Defining Race: Courts, Culture and Politics

A set of 20 vocabulary flashcards reviewing key legal precedents, constitutional amendments, and concepts regarding the definition of race in the United States.

Optical and Geographical Test

The two-part test historically used to define whiteness in the United States, based on phenotype (optical) and European descent (geographical).

1868 14th Amendment

A constitutional amendment establishing citizenship for Black Americans.

1882 Chinese Exclusion Act

Federal law prohibiting Chinese immigration, which was later repealed in 1943.

1924 Indian Citizenship Act

Legislation that granted U.S. citizenship to Native Americans.

1952 Immigration and Nationality Act

Legislation prohibiting racial and gender discrimination in naturalization.

1790 Naturalization Act

Law granting citizenship rights to all free white persons migrating to the U.S. and their children, while excluding all other persons.

Scientific Racialism

A late 1800s ideology combining racism and science based on group classification, hierarchical ordering, linking physical traits to intellect and morality, inherited qualities, and fixed racial differences.

"White Others"

European immigrant groups such as Irish, Italians, and Jews who were initially equated with "savages" before being incorporated into the broader definition of white.

1857 Dredd Scott Case

Supreme Court case ruling that a Black person whose ancestors were sold as slaves was not a citizen and had no standing to sue in federal court.

1865 13th Amendment

Constitutional amendment that abolished slavery in the United States.

1878 In Re Ah Yup

Legal ruling establishing that Chinese individuals were not white and thus ineligible for naturalized citizenship.

1896 Plessy versus Ferguson

Supreme Court ruling upholding racial segregation and establishing the "separate but equal" doctrine after Homer Plessy was arrested in a whites-only train car.

1924 Johnson Act

Immigration law designed to preserve American homogeneity by banning Arab and Asian immigration and limiting European immigration to a 2% quota.

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

Legislation that reformed the national immigration quota system while maintaining overall quota limits.

Civil Rights Act 1964

Law that banned public segregation, outlawed employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, and operationalized the 15th Amendment.

Voting Act of 1965

Federal legislation passed to protect the rights guaranteed under the 14th and 15th Amendments.

Anti-Miscegenation Laws

Laws forbidding sex and cohabitation between white and Black people, aimed at maintaining white purity and hegemony.

Pace vs. Alabama 1883

Supreme Court case upholding anti-miscegenation laws, resulting in a penalty of 2 years of jail.

Loving vs. Virginia 1967

Supreme Court case won by Mildred and Richard Loving, overturning anti-miscegenation laws after they were arrested and given a suspended sentence requiring 25 years outside Virginia.

Practical and Ideological Meaning of Color

Concepts defining race, where practical meaning relates to civic duties required of citizens, and ideological meaning reflects who "The People" ought to be.