Deck 2: The Invention of Race

Question 1

How did plantation owners strive to convince poor whites to overlook how they were exploited by the slave economy?

A)allowing all whites to have equal ownership over black slaves
B)giving poor whites opportunity for equal political participation
C)convincing poor white families to take pride in their whiteness
D)paying all white workers a fair and livable wage

Answer 1

C  

Question 2

Which two countries are most responsible for the racial classification system we know today?

A)England and Spain
B)The United States and Mexico
C)France and South Africa
D)The Netherlands and Germany

Answer 2

A  

Question 3

Who were the first group to colonize the Americas?

A)Spaniards
B)British
C)French
D)Dutch

Answer 3

A  

Question 4

Which of the following was a catalyst for Europe's emerging racial worldview?

A)trade routes
B)evolving attitudes about gender roles
C)the continued influence of political monarchies
D)agricultural advancements such as the invention of the cotton gin

Question 5

The textbook authors point out that asking "Why did Africans sell fellow Africans into slavery?" is an inaccurate question.Why?

A)The question assumes there were such things as "Africa" and "Africans" during the slave trade.
B)The question ignores the ways in which African communities were connected to one another.
C)The question ignores the different ways in which money motivated both Europeans and Africans.
D)The question assumes the slave trade was concentrated in the continent of Africa.

Question 6

In 1519,which city had the largest population?

A)London
B)Calcutta
C)Paris
D)Tenochtitlán

Question 7

What is one reason most rebellions aboard slave ships were unsuccessful?

A)Passengers had little reason to rebel.
B)Slaves were often too undernourished to fight.
C)Slaves were often from different regions of Africa.
D)Sailors outnumbered slaves.

Question 8

From 1600 to 1900,approximately what percentage of America's indigenous peoples died as a direct result of European colonization?

A)25 percent
B)55 percent
C)75 percent
D)90 percent

Question 9

In the fifteenth century,Spain began to create an "imagined community" by binding people together inside artificially created borders.What else might constitute an "imagined community"?

A)a nuclear family
B)a graduating high school class
C)a political party
D)a small church

Question 10

According to the figure below,"The African Slave Trade 1501-1867," the greatest number of African slaves were taken where?

A)the United States
B)Cuba
C)Jamaica
D)Brazil

Question 11

What was the significance of the 1676 Bacon's Rebellion?

A)The collective struggle immediately preceded the Emancipation Proclamation and the abolition of slavery.
B)Because of strategic differences,the rebellion solidified divisions between whites and blacks.
C)Enslaved whites struggled hand in hand with enslaved blacks.
D)Women across racial lines bonded,instigating the first modern women's movement.

Question 12

When contemporary public policy attempts to address the social problems faced by Native Americans,in what way is it engaging in the process of homogenization?

A)attempting to give all people vaccinations against diseases whether they want them or not
B)lumping together all indigenous people-with different histories and needs-under a single rubric
C)splitting indigenous people into the simplistic categories of "healthy" and "unhealthy"
D)ignoring the validity of indigenous medicine

Question 13

Which statement best describes the racial order of the Aztec empire following Spanish colonization?

A)High rates of miscegenation resulted in racial categories becoming blurry and numerous.
B)The indigenous population maintained autonomy over the territory,with darker-skinned people experiencing privilege over lighter-skinned people.
C)The Spanish and the indigenous populations initially conflicted but then divided territory equally,solidifying racial categories.
D)Racial categories were written into law when the Spanish crown outlawed intermarriage between conquistadores and indigenous women.

Question 14

Miscegenation,which helped blur the racial categories after Spain's conquest of the Aztec empire,can be defined as:

A)the legal contract binding indentured servants with their employers
B)passing ownership of land from one group to another
C)intermarriage and sexual intercourse between people with different skin tones
D)the method by which the Spanish attempted to maintain racial purity

Question 15

The process by which a foreign power invades a territory and establishes enduring systems of exploitation and domination over that territory's indigenous populations is called what?

A)cultural appropriation
B)indigeneity
C)racism
D)colonization

Question 16

Between 1615 and 1620,approximately what percentage of the indigenous population of Massachusetts died from the plague?

A)25 percent
B)55 percent
C)75 percent
D)90 percent

Question 17

Before the _________ century,race as we know it today did not exist.

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

Question 18

Which policy attempted to prevent people of different skin tones from marrying or having sexual intercourse?

A)the Three-Fifths Compromise
B)Jim Crow
C)antimiscegenation
D)the New Laws

Question 19

What is one reason Native Americans weren't permanently enslaved alongside blacks?

A)They were relied on as guides and trappers in the fur trade.
B)They were unfamiliar with the land and therefore would not make good agricultural laborers.
C)Their skin was light enough that they could blend in with the white population.
D)Their numbers were increasing rapidly.

Question 20

Which mindset came to greatly influence how the English would come to view indigenous people in the Americas?

A)a Christian commitment to goodwill
B)an entrepreneurial spirit
C)a language system that long included words for race
D)the perception of the Irish as savages in need of correction

Question 21

Author Michelle Alexander recently coined the term "the new Jim Crow" to discuss the rapid rise of mass incarceration among the black population in the United States.What might Jim Crow and mass incarceration have in common?

A)Jim Crow laws were used to abolish racial segregation.
B)Jim Crow was the first elected leader to decry both racial segregation and the disproportionate imprisonment of blacks.
C)The majority of people impacted by Jim Crow laws were eventually imprisoned.
D)Prisons and Jim Crow laws are both dramatic examples of segregation.

Question 22

From the end of the nineteenth century to the 1970s,thousands of Native Americans and African Americans,as well as people deemed mentally retarded or criminal,were sterilized against their will.This phenomenon was an example of what?

A)eugenics
B)Jim Crow laws
C)assimilation
D)polarization

Question 23

For the Native Americans,the process of white colonialism brought inflictions on their bodies,their spirits,and their land.What is one example given in the textbook of how Native Americans experienced violence "on their spirits"?

A)cultural reeducation
B)disease
C)eradication of tribal property
D)bullet wounds

Question 24

Unlike serfs from European countries such as Germany,France,and England,when African slaves were emancipated they _____________.

A)were given a small piece of the land they worked while they were enslaved.
B)were denied definite rights in the land.
C)were forced to continue to work in agriculture.
D)were denied the right to marry.

Question 25

From where did the term "Jim Crow" originate?

A)Congressman James Crow,who implemented a series of laws regulating the segregation of blacks and whites
B)a song called "Jump Jim Crow" by a white man who popularized minstrel shows
C)an escaped slave named Jim who was known for using crows as a method of delivering messages to other slaves
D)the author Jim Crow,whose famous children's novel laid the groundwork for the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Question 26

William Sherman's 1865 decree,which allotted forty acres of land to recently freed slaves,is commonly known as what?

A)the Three-Fifths Compromise
B)the Emancipation Proclamation
C)forty acres and a mule
D)the New Law

Question 27

Maryland's 1904 law that required all railroad companies to provide separate train cars for black and white passengers is an example of what?

A)Jim Crow laws
B)de facto segregation
C)the Three-Fifths compromise
D)Manifest Destiny

Question 28

What gave black men-but not other nonwhites or women-the right to vote?

A)the Fourteenth Amendment
B)the Fifteenth Amendment
C)the New Law
D)the Emancipation Proclamation

Question 29

How did the United States acquire the land that today is New Mexico,California,Utah,Nevada,parts of Arizona,and disputed areas of Texas?

A)the Monroe Doctrine
B)Manifest Destiny
C)the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
D)the Thirteenth Amendment

Question 30

Johann Blumenbach published a typology of humanity that divided humans into five groups that correspond to different geographical areas-Caucasians,Mongolians,Ethiopians,Americans,and Malays.Why was his research fundamentally flawed?

A)He saw beauty as relative across racial groups.
B)He understood racial groups as categories that change over time.
C)He did not gather data to support his research.
D)He suggested that equality was a natural ordering of the world.

Question 31

Which group proved most influential in solidifying racial taxonomies?

A)Philosophers,precursors to modern-day public intellectuals
B)Natural historians,precursors to modern-day biologists
C)Political scribes,precursors to modern-day journalists
D)Solicitors,precursors to modern-day lawyers

Question 32

What was the problem with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,which promised U.S.citizenship rights to Mexicans in ceded lands?

A)The promise was never fulfilled.
B)It required them to pay high taxes on their land.
C)Citizenship status was only granted to Mexican men.
D)Most Mexicans in ceded lands did not want U.S.citizenship.

Question 33

Boarding schools that attempted to strip Native Americans of their culture and tradition by requiring them to speak English can be considered an example of what type of infliction brought by colonialism?

A)an infliction of their bodies
B)an infliction of their spirits
C)an infliction of their land
D)an infliction of their laws

Question 34

The H-2A guest worker program brings tens of thousands of people to the United States to work in manual labor sectors.But because these workers are bound to the companies that request them,some critics have called this practice an example of modern-day _________.

A)indentured servitude
B)homesteading
C)black codes
D)immigration acts

Question 35

How many Cherokees died along the Trail of Tears,the 1,200-mile-long forced journey from Georgia,Tennessee,North Carolina,and Alabama to Oklahoma and Arkansas?

A)50
B)700
C)2,000
D)4,000

Question 36

Why did Harriet Jacobs,author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,say that slavery "is terrible for men;but it is far more terrible for women"?

A)Women were forced to work longer hours in the field than men.
B)Male slaves were more likely to escape from their masters than female slaves were.
C)Women were forced to work in plantation houses alongside their owners.
D)Since slave children increased a master's wealth,slave women were often the victims of rape.

Question 37

What did Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth have in common?

A)They were rare examples of black slave owners.
B)They were former slaves turned abolitionists.
C)They worked closely with feminists to highlight the gendered aspects of race.
D)They were leaders of armed slave rebellions.

Question 38

Which event effectively ended the 350-year-old Indian Wars?

A)the Wounded Knee Massacre
B)the Indian Allotment Act
C)the Indian Reservation Act
D)the Trail of Tears

Question 39

Thousands of blacks were lynched during Reconstruction and throughout the mid-twentieth century.These acts of violence can be described as ________________.

A)erratic acts of mob aggression
B)an unfortunate result of the lack of a formal criminal justice system
C)isolated events limited to a few counties in the South
D)preplanned events that drew large crowds of onlookers

Question 40

Two methods by which white Americans attempted to solve the "Indian Problem" and acquire tribal land were:

A)homogenization and differentiation
B)assimilation and removal
C)legal and illegal
D)subtle and overt

Question 41

Briefly explain one of the four ways by which Eastern European immigrants came to be categorized as white.

Question 42

What was the role of global capitalism in the invention of race?

Question 43

What are two reasons other than skin color that Africans were considered "the perfect slaves"?

Question 44

Compare and contrast the two methods by which the English were able to create the category of "Indian."

Question 45

What was the Indian Allotment Act? Explain the intentions behind the act,as well as its consequences.

Question 46

President Barack Obama is often referred to as the nation's first black president,not as the nation's first biracial president.What does this tell us about racial categories in the United States?

A)Racial categories have become meaningless as the United States has become more diverse.
B)Racial categories have become "colorblind."
C)There are fewer multiracial people of African ancestry.
D)In the eyes of many,blackness remains a totalizing racial category.

Question 47

What was the meaning of the "Indian Problem"?

Question 48

What were two ways in which slaves rebelled against their masters?

Question 49

According to current demographic projections,whites will become a racial minority in the United States by what year?

A)2023
B)2030
C)2043
D)2060

Question 50

In what year was Hawaii's sovereignty finally dissolved when the American military overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and annexed the islands?

A)1778
B)1893
C)1934
D)1992

Question 51

The 1875 Page Law,which intended to bar Chinese prostitutes from the United States,had what effect?

A)It virtually eradicated prostitution throughout the country.
B)It allowed Chinese families to flourish.
C)It barred virtually all Chinese women from American shores.
D)It increased rates of marriage between Chinese men and white American women.

Question 52

Historian Francis Jennings wrote,"The American land was more like a widow than a virgin.Europeans did not find a wilderness here;rather,however involuntarily,they made one." What do you think this quote means in the context of the colonization of the Americas?

Question 53

Compare the English and Spanish colonization of the Americas.How did racial formation vary in each instance?