Race, Public Opinion, and Policy Shifts in America

Civil War

Event that led Black Americans to support the Republican party en masse in the 1800s.

Reconstruction

Period when the Republican Party pushed for the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.

The Great Depression

Event that began to shift blacks' support from the Republican party to the Democratic party.

Election of 1932

FDR wins, building a broad coalition of voters including labor unions, White ethnics, and African Americans.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Legislation that outlaws discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, creed, or national origin.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Created method of enforcement for the 15th amendment, requiring states with a history of voting discrimination to get new voting laws cleared through the Department of Justice.

Public Opinion

The various attitudes or views large communities of people hold about politics and the actions of government.

Political Socialization

The process through which people learn their beliefs, values, and behaviors about politics that shape public opinion.

Political Ideology

Attitudes and beliefs that help shape our opinions on political theory and policy.

Primacy Principle

What is learned first tends to leave a strong and lasting impression that remains with a person throughout life.

Linked Fate

Notion that what happens to one member of the group impacts all members of the group.

Racial Threat Hypothesis

The larger a population of a minoritized group, the more the majority group aims to exert social control through social, political, and economic means.

Collective Racial Memory

Historical events not only shape the political views of an immediate generation but prompt the political interpretations of succeeding generations guided by these events.

Southern Strategy

Political strategy to use racial symbols and coded language to draw support from prejudiced white Southern voters.

Nixon's Campaign

Ran on 'states rights' and 'law and order' in 1968, contributing to regional realignment in the South.

Philadelphia, Mississippi

Location where 3 civil rights workers were murdered in '64, notorious for racial imagery.

Welfare Queen Stereotype

Notorious imagery of a woman with a large house and a Cadillac using multiple names to collect over $150k in tax-free income.

David Duke

KKK member that ran for Congress.

Clinton's Legislation

Offered legislation to get tough on crime and reform welfare, including a 1994 crime bill based partly on the narrative of superpredator.

Examples of Southern Strategy

Supporting legislation to disenfranchise African Americans such as racial segregation, poll taxes, and literacy tests.

Linda Taylor

Emerged with the case of Linda Taylor.

Welfare Queen

Displayed racial imagery such as the 'welfare queen' with a large house and a Cadillac using multiple names to collect over $150k in tax-free income.

Dependency Problem

Reinforced the stereotype of immigrants and POC having a 'dependency' problem on social welfare programs.

Racial Covenants

Instructions written into home deeds preventing the home be sold to African Americans, Jews, Mexicans, and other minorities.

Racial Steering

When realtors or mortgage companies steer certain families to live in certain neighborhoods that are all black or all white.

Blockbusting

Practice where a Black family moves into a neighborhood, effectively realtors encourage them to sell their homes at a low price.

Redlining

Illegal discriminatory practice in which a mortgage lender denies home loans to members who live in a certain community, often because of the racial characteristics of that community.

Government's Role in Redlining

The Federal Housing Administration began using these redlined maps to decide who to give home loans to.

FHA Home Loan Program

Allowed millions of poor whites the opportunity to get a home for an affordable price.

GI Bill

The VA introduced a home-loan guarantee program that allowed veterans to make a cheap down payment for a house.

Sundown Towns

Predominantly white municipalities in the United States that actively practiced racial segregation by excluding non-whites through local laws, intimidation, or violence.

Environmental Racism

Native reservations are continually used for nuclear waste sites, leading to Natives being more likely to live in areas with hazardous waste sites.

Low Opportunity

Characterized by poorer education, higher poverty rates, lower life expectancy, high rates of suicide, and domestic violence.

Food Deserts

Low-income geographic area where a significant number of people have little or no access to nutritious and affordable food products, such as fresh fruits and vegetables.

Health Impacts of Food Deserts

Obesity, high blood pressure, childhood hunger, and poor diets.

Flint Water Crisis

The city of Flint decided to get their water from the Flint River instead of Detroit, leading to complaints about drinking water and an outbreak of legionnaires disease.

Legionnaires Disease

More than 100 cases reported in Flint, with 10 cases resulting in death.

Lead Poisoning

Nearly 10 thousand children had been lead poisoned, which can cause issues with motor skills, speech, memory, learning disabilities, issues with fertility, low sperm count, and extreme death.

Impact of Environmental Racism on Indigenous Communities

Environmental racism disproportionately affects indigenous communities, leading to health and environmental disparities.

Environmental Racism

Higher rates of asthma, lead poisoning, reproductive disorders, pediatric cancer, and lung cancer are health impacts.

Redlining

Overall capital deprivation from these communities has led them to have a lack of infrastructure and subsequently more vulnerable to environmental hazards.

Urban Heat Island Effect

A phenomenon where urban areas become significantly warmer than their rural surroundings due to human activities.

Food Deserts

The racial distribution of neighborhoods influenced the spatial distribution of food availability and shaped food landscapes in America today.

Climate Change Impact of Redlining

A 2020 study found that historically redlined neighborhoods are nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer compared to non-redlined neighborhoods.

Affirmative Action

Policy of admission aimed to increase representation of women and people of color in higher education.

Alvarez v. Lemon Grove (1931)

Court sided with parents, ruling that Mexicans were considered White under the state's Education Code.

Gaines v. Canada (1938)

Court ruled that states that don't have educational institutions for African Americans must admit Black students.

Sweatt v. Painter (1950)

Supreme Court ruled separate law schools did not meet the 'equal standard' established in Plessy v. Ferguson.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

Racial segregation of students in public education violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

White Flight

The phenomenon where white residents move away from neighborhoods as racial minorities move in.

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971)

Led to court-ordered desegregation of schools through busing.

Forced Busing

A policy used in the United States, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, where students were transported by bus to schools outside their local neighborhoods to desegregate public schools.

Segregation Academies

Private schools established by white families—primarily in the American South—to avoid racial integration after public schools were ordered to desegregate following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Affirmative Action Programs

Programs designed to improve opportunities for historically marginalized groups, primarily benefiting white women.

Legacy Admissions

Admissions policies that favor wealthy, white students, originally created to limit the number of Jewish students in elite institutions.

University of California v. Bakke

A Supreme Court decision where Allan Bakke sued UC Davis medical school after being rejected; ruled that quota systems are unconstitutional but race can be considered as one factor in admissions.

Critical Theory

Examines power structures and institutions, focusing on how they create and perpetuate inequality.

Focus of Critical Theory

Examines the relationship between race, racism, and institutional power, arguing that racism is built into U.S. laws and institutions.

Core Tenets of Critical Race Theory

Includes concepts like Interest Convergence, Intersectionality, and critiques of colorblindness.

Interest Convergence

The idea that advancements in race relations occur not out of altruism but because they serve the interests of the dominant white ruling class.

Examples of Interest Convergence

Emancipation Proclamation and the Death Penalty.

Intersectionality

The concept that individuals can have multiple marginalized identities, such as race, gender, and LGBTQ status, and can possess both privileged and marginalized identities.

Race as a Social Construct

The notion that race is not a biological reality but a concept created by those in power for specific purposes.

Racism as Structural

The idea that racism is embedded in every facet of American life and is not an aberration.

Critique of Colorblindness

The argument that colorblind laws do not address the disproportionate impact on minoritized groups and fail to remedy the wrongs of racism.

Grandfather Clauses

Legal provisions that exempt certain individuals from new regulations based on their status before the law was enacted.

Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986

Legislation that is often critiqued for its disproportionate impact on marginalized communities.

Vagrancy Laws

Laws that have historically targeted marginalized groups and contributed to systemic inequality.

Critical Legal Studies

A field that examines how the law creates and reinforces systematic inequality and supports the interests of those who create the law.

Black-White Binary

A framework that simplifies racial dynamics into two opposing categories, often overlooking the complexities of race.

Racial history

Presented as a linear story between White and Black Americans.

Primary racial groups

Society views Black and White people as the two primary racial groups.

Anti-blackness

All racism experienced by other groups is compared to anti-blackness and the Black-White relations as central to racial analysis.

Common misconceptions about critical race theory

Includes beliefs such as 'White people are inherently evil because they are White' and 'CRT teaches an individual is inherently racist or oppressive because of their own race.'

Systemic racism

According to the core tenets of critical race theory, racism is systemic.

Critique of colorblindness

Critical race theory critiques colorblindness by stating that although the law is written in a color-blind way, there is a disproportionate impact that minoritized groups face.

Grandfather Clauses

Laws that exempt certain groups from new regulations, often used to disenfranchise Black voters.

Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986

Institutionalized sentencing disparities between crack versus powder cocaine.

Vagrancy Laws

Laws that criminalize loitering and other behaviors to control the movement of marginalized groups.

Mass Incarceration

A term used to describe the significant increase in the number of incarcerated individuals in the U.S., particularly affecting Black Americans.

First form of policing in America

18th century: slave patrols emerge to search, apprehend, and return runaway slaves.

Black Codes

Laws created to continue disenfranchising former slaves from their newly secured freedom.

Rockefeller Drug Laws

Instituted a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years for possessing 2 ounces or more of a Schedule I or II drug in New York.

1994 Crime Bill

Eliminated the ability of lower-income prison inmates to receive college educations during their term of imprisonment.

Truth in Sentencing Provision

Mandates offenders must serve a majority of their sentence in jail to prevent early release.

Three Strikes Law

Decrees third-time felony offenders can be subject to higher minimum sentences even if their previous offenses were nonviolent.

Broken windows policing

A strategy that focuses on preventing low-level crime and disorder to discourage more serious crimes.

Stop and Frisk

A policing strategy disproportionately impacting Black and Latino New Yorkers, with 81% of quality of life citations issued to these groups from 2001-2013.

Core tenets of defunding the police

Argues that police are asked to do too much and that budgets are exorbitant, advocating for reallocating funds to social services.

Police abolition

The idea that policing is fundamentally rooted in systems of oppression and should be replaced by systems built to support citizens.