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Week 2 · Readings & resources

Week 2 — Readings & Resources

Introduction to Ethnic Studies Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 2 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 55–71 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more depth, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (19–24 min total)

① Is race biology? Race, ethnicity, and nationality

Chapter 2, Section “Separate race, ethnicity, and nationality” · Session 1, Segment 1, “Race, ethnicity, and nationality” · Remember: race is a social classification with real effects, ethnicity is shared heritage, and nationality is citizenship.

  • Race & Ethnicity: Crash Course Sociology #34 — CrashCourse — why skin color alone cannot settle race, and how Hispanic and Latino name origins rather than races. Watch to about the 5:50 mark, after its definition of a minority. One slip to catch: it calls Hispanic a racial category when the term first appeared on the census, though its own point, and this course's, is that Hispanic names an ethnicity. The rest of the episode gives present-day population, income, and land figures for groups, which this course does not use, and walks through the census categories used before the 2024 revision, saying "slaves" where this course says enslaved people. This builds on Week 1's work with positionality and the field's first questions about who makes a category. (video, 6 min) (captions: creator)
  • AABA Statement on Race & Racism — American Association of Biological Anthropologists — a scientific society's statement that human biological variation does not fall into racial groups, while race and racism are socially real and have real effects; read the opening sections and skim the rest. (reading, 10–15 min)
  • Race — Talking Glossary of Genomic and Genetic Terms, National Human Genome Research Institute — a short federal glossary entry calling race a social construct and noting that racial categories change across time and place. (reading, 3–5 min)

② Who sets the standard, and how do categories change?

Chapter 2, Section “Trace racialization and racial formation” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Racialization, racial formation, and ethnocentrism” · Remember: racialization is one act of attaching racial meaning, and racial formation is the long history of how categories are made and remade.

  • The Origin of Race in the USA — PBS Origins — how the meaning of race shifted from kinship to appearance in the colonial era, and how some European groups once counted as separate races were later folded into "white," a long history of the kind the chapter calls racial formation. It uses the word "slaves" where this course says enslaved people. (video, 10 min) (captions: creator)
  • What Census Calls Us — Pew Research Center — an interactive timeline of the race and origin categories on every census form, showing that the boxes have been renamed again and again; browse a few decades and notice who wrote each list. (reading, 5–10 min)
  • Everyone Thinks Their Culture Is the Default: Ethnocentrism Explained — The Legacy Lab — everyday examples of judging other cultures by your own as "normal," from mealtimes to eye contact, and the habit of asking whether something is wrong or only different. Use it while working through the Week-2 module overview. (video, 3 min) (captions: automatic)

③ Attitude, act, or rule? Prejudice and the kinds of discrimination

Chapter 2, Section “Sort by who or what does it: three levels” · Session 2, Segment 3, “Prejudice, discrimination, and three levels” · Remember: prejudice is an attitude, discrimination is an action, and a rule applied to everyone can still treat people unequally.

  • Racial/Ethnic Prejudice & Discrimination: Crash Course Sociology #35 — CrashCourse — prejudice as a belief, discrimination as an action, and institutional discrimination built into schools, banks, and jobs with no single person to blame. Treat its statistic about who receives welfare as the video's own claim, since this course uses no figure about a group's present-day income, and its example about immigrants and jobs as an illustration of one theory, not a settled answer to a current debate. Stop here, at about the 8:00 mark, before the closing part on pluralism and assimilation; next week takes up theories of belonging. (video, 8 min) (captions: creator)
  • Race/Color Discrimination — U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — the federal workplace agency's plain-language page; read the part on employment policies, which explains how a rule applied to everyone can still be unlawful when it harms one group and is not needed for the job. (reading, 3–5 min)

④ Overlap and the form: intersectionality and the federal categories

Chapter 2, Section “Meet intersectionality: overlap, not addition” · Session 2, Segment 4, “Intersectionality and the federal categories” · Remember: overlapping categories make an experience neither one alone describes, and a census box is a category people chose.

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

  • About the Topic of Race — U.S. Census Bureau — the Census Bureau's own page on how it defines and asks about race; read the opening statement that its categories reflect a social definition of race, and skip the technical survey notes. (reading, 3–5 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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