Exam 3: The White Racial Frame- a Social Force

Findings in a report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) reveal:

Describe how since the seventeenth century, white racial framing has justified anti-black oppression and has had a very strong emotional character.

Describe the significance of the 1968 Kerner Commission Report.

In Europe and the Americas, a commonplace European or European American explanation for the exploitation and enslavement of other groups, especially people of African descent, drew on an old myth based on the biblical story of Noah and his sons. Describe this myth.

In the first century and a half, 40 percent of all those enslaved, as well as the many prominent whites who were speaking out on issues of their own liberty, were located in ______________.

Describe the impact of nineteenth century French diplomat and prominent racist thinker, Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, on the U.S. and Nazi Germany.

William Graham Sumner is considered a "founding father" of U.S. sociology. What does this tell us about how capitalism and its elites have shaped the dominant assumptions underlying sociology in North America and Europe?

The white racial frame has been elaborated and changed somewhat over time. Describe its variations as it has operated over time to rationalize, sustain, and script white power and white privilege.

By the 1950s, and accelerating in the 1960s, the moderately liberal fraction of the white elite was pressing for a softening of blatantly racist prejudices and for new group-based remedies. Explain this change of heart in terms of Derrick Bell's theory of "interest convergence."

Discuss how most white scientists of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while presenting themselves as objective observers, tried to marshal evidence for human differences that the European imperialists' perspective had already decided were important to highlight.

In the United States, distinguished lawyers, judges, and political leaders promoted scientific racism and its white-supremacist assumptions. In the first half of the nineteenth century whites with an economic interest in slavery dominated the U.S. political and legal system. Explain how this influence was conspicuous in the Dred Scott v. John F. A. Sandford (1857) decision.

Joe Feagin and Kimberley Ducey write: "Significantly, of the three large-scale systems of social oppression - racism, sexism, and classism - only racism involves the dominant group having a deeply rooted and often obsessively emotional fear of the subordinated group." Explain.

In _________, the colony of Virginia established the first explicit law against interracial sex, and in _________ a law against interracial marriage was enforced by banishment.

In a 1550 debate, Spanish theologian __________ argued that it was lawful to enslave African populations because of their heathen natures, which obligated them to serve those with the superior culture (the Spanish).

In his 1830 lectures, the leading German philosopher G. W.F. Hegel spoke about the "Negro" as "natural man in his wild and untamed nature" and argued that there is "nothing remotely humanized in the Negro's character."

Describe how powerful whites, including media commentators and officials, have downplayed persisting white racism and accented the image of a society where equality of opportunity and colorblindness are supposedly the reality.

Who was Madison Grant and what did he argue about new immigrant groups from southern and eastern Europe?

Joe Feagin and Kimberley Ducey write: "[T]he anti-black framing was not "out there," but rather in the white mind (brain), and riddled with racialized emotions." Explain.

Between 1878 and 1923, a series of federal court cases decided that the following Americans were not white and thus were ineligible for citizenship:

Explain how Germany's Adolf Hitler was influenced by U.S. Jim Crow patterns.