Week 2 Quiz

In this course, which statement describes race?

Select one.

• A social classification by perceived physical difference, with real effects
• A set of natural biological groups that a blood test or a genetic test could identify
• A shared identity based on ancestry, language, religion, customs, or a sense of common origin
• Legal membership in a state, which a person gains through birth or naturalization

A woman born in one country becomes a citizen of another. Her home language, family recipes, and sense of common origin stay the same. Which of these changed?

Select one.

• Her ethnicity, because she now belongs to a new country
• Her race, because a new country uses new categories
• Her nationality, her legal membership in a state
• Her ethnicity and her nationality, because the two always move together

Illustrative scenario: a shopper privately assumes that a new neighbor from another country will not keep up the yard, but says and does nothing. How does the course sort this scenario?

Select one.

• Individual discrimination, because one person holds the belief
• Prejudice, an attitude with no act of unequal treatment
• Institutional discrimination, because the belief is common
• Structural inequality, because the neighbor is new to the street

Illustrative scenario: a lender follows a written rule that rates every loan in a grade D neighborhood as too risky, no matter who applies. No loan officer holds any ill will. How does the course sort this scenario?

Select one.

• Prejudice, because the rule reflects a negative attitude
• Individual discrimination, because some loan officer signs each refusal letter
• Not discrimination at all, because no one involved intends harm
• Institutional discrimination, produced by an organization's rule

Illustrative scenarios. Select every scenario that shows an act of discrimination, whether by one person or by an organization's rule.

Select every option that applies.

• A store clerk follows customers of one racial group around the store but not other customers.
• A student believes a classmate who speaks with an accent must be less capable, and keeps the thought to herself.
• A company fills every opening through referrals from current employees, who are almost all from one group, so others never hear of the jobs.
• A neighborhood split by a highway in the 1960s still has fewer grocery stores and clinics and longer bus rides to work.

The federal directive that sets the race and ethnicity categories was first developed in 1977 and revised in 1997 and in 2024, through law and policy. Which concept does this long history best illustrate?

Select one.

• Racialization, a single act of attaching racial meaning
• Racial formation, the historical making and remaking of categories
• Ethnocentrism, judging another group by your own group's standards
• Intersectionality, overlapping categories producing an experience neither describes

Crenshaw (1989) wrote about antidiscrimination law that looks at race alone or at sex alone. What was her central point?

Select one.

• People face more harm the more identities they have, so the identities should be added up
• Sex discrimination matters more than race discrimination in employment law
• Overlapping categories produce experiences neither category alone describes
• Courts should stop using race and sex as categories in any case

True or false: the Census Bureau describes its race categories as an attempt to define race biologically.

True or false.

• True
• False

An ethnic studies student reads the list of federal categories on a form. Which question does the field ask first about any category or law?

Select one.

• Who made it, whom it served, whom it affected, and how people answered
• Which of its boxes matches the real biological groups of humankind
• Which group deserves blame for the way the list was written
• Whether the list is long enough to include every family and every ancestry exactly

Two students read the same federal form. One finds the boxes natural; the other finds that none of them fits. Which idea names how each reader's own background shapes what they notice and miss?

Select one.

• Ethnocentrism, which means only the second student is reading fairly
• Racialization, because a form attaches meaning to each student
• A bias that disqualifies the first student from reading the form
• Positionality, something every reader has and names