Common Terms

 

The Basic Three

• Race: "A race is a group of people with a common physical feature or features" (Diffen LLC, n.d.). Race is socially constructed—in other words, it's assigned by society. For example, according to the Census Bureau, "People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race" (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010).
• Ethnicity: "Ethnicity is [the] state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition. This is, by definition, a fluid concept; ethnic groups can be broadly or narrowly construed. For example, they can be as broad as 'Native American' or as narrow as 'Cherokee'....Ethnicity is self-identified. An individual can learn a language, social norms, and customs, and assimilate into a culture to belong to an ethnic group" (Diffen LLC, n.d.).
• Culture: "Culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, encompassing language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music, and arts....The word 'culture' derives from a French term, which in turn derives from the Latin 'colere,' which means to tend to the earth and grow, or cultivation and nurture" (Zimmerman, 2017).

The video that's assigned for you to watch this week further explains race and ethnicity.

More Terms

• Race relations "refers to relationships between the major race groups—white, black, native American, Hispanic/Latino, 'Asian,' and others of mixed races. America has also had a sometimes troubled history with ethnic strife—e.g., during the waves of Irish and Italian immigration to the U.S. These immigrants were Caucasian but had a different ethnicity compared to the Anglo Saxons who preceded them; they often faced ethnic discrimination" (Diffen LLC, n.d.).
• Racial politics is a practice in which political actors forward an agenda by exploiting the issue of race.
• Diversity "encompasses complex differences and similarities in perspectives, identities, and points of view among members of an institution as well as among individuals who make up the wider community. Diversity includes important and interrelated dimensions of human identity such as race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, socioeconomic status, nationality, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, ability, and age. These differences are important to understand but they cannot be used to predict any individual’s values, choices or responses" (Luther College, as quoted in Pruneda-Hernandez, 2018). 

Here's what Penn State has to say on diversity:

Diversity includes appreciation and respect of differences in race and ethnicity, in gender and sexual orientation, in religious affiliation, in age and life experience, in nationality and language, and in physical capabilities.

Final Terms

• Hegemony theory posits that those who own the media and its various channels of communication exert ideological domination and control over the rest of us. To see the theory in action, consider the fact that only six media companies control the majority of what we read, see, hear, and learn in the media (Rapp & Jenkins, 2018).

• Multicultural, according to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, means "of, relating to, reflecting, or adapted to diverse cultures" (n.d.).
• Latinx is a gender-neutral term referring to those of Hispanic heritage, substituting for the gendered Spanish nouns Latino (male) and Latina (female). 
• POC stands for “people of color”; it is often seen on social media, where it loosely describes groups of people who are not White.
• LGBTQ stands for "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer (or questioning)."
• Descriptors for gender are rapidly changing: Inclusivity group Gender Spectrum reports that "youth and young adults today no longer feel bound by the gender binary, instead establishing a growing vocabulary for gender" (2017).
• Most scholars embrace the 1993 definition of Whiteness/White privilege offered by Ruth Frankenberg, who identified three linked dimensions (quoted in Bramlett-Solomon & Carstarphen, 2017): 
  • race privilege as a result of structural advantages;
  • the standpoint from which White people look at themselves, at others, and at society; and
  • a set of cultural practices that are unmarked and unnamed.
    
    Cole (2018) builds on Frankenburg's definition: "Sociologists believe that what whiteness is and means is directly connected to the construction of people of color as "other" in society. Because of this, whiteness comes with a wide variety of privilege" (para. 1).