Unit 4 Assignment
This assignment reinforces information in your textbook and concepts presented in this unit. Your responses should be thorough, well-conceived college-level responses that are grammatically correct. It is recommended that you work on this assignment as you go complete your unit reading assignment and view the Power Point Presentations. Justify your responses with facts from your reading assignment. Write your answers in complete sentences. Please be sure to write your answers in your words.
- Define both race and ethnicity.
- Define both stereotypes and discrimination.
- Provide a short summary of each of the theories surrounding Prejudice including: Scapegoat Theory, Authoritarian Personality Theory, Culture Theory and Conflict Theory.
- Describe patterns of interaction among racial and ethnic categories in a society in terms of four models: pluralism, assimilation, segregation, and genocide.
- Give examples of inequality in both Race and Ethnicity in the United States.
- Define age stratification.
- What do you feel are the implications of age stratification?
- Provide a short summary of the transitions and challenges of aging such as; finding meaning, social isolation, retirement, caregiving, and ageism.
On a cool November morning in New York City,the instructor of asociology class at Bronx Community College is leading a small-groupdiscussion of race and ethnicity. He explains that the meaning of bothconcepts is far less clear than most people think. Then he asks, “How do youdescribe yourself?”Eva Rodriguez leans forward in her chair and is quick to respond. “Who am I?Or should I saywhatam I? This is hard for me to answer. Most people think ofrace as black and white. But it’s not. I have both black and white ancestry inme, but you know what? I don’t think of myself in that way. I don’t think ofmyself in terms of race at all. It would be better to call me Puerto Rican orHispanic. Personally, I prefer the term ‘Latina.’ Calling myself Latina says Ihave a mixed racial heritage, and that’s what I am. I wish more peopleunderstood that race is not clear-cut.”This chapter examines the meaning of race and ethnicity. There are nowmillions of people in the United States who, like Eva Rodriguez, do not thinkof themselves in terms of a single category but as having a mix of ancestry.The Social Meaning of Race and Ethnicity14.1Explain the social construction of race and ethnicity.As the opening to this chapter suggests, people often confuse race andethnicity. For this reason, we begin with some basic de±nitions.RaceAraceisa socially constructed category of people who share biologicallytransmitted traits that members of a society consider important.People mayclassify one another racially based on physical characteristics such as skincolor, facial features, hair texture, and body shape.racea socially constructed category of people who share biologicallytransmitted traits that members of a society consider importantRacial diversity appeared among our human ancestors as the result of livingin di²erent geographic regions of the world. In regions of intense heat, forexample, humans developed darker skin (from the natural pigment melanin)as protection from the sun; in regions with moderate climates, people havelighter skin. Such di²erences are literally only skin deep because humanbeings the world over are members of a single biological species.The striking variety of physical traits found today is also the product ofmigration; genetic characteristics once common to a single place (such as…