Civil Rights, Public Opinion, and Political Action Vocabulary Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards generated from Chapters 5 and 6 textbook margins covering civil rights, constitutional amendments, key landmark Supreme Court cases, demographics, public opinion polling, and political participation.

civil rights

Policies designed to protect people against arbitrary or discriminatory treatment by government officials or individuals.

Fourteenth Amendment

The constitutional amendment adopted after the Civil War that declares, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

equal protection of the laws

Part of the Fourteenth Amendment emphasizing that the laws must provide equivalent "protection" to all people.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

The 1857 Supreme Court decision ruling that a slave who had escaped to a free state enjoyed no rights as a citizen and that Congress had no authority to ban slavery in the territories.

Thirteenth Amendment

The constitutional amendment ratified after the Civil War that forbade slavery and involuntary servitude.

Plessy v. Ferguson

An 1896 Supreme Court decision that provided a constitutional justification for segregation by ruling that a Louisiana law requiring "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races" was constitutional.

Brown v. Board of Education

The 1954 Supreme Court decision holding that school segregation is inherently unconstitutional because it violates the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. This case marked the end of legal segregation in the United States.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

The law making racial discrimination in public accommodations illegal. It forbade many forms of job discrimination. It also strengthened voting rights.

suffrage

The legal right to vote, extended to African Americans by the Fifteenth Amendment, to women by the Nineteenth Amendment, and to 18- to 20-year-olds by the Twenty-sixth Amendment.

Fifteenth Amendment

The constitutional amendment adopted in 1870 to extend suffrage to African Americans.

poll taxes

Small taxes levied on the right to vote. Poll taxes were used by most Southern states to exclude African Americans from voting.

white primary

Primary elections from which African Americans were excluded, an exclusion that, in the heavily Democratic South, deprived African Americans of a voice in the real contests. The Supreme Court declared white primaries unconstitutional in 1944.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

A law designed to help end formal and informal barriers to African American suffrage. Under the law, hundreds of thousands of African Americans registered to vote, and the number of African American elected officials increased dramatically.

Hernandez v. Texas

A 1954 Supreme Court decision that extended protection against discrimination to Latinos.

Korematsu v. United States

A 1944 Supreme Court decision that upheld as constitutional the internment of more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent in encampments during World War II. It was overturned by the Court in 2018.

Nineteenth Amendment

The constitutional amendment adopted in 1920 that guarantees women the right to vote.

Equal Rights Amendment

A constitutional amendment passed by Congress in 1972, stating that "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." The amendment failed to acquire the necessary support from three-fourths of the state legislatures.

Reed v. Reed

The landmark case in 1971 in which the Supreme Court for the first time upheld a claim of gender discrimination.

Craig v. Boren

The 1976 ruling in which the Supreme Court established the "intermediate scrutiny" standard for determining gender discrimination.

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

A law passed in 1990 that requires employers and public facilities to make "reasonable accommodations" for people with disabilities and prohibits discrimination against these individuals in employment.

affirmative action

A policy designed to give special attention to or compensatory treatment for members of some previously disadvantaged group.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

A 1978 Supreme Court decision holding that a state university may weigh race or ethnic background as one element in admissions but may not set aside places for members of particular racial groups.

public opinion

The distribution of the population's beliefs about politics and policy issues.

demography

The science of population changes.

Census

An "actual enumeration" of the population, which the Constitution requires that the government conduct every 10 years. The Census is a valuable tool for understanding demographic changes.

melting pot

A term often used to characterize the United States, with its history of immigration and mixing of cultures, ideas, and peoples.

minority majority

The situation, likely beginning in the mid-twenty-first century, in which non-Hispanic whites will represent a minority of the U.S. population and minority groups together will represent a majority.

political culture

An overall set of values widely shared within a society.

reapportionment

The process of reallocating seats in the House of Representatives every 10 years on the basis of the results of the Census.

political socialization

The process through which an individual acquires political attitudes, views, and knowledge from, among other sources, family, the media, and school.

sample

A relatively small proportion of people who are chosen in a survey so as to be representative of the whole.

random sampling

The key technique employed by survey researchers, which operates on the principle that everyone should have an equal probability of being selected for the sample.

sampling error

The level of confidence in the findings of a public opinion poll. The more people interviewed, the more confident one can be of the results.

random-digit dialing

A technique used by pollsters to place telephone calls randomly to both listed and unlisted numbers when conducting a survey.

exit poll

Public opinion surveys used by major media pollsters to predict electoral winners with speed and precision.

gender gap

The regular pattern in which women are more likely to support Democratic candidates, in part because they tend to be less conservative than men and more likely to support spending on social services and to oppose higher levels of military spending.

political participation

All the activities used by citizens to influence the selection of political leaders or the policies they pursue. The most common means of political participation in a democracy is voting; other means include contacting public officials, protest, and civil disobedience.

protest

A form of political participation designed to achieve policy change through dramatic and unconventional tactics.

civil disobedience

A form of political participation based on a conscious decision to break a law believed to be unjust and to suffer the consequences.