7.11 Glossary

Acculturation: Cultural change, generally the reconciliation of two or more culture groups.

Amalgamation: the action, process, or result of combining, uniting or merging. Idea that multiethnic societies become a combination of the cultural traits of their ethnic groups.

Apartheid: a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race (particularly in South Africa)

Assimilation: minority cultural characteristics become almost non-existent so that the ethnicity ceases to exist.

Blockbusting: the practice of persuading home owners to sell property cheaply because of the fear of people of another ethnic or social group moving into the neighborhood, and then profiting by reselling at a higher price.

Discrimination: Mistreatment due to perceived difference.

Diversity: Having a range of different people.

Enclave: Self-enforced separation of a racial or ethnic group.

Environmental Justice: The concept that environmental benefits and burdens should be equally shared across different socio-economic groups.

Ethnic cleansing: the attempt to completely expunge or remove traces of another population from a place. May or may not relate to genocide.

Ethnicity: group of people sharing a common cultural or national heritage and often sharing a common language or religion.

Expulsion: the process of forcing someone to leave a place, especially a country.

First effective settlement: Doctrine in which the first group able to assert dominance provides the template for the future society.

Foodway: The cultural, social, and economic practices relating to the production and consumption of food.

Genocide: the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.

Ghetto: Area of externally forced and legally-defined ethnic or racial separation.

Immigration: Incoming migration to a place.

Intersectionality: interconnected nature of social categories such as race, class and gender which create overlapping systems of discrimination.

Jim Crow: A set of laws enforcing racial segregation and disenfranchisement in the southern United States in the poet Civil War era.

Majority: A group making up more than half of a population.

Marginalization: treatment of a person, group, or concept as insignificant or peripheral.

Minority: A group making up less than half of a population.

Nation: An ethnicity or a people.

Race: The categorization of humans into groups based physical characteristics or ancestry.

Redlining:  the practice of denying people access to credit because of where they live, even if they are personally qualified for loans.

Segregation: The spatial and/or social separation of people by race or ethnicity.

Social construct:  concept or practice created, shared and accepted by a society or group built the assumptions upheld within that group.

White flight: the act of white people moving out of urban areas, particularly those with significant minority populations, and into suburban areas.

Xenophobia: fear of the different.