Social issues in the News

Racial and Ethnic relations: An American Dilemma

Race: a category of people who share certain inherited physical characteristics such as skin color, facial features and stature.

Social Construction: A concept that has no objective reality but rather is what people decide it is.

Ethnicity: Shared social, cultural, and historical experiences, stemming from common national or regional backgrounds that make subgroups of a population different from one another

Ethnic Groups: A subgroup if a population with a set of shared social, cultural and historical experiences, with relatively distinctive beliefs, values and behaviors, and with some sense of identity of belonging to the subgroup

Ethnic Pride:The sense of self-worth that many people derive from their ethnic backgrounds

Prejudice: a set of negative attitudes, beliefs, and judgments about whole categories of people and about individual members of those categories, because of their perceived race and/or Ethnicity

Racism: The belief that certain racial or ethnic groups are inferior to one's own.

Stereotypes: simplified, mistaken generalization about people because of their race and/or ethnicity.

Authoritarian personality: a personality emphasizing such things as obedience ti authority, a rigid adherence to rules and low acceptance of people not like oneself and said to help account for racial and ethnic prejudice.

Frustration or Scapegoat theory: As an explanation of racial and ethnic prejudice, the view that individuals blame the problems they experience on racial and ethnic minorities and thus scapegoat them instead of recognizing the real source of their own misfortune.