Sexual Script
Specifies the formal and informal norms for legitimate or unacceptable sexual activity, which individuals are eligible sexual partners, and the boundaries of sexual behavior.
Transgendered people
Those who are transexuals, intersexuals, or transvestites.
Apartheid
A formal system of racial segregation.
Assimilation
A process of conforming to the culture of the dominant group and intermarrying with that group.
Contact Hypothesis
The idea that the more people get to know members of a minority group personally, the less likely they are to be prejudice against that group.
Discrimination
Any act that treats a person unequally because of their group membership.
Dominant Group
Any physically or culturally distinctive group that has the most economic and political power, the greatest privileges and the highest social class.
Ethnic Group
A set of people who identify with a common national origin or cultural heritage that includes language, geographic routes, food, customs, traditions, and or religion.
Ethnocentrism
The belief that one's own culture, society, or group is inherently superior to others.
Gendered Racism
The combined and cumulative effects of inequality due to racism or sexism.
Genocide
The systematic effort to kill all members of a particular ethnic, religious, political, racial, or national group.
Individual Discrimination
Harmful action directed intentionally, on a one- to- one basis by a member of a dominant group against a minor of a minority group.
Institutional Discrimination
Unequal treatment and opportunities that members of a minority group experience as a result of the everyday operations of a society's law, rules, policies, practices, and customs.
Internal Colonialism
The unequal treatment and subordinate status of groups within a nation.
Minority Group
A group of people who may be subject to differential and unequal treatment because of their physical, cultural, or other characteristics, such as gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, or skin color.
Miscegation
Marriage or sexual relations between a man and a woman of different races.
Pluralism
Minority groups retain their culture but have equal social standing in a society.
Prejudice
An attitude, positive or negative, toward people because of their group membership.
Race
A group of people who share physical characteristics, such as skin color and facial features, that are passed on through reproduction.
Racial- Ethnic Group
A group of people who have both distinctive physical and cultural characteristics.
Racism
A set of beliefs that one's own racial group is naturally superior to other groups.
Scapegoats
Individuals or groups whom people blame for their own problems or short comings.
Segregation
The physical and social separation of dominant and minority groups.
Stereotype
An exaggerated generalization about a category of people.
Capitalism
An economic system in which the ownership of the means of production is in private hands.
Conflict Theory
An approach that examines the ways in which groups disagree, struggle over power, and compete for scarce resources.
Division of Labor
An interdependence of different tasks and occupations, characteristic of industrialized societies, that produce social unity and facilitate change.
Dysfunctional
Social patterns that have a negative impact on a group or society.
Imperical
Information that is based on observations, experiments, or experiences rather than on ideology, religion, or intuition.
Feminist Theories
Approaches that try to explain the social, economic, and political position of women in a society.
Functionalism
An approach that maintains that society is a complex system of interdependent parts that work together to ensure a societies survival.
Interaction
Action in which people take each other into account in their own behavior.
Latent Functions
Functions that are unintended and unrecognized; they are present but not