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25 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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abolitionism
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The ideas behind 19th-century political movements to end racial slavery. Some white abolitionists, however, believed that African Americans were inferior to whites and should not have equal rights.
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agency
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The state of being in action on behalf of oneself or of a group, which is the result of knowledge and consciousness, and which allows one to exert power or influence over oneself and others.
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The American Race
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A reference to the English-speaking White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP) group, who were once widely thought to possess superior intelligence, cultural traits, and social status in relation to in-between peoples and racial minorities. The concept articulates the intersection of race and citizenship in the United States.
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anti-miscegenation
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The opposition to intermarriages and interbreeding between the white race and the (supposedly inferior) non-white races. Such marriages and interbreeding were considered racially suicidal and a dire threat to the Saxon habits of government and to civilized way of life. Under the anti-miscegenation legislation, non-white men marrying white women could be persecuted for race mix up, and white women could lose their citizenship if they married non-white men.
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binary logic
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Using oppositions for the purpose of non-racial as well as racial classification. These oppositions frequently express an implied hierarchy of value between the two terms (e.g., self/other; white/black; man/woman).
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biological determinism
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Doctrine of biological inheritance, the root of all racist thinking/doctrine/ideology, that asserts that some groups of people inherit specific characteristics – intellectual and temperamental – that make them ‘inferior’ to other or ‘superior’ racial groups. When the belief in biological inheritance fuses with and is reinforced by color prejudice, the result is racism.
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class paradigm
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An approach that understands racial discrimination as the result of market forces and the unequal distribution of wealth.
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discourse
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A socially shared way of talking and thinking (e.g., Christianity or science). Whereas dominant-discourse implicitly or explicitly supports conventional relations of domination and subordination, counter-discourse challenges or critiques these conventions. A single discourse can have both “dominant” and “counter” elements, and thus be contradictory.
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domestic feminism
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A term used by American historians to describe how women’s authority was, beginning the mid-19th century, situated within the “separate sphere” of the home. This emerging discourse allowed (primarily) northern, middle class, white women to connect new ideas about gender roles within the family to their growing participation in abolitionism.
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ethnicity
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A group identity constructed through a shared sense of ancestry, country of origin or community experience.
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gender convention
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The expectations that society has regarding the morality, spheres of activity and influence, perceptions, and lifestyles of women and men. Conventions can vary across cultures, classes and generations.
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inbetween peoples
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Those who are simultaneously non-white and non-black. As such, these people have a relatively fluid social location within a society that promotes a racial hierarchy of differential power and privileges.
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institutional racism
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Practices in organizations or systems that result in the subordination and control over some racial groups and the inequitable distribution of power and privilege.
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Middle Passage
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The four week to two month trip that Africans were forced to take from a west African destination to the Americas. The trip was characterized by high mortality rates, physical, psychological and sexual abuse, limited food and water availability, and very unsanitary conditions.
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nation
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An “imagined community” whose geographical borders are artificially constructed and whose members typically enforce a self/other binary relationship with foreigners, minorities or other out-groups. In-group pride (a.k.a. patriotism) can become out-group hatred (a.k.a. xenophobia) when a boundary – grounded in racism – is drawn between those who are part of the group and those who are not.
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racial classification
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A natural process by which we group people along physical characteristics. Race is an example of this (gender is another). Classification helps us sort the world in meaningful ways. Classification does not necessarily mean we value one category more than another but frequently it does.
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racial project
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According to Omi and Winant, this concept “is simultaneously an interpretation, representation or explanation of racial dynamics and an effort to reorganize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines.” Racial projects are considered racist when they create or reproduce structures of domination (e.g., slavery, Jim Crow, anti-miscegenation laws, exclusionary immigration policies) based on essentialist categories of race.
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racial slavery
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A particular form of human bondage – which begins with the European capture of Africans in the 15th century and which is introduced to the English colonies in 1619 – differing radically from previous forms of slavery. Under racial slavery, the slave owner is distinguished in physical type from the enslaved, such that no white person could ever ‘fall’ into a state of slavery, and justified by the belief that black people were born to be servants to white people.
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racial stereotype
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A representation – licensed by racism – based on negative or degrading types assumed to be fixed in nature. Critiques of stereotypes as misrepresentations are typically based on either the promotion of positive types or on the assertion that real people are complex beings from whom generalizations cannot be made.
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racialization
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The process by which we attach social meaning to racial classification. Some of this meaning may disadvantage some groups and some may not. Social meaning refers to the fact that we moved beyond simply saying, “people differ on physical characteristics.”
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racism
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Beliefs, practices, and systems – sanctioned in the nineteenth century with a systematic ideology based on full-blown pseudoscientific theories of racial inferiority (where blacks are assigned the lowest position within a strict racial hierarchy) – that serve to make some groups disadvantaged and other groups privileged.
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slavery
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A complex system of labor control that has taken on many characteristics across time and place, such as: a) forced labor; b) a means of political, social and economic oppression; c) control of another person’s physical self; d) a status system; e) an economic system; f) a means to control an “inferior” population; g) a means to control a “hostile” population or an enemy of war; h) a means to punish criminals; and i) a means to exact a payment for debt.
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social location
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The socially recognized groups and categories in society to which we belong, such as our gender, race, class, religion, age, etc. These shape our experiences and thus provide vantage points for interpreting the world.
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triangular trade
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A common name for a series of complex trade routes between Africa, Europe and the Americas. Europeans traded items such as steel, brass, copper, weapons, liquors, and cloth. Africans trade items such ivory, gold, grains, and slaves. The Americans traded: tobacco, coffee, rice, dyewoods, and sugar.
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True Womanhood
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An ideal that defines what it means to be a woman according to one’s capacity for piety, purity, and domesticity. It is a gender convention most strongly associated with white, middle-class women. Historians date its origins at least as far back as the 19th century but it continues to be relevant to current notions of femininity.
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