CHAPTER 10: Ethnicity and Race
MULTIPLE CHOICE
1. What do sociologists mean by the phrase “racial literacy”?
a. Students should be required to read the works of African American authors, along with
other literature.
b. Black students need to read books by the classical British authors.
c. Black children should learn methods of dealing with white racism.
d. There is a hierarchy of knowledge that is based on racial characteristics.
Answer: C
2. As a sociological concept, race refers to:
a. a set of distinct physical characteristics that are the basis for a scientific classification of
human beings
b. the four clearly defined groups into which humans are easily categorized
c. physical variations in human beings singled out by members of a community or society as
socially significant
d. the fact that nearly all long-distance runners belong to a single race
Answer: C
3. ________ is a set of social relationships that allow individuals and groups to be located
and various attributes or competencies assigned, based on biologically grounded features.
a. Ethnicity
b. Race
c. Class
d. Nationality
Answer: B
4. As a sociological concept, ethnicity refers to:
a. a set of distinct physical characteristics that are the basis for a scientific classification of
human beings
b. cultural practices and outlooks, including language, history, ancestry, religion, and styles of
dress or adornment, that tend to set people apart
c. an inborn difference that separates one group from others
d. the roles of men and women in the reproduction of patterns of power and inequality
Answer: B
5. Historically, Europeans classified individuals they came into contact with in various parts
of the world into categories based on their physical attributes. These categories became the
basis of systems that shaped and constrained the people’s daily lives. This process is known
as:
a. genesis
b. racialization
c. ethnic cleansing
d. socialization
Answer: B
6. The earlier classification of humans into four racial groups emerged from the writings of:
a. a random sample of European and African explorers
b. the leading economists from four continents
c. slave traders and missionaries
d. Christopher Columbus and Charles Darwin
Answer: C
7. Racism that includes not simply the opinions of a small segment of the population, but
systematically pervades all of a society’s structures and operations, is known as:
a. prejudice
b. discrimination
c. new racism
d. institutional racism
Answer: D
8. Prejudice is to discrimination as:
a. race is to ethnicity
b. ethnicity is to poverty
c. displacement is to scapegoating
d. race is to crime
Answer: C
9. Preconceived opinions or attitudes held by members of one group toward another are
defined as:
a. prejudice
b. discrimination
c. racism
d. situational ethnicity
Answer: A
10. Behavior that disqualifies members of one group from opportunities available to others is:
a. prejudice
b. discrimination
c. racism
d. situational ethnicity
Answer: B
11. ________, thinking in terms of fixed and inflexible categories, often involves the
psychological mechanism of ________, directing hostility or anger toward objects that are
not really the source of those feelings.
a. Institutional racism; situational ethnicity
b. Symbolic ethnicity; individual racism
c. Stereotypical thinking; displacement
d. Scapegoating; projection
Answer: C
12. People who are blamed for things that are not their fault are called:
a. racists
b. scapegoats
c. individual racists
d. authorities
Answer: B
13. ________ often involves ________, the unconscious attribution to others of one’s own
desires or characteristics.
a. Institutional racism; situational ethnicity
b. Symbolic ethnicity; individual racism
c. Stereotypical thinking; displacement
d. Scapegoating; projection
Answer: D
14. Why is the term “minority group” potentially ambiguous and confusing, particularly for
sociologists?
a. because sociologists use the term to mean disadvantaged, not necessarily a group of less
than 50 percent of the population
b. because sociologists often disagree about the percentage of the population that is nonwhite
c. because it is difficult to place nonwhites, such as athletes Shaquille O’Neal, James Taylor,
and Sammy Sosa, in a minority group
d. because sociology is a dynamic discipline that has difficulty with a static concept such as
minority group
Answer: A
15. What are the sociologically defined characteristics of a minority group?
a. any group that is less than 50 percent of the population
b. any ethnic or “racial” group
c. a disadvantaged group
d. immigrant groups
Answer: C
16. Why has racism thrived in the period since European expansion into the rest of the world?
a. As cultural symbols, white and black have long been seen as opposites in African culture,
with white symbolizing evil and black symbolizing purity.
b. The concept of race was invented and spread by Asians living in European countries in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
c. Africans justified racism as a way to combat feelings of inferiority imposed on them by
Europeans.
d. Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, who is called the father of modern racism, proposed
that whites were the superior race because of their intelligence and morality.
Answer: D
17. Why has racism flourished?
a. Because they believed that black people were intellectually superior, white Europeans
retaliated through harsh colonial rule.
b. Within the concept of race, there is an implicit hierarchy and early white scientists placed
the Asian race at the top and the white race at the bottom.
c. White Europeans had almost always associated black or darkness with evil and other
negative traits, and white with goodness.
d. White Europeans often believed that they had the responsibility of demeaning people who
did not accept their beliefs because of their personal feelings of innate inferiority.
Answer: C
18. The systematic, planned destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group is called:
a. genocide
b. assimilation
c. segregation
d. pluralism
Answer: A
19. In several parts of the former Yugoslavia, certain minority ethnic groups were executed
by the majority ethnic group. This is an example of:
a. genocide
b. assimilation
c. segregation
d. pluralism
Answer: A
20. ________ is the physical separation of a racial or ethnic group from other groups.
a. Genocide
b. Assimilation
c. Segregation
d. Pluralism
Answer: C
21. When a group takes over the attitudes and language of the dominant community, they
have engaged in:
a. genocide
b. assimilation
c. segregation
d. pluralism
Answer: B
22. ________ is a model in which ethnic cultures have a distinct and separate existence while
their members participate in the economic and political life of the larger society.
a. Genocide
b. Assimilation
c. Segregation
d. Pluralism
Answer: D
23. When ethnic groups have achieved a distinct but equal status, the society is said to
exhibit:
a. multiculturalism
b. assimilation
c. segregation
d. pluralism
Answer: A
24. Which of the following is NOT included among the major population flows since 1973?
a. from South America to North America
b. from Asia to North America
c. from Africa to the Arab oil countries
d. from North America to Europe
Answer: D
25. Global migratory patterns are a result of the combination of ________, the movement of
people into a country to settle, and ________, the process by which people leave a country to
settle in another.
a. immigration; emigration
b. emigration; immigration
c. assimilation; segregation
d. segregation; assimilation
Answer: A
26. What is meant by the feminization of migration patterns?
a. As more women are elected to leadership positions, countries will loosen their immigration
rules.
b. Women business owners are more likely than men to employ women immigrants.
c. Women are more willing to take economic, political, and social risks.
d. The number of women migrants has increased in part because of the demand for mail-order
brides.
Answer: D
27. Dispersal of an ethnic population from an original homeland into foreign areas, often in a
forced way or under traumatic circumstances, is known as:
a. emigration
b. assimilation
c. pluralism
d. diaspora
Answer: D
28. More than 99 percent of the people in the United States are descended from:
a. former slaves
b. European royalty
c. immigrants
d. Native Americans
Answer: C
29. The first large wave of immigrants to the United States, from the time of independence
until the 1880s, was mostly from:
a. Britain and northwestern Europe
b. eastern Europe
c. southern Europe
d. Asia
Answer: A
30. Driven by a series of potato famines, 1.5 million people migrated to the United States
from ________ in the nineteenth century, settling mostly in ________ areas.
a. Germany; rural
b. Germany; urban
c. Ireland; rural
d. Ireland; urban
Answer: D
31. A large influx of people from ________ migrated to the United States in the 1880s and
1890s.
a. Britain
b. southern and eastern Europe
c. northwestern Europe
d. Asia
Answer: B
32. Which of the following immigrant groups was NOT subjected to prejudice and
discrimination by those who were already established in the United States?
a. Irish
b. Italians
c. Chinese
d. Dutch
Answer: D
33. The majority of immigrants to the United States in 1900 were from ________; in 1990
the majority were from ________.
a. Asia; Asia
b. Europe; Europe
c. Latin America; Europe and Asia
d. Europe; Latin America and Asia
Answer: D
34. Industrial development in the North and the mechanization of agriculture in the South
resulted in a substantial migration of ________ to northern urban areas during the twentieth
century.
a. Europeans
b. African Americans
c. Latin Americans
d. Native Americans
Answer: B
35. What Supreme Court decision established the foundation for the civil rights struggles of
the 1950s through the 1970s?
a. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
b. Darwin v. Board of Education of the State of Kansas
c. Roe v. Wade
d. Clay v. Liston
Answer: A
36. Which group has lived in the United States longer than all other immigrant groups besides
Anglo-Saxons, yet still faces the segregation and poverty that for the other groups was only a
transitional phase?
a. eastern Europeans
b. southern Europeans
c. Irish
d. African Americans
Answer: D
37. What did the 1964 Civil Rights Act do?
a. It banned discrimination in public facilities, education, employment, and any agency
receiving government funds.
b. It eliminated resistance to civil rights once and for all.
c. It eliminated discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity in the United States.
d. It granted Europeans the right to discriminate against others on the basis of race and
ethnicity in schools and in the workplace.
Answer: A
38. What is the current status of immigration patterns to the United States?
a. Fewer than 10,000 new immigrants arrive each year.
b. Europeans continue to be the largest migrant group as they seek the economic growth of
the United States and escape the economic decline in Europe.
c. More than half of the legal immigrants who entered the United States between 2000 and
2003 were from Latin America.
d. Immigrants from Africa constitute the largest immigrant group to the United States as they
escape the famine and civil wars in their homeland.
Answer: C
39. Recent immigration trends have meant that ________ now outnumber ________.
a. Irish Americans; German Americans
b. African Americans; Irish Americans
c. African Americans; Latinos
d. Latinos; African Americans
Answer: D
40. Which of the following ethnic groups did NOT come from a country whose territories
were at least partially conquered by the United States?
a. Mexicans
b. Puerto Ricans
c. Native Americans
d. Haitians
Answer: D
41. In what way do the immigration patterns of Cubans differ from those of other Latinos?
a. All Cuban refugees have been highly educated, whereas other Latinos come from lower
classes.
b. Cubans have settled only in Miami, whereas other Latinos have migrated throughout the
United States.
c. Cuban immigrants are political refugees, whereas other Latinos are economic refugees.
d. Cuban immigrants are less likely to learn English than other Latinos.
Answer: C
42. Which ethnic group was forcibly moved to relocation centers in World War II?
a. German Americans
b. Italian Americans
c. Japanese Americans
d. American communists
Answer: C
43. Which of the following statements accurately describes the relationship between race and
educational achievement?
a. White Americans and Latin immigrants have widened the educational gap between
themselves and black Americans.
b. Regardless of the advances from the civil rights movement, the educational level of black
Americans continues to decline.
c. White Americans have a higher educational level than black Americans and Latinos
combined.
d. The educational level of Latinos continues to lag behind that of whites and blacks in the
United States.
Answer: D
44. Which of the following groups saw the most significant increase in household family
income in the 1990s?
a. European Americans
b. African Americans
c. Hispanics
d. Asian Americans
Answer: B
45. According to Jake Najman’s 1993 research, what would be the most effective policy to
eliminate racial and ethnic inequality in health?
a. more health education
b. increased access to health care services
c. greater efforts to attack poverty and reduce the income gap between rich and poor
d. universal health care
Answer: C
46. Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton argued that ________ is responsible for the
continuation of black poverty in the urban ghettos of the United States.
a. the history of racial residential segregation
b. the genetic makeup of whites and blacks
c. the culture of poverty
d. institutional racism implemented through government policy
Answer: A
47. What does Robert Blauner suggest as the best explanation for the significant difference
between the least and most fortunate groups in the United States?
a. The most fortunate have superior cultural attributes.
b. The least fortunate were originally present as colonized peoples rather than willing
immigrants.
c. The least fortunate have inferior levels of intelligence and motivation.
d. All of the above are equally important factors.
Answer: B
48. Who argued that race has declined in its significance for blacks, especially with respect to
economic disadvantages for the poorest segment of the community?
a. William Julius Wilson
b. the Association of Black Sociologists
c. David Wellman
d. Robert Blauner
Answer: A
TRUE/FALSE
1. There are no clear-cut biological races of human beings.
Answer: True
2. Ethnic differences are learned behaviors.
Answer: True
3. An individual must be prejudiced in order to discriminate.
Answer: False
4. The model of ethnic group relations that best describes the United States is
multiculturalism.
Answer: False
5. Although more African Americans are now attending college, a much higher proportion of
whites than blacks graduate.
Answer: True
6. The unemployment rate of black and Latino men has shrunk since the 1960s, so it is now
about the same as the unemployment rate for white men.
Answer: False
7. On average, white women make more money than black women.
Answer: True
8. There are few disparities in terms of the health of members of different racial and ethnic
groups in the United States.
Answer: False
9. Although both individual and institutional racism seem to be declining in the United States,
the differences between white and nonwhite ethnic groups are long enduring.
Answer: True
Test Bank for Essentials of Sociology
Anthony Giddens, Mitchell Duneier, Richard P Appelbaum, Deborah Carr
9780393932379, 9780393674088, 9780393937459, 9780393918830
