Race, Ethnicity, and Coloniality Overview

Race, Ethnicity, and Racism

• Minority group: A group in society who face disadvantage due to their physical, ethnic, or cultural characteristics compared to the dominant group.
• Race: A category based on the belief in fundamental differences between humans stemming from ancestral elements. Examples include Black, White, Asian, Hispanic.
• Ethnicity: A type of social identity rooted in ancestral and cultural elements (more specific than race). This includes cultural values, language, history, religion, and clothing. Examples of ethnic groups include Mayan, Aztec, Caucasian, Hutu, and Tutsi.
• Americanity: A concept of a "new world" system distinct from the old European world system.

Coloniality

• Coloniality: The concept of newness itself, referring to the various state hierarchies (e.g., world leaders, empires, colonies) and how they persist even after the end of colonialism.
• End of traditional colonialism: Does the end of traditional colonialism mean the end of the hierarchies of European and non-European? No, the socioeconomic hierarchy continues in a new form.
• Coloniality as a mindset: Coloniality is a mindset of subordination based on stigmas and harmful stereotypes that persist and often go unnoticed.
• Impact of colonialism: Former colonies often continue to experience the negative effects of coloniality through cultural stereotypes and the perpetuation of subordinate positions.

Ethnicity

• Collective identity: A shared identity among people who identify with the same group.
• Categorization: The process through which groups are categorized, often contributing to the perpetuation of existing power imbalances.
• Colonilaity and ethnicity: Is ethnicity an unavoidable outcome of colonialism? Does categorization of labor (e.g., slavery, agricultural work for white laborers), justify social constructs? Ethnicity can be used as a mechanism of control due to its connection with coloniality.

Racism

• Racism: An implicit, historical, and implicit form of racism—not new—that was a fundamental part of the creation of Americanity.
• Americanity: The societal values and norms shaping America after colonialism.
• Explicit Racism: Racism becoming more explicit as a result of the construction of American concepts.
• Post-WWII racism: The idea that the USA, as a superpower, cannot be racist after WWII.

Decoloniality

• Coloniality's impact on knowledge: Promotes hierarchies and ranks, even in areas like knowledge, politics, and economics, subordinating those in lower-ranked positions.
• Breaking from traditional coloniality: Decoloniality strives to confront and disengage from the traditional colonial matrix, enabling less-ranked states and their societies to grow.
• Colonial power structures: Decoloniality acknowledges the enduring colonial structures of power that continue to shape societal organization.
• Impact of colonization on knowledge: Colonization created distorted paradigms of knowledge and diminished the liberating promises of modernity.

Patriarchy

• Patriarchal society: Societal control by men; a key example is where the oldest male is the leader and is in a position of power.
• Dominion: Men hold dominion over women and are in positions of power/control over other aspects of societal decision making.
• Effects of Patriarchal Systems: This hierarchical social order impacts the economy, production, and access to natural resources.

Basic Concepts

• Intersectionality: How multiple social categorizations shape one's identity and social experience.
• Sex: Biological differences between males and females.
• Gender: Social expectations and attributes associated with each sex.
• Sexuality: Sexual behaviours, attractions, and relationships among individuals.

Feminism

• Feminist sociology: Focuses on gender's centrality in analyzing social structures, particularly the unique experiences of women.
• Gender Roles: Social expectations of behaviors and characteristics based on a person's sex assigned at birth.
• Variations within feminism: Different schools of thought like Liberal Feminism and Radical Feminism have different approaches and goals.

Global Inequality

• Systematic differences in wealth and power: There are significant differences in wealth and power amongst various countries and within them.
• Micro vs. Macro inequalities: Within country and country to country inequality.
• World Bank Classification: Different countries are categorized based on their income levels, such as high-income, upper-middle income, lower-middle income, and low-income.
• High-income: Countries that industrialized first, starting in England.
• Middle-income: Primarily located in Asia and oil-rich countries in North Africa.
• Low-income: Mostly located in Africa and Asia regions with agricultural economies.
• Global wealth production: Countries are measured based on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per citizen.

Theories

• Market-oriented theory: Focuses on individual economic decisions, with limited regulation from governments.
• Modernization theory: Outlines an economic development process for less developed countries.
• Dependency theory: Argues that economic exploitation (like colonialism) is the key reason why many countries are poor.

World System Theory

• Unequal Economic Zones: Wallerstein's concept of core, semi-periphery, and periphery countries illustrating varying levels of economic influence and exploitation.
• Global economic system: A global interlinked system (capitalist).
• Core countries (wealthy): Countries with advanced economies that dominate international trade.
• Peripheral countries (low-income): Countries with limited industrialization and often serve as suppliers to core countries.
• Semi-periphery countries (middle-income): Countries that are industrializing and play a less dominant role in the global economy.