Race & Ethnicity - Hendrix College

Dr. Axxe, Quiz 4

Wealth

• The sum total of a person’s assets minus debt

• Built up over a lifetime and passed on to the next generation through inheritances

What is the wealth inequality in the U.S. today?

• The top 20% takes more than 80% of the wealth in the US

• The bottom 20% and 4th 20% are not even listed on the graph

What is the wealth distribution like by race?

• Whites take up 75% of the wealth

What events could have led to a racial wealth gap in the US?

SLAVERY

How did slavery impact wealth in the US?

• Enslaved people were used as wealth (collateral) for loans and property acquisition

• enslaved people generated wealth for enslavers, but were denied the benefits of that wealth

What was the effect of the Freedman’s Bureau and the Freedman’s savings bank?

• There was land set aside for former slaves

• by the end of 1865, President Johnson had ordered the removal of former slaves from the lands and returned the lands to their former owners

• In 1874, the bank failed because of speculative loans made to white investors and corporations

• 60,000 black people lost most of their savings

What is redlining?

Redlining is the categorization of residential areas of cities to separate racial and ethnic groups by labeling those areas as hazardous.

What is steering?

Steering is when realtors show houses to people based on race.

What are subprime mortgages?

• banks gave loans even when they were risky

• charged specific racial groups more for their loans

What is the dissimilarity index?

• the percentage of people who would have to move in order for a neighborhood to be integrated.

What is commodification?

To commodity is to turn something into a product for exchange

• real estate is a unique commodity because it creates contradictions and conflicts

What is financialization?

• Increases in wealth come from collecting and managing money

• Debris attribute this to the growth machine and real estate state

What has happened with mass incarceration in the US?

The US has more people in prison than any other nation in the world

• the US incarceration rate is at a higher rate than an other time in history

Even though crime has been decreasing, ___ has remained prominent

incarceration

What is the prison industrial complex?

• the vast network of prisons, jails, courts, and police officers is not designed to solely control crime

• a confluence of interests has led to the building of more prisons, the enactment of harsher laws, and the mass incarceration of poor people

The social construction of legality includes:

• the criminal justice system

• public perception of criminality

• the legal system

Explain the experiment to test the concept of “Social illegality”

• offer participants scenarios and ask whether

  • they assume the individual is undocumented

  • they would report that individual to the authorities

• test whether ethnicity, government benefit use, criminality, occupation, age, gender, and education predicts perceived illegality

• results

  • Latin Americans, Syrians, and Somalians are most likely to be suspected

  • Participants in an informal labor market, perpetrators of violent crime, government benefits use, and age influences perception

What are the four types of illegality and explain them

Full citizen: citizen by law and in the eyes of society

Hidden illegality: not a citizen by law, but seen as a citizen by society

Social illegality: citizen by laws, but not seen as a citizen by society

full illegality: not a citizen by law or by society

White racial group is the most incarcerated?

Black men followed by Hispanic men then White men

What can felons be legally excluded from?

• employment

• housing

• voting

• public benefits

• jury service

Opposing criminals is a successful political strategy? (T/F)

True

What is the 1984 Crime Control Act?

Established mandatory minimum sentences and eliminated federal parole

What is the anti-drug abuse act of 1986?

set a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence for offenses involving 100 grams of heroin, 500 grams of cocaine, or 5 grams of crack cocaine.

What is the anti-drug abuse act of 1988

Included a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of crack cocaine, with no evidence of intent to sell

How does the criminal justice system perpetuate racial inequality?

• racial profiling

• sentencing disparities

  • certain racial groups are more likely to receive mandatory minimum sentencing compared to whites

How does life expectancy at birth differ by race?

• Life expectancy is highest for Asians and Hispanics followed by Whites

• Life expectancy is lowest for American Indian/Alaska Native and Blacks

What is epigenetics?

Instead of genes dictating outcomes (determinism), social environments can “activate” genes (plasticity)

What are the social determinants of health?

• Education access and quality

• health care and quality

• neighborhood and built environment

• social and community context

• economic stability

Pregnancy-associated deaths by race/ethnicity

• 19% of all births were to Black non Hispanic women

• BUT 37% of all pregnancy-associated deaths were to Black non-Hispanic women

What is the life course perspective?

• The Cumulative disadvantage perspective explains the increasing divergence between US Black and White health outcomes and focuses on how disadvantages accumulate over the life course

• The weathering hypothesis explains the increasing divergence between US Black and White health outcomes and focuses on how constant exposure to stress accelerates health decline for Black

What is the Hispanic paradox?

• Even though Hispanics have, on average, a lower socioeconomic status than White, they have comparable health outcomes

• Second-generation migrants have worse health outcomes than first-generation migrants

What is environmental racism?

Institutional policies and practices that differentially affect the health outcomes or living conditions of people and communities based on race or color

(poll) The separation of different groups of people into distinct neighborhoods is ____

residential segregation

(poll) Which best describes the concept of something? (i did not write it all down from class lol)

overlapping of interests for mass incarceration

(poll) which are related to genetics?

none, the rest have racial categories and there are not racial differences in genetics

From the Williams article, why is racial residential segregation a fundamental cause of health things than surface causes?

Because changing segregation would simultaneously change multiple downstream factors like income, educational and neighborhood change