Race and Gender Stratification

1. Race, as a social construct, is a group of people who share similar and distinct physical characteristics. Social conceptions and groupings vary over time, involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits.
2. An ethnic group is a socially defined category of people who identify with each other based on common ancestral, social, cultural or national experience.
3. Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender.
4. Ethnocentrism is judging another culture solely by the values and standards of one's own culture.
5. Ageism is stereotyping and discriminating against individuals or groups on the basis of their age.