Chris Logue

Prof. Katie Lookholder

Sociology
February 27 2016

Understanding Race: Witt Ch. 13

1. Racial profiling is when an authority does an unreasonable action to
a suspect not because their behavior but because their background,
such as race and ethnicity. An example of 9/11 would be authorities
being suspicious and checking people who are dressed and look
Muslim even though theyre not looking for any trouble. Just based
on their race and background they think that, that person might be
a suspect. Then for the Arizona case people who look Hispanic are
being pulled over to see if their legal immigrants even though they
are and have been living in this country since they were born.
Contact hypothesis is where someone with a different background
thats in a minority group starts working with someone else thats in
a higher class, then the prejudice is decreased and see each other
as individuals instead of their background. So in a way its the
opposite of racial profiling looking more of the effort that the person
has made.
2. They were different types of practices in the past and present that
are have prejudicial attitude to minority and racial groups. One of
them would be when the Ku Klux Klan to scare the civil rights
movement so that they wouldnt have the same equal rights as they
do. Another group would be the Bureau of Indian Affairs that was
founded during 1824 by the war department which eliminated a lot
of native people.
3. Social construction of race is race being more on the political hand
not on the biological category. People make their own categories
and placing themselves and others in it. A symbolic interactionists
perspective would be that ethnicity plays a big role in someones
identity but the identity brings racism in. So the main point is that
when we label are selves and look at our identity and others that
brings up racism. This concept can be applied to people with
Americans with multiple because they may think that theyre
Americans but others may view them as a different race judging
how they look.
4. Model minority is despite that race receiving prejudice in the past
they were able to triumph and succeed in the present world socially,

economically, and in education. Such as the Asian once were looked

as minorities such as the Chinese building rail roads in the past. In
todays day we see Asians as smart, intellectual, and wealthy. Some
advantages of being a model minority are first you arent getting as
much prejudice as before and seen as an equal individual.
Disadvantages would be things such as other races thinking that it
might not be fair that Asians are getting advantage over other races
and thinking that its not fair.