Vocab 1

Race (and biology): A social category that bears a name. Usually refering to ones skin color, or region they are from. + Johnson adds how the reason we gave names to race was simply an idea- like the idea of being white that it somehow make people better than others. It also doesn't have as much to do with privilge and oppression as once thought.

Ethnicity: ethnic traits, background, or affiliation

Ethnic Studies: the study of different ethnic groups in hopes that one w

History: a record of past events

Progress: a movement toward a goal

Social Construction: Society created race and all its categories but they have no meaning outside of privilege and opression . + Privilege and Oppression are becoming bigger obsticals because of the way our society is formed. The reason being is because people follow the path of least resistance and because people dont want to stray away from what is considered normal then its going to be a big hurdle getting over privilge and oppression.

Genocide: the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political or cultural group.

Ideological (as used by Zinn page 9): It is used by Zinn meaning mapmaker's as a group and the way they think.

Privilege: exists when one group has somthing of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, trather than becuase of anything they've done or failed to do + It is not individualistic

Oppression: social forces that tend to "press" on people and hold them down, to hem them in and block their pursit of a good life. + because of people taking the path of least resistance opression will continue to hold people down. Also oppression came into play with the expanding economy and captialism.

Racialization: Racialization is the process by which race comes to have meaning as a category. It is also the process each one of us goes through in order to have a racial identity. In other words, we are not just born “white” or born “black” – what it means to us to be “white” or “black” changes in our social interactions with others throughout our lives. This means that race develops meaning through social interaction, instead of merely existing as concrete, independently verifiable fact.