1. The belief that humans are subdivided into distinct hereditary groups that are innately different in their social behavior and mental capacities and that can therefore be ranked as superior or inferior, according to Martin Marger, is called ______________.
2. Ethnocentrism refers to the habit of viewing one’s own group with favor and viewing other groups and their differences with disfavor. Thus, ethnocentrism involves noticing differences, then ranking, and, finally, placing one’s own group at the top of a classification. All others who differ are regarded as inferior. True or False
3. McGee, other anthropologists, and many others of his generation believed in the survival of the fittest. Social Darwinists, following the ideas of Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) believed that only the fittest individuals survive and that the “inferior,” weak, and less able ones necessarily and rightfully should be left to die off. Social Darwinism was used to justify slavery and to postpone its abolition in the United States. It was also used to support the often cutthroat environment of capitalism that prevailed in American businesses and factories at the turn of the twentieth century.
Social Darwinists believed the poor and “unfit,” including members of “primitive races” should be left to die rather than be helped and kept alive by charity. Theodore Roosevelt, campaigning for the presidency of the United States in 1898, echoed this view when he said, “I hope that every man who strives to be efficient and moral will realize that it is for the interest of mankind to have civilization go forward, to have the higher supplant the lower life” (Paulet, 2001, p. 3).
This statement reflected a misreading of Darwin. True or False?
4. People have always been able to self-identify or to determine one’s own racial group when filling out the census. True or False?
5. All humans are descended from common ancestors originating from Africa. True or False?
6. Race, ethnicity, and culture are biological, and thus are not social constructs. True or False?
7. The science of breeding is called _________.
8. What is it called when enslaved mothers passed down the status of bondage to their children?
A. Vendue
B. Indenture
C. Manumission
D. Chattle Slavery
9. What is it called when one group gives up their customs and language and adopts those of the dominant group in order to attempt to blend in and become indistinguishable from the members of that group?
A. Competition
B. Accomodation
C. Assimilation
D. Contact
10. The study of cultures for their own attributes, without assigning value judgments is called
A. Eugenics
B. Cultural Relativity
C. Cultural Awareness
D. Ethnocentrism
11. The majority or dominant group in society is the group that controls most of the resources and wields the most power within different institutional settings. These settings include those of government, religion, education, and commerce. Minority groups lack equal access to these institutional settings, resources, privileges, and opportunities. The power imbalance reinforces the notion that minority groups are inferior.
True or False?
12. In 1830, the U.S. Congress passed the _________ to seize lands historically occupied by Native Americans for government use and for private farming by white settlers.
13. Policies, programs, and funding set aside to help minorities and women overcome the history of discrimination is called ___________
14. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, many Americans developed strong feelings against Japanese Americans and believed that the Japanese Americans were a danger to the security of the nation. In 1942, in another exercise of plenary power, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which mandated the immediate removal of Japanese American individuals from coastal areas in Washington, Oregon, and California (Saito, 2007).
Virtually all Japanese Americans in this region were asked to leave the universities where they studied and ordered to abandon their businesses, homes, and farms. About 10,000 Japanese Americans were able to relocate to other parts of the United States in time to avoid the internment, but over 110,000 were evacuated to hastily built relocation centers (Saito, 2007). With so little time to prepare for relocation, most lost their entire businesses, farms, and all personal possessions. What was this called?
A. The Japanese Removal Act
B. The Dawes Act
C. Japanese American Enslavement
D. Executive Order 9066: The Japanese Internment
15. In 1857, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in the case of Scott v. Sandford (1857), stating that African Americans were not citizens and therefore were not entitled to the benefits of American citizenship was called what?
A. Plessy v. Ferguson
B. Brown v. The Board of Education
C. The Dawes Act
D. Dred Scot Decision
16. In addition to presenting so-called racial groups, the Congress of Races at the St. Louis fair had a second objective which was to justify dismantling American policies toward conquered groups at home and abroad.
True or False?
17. The first American sociologist to study race was
A. Gunnar Myrdal
B. W.E.B. DuBois
C. Franz Boas
D. E. Franklin Frazier
18. Some states passed mandatory sterilization laws for those deemed unfit and legislated restrictive marriage clauses. Virginia, for example, made it illegal for a white person to marry a person who had “one drop” of black blood (Black, 2003, p. 165). These laws were intended to prevent “mongrels and mental defectives” (terms the 1924 Virginia legislature used) from reproducing and spreading their damaged genes through society. Mandatory sterilization laws were applied in the United States, where many individuals in mental institutions and in institutions for the feebleminded were sterilized without their consent. In California, over 11,000 inmates of institutions were sterilized.
True or False?
19. With money from the United States as well as other international funding, Germany founded the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics in 1927 to conduct research on eugenics. One of the contributors of ideas to this enterprise was American eugenicist Charles Davenport, the head of the Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor (New York), where he founded the Eugenics Record Office. In Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911), Davenport examined how race and disease were biologically based and determined that the “racially robust” were destined to rule the earth (Black, 2003, p. 386). Davenport’s subsequent book Race Crossing in Jamaica (1929) was of special interest to the Germans. His contribution enabled the Nazis to use “pedigrees,” or family trees, to identify Mischlinge (mixed-race Jews).
True or False?
20. Reading and interpreting the bumps on the skull was one method used to assess an individual’s abilities and character and was called ________.
