Race and Ethnic Relations

Exam Two Study Guide

What is Middle Passage? When did slaves first arrive in the British colonies? What was their status upon arrival? Did slaves always go passively to the New World? According to most recent studies, what is the range of estimates for Middle Passage’s immediate victims—that is, enslaved and deceased Africans?

I detailed two dimensions to the increasing reliance on African labor. What were these? What were the differences between England and the North American colonies that contributed to the use of slave labor as opposed to free labor?

The plantation system has often been romanticized, with slave masters viewed as fatherly and slaves depicted as happy children. How close are such idyllic images to reality? What does Randall Kennedy means by racially selective underprotection? What are the two sources of such harsh treatment of slaves? What were the sources of harsh treatment of slaves? How did the state and the courts participate in slavery? What is paterfamilias? What was the character of sexual controls under slavery?

What was the significance of the Fugitive Slave Act? What were the ways in which blacks, free and slave, resisted slavery? Who were Nat Turner and Frederick Douglas? Did whites join with blacks in the struggle? Who were John Brown and Luther Lee?

What was the character of the Confederate States of America? What is the Emancipation Proclamation? What is Reconstruction? How did it begin and how long did it last? What is Redemption? Know the definition of lynching according to your professor. What was its two-fold function of lynching according to your professor? What was the fate of anti-lynching laws? What is the NAACP? Who led the development of the organization? Who or what is Jim Crow? Plessey v Ferguson (1896) and the separate but equal doctrine. What does it mean?

What were the variables critical to race relations context of the Civil Rights era? What was the relationship between the New Deal and Civil Rights? What were some of the institutional developments during that time? What did it mean for black people? What is the significance of Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (1945-1946) to the Civil Rights movement? What role did emergence of newly formed independent African nations play in fostering change in US race relations? How did these changes affect black and white attitudes and actions?

Know something about these key moments, organizations, and figures of the Civil Rights movement: Brown v the Board of Education (1954), Montgomery Bus Boycott, Martin L. King, Rosa Parks, Jr. Little Rock Nine, Civil Rights Act of 1957, Sit-ins, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Freedom Riders, Birmingham 1963, Orval Faubus, Alabama Governor George Wallace, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Freedom Summer 1964, Bloody Sunday 1965, Voting Rights Act of 1965.

What is Black Power? Who was Malcolm X and what is black nationalism? What is a Black Panther? Who were the leaders of the movement? What were the theories that animated the Panthers? Who was Fred Hampton and what happened to him? What was the involvement of the FBI in the Civil Rights movement and the Black Power movement? Who is Mumia Abu-Jamal and what happened in Philadelphia in 1985? What is COINTELPRO?

Testing on book content

The books are dense, and, of course, I can’t pretend to potentially ask questions from any part of these books. So I will present you with some fairly specific ranges of what I want you to prepare for with respect to the readings. Ward Churchill’s book was covered in detail in the previous study guide, so I won’t add any questions from that particular text.

Race, Reform, and Rebellion (Marable) What was the effect of knowledge of the Nazi Germany’s crimes against European Jews on racial thinking and policy in the United States? How significant was the role Roosevelt and Truman played in advancing the interests of blacks during this period? What was their motive? What role did anti-communism play in civil rights, particularly in the experience of progressive blacks? What role did black entrepreneurs and elites play in shaping the Civil Rights discourse? Who was Walter White? What did he do? According to Marable, what became the principal tenets of black middle-class politics for the 1950s? What is Second Reconstruction? Who was Nathan Wright? How did he conceptualize Black Power? What were factors in the retreat of Second Reconstruction? Why does Marable argue that in face of greater black representation in politics and culture, the 1980s experienced a deepening crisis in race relations?

Image and Reality in the Israel-Palestine Conflict (Finkelstein). This concerns what we went over during the last class session. Although I did not go through its history, I did define the term Zionism. What is it? What happened after the breakup of the Turkish Ottoman Empire? Which European country was given control over Palestine? What is the Balfour Declaration? What do demographic figures tell us about Palestine in 1914? What is the UN partition? Why did the Arabs reject it? What happened in 1948? What is al Nakba? What happened in 1967? What are United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338? Know the peace treaties. What happened at Camp David? What is the judgment of the International Court of Justice on the security barrier?

Harvest of Empire (Gonzales). What was the condition of Spain’s American colonies at the time of independence? How did their collective condition compare to the United States? What happened over the several decades following independence? What does Gonzales claim was the cause of the change? What is a banana republic? How significant was Latin America for US capitalism in the early part of the twentieth century? Why does Gonzales claim that patterns of Mexican immigration depends on what happens south of Rio Grande? According to Gonzales, how many major eruptions of nativist backlash have occurred since the country’s founding? Approximately how many foreigners settled in the US legally between 1960 and 1996? What has been the effect of that wave of immigration? How does it differ from the previous wave?