Study Guide -- Desmond and Emirbayer: 3. Politics
1. What is sharecropping? Describe it.
2. What tactics employed to keep blacks from voting after they had won the right to legally participate in elections?
3. Which institution served as an institutional hub for the Civil Rights Movement?
4. What were some direct results of the Montgomery Bus Boycott?
5. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 resulted in what?
6. George Wallace, when he blocked entrance to two black students at the University of Alabama, taught Republican politicians what lessons?
7. Give examples of couching a race-specific issue—segregation--in race-neutral language.
8. According to your textbook authors, which of the following statements about the new conservatism is true?
a. it was a direct response to the Civil Rights Movement
b. it opposes racial equality while never admitting doing so
c. it learned to appropriate the language of the Civil Rights Movement while promoting agendas aimed at dismantling the movement
9. Did the new conservatives distort the concept of “color-blindness” to mean that public policies that address social problems created by centuries of racial domination are unjust?
10. Which of the following statements about the post-Civil Rights liberal left is true?
a. denied the necessity for redress of past wrongs
b. refused to confront racism head on in order not to fracture the Democratic Party
c. blamed the failure on nonwhites themselves
d. supported universalism
11. Which subsets of Hispanics usually vote Republican?
12. Which subsets of African Americans usually vote Republican, if any?
13. Have researchers documented how, compared to white democrats, nonwhite democrats are more likely to represent the interests of their nonwhite constituents, to draft policy that matters to many nonwhites, and to sponsor bills and make speeches about racial justice?
14. As the size of the nonwhite population increases in a particular area, does white voter turnout in that area decrease?
15. In a recent survey, what percent of whites felt that “federal spending on programs that assist blacks should be increased”?
16. Martin Gilens evaluated whites’ view of welfare. Gilens found that _____ has the most powerful effect on their valuations of welfare policy.
Lecture notes:
Meghan A. Burke, “Racing Left and Right: Color-Blind Racism’s Dominance across the U.S. Political Spectrum” (2017). Burke found that both liberal and conservative participants talked about welfare, public housing, and street “hooligans” in ways which seemingly ignore race but do more than hint at the idea that local African-Americans are the problem. As Burke states, “racial codes allow these deeply racialized social issues to be discussed in seemingly race-neutral terms, thereby preserving colorblindness as an important moral stance”
According to Pew, in 2016, did over 60 percent of white men but under 50 percent of white women identify as or lean Republican?
According to Pew, in 2016, did over 55 percent of whites with a high school diploma or less identify as or lean Republican but less than 50 percent of whites college graduates (or more education) identify as or lean Republican?
According to Pew, in 2016, did most white women with college degrees identify as or lean Republican?
According to Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, continuing racial animus in the United States appears to have cost Obama roughly four percentage points of the national popular vote in both 2008 and 2012.