SOCY224 Exam 1

Transatlantic Slave Trade dates and duration

1619-1865 - 246 years

Chain of Being Theory

1700s theory that is composed of a great number of hierarchical links, from the most basic and foundational elements up through the very highest perfection, in other words, God. God sits at the top of the chain, and beneath him sit the angels, both existing wholly in spirit form, with people of lesser value being closer on the Chain to apes and other creatures. This theory was composed by Carl Linnaeus, who "invented" race with his theory. According to this theory, the color of people's skin defines other characteristics; Asians are sallow and severe, blacks are lazy, whites are intelligent.

Homestead Act

1862-1986 law signed by Lincoln, where 270 million acres of land in the midwest and west were given to white families, even land that had been previously granted to Natives.

Reconstruction

1865-1877 period that attempted to resolve the issues that developed among the North and South, the withdrawal of Southern states from the Union, and the status of the Confederate leadership. It was a time to figure out what to do with freed slaves. During this time, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were passed. In 1870, after blacks got the right to vote, the US saw its first black congressmen (multiple of them), but then from 1900-1950, there were none. Rutherford B. Hayes: president 1877-1881: the election of the compromise of 1877. This marked the return of white southerners into the voting process. He traded deals with the south for his presidency. Part of these deals were to restrict black rights, like voting and Jim Crow Laws.

"Birth of a Nation"

1915 silent film, the first movie shown in the White House. It freaked white people out by essentially saying if you keep letting black people be free, they will take over, rape all the women, and bring chaos. The movie ended with the KKK coming on horses and saving the day. The black people in the movie were all in blackface. People came out of the movie believing black people should be enslaved again. The most confederate statues were built in that time, right around when NAACP was founded.

American Civil Rights Movement dates

1954-1968

Montgomery Bus Boycott

1955 boycott of public buses in Alabama. The aim was to shame America for segregating public transportation and for making black people get up when there weren't enough seats for whites. They instead organized a community carpool system and walked everywhere. After 11 months, the US Supreme Court ruled that Montgomery's bus segregation was unconstitutional.

Civil Rights Act

1964 landmark legislation that outlawed segregation in schools and public places, implemented to establish the precedence that blacks and women should be treated like normal human beings.

The Ballot or the Bullet

1964 speech by Malcolm X, addressed to the common black people. He told his listeners to exercise their right to vote, but if black people were not given equal rights soon, they might eventually respond with violence.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

A letter Martin Luther King wrote while in a Birmingham jail, addressed to clergymen (mainly white, but possibly also black). He was put in prison for leading a demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, but he was released on bond after 8 days. Clergymen criticized him for causing trouble for the sake of attention. They said he was pushing too hard for civil rights and that he should hold back, but in this letter he argued that the time to act was now. In this letter he argued that the steps to a non-violent campaign are collection of facts, self-purification, direct action, and negotiation.

Poll tax

A state mandate used by Southern and surrounding states that denied blacks the right to vote

Ethnicity

A subgroup that shares a common ancestry, history, and/or culture

Nonviolent direct-action

Actions which seek to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community and/or group which has constantly refused to negotiate with another community and/or group is forced to confront the issue, according to Martin Luther King's "Letters from a Birmingham Jail". Protests and sit-ins, for example

Malcolm X

African American Muslim human rights activist and minister. Advocate for black rights, delivered the speech "The Ballot or the Bullet."

How to make a slave, as recommended by Willie Lynch recommended

Break Africans down like one would break down a horse or wild animal. Take the African male who is considered the strongest mentally and physically, and publicly mutilate and murder him in front of the other slaves. Then, the slaveowners should tie the next strongest African's arms and legs to a horse and beat the horses in opposite directions until they ripped the body into separate pieces, instilling fear in the other slaves.

White, yellow, red, and black

Categories into which racial groups are classified, according to the Chain of Being

Cranium weight and facial angles

Forms of scientific manipulation that were used to justify racial classification (according to the Science of Race film and lecture)

Henrietta Lacks

Historically significant black woman from Baltimore--doctors took her cells from a pap smear without asking and used them for medical testing for cancer treatment advancements. Her cells spurred medical advancements that would later save lives, but she never got any benefits from it and her sample was taken without her consent. But if genes made us different inside, the cancer treatments made based on her cells wouldn't work for non-black people—but they do (proof that skin tone does not make us genetically different).

Skin color, hair color, and eye color

Human features that were used to justify racial classification and reflect psychological and mental abilities to imply racial superiority or inferiority

Maryland Correctional Facilities

MD company that employs prison labor, makes the furniture for UMD for cents on the dollar. The majority of these prisoners are African American men. It holds the legacy of slavery.

Social construction, science, exploitation, economic

The _______________ of race, based on the falsifying of the _________________ of race, is used to justify the _____________ of race for _______________ gains.

Victimization

The act of being cheated and/or defrauded of money, property, or self-worth

Empowerment

The act of being invested with the power and ability to take action, usually legally through official authority

$82 billion

The amount of money that the current generation of black Americans has been denied because of institutional biases such as discrimination through employment and mortgages

Convict leasing

The arrest of black people for tiny things after the end of slavery. They were incarcerated and put to work on plantations for things like j-walking, smiling at someone, disrespecting someone.

Collection of facts, self-purification, direct action, and negotiation

The basic steps of a nonviolent campaign, according to Martin Luther King's "Letters from a Birmingham Jail"

Gender and race

The first characteristics people notice about others

The White Man's Burden (according to Drake and Zuberi)

The idea that whites are supposed to govern and preserve human life, and that this is their responsibility

Tuskegee Experiment

The injection of black farmers with syphilis

Separate but equal

The legislation enforced by the Jim Crow Laws, established in the Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896

20 million

The number of Africans that died during the Transatlantic Slave Trade (8 million specifically during transport)

5.7 million

The number of Jews who perished in the Holocaust

White men

The people to whom the Declaration of Independence refers when it says "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Affirmative Action

The policies and/or programs that seek to redress past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity (to correct the huge wealth disparities put into place by the New Deal). A common misconception is that it is designed to give less qualified minorities a leg up those who are more qualified. Related to, but not the same thing as, corrective justice. JFK was the first president to use this program by ensuring that applicants for federal contractor jobs are "treated equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."

Eugenics

The science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics, has been used for justifying state-sponsored discrimination and human rights violations and interventions such as selective breeding, genetic engineering, in vitro fertilization, and forced sterilization. The idea of this science is to enhance intelligence levels, save society's resources, and decrease human suffering.

Racism

The social system that conveys an ideology of inferiority, which is often affiliated with individual and group-level prejudice and discrimination

The Middle Passage

The transport voyage from Africa to the Americas

One drop rule

The way that slave status was transferred from mother to child, as in cases where white men raped black women. Even a child who physically looked white, if they had a black relative, was considered black.

Racism (according to Bobo and Fox)

An ideology of racial domination, a set of institutional conditions, and a social system that conveys an ideology of inferiority

Social Darwinism

During the era of slavery, scientists wanted to find a justification for keeping black people enslaved, perhaps a genetic explanation/justification. They did experiments on their live or dead bodies, but they did not actually find real differences so they'd falsify the size and shape of brains and skulls to make it seem like black people were closer to animals. Darwin was talking about variations between different species; people took this to mean variation within a single species. We have come to believe that white people are intellectually superior and black people are physically superior.

Race

Ethnoracial, historically rooted distinctions or social constructions

True or false: A black person and a white person cannot be genetically more similar to each other than two white people or two black people

False

GI Bill

Government program (part of the New Deal) aimed to reintegrate veterans returning from war, the largest federal government initiative in history allocating over $95 billion from the early 1940s into the 1970s. This money was used by white men to go to college, send their kids to college, buy homes, and start businesses. Since it was implemented locally by states, even though it was passed nationally, the individual states did not give the money to black veterans who fought alongside the white veterans.

Social Security

Government program (part of the New Deal) that set minimum wages, regulated work hours, established unions, but did not include professions that were highly represented by blacks (including farming and domestic work). 60% of black people at the time were in those professions, and 75% of black people in the south.

New Deal

Government program created by FDR during the Great Depression that included Social Security and the GI Bill to help create today's "middle class." These two programs are America's largest government initiatives ever, and they got us out of the biggest depression the US has ever seen. During the 1929 stock market crash, unemployment was up to 40%, but by 15 years after the New Deal passed, unemployment was at an all-time low. SS and the GI Bill did not benefit black Americans, and instead widened the economic gap between them and white Americans.

Government, media, and education

Institutions that shape the messages that individuals receive about race

Corrective justice

Justice that identifies interventions that remedy previously unjust decisions that made existing patterns of distribution even more unfair than they otherwise would have been.

Micro, macro

On a _____________ and _____________ level, race functions through institutions.

Affirmative Actions' initiatives

Points (given to college applicants for grades, family legacy, donations, and above all, race), quotas (illegal, except under a court order), busing (to bring minority students from low SES neighborhoods into nicer neighborhoods for school, but only a few select students based on grades)

The Emancipation Proclamation

September 22, 1862: Abraham Lincoln proclamation that declared the freedom of all slaves in the Confederate States of America, and it gave citizenship to all slaves in the Confederate States of America on January 1, 1863. Until the Union could conquer the confederate states, those slaves were held captive. Thus, all slaves in America were free except for the ones in the Confederate states, who could only be freed when the Confederacy was conquered.

Willie Lynch

Slave owner who allegedly constructed "The Making of a Slave"

Implicit association test (IAT)

Test that measures attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report, may be especially interesting if it shows that you have an implicit attitude that you did not know about.

13th (XIII) Amendment

The 1865 amendment that abolished slavery (freed the slaves)

14th (XIV) Amendment

The 1868 amendment gave citizenship to former slaves and all individuals born in the US

15th (XV) Amendment

The 1870 amendment that granted black people the right to vote, also in the same year as the first black congressmen

Juneteenth

The 1965 day the last slaves, in Texas, found out they were freed.

Skin color

What determines racial hierarchy in America