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

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.

Even today, a century and a half after slavery's abolition, researchers have demonstrated slavery's continuing impacts. Explain.

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

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.

Explain the significance of Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan's 1883 dissenting opinion.

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.

Discuss black workers as economic surplus during World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

Compare the mainstream view of the U.S. government to the contrasting view of the American Revolution.

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

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

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

Describe the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution; as well as southern legislatures, federal courts, and presidential or congressional actions regarding the amendments up until the civil rights revolution of the 1950s-1960s.

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

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

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.

Describe colonial laws regarding slavery.

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

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.

Describe the racist barriers faced by blacks from the 1930s to the 1950s, with a focus on the white federal officials who played a central role in creating the high degree of racial segregation and other discrimination in housing and employment that emerged out of this era of major government-assisted programs.

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