of hypodescent.
B) There are more than 500 different terms used to describe phenotypes.
C) The large number of racial categories in Brazil does not easily lend itself to socioeconomic discrimination based on race.
D) The perception of biological races is influenced not just by their physical phenotype but by how one dresses and behaves.
E) A person's race can change from day to day.

Question 36

A policy of ethnic expulsion aims at removing from a country groups who are culturally different. There are many examples, including Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s; Uganda expelling 74,000 Asians in 1972; and so on. The neofascist parties of contemporary western Europe advocate the repatriation of immigrant workers. What is one of the potential consequences of such policies?

A) the breakup of imaginary communes
B) the creation of refugees-people who have been forced or have chosen to flee a country, to escape persecution or war
C) state-mandated forced assimilation
D) the creation of class consciousness
E) gender stratification

Question 37

When an ethnic identity is flexible and situational, it can become an achieved status.

Question 38

Which of the following is a major difference between Brazilian and U.S. racial taxonomies?

A) Brazilians do not recognize racial differences.
B) U.S. categories are purer than Brazilian categories.
C) There are no important differences between the two taxonomies.
D) In the United States, social race is determined at birth and does not change, but in Brazil race is flexible, and more of an achieved status.
E) Brazilian racial categories are based on genotype, whereas U.S. categories are based on phenotype.

Question 39

What term refers to the destruction of the culture of an ethnic group?

A) genocide
B) prejudice
C) ethnocide
D) discrimination
E) diaspora

Question 40

Ethnic groups that once had, or wish to have or regain, autonomous political status-their own country-are called

A) ethnicities.
B) nationalities.
C) imaginary communes.
D) secondary states.
E) diasporas.

Question 41

Historically, scientists have approached the study of human biological diversity in two main ways: racial classification, which is now largely abandoned; and the current explanatory approach, which focuses on understanding specific differences.

Question 42

In cultural terms, a race is an ethnic group that has a biological basis.

Question 43

The term hypodescent refers to individuals who are racially pure.

Question 44

Phenotypic similarities and differences always have a genetic basis.

Question 45

The only chance for human racial classification schemes to work is to shift from using phenotypic to genotypic characteristics of human populations.

Question 46

Humanity (Homo sapiens) lacks distinct races, because human populations have not been isolated enough from one another to develop into discrete groups.

Question 47

Human biological differences are evident only to individuals who wrongfully sustain the validity of human races.

Question 48

Higher amounts of melanin in the skin inhibit the body's ability to manufacture vitamin D. This confers an adaptive advantage in environments with excessive sun exposure.

Question 49

Biologists have rejected the idea of three great races-white, black, and yellow-largely because it fails to account for Native Americans.

Question 50

Racial categories in Japan are more rigid than racial categories in Brazil.

Question 51

Physical features cluster into discrete genetic units.

Question 52

The U.S. and Canadian governments use the same racial categories in their census.

Question 53

The role of natural selection in producing variation in human skin color illustrates the explanatory approach to explaining human biological diversity.

Question 54

In Japan, the burakumin represent an isolated breeding population that is genetically distinct from the rest of the country.

Question 55

Hypodescent in the United States automatically determines the race of a child whose parents belong to different racial groups.

Question 56

There is much greater variation within each of the traditional races than between them.

Question 57

Most Americans are not very precise in distinguishing between the terms race and ethnicity.

Question 58

Biological races have been scientifically discredited not just among humans but also among all living species.

Question 59

Interracial, biracial, and multiracial identities are becoming more and more common in the United States.

Question 60

Racial categories in Brazil are not rigid; rather, they often change depending on the social setting.

Question 61

Host countries that emphasize assimilation tend to encourage minority ethnic groups to retain their identities.

Question 62

The term nation is used to refer to an ethnic group that shares a religion, language, history, territory, ancestry, and kinship.

Question 63

Multiculturalism emphasizes the need for a series of cultures to abandon their old ethnic identities and join together to forge a new and unique cultural identity.

Question 64

Brazilian racial classification is based exclusively on an individual's phenotype.

Question 65

Only dominant or majority groups can have prejudiced views; minority groups are not capable of being prejudiced.

Question 66

Migration and rapid population growth are fueling multiculturalism in countries like the United States and Canada.

Question 67

Institutional discrimination happens when institutions rather than individuals are the targets of discrimination.

Question 68

Ethnocide refers to the deliberate elimination of a cultural tradition through aggressive policies forcing assimilation.

Question 69

De facto discrimination occurs when laws exist that harm a specific group and its members.

Question 70

Colonialism often involves dividing up ethnic groups to weaken their authority.

Question 71

A plural society is the opposite of a society that forces groups to assimilate.

Question 72

Is it contradictory to say that membership in an ethnic group is an ascribed status while arguing that we negotiate our social identities? Why or why not? How do we occupy multiple social statuses?

Question 73

As the post-World War II framework of nations-the former Soviet Union and the socialist and non-socialist countries of eastern Europe and Asia-disintegrates, multiculturalism based on the U.S. and Canadian examples is becoming increasingly popular.

Question 74

Populations in equatorial Africa and Papua New Guinea are quite similar phenotypically, dark skinned with similar hair and facial features. How would the existence of a typical racial model explain these similarities? How would evolutionary biology's explanation differ? Which model does a better job of explaining the data?

Question 75

Support or refute this statement: By rejecting the race concept, anthropologists are ignoring obvious human biological variation.

Question 76

One of the definitions of state is a centrally organized political unit, a government.

Question 77

A nation-state refers to an ethnic group that is not politically autonomous.

Question 78

A key element of multiculturalism is its respect for ethnic diversity.

Question 79

Genocide refers to the physical destruction of an ethnic or religious group through mass murder.

Question 80

How does the concept of race used by anthropologists today differ from the concept used by early biologists?