poli 316 midterm 2

🧩 SECTION 1 – CORE CONCEPTS

🧩 SECTION 1 – CORE CONCEPTS

Q: What is meant by the idea of Black criminality?

A: The belief, historically constructed through media, policy, and “scientific” crime stats, that Blackness itself signifies criminality and danger.

Q: What is implicit bias?

A: Unconscious automatic associations—e.g. linking Blackness with threat or guilt—that influence judgment under stress, speed, or ambiguity.

Q: Define colorblind racism.

A: A liberal ideology denying structural racism by framing race as individual prejudice rather than systemic inequality.

Q: Define predation (Criminal Justice Predation).

A: Exploiting marginalized groups’ vulnerabilities through systems of extraction—fines, fees, labor—under racial capitalism and predatory inclusion.

Q: Define predatory inclusion.

A: Keeping groups inside exploitative systems instead of excluding them, to extract resources or labor (e.g. prison labor, debt).

Q: Define data suppression.

A: Withholding or manipulating information to hide state or institutional violence, preventing accountability.

Q: Define accountability in policing.

A: Mechanisms—legal, institutional, cultural—that ensure officers and departments are answerable for misconduct.

Q: Define the politics of emotion.

A: How emotional expression shapes legitimacy, participation, and hierarchy in democracy

Q: Define Black rage.

A: Collective moral anger arising from enduring injustice and white indifference

Q: Define white grievance.

A: Emotion of perceived loss or victimhood among whites, used politically to justify backlash and maintain hierarchy.

⚖️ SECTION 2 – THE NEW JIM CROW (Wk 7)

⚖ SECTION 2 – THE NEW JIM CROW (Wk 7)

Q: What is the “13th Amendment loophole”?

A: It bans slavery except as punishment for crime—used to justify convict leasing and forced prison labor.

Q: According to Khalil Gibran Muhammad, how did crime statistics reinforce racial hierarchy?

A: White crime explained socially

Q: What was the War on Drugs?

A: Reagan-era campaign criminalizing drug use, especially in Black communities, causing mass incarceration.

Q: What are three strikes laws?

A: Third felony → 20 years–life

Q: What did the 1994 Crime Bill do?

A: Funded police/prisons, expanded death penalty, ended parole and prison education grants.

Q: What is meant by colorblind racism in the New Jim Crow context?

A: Policies framed as neutral but producing racialized outcomes—mass incarceration as “crime control,” not race control.

🚓 SECTION 3 – POLICE VIOLENCE (Wk 9)

🚓 SECTION 3 – POLICE VIOLENCE (Wk 9)

Q: What proportion of police killings go unrecorded or unprosecuted?

A: Large majority—data fragmented, departments uncooperative

Q: What did Dr. Owens’ study reveal about deadly-force data?

A: Incomplete reporting by 208 of 302 departments

Q: What are the main obstacles to accountability?

A: Institutional (internal investigations), legal (qualified immunity), political (union power), cultural (“blue wall of silence”).

Q: What standard was set by Graham v. Connor (1989)?

A: “Objective reasonableness”—judges force from perspective of a reasonable officer

Q: What change did Barnes v. Felix (2025) introduce?

A: Courts must consider the totality of circumstances, not just the final moment before force.

Q: What is qualified immunity?

A: Legal doctrine protecting officers unless a “clearly established” right was violated.

Q: What does data suppression look like in police violence cases?

A: Withheld footage, missing reports, or refusal to share data that obscures racialized patterns of force.

💰 SECTION 4 – LEGAL PLUNDER / PREDATION (Wk 10)

💰 SECTION 4 – LEGAL PLUNDER / PREDATION (Wk 10)

Q: What are the three main causes of Criminal Justice Predation?

A: Fiscal retrenchment (budget cuts), law-and-order politics, neoliberal public-private partnerships.

Q: What are extractive operations?

A: Mechanisms to draw profit from the punished—fines, fees, asset forfeiture, prison labor.

Q: What is asset forfeiture?

A: Seizure of property suspected in crime, often without conviction

Q: How does bail predation work?

A: Bail bond companies charge non-refundable premiums

Q: Define indentured citizenship.

A: A degraded civic status marked by debt, surveillance, and conditional freedoms resulting from criminal-justice extraction.

Q: What role does neoliberalism play in predation?

A: It markets punishment as efficiency

😡 SECTION 5 – BLACK RAGE / WHITE GRIEVANCE (Wk 11)

😡 SECTION 5 – BLACK RAGE / WHITE GRIEVANCE (Wk 11)

Q: What are “feeling rules”?

A: Social norms dictating which emotions are appropriate in political life.

Q: How can anger be productive?

A: It creates moral clarity, solidarity, and drives collective action against injustice.

Q: What are moral shocks and moral batteries?

A: Shocks = triggering events

Q: How is white anger treated differently from Black anger?

A: White anger is legitimized as civic concern

Q: How does white grievance maintain racial hierarchy?

A: By reframing loss of privilege as injustice, recenters white emotion as politically valid.

🧾 SECTION 6 – CONCEPT ↔ TOPIC APPLICATION DRILLS

🧾 SECTION 6 – CONCEPT ↔ TOPIC APPLICATION DRILLS

Q: How does Predation appear in The New Jim Crow?

A: Mass incarceration extracts labor and money from Black communities

Q: How does Predation appear in Legal Plunder?

A: Through fines, fees, bail, and prison work as revenue streams under austerity.

Q: How does Data Suppression appear in Police Violence?

A: Police and states withhold data on shootings, blocking transparency and reform.

Q: How does Data Suppression appear in The New Jim Crow?

A: Racialized incarceration statistics under-reported

⚡ SECTION 7 – QUICK RECALL LIST (“Say-it-aloud” before bed)

⚡ SECTION 7 – QUICK RECALL LIST (“Say-it-aloud” before bed)

Black Criminality

→ historical myth linking race + crime

Implicit Bias

→ automatic associations

Colorblind Racism

→ denies structure

Predation

→ extraction through punishment

Data Suppression

→ hidden violence

Accountability

→ oversight gap

Politics of Emotion

→ who’s allowed to feel

Black Rage

→ legitimate moral anger

White Grievance

→ resentful victimhood