1. Race (and biology): Race is simply the categories that we group people into. The people placed into each group are perceived to be the same as others in the same group. The groups are usually divided up based on physical appearances and ethnic backgrounds. According to Johnson, race is socially constructed. It is not actually real, it is just a made up way to categorize people. Johnson says that race is only a part of the equation when talking about privilege and oppression. We cannot predict how much privilege or oppression a person will receive based solely on their race.
2. Ethnicity: Ethnicity is the social and cultural background that we all posses.
3. Ethnic Studies: Ethnic Studies is the study of how cultural differences affect the way we, as humans, interact with other humans who appear to be different from us.
4. History: Zinn quotes Henry Kissinger as saying “History is the memory of States” It is usually a bias account of how particular events took place. It has a tendency to favor the so called greater good by overlooking atrocities in favor of progress for the government, nation, or conqueror.
5. Progress: Zinn discusses progress as being the advancement of the “common interest” He is skeptical however that there really is such a thing as a common interest. Progress is really then, the advancement of the government or conqueror’s interests.
6. Social Construction: According to Johnson on page 20, social construction occurs when “we think the way our culture defines something like race or gender is simply the way things are in some objective way” Johnson discusses the the fact that we are likely to follow paths of least resistance. That means that privilege and oppression will be even more difficult to overcome because people are unlikely to go against the norms that are already established.
7. Genocide: Genocide is the execution of people because of their ethnic background. According to Zinn on page 9, it is the harshest word one can use for mass murder.
8. Ideological (as used by Zinn on pg 9): Ideological is the support of some kind of interest whether knowingly or not. It may be political, racial, economic, national, or sexual.
9. Privilege: On page 21, Johnson credits Peggy McIntosh with defining privilege as something of value that one group has access to and another group does not have access to solely because of the group they belong to rather than anything they did or failed to do. Privilege is not something that can be understood on an individual level. There are just too many interconnected class that a person can belong and it is impossible to separate which the effects of each social class.
10. Oppression: According to Johnson, oppression occurs when one class benefits from privilege at the expense of another class. Oppression can only exist if one group has the power to benefit from privilege over another group. Johnson argues that oppression is strengthened by the "paths of least resistance theory" He gives the example of the black people staging a sit in at a diner to change their policy of not serving blacks. Before the sit in people just accepted the policy because they didn't want to take a path of more resistance. That just strengthened the oppression
11. Racialization: Racializatoin is the process by which race comes to have meaning as a category. It is also the process each one of us goes through in order to have a racial identity. In other words, we are not just born “white” or born “black” – what it means to us to be “white” or “black” changes in our social interactions with others throughout our lives. This means that race develops meaning through social interaction, instead of merely existing as concrete, independently verifiable fact.
12. Unearned Entitlement: Something of value that all people should posses. According to Johnson on page 23, some examples include “feeling safe in public spaces or working in a place where they feel they belong and are valued for what they can contribute.”
13. Unearned Advantage: Page 23 of Johnson’s text describes an unearned advantage as a form of privilege derived from a situation when an unearned entitlement is restricted to certain groups.
