Final answer:
Societal norms are responsible for dictating customs, attitudes, and beliefs within racial or ethnic groups, and encompass a wide array of cultural rules. These norms are taught and reinforced by social groups and institutions, and can exist within society independently of individual actions.
Step-by-step explanation:
Societal norms dictate the customs, attitudes, and beliefs of a particular racial or ethnic group. These norms encompass the laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all of the cultural rules that govern social life within a society. Unlike government policies or chemical reactions, societal norms are not enacted or caused by a specific regulation or biological process but are the established standards of behavior maintained by social consensus and cultural reinforcement.
Our direct interactions with social groups, such as families and peers, alongside formal and informal institutions, including schools, workplaces, and media, teach and reinforce these norms. Furthermore, these social constructs are deeply embedded within society, and as sociologist Émile Durkheim described, certain aspects such as racism can exist as a social fact, meaning they can continue even without individual actions due to complex systems in place within the educational, criminal, economic, and political realms.