Sociology of Race & Ethnicity: Criminal Justice, Education, Affirmative Action, and Immigration

Vocabulary practice cards focusing on key legal cases, sociological theories, historical legislation, and concepts from the study guide on race, the criminal justice system, education, affirmative action, and immigration.

Lynch Mobs

Groups that carried out extrajudicial killings and used racial terror as an early form of racialized social control.

Prison Labor Camps

Incarceration facilities developed as an early form of racialized social control to extract compelled labor from convicts.

Vagrancy Laws

Post-Civil War legal statutes that criminalized poverty, joblessness, and unemployment to maintain social and labor control over Black populations.

Convict Leasing

A post-slavery system that rented out incarcerated individuals to private corporations and employers for profit.

Strategic Racism

The calculated use of racial fears, resentment, and coded appeals to acquire wealth, political power, or status, regardless of personal racial prejudice.

White Flight

The demographic trend in which White residents relocated away from urban neighborhoods and public schools in response to racial integration.

The Prison Boom (Sentencing Factors)

Harsher criminal sentencing measures—including mandatory minimums, three-strikes legislation, extended sentences, and parole curbs—which accounted for $88\%$ of the U.S. incarceration growth between 1980 and 1996.

Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986

Federal legislation establishing a $100:1$ sentencing disparity ratio by weight between powder and crack cocaine mandatory minimum trigger levels.

Racial Profiling

The discriminatory law enforcement practice of treating a person's perceived racial or ethnic identity as reasonable grounds for criminal suspicion.

Terry v. Ohio (1968)

A Supreme Court decision establishing that an investigative police stop requires reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, and a protective pat-down frisk requires reasonable suspicion that the individual is armed and dangerous.

Batson v. Kentucky (1986)

A Supreme Court precedent ruling that peremptory challenges based exclusively on race violate equal protection, requiring prosecutors to offer credible, race-neutral justifications upon a prima facie showing of discrimination.

Hernandez v. Texas (1954)

A landmark Supreme Court decision extending Fourteenth Amendment equal-protection protections against systemic jury exclusion to Mexican Americans, regardless of their legal classification as White.

Quillian & Pager (2001) Study

An observational study demonstrating that survey respondents perceived higher rates of crime in neighborhoods with larger proportions of young Black men, even when actual crime rates were identical.

Hetey & Eberhardt (2014) Study

Experimental research demonstrating that exposing participants to higher proportions of Black prison mugshots significantly decreased their support for criminal sentencing and policing reforms.

The New Jim Crow (Alexander 2010)

The structural argument that mass incarceration functions as a modern racial caste system by branding Black individuals with criminal convictions and legally disenfranchising them from voting, employment, housing, and public assistance under colorblind laws.

American Indian Boarding Schools

A federally supported boarding school network operating from the 1860s designed to effectuate cultural genocide and forced assimilation by forcibly separating Native American children from families and stamping out indigenous languages and spiritual practices.

Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975

Federal legislation granting Native American tribes direct administrative authority and self-governance over federally funded education, community, and social welfare programs.

Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA)

Federal law established to preserve Native American families and tribal integrity by preventing the unwarranted separation and placement of Native children into non-Native foster or adoptive homes.

Atlanta Compromise

Booker T. Washington's 1895 stance proposing that African Americans accept social segregation and emphasize vocational education and due process in exchange for basic economic security, while characterizing Reconstruction as an error.

The Talented Tenth

W.E.B. Du Bois's initial educational doctrine advocating that top African American leaders receive elite classical and liberal higher education to uplift the community, an elite approach he subsequently repudiated in favor of grassroots collective action.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

The Supreme Court decision legalizing state-mandated racial segregation under the constitutional doctrine of 'separate but equal.'

Murray v. Pearson (1936)

A legal ruling barring racial discrimination in higher education by compelling the University of Maryland Law School to admit qualified Black applicants.

Sweatt v. Painter (1950)

A Supreme Court ruling finding that a hastily created, separate Black legal institution in Texas could not provide an education equal to the University of Texas Law School.

Mendez v. Westminster (1946)

A federal district court decision declaring the segregated schooling of Mexican American children in California unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

The landmark Supreme Court ruling that overturned Plessy in public schooling, declaring segregated facilities inherently unequal based partly on social-science doll experiments demonstrating psychological injury to Black children.

Citizens' Councils

Associated networks of White segregationists that coordinated regional resistance to school integration through economic retaliation, political pressure, and school shutdowns.

Hyper-Segregated Schools

Educational institutions where $90\%$ or more of the student body belongs to a single racial or ethnic group.

Racial Achievement Gap

Persistent statistical disparities in standardized test scores, grades, and graduation rates between distinct racial cohorts that stem from structural inequalities rather than intrinsic academic capability.

Cultural Capital

The cultural background, communication skills, styles, and institutional knowledge privileged and rewarded within academic institutions.

Social Capital

The collective network of interpersonal relationships, professional contacts, and social ties that provide access to educational and economic opportunities.

Hidden Curriculum

The unspoken norms, behavioral codes, cultural values, and procedural expectations that schools socialize students into without explicit instruction.

Oppositional Culture Theory

A contested thesis claiming that minority students develop an oppositional stance toward scholastic success out of fear of peer censure for 'acting White.'

Code-Switching

The practice of alternating between differing speech dialects, cultural vocabularies, or styles to navigate academic requirements while retaining indigenous or peer cultural identities.

Attitude-Achievement Paradox

The empirical pattern wherein minority students display exceptionally favorable attitudes and dedication toward schooling while experiencing lower aggregate standardized academic metrics.

Model Minority Myth

A stereotype explaining the aggregate success of Asian Americans through universal cultural norms, which erases wide socioeconomic and educational disparities among Asian ethnicities and conceals systemic discrimination.

Fallacy of Undifferentiating Difference

The flawed analytical assumption that all racial minority groups should exhibit identical academic and financial outcomes, ignoring divergent histories, immigration conditions, class backgrounds, and forms of racialization.

Affirmative Action

Proactive institutional policies and race-conscious admissions procedures designed to promote equal opportunity and enrollment access for historically marginalized demographics.

Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023)

The Supreme Court decision declaring race-conscious admissions systems at Harvard and UNC unconstitutional under Title VI and the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978)

A Supreme Court ruling prohibiting rigid racial quotas in admissions while allowing the individualized, non-formulaic consideration of race as a 'plus' factor to achieve educational diversity.

Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)

A Supreme Court precedent upholding holistic, narrowly tailored race-conscious admissions programs intended to secure the educational benefits derived from a diverse student body.

Asian Penalty Myth

The unsubstantiated claim that race-conscious university admissions policies function directly to penalize or depress Asian American admission rates in favor of other applicants of color.

Myth of Unqualified Students

The erroneous stereotype presuming that admitted minority students who benefit from affirmative action policies lack the academic qualifications necessary to succeed.

Nativism

A political and social ideology favoring the interests of established, native-born inhabitants over those of incoming immigrants.

Institutional Nativism

The systemic codification of anti-immigrant preferences and restrictions within federal laws, bureaucratic policies, and institutional procedures.

Naturalization Act of 1790

The foundational statutory framework restricting naturalized U.S. citizenship exclusively to 'free White persons' of good moral character after two years of domestic residence.

Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

Federal legislation halting the entry of Chinese laborers and explicitly barring Chinese immigrants from securing naturalized American citizenship.

Fong Yue Ting v. United States (1893)

A Supreme Court ruling establishing that immigrant deportation is an administrative civil process rather than a criminal trial, denying noncitizens Sixth Amendment criminal protections.

Asiatic Barred Zone

A vast geographic exclusion established by the Immigration Act of 1917 that barred immigration from South, Southeast, and East Asia, excluding Japan and the U.S.-held Philippines.

Emergency Quota Act of 1921

Immigration restriction legislation limiting yearly admissions of each nationality to $3\%$ of its foreign-born demographic count in the 1910 U.S. Census.

Johnson-Reed Act of 1924

Restrictive federal statute that established national-origins quotas at $2\%$ based on the 1890 Census to favor Western and Northern Europe and instituted a $150{,}000$ annual global cap starting in 1929.

Bracero Program (1942–1964)

A bilateral labor agreement between the United States and Mexico that brought millions of temporary Mexican farmworkers into the country under contract, often subjected to substandard conditions.

Operation Wetback (1954)

A mass federal military-style deportation drive that expelled over one million Mexican migrants alongside lawful permanent residents and U.S. citizens.

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

Comprehensive civil-rights-era legislation that eliminated the discriminatory national-origins quota system and established modern visa preference categories centered on family reunification, work skills, and humanitarian refugee relief.

Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA)

Federal reform that provided legal status to roughly $3\text{ million}$ unauthorized residents while establishing legal sanctions against employers who knowingly recruit undocumented workers.

Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA)

Federal legislation expanding mandatory detention and expedited removal, narrowing relief, and establishing 3-year and 10-year reentry bars for individuals with periods of unlawful presence.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)

A 2012 executive policy that provides eligible unauthorized immigrants brought to the U.S. as children with temporary protection from removal and renewable employment authorization without granting legal residency or citizenship.

Segmented Assimilation

A sociological framework positing that immigrant groups absorb into society along divergent trajectories: upward integration into the middle class, downward integration into poverty, or economic integration paired with ethnic preservation.

Shadow Docket

The Supreme Court's procedural mechanism for issuing immediate unsigned emergency rulings and orders without full merits briefing or oral argument.