Black Studies / Social Science Final Exam Flashcards

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering race, economics, education, prisons, and Black intellectual history for a Black Studies/Social Science final exam.

Racial capitalism

The development of capitalism through the exploitation of racialized groups and its continued reliance on racial inequality.

Racial Wealth Gap

The average difference in wealth between African Americans and white Americans caused by historical and ongoing policies such as slavery, Jim Crow, and redlining.

Redlining

A discriminatory housing and lending practice that labeled Black neighborhoods as risky investments to limit access to loans.

De jure segregation

Segregation that is written directly into law.

De facto segregation

Segregation that exists in practice even when not explicitly written into law.

Equity

Value built through ownership, particularly homeownership, that can be passed down as generational wealth.

School-to-prison pipeline

School policies and practices, such as zero-tolerance and police presence, that push marginalized students out of classrooms and toward the criminal justice system.

Exclusionary discipline

Disciplinary actions like suspensions and expulsions that remove students from learning environments and increase potential police contact.

Restorative Justice

A discipline model that repairs harm and rebuilds community by focusing on accountability, reintegration, and asking who was harmed and how to fix it.

Zero-Tolerance Discipline

A practice of using automatic punishment that often ignores context and removes students from the classroom or school.

Prison industrial complex

The overlapping interests of government, policing, prisons, courts, and private profit.

Angela Davis

A scholar and activist who argues for prison abolition, replacing the current system with justice rooted in equity, care, and transformation.

13th Amendment Exception Clause

A provision in the 13th Amendment that ended slavery except as punishment for a crime, which filmmaker Ava DuVernay argues connects slavery to incarceration.

Convict leasing

A system after the Civil War where incarcerated people, often Black men, were leased to private companies for brutal forced labor.

Yance Ford

Director of the documentary Power, which connects policing to social control, containment, racial hierarchy, property, and order.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

A document where Martin Luther King Jr. criticized white moderates for preferring order over justice.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Legislation that protected Black voting rights and significantly helped the U.S. move toward becoming a multiracial democracy.

Booker T. Washington

A leader who emphasized industrial education, economic self-help, and public accommodation as a strategy for gradual progress.

W.E.B. Du Bois

A leader who supported immediate civil rights, higher education, and the 'Talented Tenth' idea, while criticizing accommodationist strategies.

NAACP

An organization that challenged racial discrimination through legal, political, and public advocacy.

Harlem Renaissance

A flourishing of Black art, identity, literature, music, and intellectual life in Harlem, New York, during the early 20th century.

Great Migration

The movement of Black Americans from the South to northern and western cities, which shaped urban culture and politics.

Langston Hughes

A prominent Harlem Renaissance poet associated with the artistic expression of Black life, struggle, and joy.

Zora Neale Hurston

A writer and anthropologist who documented Black culture, language, and folklore with seriousness.

Barracoon

A work by Zora Neale Hurston about Cudjo Lewis (Oluale Kossola), one of the last survivors of the Clotilda.

Clotilda

The final known slave ship to bring kidnapped Africans to the United States.

Intersectionality

A framework coined by Kimberle Crenshaw to understand how overlapping identities like race, gender, and class create unique systems of discrimination and privilege.

Misogynoir

A term coined by Moya Bailey to describe the unique anti-Black sexism faced specifically by Black women.

Audre Lorde

A Black feminist theorist who argued that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" and viewed difference as a source of strength.

Horizontal hostility

Lateral violence that occurs when marginalized people direct anger at each other instead of at the systems of power.

Pan-Africanism

The belief that people of African descent globally are connected through slavery and colonialism and share common political interests.

Marcus Garvey

Leader of the UNIA associated with Black nationalism, racial pride, and global Black unity.

Frantz Fanon

A theorist who analyzed the psychological, political, and violent effects of colonial domination.

Patrice Lumumba

A Congolese independence leader associated with anti-colonial struggle and the politics of resource extraction.

Environmental racism

The disproportionate exposure of communities of color to pollution, toxic sites, and environmental harm.

AI and Environmental Racism

The phenomenon where data centers use large amounts of electricity and water while increasing pollution burdens in vulnerable communities.