SOC 303: Quiz 2
racial & ethnic identity as it relates to religious life
Religious associations are connected to, and used to promote and preserve, certain racial and ethnic identities - serve as refuge, provide valuable social services, social status and prestige - powerful agents of social change and political mobilization
identity politics
Refers to political action intended to address the unique interests and hardships of groups (such as nonwhites, women and gay people) who historically have faced oppression and who continue to be excluded from mainstream society.
political correctness
usually refers to discourse that while designed to minimize offense to marginalized groups, ends up censoring certain speech or attitudes deemed off limits. who has to watch what they say? this moment in time, white people.
marcus garvey (who, what, when, where)
who: a Jamaican immigrant earning a name for himself in the form of black nationalism. what: Founding mastermind behind and primary spokes person for the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) when: around 1920's. where: Harlem, New York. Black nationalism was not a movement for equal-rights; it was a movement for black power, for black-owned businesses and a black-run government with a black military behind it.
Fear as a social mechanism
- Certain threats are overlooked, while others receive a great deal of attention, either because they offend the fundamental values of society or because they facilitate the continued stigmatization and exclusion of marginalized groups. The fear of being victimized by nonwhite men fulfills both. - Americans' fear of blackness vs fear of crime - Trope that immigrants increase crime rates when in fact, social-scientific researchers have come to the opposite conclusion
Criminalization: racialized, classed, and ethnic/religious bias and discrimination
- Fear of crime is strongly connected to one's racial identity, one's racial attitudes, and the racial makeup of one's neighborhood - people who live in areas with a higher proportion of young black men think their neighborhood is plagued with more crime than those who live in majority white areas - Members belonging to racial groups feared by the larger society can adopt the attitudes of their host society and come to fear members of their own group
Global Incarceration (Where does the U.S. fall relative to other nations)
- If including people in county jails and juvenile detention (a rate of roughly 1 person per 135 behind bars) the United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other nation on Earth.
Dichotomist framing of terrorism and group involved (or not involved)
- Post-September 11 America is set apart not by the presence of terrorism but by the victims of it. As applied to modern times, the term "age of terror" is historically inaccurate, for terrorism in America is anything but a modern development. - America's indigenous peoples were brought mercilessly under the heel of Western colonizing forces. The Mexican Repatriation Programs could accurately be classified as organized kidnapping. Black America has been plagued by a most brutal and bloody terrorism, which has included the Middle Passage, slavery, and lynch mobs. The Ku Klux Klan resembles a terrorist organization much as al-Qaeda does.
the cost of imprisonment
- Prisons are not restorative - Political consequences (not being able to vote) - Many jobs disqualify job applicants that have a criminal history - Many ex-offenders are denied many types of social services like food stamps, public housing, Medicaid, and government-based financial aid for college - the direct connection between incarceration and chronic poverty - impact on family life (single parent households, eroded relationships)
The American Police State as an institution
- Racial disparities in arrest rates can be attributed to institutional racism operating at multiple levels of the criminal justice system. - Criminalization of dark skin - For white people the police are seen as a force of protection, for nonwhite Americans, the police are seen as people who bring violence and harm, unfair treatment and repression - Police brutality
virtual empowerment
- anti racist movements have relied on the internet to circulate information around the world and increase their visibility in civil society - reconnect members of diasporic communities, communities of people or ethnic groups that have been fractured, displace, and scattered around the world on account of warfare, colonialism, or the slave trade - the internet enables people of different racial identities and nationalities to interact and enter into conversation with one another
virtual racism
- protected by complete anonymity - hate speech used online vs offline - whiteness as virtual norm - racial tourism reinforces racial divides through stereotypes
homophily in the religious life
- religious associations behave as other associations in civil society do, following the homophily principle. since religious groups spring from most likely racially homophilous social networks and connections based in most likely racially segregated neighborhoods, it is not surprising that most reflect pre-exisiting racial divides. - Certain religious cultures and habits unitentionally widen racial divides - most white evangelicals understand racism as only the interpersonal, not the institutional
religious associations 1) Percent of Sweden that is atheist 2) Average percent of Americans attending Christian church service each week. 3) Percent of U.S. population that is atheist. 4) Percent of U.S. population that is Christian
1) 80% 2) 20-40% 3) 1.6% 4) 78%
Arabization of terrorism
After 911, Arab Americans suffered from a double helping of fear, because not only did they join all Americans in worrying about repeat attacks; they also dreaded repression from the American government as well as assaults from their fellow non-Arab citizens. - In 2001 the FBI reported that crime rates directed at Muslims increased seventeenfold
The rise of the prison industrial complex (mention peonage and prison labor camps)
After the emancipation of slavery, the prison industrial complex took on new ways to reenslave thousands of black workers recently released from bondage. Vagabond laws were adopted in state after state post the Civil War. These laws outlawed begging and loitering. Ultimately, these laws transformed the poor into the criminal. To meet the labor shortage once filled by enslaved workers and to uphold an economic system built on racial domination, southern prisons introduced "convict leasing" programs, which forced prisoners to work for no pay. Once again, black men returned in shackles to the cotton fields, the swamps, and the roadsides, sometimes chained to white prisoners. Historians have said that prison labor camps were just as inhumane as were conditions under slavery.
Likelihood of incarceration proportional terms (who makes up the prison population)
All men: 1/9 White men: 1/17 Black men: 1/3 Latino men: 1/6 All women: 1/56 White women: 1/111 Black women: 1/18 Latino women: 1/45
digital/cyber communities
As of 2011 fewer than 58% of black and hispanic households had internet access, compared with 76% of white households. Regular internet use is sparse in some immigrant communities (non-english speakers have very low rates of computer ownership and home internet access), as it is in many poor rural areas, such as American Indian reservations, impoverished white communities, and rural black towns scattered throughout the Mississippi Delta. Those without equal access to this knowledge and information divide between the technical class and the digital underclass is a serious problem.
Incarceration rates (then and now)
Between 1925-1975 the prison population remained the same, fluctuating between 100,000 and 200,000 prisoners. Around 1975, the prison population began to skyrocket and by 2000 had reached 1,400,000. From 1970 to 2003, the number of state and federal prisons grew sevenfold. In 2003, over 7 million people were under supervision of the criminal justice system.
Differentiate between the types of crimes discussed in the chapter and their implications racially and for the criminal justice system (drug trafficking, domestic violence, murder, terrorism)
Call into question criminalization processes and their relation to systems of economic exploitation and racial domination white-collar crime: illegal acts committed by more privileged members of society (technological crimes, computer hacking, fraud, identity theft, environmental law violations, tax evasion, bribery, counterfeiting, money laundering, embezzling) - many white collar crimes require some sort of expertise and education Domestic violence: Poor women, immigrants, and women of color are victimized at disproportionately higher rates. Native American women are abused at twice the rate of black and white women. And between 40-60% of Asian women are beaten at some point during their lives. Compared to black women, white women are nearly twice as likely to be killed by an intimate partner; however the leading cause of death for black women between the ages of 15 and 24 is partner homicide. Murder: USA has the highest rate of gun-related murder in all developed countries. Black male youth have the highest rate of murder. !!!!violent crime thrives in neighborhoods wracked by compounding structural disadvantages!!!
hate groups: who joins? where?
Despite popular representations of hate group member as poor, uneducated whites from rural America, white supremacists groups draw from all regions of society. women in white supremacist movements: posses college degrees, came from middle-class stable homes, and held steady jobs, working as nurses, engineers, teachers, therapists, and librarians. recruiting tools: leaflets, speakers, 'zines, music, children's books, and face-to-face conversations, the internet. most involvement on website: Montana, Utah, and Portland.
Are prisons keeping us safer?
If evidence indicates that the three mechanisms by which incarceration is supposed to lower crime are less effective than originally thought, we might suspect the effect of mass incarceration on the crime drop to be modest. Since the rise of "law and order" politics and the implementation of harsher sentences, prisons have abandoned their original mission-to rehabilitate those who have committed crimes-and instead have become punishing and ware housing institutions. Incapacitation decreases the crime rate by only a modest degree. Prisons don't function as a strong deterrent for would-be criminals. 1/3 people don't consider the punishment when committing the crime.
social capital and its "decline"
If there are any two kinds of social capital-a homophilous kind that binds you to "your people" and a heterophilous kind that bridges racial cleavages-then most formal associations dole out the binding kind. What has contributed to the decline in social capital? 1) the suburbanization of America, a process pushed by white fear and flight. 2) Social capital and trust for fellow Americans are lower in more racially diverse communities.
integrationist "associational coalition building"
In the wake of racial segregation, a movement toward integration also began to take shape within associational life. Political societies, such as the Commission on Interracial Coalition, which arose alongside the NAACP, practiced integration in membership and leadership. Veterans' associations, such as the Grand Army of the Republic, The Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the American Legion, allowed nonwhite veterans to join integrated chapters in the North. African American women in the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) fought to integrate their organization. Black women fought to make the YWCA move from a progressive minded organization to one that put "racial justice at the center of its mission" it created a new mission "Eliminating Racism; Empowering Women." - After Civil War many associations erased racially exclusive language from their constitutions and charters - 1960's many boy scout troops were desegregated - the PTA forbade its chapters from limiting white parents only
homophily
Literally meaning "love of the same," homophily refers to the practice of associating with people like you. This concept applies to age, religion, education, and occupation. Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments.
Ethnic nationalism
Racial segregation and complete independence from whites was the only answer. This ideology is know as ethnic nationalism; its ambassadors resist cultural and social assimilation and instead champion self-determination, race pride, separatism, and in some cases the creation of an independent nation based on racial identity.
Be able to identify what the social, economic, and political roots & incentives for incarceration are
Republicans political roots & incentives for incarceration: - Richard Nixon "war on crime" to protect Americans from those who "increasingly threaten our cities, our homes, and our lives" - Ronald Reagan followed by initiating a "war on drugs" introducing harsher penalties for those found guilty of possessing and selling drugs George H.W. Bush won the WH after exposing his opponent, Michael Dukakis, as "soft on crime" (Willie Horton case) - Bill Clinton became an avid supporter of three-strikes laws and his Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 allocated nearly 10 billion for the construction of new prisons and mandated life sentences for third-time offenders - White backlash to the Civil Rights movement Economic: - prisons employing thousands of correctional officers, wardens, and other workers - expanded America's cheap labor force as prisoners are put to work at third world wages - for profit prisons (private companies) - today, over half the states rely on for-profit prisons Social: - Wreak devastation on Black communities - More police officers were dispatched to poor, nonwhite communities - Law enforcement officers targeted ghetto neighborhoods for a number of reasons, including because America's established tradition of linking nonwhites with drug use
The Lynch Mob as an institution
Sometimes the lynch mob operated in cahoots with local law enforcement; other times they overthrew sheriff deputies attempting to protect their captives long enough that they might receive a fair trial. The lynch mob would break into the jail cell, take the black man and torture him to death. Between 1880-1930 lynch mobs murdered over 2,300 black people and most likely more. The broader white public justified lynching in a number of ways, one of which was arguing that it kept white women safe from the black male rapist. What Ida B. Wells found out when she was doing research on Southern lynch mobs was that most black men were killed for being to "uppity." In reality, the majority of black men that were accused of rape were innocent. Lynch mobs thrived on the widespread fear that black men were violent. They upheld white supremacy by letting black people know that they could not find refuge in the law. It also upheld white patriarchy by cultivating within white women a dread of the black male rapist, this dread increased white women's dependency on their white male protectors.
United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) & their relationship with other coalitions
The UNIA which in its heyday (1920-1921) most likely had more members than the NAACP. (And, unlike the NAACP, the UNIA placed women in positions of leadership and was entirely led, financed, and staffed by blacks.) For Garvey and the UNIA, the solution to antiblack racism could be found only within the collective strength of the black community. Garvey encouraged African Americans to view themselves as Africans first - as people who had had their culture, history, language, identity and pride stripped from them and as Americans second. Garvey didn't think blacks were equal to whites; he thought they were better.
Civic participation: racial & classed variation in participation in associational life (proportions might be important)
Whites have a higher rates of civil engagement, whereas people of color are less likely to join voluntary associations and to participate in community activities. One pair of researchers say, "On average, whites participate in the most organizations, followed by blacks, latinos, and asians." Community trust is a big issue among nonwhites. One study found that while 41% of whites believed that "most people can be trusted," only 20% of blacks and 12% of lations felt likewise. Once economic differences are taken into account, Latinos are just as likely, and blacks even more likely, to participate in voluntary associations as whites.
the persistence of segregated communities and social life
Whites responded to this increasing diversity and the rising black middle class with fear, violent reprisals, and state legislation--their founding attempt to build racial order. Whites created the culture of segregation in large part to counter black success, to make a myth of absolute racial difference, to stop the rising. Many new organizations across the nation were formed with the explicit purpose of promoting racial and ethnic conflict. Irish associations were established to wage battles with Italian ones; Protestant groups struggled against Catholic societies. And many social clubs limited their membership to white men.
Sentencing trends (unjust sentencing)
Why did criminal sentencing take such a mean turn? The answer lies in the rise of the "law and order" politician. Arrest rates, especially drug-related offenses, shoot upward during the prison boom, but several other changes were put into effect to harshen criminal sentencing. - Parole was limited severely or abolished entirely - Mandatory minimum sentences - including those convicted of nonviolent crimes - were enforced - During the 1970s, several laws were passed attaching a life sentence to an ounce of cocaine or heroin - Three strikes law: intensified punishment for repeat offenses, with many laws imposing a life sentence for the third offense
Understand the relationship between race, class, gender, and regional residence and incarceration
Women: - only account for 6.7% of the nation's prison population - black women incarcerated at 2.5 times the rate of white women - Hispanic women incarcerated at 1.4 times the rate of white women Men: - group predominantly by prison boom: poor, uneducated black and Hispanic men - Blacks and Hispanics account for approximately 25% of the U.S. population but 58% of all prisoners - Hispanic men 3x more likely/black men 8x more likely than white men to be in prison - 1/6 black men has been incarcerated as of 2011 The incarceration rate of young black men who dropped out of high school was nearly 50 times the national average