Sociology 105—Race Ethnic and Gender Relations

Essay Questions for exam 1

I will ask you to answer five of the following questions. Carroll, Boone and Newton students will take the exam in the testing centers.

1. A Minority Group may or may not be less than half of the population of a region. Explain this statement and describe the characteristics of a minority group according to the text and class lecture.
2. Race is commonly defined as a group of people with common physical characteristics and an ethnic group is commonly defined as people sharing cultural characteristics. After having read the chapter and listened to the lectures how would you define these two terms?
3. Distinguish between the functionalist, conflict and labeling approaches to race, ethnic or gender relations.
4. How do subordinate groups come into existence? Discuss migration, annexation and colonialism, including world systems theory and illustrate with three examples of minority groups.
5. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of increasing the diversity of ethnic groups in a region.
6. Discuss the “social construction of race.” Include biological, anthropological, sociological economic and legal contributions to our understanding of race (so-called).
7. Discuss prejudice and discrimination as they apply to one of the groups in the video, “The Shadow of Hate.”
8. Discuss why the experiment done by Jane Elliott in the video entitled, “ A Class Divided” seemed to reduce prejudice among her students.
9. Draw and explain the “Field Context Model of Discrimination.”
10. Discuss Affirmative Action and Reverse Discrimination from both the dominant and subordinate group perspective.