Exam 1: Systemic Racism-A Comprehensive Perspective

Inequality in life expectancy means that on average a black person secures significantly less:

According to Benjamin Franklin, a relatively liberal U.S. founder, the ideal of the virtuous American was grounded in whiteness.

Discuss how the elite framers reinforced and legitimated a system of racial oppression that they thought would ensure that whites, especially men of means, would rule for centuries.

In the first extended social science analysis of powerful whiteness, the pioneering book Darkwater (1920), the influential sociologist _________ noted that "the discovery of personal whiteness among the world's people is a very modern thing. … The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction … we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful!"

Reinvigorated biological racism developed by leading Western intellectuals in the late ________ was spread by newspapers, pamphlets, and pulpits of the day to the general population.

Researcher Richard Reeves recently reported that ___ percent of black children born to families with incomes below the middle of the U.S. income range will, as adults, likely have incomes substantially lower than their parents.

The white racial frame includes:

James Madison enslaved many black Americans.

Historically, there has been a trans-racial world of workers in which all U.S. workers hold a strong and common class identity and loyalty across the racial line.

Describe examples of biracial coalitions of workers that was of serious concern to elite white leaders.

To what was W.E.B. Du Bois specifically referring when he wrote: white laborers' "vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them"?

In a pathbreaking book, _________ argued that the anti-lynching crusade of her/his era, in which s/he was a leader, will determine "whether the precepts and theories of Christianity are professed and practiced by American white people as Golden Rules of thought and action, or adopted as a system of morals to be preached to heathen until they attain to the intelligence which needs the system of Lynch Law."

Black labor was extensively and unjustly used for building up the wealth and prosperity of whites from the 1600s to at least the 1960s (i.e., the slavery and Jim Crow segregation periods).

In the Preamble to the United States Constitution, the white founders cite prominently "We the People," but this phrase does not encompass the one-fifth of the population then enslaved or the large Indigenous population.

Illustrate what Joe Feagin and Kimberley Ducey mean when they write: "Systemic racism is about more than the construction of racial definitions, attitudes, and identities. It is centrally about the creation, development, and maintenance of white privilege, economic wealth, and sociopolitical power over centuries. It is about hierarchical interaction and dominance."

Discuss how undeserved impoverishment and enrichment get transmitted and institutionalized over many generations.

Recent national opinion surveys find that three-quarters of whites oppose affirmative action in college admissions when such admissions directly consider racial backgrounds to promote campus diversity. Using systemic racism theory, explain why such reasoning is in contradiction to genuine democracy and liberty.

Describe conservative white political officials' questioning of reparative and affirmative action. Using systemic racism theory, explain why such questioning is flawed.

Abraham Lincoln, often called the "Great Emancipator," was willing to support a constitutional amendment making slavery permanent in the existing southern states if it would prevent a civil war.

White families' median wealth is about ____ times that of black families, and ___ times that of Latino families.