SOC 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Heredity, Institutional Racism, Racial Profiling
Document Summary
Some groups are racially defined, even though races per se do not exist. Social scientists now reject the biological concept of race. Although there is no biological race, races are real insofar as they are socially defined. Racial categories are a mechanism for sorting people in society. Based on a black-white dichotomy the construction of two opposing categories into which all people fit. Social definitions of race have changed throughout history. For example, many of the people considered white are descendants of immigrants who, at one time, were not considered white. Racial categories vary in different parts of the country and around the world. Latino/a and asian immigrants and native americans have changed the meaning of racial categories. Skin color complicates racial differences because it is a basis of ranking that favors light skin over dark skin. Ex: 9-11 made arab americans a racial identity, rather than an ethnicity.
