Exam 1: Systemic Racism-A Comprehensive Perspective

Many conservative and center delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention were anti-democratic in their thinking, fearing "the masses."

Explain why whiteness itself is a major social resource.

Mainstream social scientists have often examined the paired ideas of racial prejudice and discrimination. Explain why making heavy use of concepts such as prejudice, stereotyping, bias, and bigotry are skewed in practice toward an individualistic, cognitive, and/or non-systemic interpretation of racial issues.

Describe the elite-white-male dominance system.

Discuss the following: "Enslaved blacks were to be counted as human beings only when it suited whites to do so. Otherwise, they were just white property."

In recent decades, African Americans have undergone markedly more upward mobility.

White men in the U.S. (approximately 31 percent of the adult population) make-up:

How is the whole societal system of racial inequality reproduced?

Explain how the "founders" built a racially based republic in the face of monarchial opposition and against those on the North American continent that they defined as inferior.

Recent government reports signal the cumulative cost of several centuries of white racial oppression, including:

Various contemporary U.S. analysts argue that it is unfair to judge early white enslavers by contemporary standards. Take the opposing side and explain why these contemporary U.S. analysts are mistaken.

A projected pro-slavery amendment was supported by many Republicans in the U.S. Congress in 1861, but opposed by President Abraham Lincoln.

Who among the delegates refused to sign the Constitution document, in part because of its slavery provisions.

For systemic racism to persist across many human generations, it must reproduce well and routinely the necessary socioeconomic conditions. These conditions include:

Into the mid-nineteenth century, most whites participated directly in slavery or the economic trade around slavery, or did not object to those who did so.

The left wing of the white male elite at the 1787 Constitutional Convention successfully added a specific list of individual rights to the Constitution.

Like the earlier Articles of Confederation, the new Constitution used the term "white" in setting the formula for enumerating the country's population.

Historically, there has been a trans-racial world of gender where all women hold a strong common identity and loyalty across the color line.

Ten presidents, from George Washington to Ulysses S. Grant, at some point held African Americans in bondage.

Michael Omi and Howard Winant have shown with much evidence that "race" cannot be reduced to class or ethnicity, but remains an "autonomous field of social conflict, political organization and cultural/ideological meaning."