Chapter 2: The Invention of Race

Colonialism

A policy or practice by which one country takes control of another and establishes enduring systems of exploitation and domination over that territory’s land, resources, and people.

Settler Colonialism

A type of colonialism that replaces Indigenous populations with an invasive settler society that, over time, develops a distinctive identity and sovereign.

Racial Capitalism

A system of global capitalism maintained by racism, colonialism, patriarchy, and nationalism.

White Supremacy

An ideology holding that people racialized as White are superior to all other human groups.

Racial slavery

A system in which individuals are enslaved based on their race or ethnicity, often justifying enslavement based on perceived racial inferiority. In this system, the enslaved group is considered property with no legal rights, white the enslavers benefit from their labor and exploit them socially, economically, and politically.

Slave Codes

A set of laws that regulated enslaved Black people and restricted their lives, in addition to denying them personhood and citizenship.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1986)

SCOTUS ruled that racial segregation is constitutional under the “separate but equal“ doctrine.

Eugenics

a set of theories and practices aimed at ensuring genetic purity though extreme measures such as forced sterilization of those considered racially inferior; term coined by Francis Galton in the nineteenth century.

Immigration

the process of entering and establishing residence in a place other than one’s country of origin

Manifest Destiny

the nineteenth-century belief that it was God’s will that the United States expand across the North American continent. This idea was used to justify the westward expansion of settlers, often at the expense of Native American lands and Mexico. It promoted the notion that American culture and democracy were superior and that it was the nation’s duty to spread these values, leading to significant displacement and violence against Indigenous peoples and other nonwhite groups.

Multiracial heritage

a heritage that includes two or more racial groups