Deck 2: Slavery Unwilling to Die- the Historical Development of Systemic Racism

Question 1

By _________, an all-white U.S. Supreme Court had redefined Indigenous societies as "domestic dependent nations."

A) 1600
B) 1631
C) 1700
D) 1831

Answer 1

D

Question 2

By _________, white government officials had the power to stop making treaties with Native Americans.

A) 1631
B) 1703
C) 1871
D) 1900

Answer 2

C

Question 3

As of _________, when the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, the U.S. government was among only four of the 192 countries to vote against these rights. (Later, under President Barack Obama, the government reversed this position.)

A) 1970
B) 1984
C) 1993
D) 2007

Answer 3

D

Question 4

The first Africans brought into the English colonies were bought by Jamestown colonists from a Dutch-flagged ship in _________.

A) 1433.
B) 1501.
C) 1619.
D) 1700.

Question 5

Laws firmly institutionalizing slavery were not put in place in the English colonies until the mid- _________ century.

A) fifteenth
B) sixteenth
C) seventeenth
D) eighteenth

Question 6

Between the 1600s and the 1820s, at least ____________ Africans were forcibly brought to the Americas, while in contrast ____________ European immigrants came during the same period.

A) 500,000; 200,000
B) one million; 400,000
C) five million; 1 million
D) eight million; 850,000

Question 7

The trade in enslaved Africans was begun by the ____________ and ____________ as they developed overseas empires.

A) Portuguese; Spanish
B) English; Spanish
C) Dutch; French
D) French; Portuguese
E) English; Germans

Question 8

Plantation owners demanded large numbers of workers, and the number of those enslaved grew rapidly, to several million by the 1860s. By the 1770s about ____ percent of the population in southern areas of the U.S. was African American.

A) 10
B) 20
C) 30
D) 40
E) 50

Question 9

In the decade preceding the Civil War, _________ of white families in southern and border states legally owned nearly _________ black Americans.

A) one-half; 850,000
B) one-third; 1 million
C) two-thirds; 2 million
D) one-quarter; four million

Question 10

New York City's famous Wall Street sold enslaved black Americans up until ________.

A) 1689
B) 1703
C) 1777
D) 1800
E) 1862

Question 11

It is estimated today that at least _________ of "black" Americans have at least one "white" ancestor.

A) one-half
B) one-third
C) two-thirds
D) one-quarter
E) three-quarters

Question 12

Please identify the FALSE statement.

A) From the early 1700s to the mid-1800s much surplus capital and wealth in North America came directly, or by means of economic multiplier effects, from the slave trade and plantations.
B) From the 1700s to the mid-1800s a large proportion of agricultural exports in world trade was produced by enslaved people of African descent.
C) Much wealth generated between the 1700s and the 1860s came from the forced migration of the slave trade.
D) Much wealth generated between the 1700s and the 1860s came from the violently coerced labor of enslaved men, women, and children on plantations.
E) Even without the often brutally whipped labor of enslaved black Americans, there would probably have been a successful textile industry in the U.S.

Question 13

George Washington, the first U.S. president, was one of the wealthiest Americans. He:

A) owned more than 36,000 acres of land.
B) held substantial securities in banks and land companies.
C) enslaved 216 black Americans in 1783.
D) viewed black men, women, and children primarily as economic investments, like farm animals whose purpose was to bring monetary profit.
E) All the above

Question 14

The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson:

A) was wealthy because he owned much land.
B) was wealthy because he enslaved hundreds of African Americans.
C) was sometimes critical of slavery, but rarely freed those he enslaved.
D) All the above

Question 15

The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson:

A) did little to end slavery when he held positions of political authority, such as the U.S. presidency.
B) fathered children with an enslaved woman, whom he kept enslaved.
C) chased down fugitive slaves, whom he had severely whipped.
D) All the above

Question 16

The ____________ removed the few remaining federal troops and eliminated much federal protection of black southerners, effectively ending the Reconstruction Era and welcoming Jim Crow.

A) Hayes Compromise of 1877
B) Tilden Compromise of 1877
C) Russell Compromise of 1877
D) Hobbes Compromise of 1877

Question 17

Between the Civil War and the present, perhaps as many as ____ lynchings of black men and women have been perpetrated in the southern states and in certain areas of the northern and border states.

A) 3000
B) 4000
C) 5000
D) 6000

Question 18

The first Jim Crow railroad cars were established in ____________.

A) Alabama.
B) Kentucky.
C) Massachusetts.
D) Mississippi
E) Tennessee

Question 19

In developing laws oppressing German Jews and other racially targeted groups, Nazi:

A) leaders in the 1930s and 1940s were partially influenced by U.S. segregation laws and other racialized U.S. laws, including those targeting African, Native, and Puerto Rican Americans.
B) lawyers visited the U.S. to study racially repressive U.S. laws.
C) leader Adolf Hitler studied U.S. whites' genocidal treatment of Native Americans.
D) leader Adolf Hitler studied U.S. whites' imposition of severe Jim Crow laws on Native Americans and African Americans.
E) All the above

Question 20

The brutal and exploitative practices of whites were common practice in European colonials across the globe.

Question 21

The brutal and exploitative practices of whites were aberrations or occasional. They were NOT common practice in European colonials across the globe.

Question 22

At no point in U.S. history did European colonists enslave Native Americans in attempts to find exploitable labor.

Question 23

Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson occasionally expressed admiration for Indian societies.

Question 24

By the mid-nineteenth century, all Indigenous societies had no political and cultural autonomy from white European settlers.

Question 25

Whites' racist framing of Indigenous societies often allowed Native Americans slight independence.

Question 26

By 1890, with most forced onto reservations, Native American numbers had decreased to about 250,000, sharply down from an estimated 15 million Indigenous people when Europeans first arrived.

Question 27

In the Spanish colonies in Mexico and South America, Indigenous Americans were usually a major source of labor.

Question 28

In the English colonies of North America, Indigenous Americans were usually a major source of labor.

Question 29

As early as the 1620s, Africans were treated differently from English colonists.

Question 30

As early as 1624, one court case made clear that a "negro" could testify in court only because he was a convert to Christianity.

Question 31

To the present day, many apologists for centuries of enslavement of African Americans have argued that one of the virtues of slavery was bringing Christianity to those enslaved.

Question 32

In the Northern states, there were significant numbers of enslaved and free African Americans.

Question 33

Larger plantation owners were early capitalists.

Question 34

By the 1720s more than one-fifth of New York City's population was black and mostly enslaved.

Question 35

New York City's famous Wall Street area was one of the first colonial markets where whites sold enslaved black Americans.

Question 36

From the 1700s to the mid-1800s, a large proportion of agricultural exports in world trade was produced by enslaved people of African descent.

Question 37

Much wealth generated between the 1700s and the 1860s came from the forced migration of the slave trade and the violently coerced labor of enslaved men, women, and children on plantations.

Question 38

Even without the cotton textile industry, which was the first major U.S. industry, the U.S. would have likely still become a major industrial power when it did.

Question 39

Because of slavery, the South was the most economically prosperous and politically powerful U.S. region from the mid-1700s to the 1850s.

Question 40

By 1783, George Washington's accounting showed he enslaved 216 black Americans.

Question 41

The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was sometimes critical of slavery.

Question 42

Without the wealth generated by enslaved black Americans, there might not have been an American Revolution and, thus, a United States in the late eighteenth century.

Question 43

For 50 of the first 64 years of the new U.S. nation the president was a white male slave-owner.

Question 44

Chief Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, for most of the period up to the Civil War, were slaveholders.

Question 45

The removal of federal soldiers from the streets and from statehouse offices in the South signaled the end of a commitment to protecting the civil and political rights of African Americans.

Question 46

By the 1880s and 1890s legal segregation was linked to the white elite's successful attempt to disenfranchise black voters and reassert the power of the whites-only Republican Party against inroads made during Reconstruction by a more diverse southern Democratic Party.

Question 47

By the early 1900s Jim Crow segregation was the rule throughout southern and border states, but NOT in parts of northern and western states.

Question 48

Some 3,513 lynchings of black men and 76 lynchings of black women were recorded for the years 1882 to 1927, but many more were not recorded.

Question 49

One contemporary researcher's data suggest that as many as 46 million white Americans are current descendants of the white homestead families and are likely inheritors of some wealth from this major wealth-generating government program.

Question 50

Into the 1930s, not only did the 11 southern states have Jim Crow laws, but all the border states did too.

Question 51

Into the late 1940s, numerous northern and western states had laws banning marriages between white and black Americans.

Question 52

During the 1933-45 period of the Nazism in Europe, approximately half of the Democratic Party's all-white male members in Congress represented Jim Crow states, and neither major party sought to curtail the race laws so admired by German lawyers and judges.

Question 53

New Deal housing programs increased residential segregation by restricting federally guaranteed home loans to homes in racially segregated areas.

Question 54

New Deal housing programs increased residential segregation by locating public housing so it would be segregated.

Question 55

During the 1930s Great Depression, unemployed whites frequently pushed black workers out of all jobs, EXCEPT menial jobs.

Question 56

White-run federal agencies were NOT discriminatory and or segregationist in many New Deal policies, including Social Security programs.

Question 57

Recalling Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, explain why the treatment of Indigenous peoples across the Caribbean and North and South America by white European colonists constitutes genocide.

Question 58

Explain why the infamous 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision confirms that leading whites viewed the situations of Native Americans and African Americans differently.

Question 59

The North American colonies developed two modes of production. Describe each.

Question 60

What distinguished slavery in the Americas from slavery in the ancient world of the Greeks and Romans?

Question 61

Describe how Christianity was/is dogmatic and Eurocentric in "ideology, organization, and practice."

Question 62

Describe colonial laws regarding slavery.

Question 63

The draft Declaration of Independence, prepared mostly by Thomas Jefferson, originally contained language accusing the British king of pursuing slavery and the slave trade. Why was this critique of slavery omitted from the final version of the Declaration of Independence?

Question 64

While a number of factors played an important role in the expansion of commercial capitalism in the Americas, slavery was one of the most consequential. Explain.

Question 65

In important respects the variant of capitalism developing in southern agricultural areas was different from the capitalism in northern urban areas. Explain.

Question 66

What was the position of white women in this system?

Question 67

Among some social scientists there is debate as to whether the slavery system was capitalistic or a unique enclave economy imbedded in a larger capitalistic system. However, most agree on two points. Describe the two points.

Question 68

At the time of the American Revolution, the slave trade was, in Lorenzo Greene's detailed analysis, the "very basis of the economic life of New England; about it revolved, and on it depended, most of [the region's] other industries." Explain.

Question 69

Describe the barbaric brutality of white northerners responding to black attempts to break slavery's bonds.

Question 70

Describe the history of slavery in Massachusetts.

Question 71

Describe the enslavement of Africans as one of the most brutal aspects of European and North American history.

Question 72

Illustrate how once fully instituted, the arrangements of slavery became much more than a machine for generating wealth. The arrangements of slavery constituted a well-developed system for the social and sexual control of men and women.

Question 73

One of the most oppressive aspects of U.S. racism lies in its sexual thread, which weaves itself through various manifestations of systemic racism to the present. Explain.

Question 74

Numerous narratives from enslaved women recount sexual exploitation, including that of Celia. Who was Celia and what happened to her?

Question 75

Who was Sally Hemings?

Question 76

Explain how the English language became an important weapon for subordinating enslaved Africans.

Question 77

Discuss how any serious understanding of the development of European wealth must center on African colonialism.

Question 78

Using the famous British South Sea Company as your example, explain American slavery as a system created, supported, and financed by a large number of elite white men.

Question 79

Joe Feagin and Kimberley Ducey write: "Africans' enslavement is the ultimate foundation of the modern industrial and technological age." Explain.

Question 80

Describe the famous triangular trade of the seventeenth century.