Week 12 Quiz

Which statement gives the course's definition of race?

Select one.

• A set of natural biological groups that every society recognizes in the same way, fixed at birth and unchanged across places and times
• A shared identity based on ancestry, language, religion, or customs
• A social classification that a society makes, whose categories differ across places and times and whose inequality has real effects
• A trait that changes gradually across geography rather than falling into boxes

According to the course, skin color varies mainly with which of the following?

Select one.

• The other inherited traits a person carries, so that a person's skin color predicts those traits
• Ancestral exposure to ultraviolet light, and it does not predict other traits
• The census category a person checks on a form
• A person's ethnicity, which it reveals

True or false: human variation in traits such as skin color falls into a few separate boxes with sharp edges between them.

True or false.

• True
• False

Lewontin (1972) gave a figure of about 85 percent of variation within populations, and the American Anthropological Association's Statement on Race (1998) gives about 94 percent within so-called racial groups. How does the course treat these two figures?

Select one.

• It keys 85 percent as the one correct figure and treats the other as an error
• It keys 94 percent as the newer figure, which replaces the older one
• It treats the gap of 9 percentage points between them as evidence that most human variation lies between groups rather than within them
• It states each figure with its source, as figures from different analyses that both place most variation within groups

What did Boas (1912), "Changes in the Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants", find?

Select one.

• That children born in the United States to immigrant parents differed in head form from their parents
• That head form was a fixed racial marker, passed down unchanged from parents to children whatever setting they grew up in
• That skin color predicts head form in every population
• That immigrants' children were identical in every bodily trait to their parents

An illustrative family speaks its grandparents' language at home and cooks their holiday dishes every year. Which idea does this describe?

Select one.

• Race, because the family's customs are inherited biologically
• Ethnicity, a shared identity based on ancestry, language, religion, or customs
• Continuous variation, because the customs change gradually across geography
• A census category, because a government office issued it

A classmate writes, "Race is a social construct, so it has no effect on anyone's life." Which response keeps both halves of the course's definition of race?

Select one.

• Race is a natural biological grouping, so it does affect people's lives
• Race is made by societies, so the classmate is right that it has no effects
• Race is made by societies, and the inequality built around its categories has real effects
• Race is the same as ethnicity, so its effects come from shared customs

The Office of Management and Budget's 2024 standard uses 1 combined race-and-ethnicity question with 7 minimum categories, and Middle Eastern or North African is the newly added one. How many of the 7 minimum categories were not newly added in 2024?

Select one.

• 7
• 1
• 6
• 5

The Office of Management and Budget sets the minimum race and ethnicity categories, and people fill in forms that use them because they accept the office as rightful. Which concept from the course names power that people accept as rightful?

Select one.

• Authority
• Power
• An egalitarian society
• Ethnic identity

In an illustrative town, an old rule let only residents in one racial category hold licenses to sell at the town market. In Fried's scheme, unequal access to a basic resource such as a way to make a living is the mark of which kind of society?

Select one.

• An egalitarian society
• A rank society
• A stratified society
• A band