Sociology 132 Exam #2

Income

money received from employment, retirement, or government aid

Wealth

owned assets that yield monetary return, such as stocks and bonds, savings accounts, houses and real estate, and business and farm ownership

Who was hit hardest by the Great Recession

People of color

Regina Baker studied the relationship between the historical racial regime (HRR) and current racial inequalities. She found that…

Present-day racial disparities in poverty are higher in southern states with higher HRR scores

The New Deal

social programs dealing with welfare, work, unemployment insurance, minimum wage, workday limitations, and veteran assistance

G.I Bill of Rights (1944)

• Created American middle-class

• Most non-White veterans excluded from benefits

Dog whistle politics

Coded racial language in the form of certain phrases or symbols that carry a hidden meaning for a target group

Often signals a prejudiced subset of the population 

3 part “dog whistle” strategy 

• Punch: introduce racial tension using coded terms (ex. welfare cheats, illegal aliens)

• Parry: deny any racial intent because no specific racial words were used

• Kick: attack critics for “playing the race card

Democratic view on voting limitation laws 

Deliberate voter suppression tactics to reduce turnout among Democratic-leaning groups

Republican view on voting limitation laws

Prevent voter fraud and protect election integrity

sharecropping

White land owners (former slave masters/descendants) sold African-Americans a small portion of their land, but forced the African-American people to give up a portion of what they grow on it (and they were not given enough resources to actually make any profit off their land)

13th Amendment

Abolished slavery except as a punishment for crime

14th Amendment

Declared freed African-Americans as U.S citizens and gave them equal protection

15th Amendment 

Allowed voting regardless of race or former slave status 

Montgomery Bus Boycott

For 381 days, people walked, carpooled, and took taxis to work as a protest against racial segregation on public transporation

Freedom Rides of 1961

Student activists from CORE (Cogress of Racial Equality) rode through the deep south challenging segregated interstate travel laws 

They were trying to get to New Orleans from Washington DC but only made it to Birmingham Alabama before being met with extreme violence

Civil Rights Act of 1964 

• signed into law by President Johnson in July 1964 (called for by Kennedy in 1963)

• Prohibited racial segregation in schools; prohibited discrimination in employment; prohibited unequal application of voting registration requirements

Voting Rights Act of 1965

• outlawed literacy tests and other discriminatory voter registration requirements 

Preclearance requirement

required federal pre-approval before making any changes to voting laws 

Southern Strategy

coordinated Republican strategy used to court White voters by manufacturing and appealing to ant-Black racism

2 lessons applied to the Southern Strategy

1. Opposing racial justice movements increases support among White voters

2. Promote White supremacy but never explicitly (dog-whistling)

George Wallace

First person to use Southern Strategy

Jimmy Carter

• another president who used the Southern strategy by praising George Wallace and campaigning with a white supremacist organization

• came out in opposition to racial discrimination after being elected

Groups that voter suppression primarily effects

1. Poor people

2. urban/inner-city residents

3. college students 

Shelby County v. Holder

The Supreme Court decision that allowed many voting restriction laws to be put into place 

Gerrymandering

The process by which elected politicians redraw and manipulate the borders of political districts to secure political advantage

Strategies of Gerrymandering

1. Packing: concentrating voters of one type

2. Cracking: spreading out voters of one type

Gill v. Whitford

Ruled that extreme partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional, but that the Supreme Court had no precedent determining what courts as “extreme partisan gerrymandering.”

Rucho v. Common Cause

ruled that partisan gerrymandering was a political question, and thus fell outside the jurisdiction of the courts

Right’s view on restrictive voting access

Saw it as a necessary response to rampant electoral fraud by Democrats

Left’s view on restrictive voting laws

Saw it as a strategic attempt to reduce turnout amongst Democratic-leaning votters

Ghetto

a part of a city that is almost exclusively inhabited by members of one racial/ethnic group to which virtually all members of that group are restricted

Index of dissimilarity 

A measure of segregation between any two groups, with 0 indicating total integration and 100 indicating total segregation

Racial threat hypothesis

social controls are imposed on groups of color in response to perceived threats to white people’s dominant political, economic, and social position

contested boundaries hypothesis

Racial tension and conflict are highest in areas where different racial or ethnic groups meet or live close together—because the “boundaries” between each group are being challenged 

NIMBY (“not in my backyard”

Objection to siting of something perceived as unpleasant or hazardous near one’s home, especially while raising no such objections to similar developments elsewhere

Two events leading to the passing of the Fair Housing Act/Civil Rights Act in 1968

• Chicago Open Housing Movement

• Assassination of MLK

Origins of ghettos

• most housing built for white residents

• FHA denying housing loans to POC

• Steering

Steering

Real estate agents guiding or discouraging potential buyers from buying certain homes in cerntain neighborhoods 

redlining

denying mortgage loans for homes in non-white neighborhoods d

areas grouped depending on how good of an investment it would be to live there

Historic/contemporary factors for racialized voter disenfranchisement

• Poll taxes 

• Grandfather clauses

• Literacy test 

Political Strategy used by Governer George Wallace and President Jimmy Carter to win elections

Southern strategy

The civil rights movement strategy of sending college students to live with Black families in the segregated south to tutor school-age kids and dhelp register adults to vote 

Freedom Summer

According to the Verhuizen (2023) article "Voting groups condemn Spindell email…", what caused a decline in Black voter turnout in Milwaukee?

Limiting polling hours and instituting a new voter ID law 

Index of dissimilarity rate for Milwaukee (low or high)

High

True or False: the racial wealth and income gap becomes almost non-existent once we compare groups by education level

False

Why did the Federal Housing Authority start

started during the Great Depression to boost the housing market

wanted to make home ownership more affordable 

Used redlining and refused to insure mortgages in “high risk” areas 

White Flight

People moving out of the suburbs in 1950s—an increase with urban deindustrialization and the Civil Rights Movement 

Effects of spatial concentration of poverty 

• under-funded schools

• crime

• violence

• low demand density