SOC 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: White Supremacy, Institutional Racism, Racialization

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 1101
• Professor: Willow Scobie

Document Summary

Race - a category of people who share a certain common physical traits deemed to be socially signi cant. There are no clear-cut races", only a range of physical differences. Human populations are a continuum, and the genetic diversity within populations that share visible traits is as great as the diversity between them. There are as many differences within the group of people we consider white" and between those we consider white and black. Process of racialization - the process by which people use their understandings of race to classify individuals or groups. Historically, certain groups were thought to be distinct biological groups. Beginning in the 15th century as europeans expanded their travel, their increased contact with different regions of the world lead to attempts to categorize and explain natural and social dynamics. Slavery, apartheid, segregation, and racial discrimination resulted. Racialization also means singling people out for unequal treatment on the basis on real or imagined physical characteristics.