American Democracy Now Chapter 5

Civil Rights

the rights and privileges guaranteed to all citizens under the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments; the idea that individuals are protected from discrimination based on characteristics such as ace, national origin, religion, and sex.

Inherent characteristics

Individuals attributes such as race, national origin, religion, and gender.

Suspect classifications

Distinctions based on race, religion, and national origin, which are assumed to be illegitimate.

Strict Scrutiny test

The guidelines the courts use to determine the legality of suspect classification-based discrimination; on the basis of this test, discrimination is legal if is a necessary means by which the government can achieve a compelling public interest.

Heightened scrutiny test (intermediate scrutiny test)

The guidelines used most frequently by the courts to determine the legality of sex-based discrimination; on the basis of this test, sex-based discrimination is legal if the government can prove that it is substantially related to the achievement of an important public interest.

Ordinary scrutiny test (rational basis test)

On the basis of this test, discrimination is legal if it a reasonable means by which the government can achieve a legitimate public interest.

Civil disobedience

Active, but nonviolent, refusal to comply with laws or governmental policies that are morally objectionable.

Standing to sue

The legal right to bring lawsuits in court.

Reconstruction era

The time after the Civil War between 1866 and 1877 when the institutions and infrastructure of the South were rebuilt.

Black Codes

Laws passed immediately after the civil war by the confederate states that limited the rights of "freemen" (People formerly enslaved).

Jim Crow Laws

Laws requiring strict separation of racial groups, with whites and "nonwhites" required to attend separate schools, work in different jobs, and use segregated public accommodations, such as transportation and restaurants.

De jure segregation

Segregation mandated by law.

White primary

A primary election in which a party's nominees for general election were chosen but in which only white people were allowed to vote.

Literacy test

A test to determine eligibility to vote; designed so that few African Americans would pass.

Poll tax

A fee for voting; levied to prevent poor African Americans in the South from voting.

Grandfather clause

A clause exempting individuals from voting conditions such as poll taxes or literacy tests if they or their ancestors had voted before 1870, thus sparing most white voters.

Plessy v. Ferguson

1896 Supreme Court ruling creating the separate but equal doctrine

Equal protection clause

The Fourteenth Amendment clause stating that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"

Separate but equal doctrine

Established by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson, it is said that separate but equal facilities for whites and nonwhites do not violate the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

The 1954 Supreme Court decision that ruled that segregated schools violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment

Steering

The practice by which realtors steered African American families to certain neighborhoods and white families to others.

De facto segregation

Segregation caused by the fact that people tend to live in neighborhoods with others of their own race, religion, or ethnic group.

Intersectionality

The experience of multiple forms of oppression (based on race, gender, class, and/or sexuality) simultaneously.

Hate crime

A crime committed against a person, property, or society, where the offender is motivated, in part or in whole, by his or her bias against the victim because of the victim's race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.

Affirmative action

In the employment arena, international efforts to recruit, hire, train, and promote underutilized categories of workers (women and minority men); in higher education, intentional efforts to diversify the student body.