Deck 1: Systemic Racism-A Comprehensive Perspective

Question 1

The white male elite delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention have all the following in common EXCEPT:

A) they are all men of European origin.
B) most of the 55 men are well-off by the standards of their day.
C) at least 40 percent of them have been or are slaveowners.
D) none of them profit from commerce in slave-produced agricultural products or by supplying provisions to slaveholders and slave traders.

Answer 1

none of them profit from commerce in slave-produced agricultural products or by supplying provisions to slaveholders and slave traders.

Question 2

George Washington:

A) was one of the richest men in the colonies because of the hundreds of black people he held in bondage.
B) was the first president to live in the White House.
C) is buried in a crypt beneath the U.S. Capitol.
D) was famous for his many victories on the battlefield.
E) was a Republican.

Answer 2

was one of the richest men in the colonies because of the hundreds of black people he held in bondage.

Question 3

The white male elite delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention:

A) disagreed over whether the new government should protect private property.
B) were vehemently opposed to existing economic inequality.
C) consisted of a small left wing, with strong views on class equality and popular revolution.
D) had less influence if they belonged to the center and the right wing of the elite than if they belonged to the left wing.
E) among the left wing, included numerous delegates who desired some form of monarchy.

Answer 3

consisted of a small left wing, with strong views on class equality and popular revolution.

Question 4

The white male elite delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention:

A) believed the trade in, and enslavement of, people of African descent was an unimportant and acquiescent issue.
B) mostly all accepted the view that people of African descent could be the chattel property of others and were not human beings with citizens' rights.
C) vastly disagreed on the idea that property is the "main object of Society."
D) opposed the idea that freedom meant the protection of unequal accumulation of property, particularly property that could produce a profit in the emerging capitalist system.
E) gathered with the purpose of deconstructing the existing bourgeois-democratic government.

Question 5

Article 1 speaks only of three groups in the new nation. Which of the following is NOT one of those groups?

A) free persons
B) Indians not taxed
C) immigrant (newcomers)
D) all other persons

Question 6

Who among the delegates refused to sign the Constitution document, in part because of its slavery provisions.

A) George Mason and Elbridge Gerry
B) George Washington and Rufus King
C) George Wythe and Edmund J. Randolph
D) George Read and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
E) George Clymer and Benjamin Franklin

Question 7

By the end of the summer of 1787 there were at least seven sections where the framers had the system of slavery clearly in mind. These included all the following EXCEPT:

A) Article 1, Section 2, which counts slaves as three-fifths of a person.
B) Article 1, Section 8, which gives Congress authority to suppress slave and other insurrections.
C) Article 1, Section 9, which prevents the slave trade from being abolished before 1808.
D) Article 1, Sections 9 and 10, which exempt goods made by slaves from export duties.
E) Article 4, Section 2, which exempts the federal government from helping state governments put down domestic violence, including slave uprisings.

Question 8

Until the mid-to-late nineteenth century, Indigenous societies were mostly viewed as separate nations, with whites advocating for all the following EXCEPT:

A) treaty-making.
B) land purchases or land theft.
C) the "civilizing" of Indigenous Americans.
D) "Indian wars."
E) extermination.

Question 9

At a gathering in Massachusetts on July 4, 1854, the eminent abolitionist _____________ burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution, uttering the words: "So perish all compromises with tyranny."

A) Elizabeth Margaret Chandler
B) Lucretia Mott
C) William Lloyd Garrison
D) Angelina Grimke
E) John Brown

Question 10

All the following men enslaved people of African descent EXCEPT:

A) religious leader Cotton Mather, the famous Puritan.
B) religious leader William Penn, a Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania.
C) the founder of U.S. psychiatry, Dr. Benjamin Rush.
D) men of politics Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, and Sam Houston.
E) the sixth President of the United States, John Quincy Adams.

Question 11

Of whom was President Thomas Jefferson speaking when he wrote: "This unfortunate race, whom we had been taking so much pains to save and to civilize, have by their unexpected desertion and ferocious barbarities justified extermination and now await our decision on their fate"?

A) African Americas
B) Asian Americans
C) Immigrant newcomers
D) Native Americans
E) The Win Tribe ("Mongrel Virginians")

Question 12

Known to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington, all prominent slaveholders among the founders, _____________ freed all 500 of the African Americans he enslaved; he had come to view slavery as "contrary to the principles of religion and justice."

A) Wade Hampton III
B) Robert Carter III
C) David Rice Atchison
D) William Aiken Jr.
E) Judah P. Benjamin

Question 13

Systemic racism includes a diverse assortment of racist realities, including:

A) the unjustly gained economic and political power of whites.
B) continuing resource inequalities.
C) the rationalizing white-racist frame.
D) major institutions created to preserve white advantage and power.
E) All the above

Question 14

____________ was the first social scientist to analyze fully the emergence of the dominant idea of whiteness and of a white-racist order extending beyond the U.S.

A) W.E.B. Du Bois
B) Frederick Douglass
C) Oliver C. Cox
D) Ida B. Wells-Barnett
E) Anna Julia Cooper

Question 15

In a pathbreaking book, _________ argued that the anti-lynching crusade of her/his era, in which s/he was a leader, will determine "whether the precepts and theories of Christianity are professed and practiced by American white people as Golden Rules of thought and action, or adopted as a system of morals to be preached to heathen until they attain to the intelligence which needs the system of Lynch Law."

A) W.E.B. Du Bois
B) Frederick Douglass
C) Oliver Cox
D) Ida B. Wells-Barnett
E) Anna Julia Cooper

Question 16

One of the first extended social science analyses of U.S. society as a well-institutionalized system of racism was that of _____________, who provided in the 1940s a well-researched argument showing how sustained labor exploitation of black Americans created a centuries-old structure of "racial classes."

A) W.E.B. Du Bois
B) Frederick Douglass
C) Oliver Cox
D) Ida B. Wells-Barnett
E) Anna Julia Cooper

Question 17

Analyzing Europe's extensive colonization of Africa, __________ demonstrated that extreme poverty and degradation in the African colonies was a key source of wealth and luxury in Europe.

A) W.E.B. Du Bois
B) Frederick Douglass
C) Oliver Cox
D) Ida B. Wells-Barnett
E) Anna Julia Cooper

Question 18

For systemic racism to persist across many human generations, it must reproduce well and routinely the necessary socioeconomic conditions. These conditions include:

A) substantial control by whites of major economic resources.
B) substantial possession of whites of the political, police, and ideological power to dominate subordinated groups.
C) both a and b

Question 19

White families' median wealth is about ____ times that of black families, and ___ times that of Latino families.

A) 5; 2
B) 7; 6
C) 13; 10
D) 15; 13
E) 17; 14

Question 20

Recent government reports signal the cumulative cost of several centuries of white racial oppression, including:

A) a life expectancy for the average black person three to four years (female/male) less than the average white person.
B) the median black household being about 61 percent of the income of the median white household.
C) the median wealth of black families being only about one thirteenth of the median wealth of white families.
D) All the above

Question 21

Inequality in life expectancy means that on average a black person secures significantly less:

A) lifetime support from close relatives in psychological terms (e.g., comfort and socialization for racial and other stress).
B) social cultural terms (e.g., access to jobs and educational networks).
C) concrete material terms (e.g., income sharing and support).
D) All the above

Question 22

Researcher Richard Reeves recently reported that ___ percent of black children born to families with incomes below the middle of the U.S. income range will, as adults, likely have incomes substantially lower than their parents.

A) 30
B) 40
C) 50
D) 60
E) 70

Question 23

White men in the U.S. (approximately 31 percent of the adult population) make-up:

A) 97 percent of owners of television and radio licenses.
B) 85 percent of corporate executive officers.
C) 92 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.
D) All the above

Question 24

To what was W.E.B. Du Bois specifically referring when he wrote: white laborers' "vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them"?

A) Social Darwinism
B) racial emotions
C) public and psychological wage of whiteness
D) double consciousness
E) white privilege

Question 25

W.E.B. DuBois superbly argued that whiteness serves as a "public and psychological wage," delivering to poor whites in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries a valuable social status derived from their classification as "not-black." The claims embedded in DuBois's thesis include:

A) that whiteness provides meaningful "compensation" for citizens otherwise exploited by the organization of capitalism.
B) that the value of whiteness depends on the devaluation of black existence.
C) that benefits enjoyed by whites are not strictly monetary.
D) All the above

Question 26

Since the __________ century, a powerful white racial frame has provided the vantage point from which whites and others have regularly viewed and interpreted U.S. society.

A) fifteenth
B) sixteenth
C) seventeenth
D) eighteenth
E) nineteenth

Question 27

The white racial frame includes:

A) racial stereotypes (a verbal-cognitive aspect) and racial narratives and interpretations (integrating cognitive aspects).
B) racial images (a visual aspect)
C) language accents (an auditory aspect)
D) racialized emotions (a "feelings" aspect) and inclinations to discriminatory action
E) All the above

Question 28

In the first extended social science analysis of powerful whiteness, the pioneering book Darkwater (1920), the influential sociologist _________ noted that "the discovery of personal whiteness among the world's people is a very modern thing. … The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction … we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful!"

A) W.E.B. Du Bois
B) Frederick Douglass
C) Oliver C. Cox
D) Ida B. Wells-Barnett
E) Anna Julia Cooper

Question 29

Influential scholars and intellectuals like ____________ in Europe and ____________ in the U.S. lent their authority to the "scientific" notion of a hierarchy of races.

A) Christian Wolff; Benjamin Franklin
B) Immanuel Kant; Thomas Jefferson
C) Friedrich Nietzsche; James Madison
D) Arthur Schopenhauer; John Jay
E) Jürgen Habermas; Alexander Hamilton

Question 30

Reinvigorated biological racism developed by leading Western intellectuals in the late ________ was spread by newspapers, pamphlets, and pulpits of the day to the general population.

A) 1500s
B) 1600s
C) 1700s
D) 1800s
E) 1900s

Question 31

Over the course of the ___________ and ___________ centuries a strong biological view of a hierarchy of races came to accompany older anti-black views accenting black inferiority in culture, religion, and civilization.

A) fifteenth; sixteenth
B) sixteenth; seventeenth
C) seventeenth; eighteenth
D) eighteenth; nineteenth
E) nineteenth; twentieth

Question 32

In the Preamble to the United States Constitution, the white founders cite prominently "We the People," but this phrase does not encompass the one-fifth of the population then enslaved or the large Indigenous population.

Question 33

Slavery was only a minor matter at the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

Question 34

Many conservative and center delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention were anti-democratic in their thinking, fearing "the masses."

Question 35

The left wing of the white male elite at the 1787 Constitutional Convention successfully added a specific list of individual rights to the Constitution.

Question 36

Some states did not ratify the new document arising from the 1787 Constitutional Convention until their ratifiers were persuaded that a democratic Bill of Rights would be added.

Question 37

In numerous provisions the final document was oriented to political liberty: there was no agreement on rejecting religious tests for office or protecting freedom of debate in Congress.

Question 38

Some framers of the Constitution realized that they were divesting black people of their humanity.

Question 39

No delegate questioned the three fifths compromise.

Question 40

Whether free or enslaved, African Americans were not to be citizens or voters, yet 60 percent of their number could be counted to enlarge white representation in the states.

Question 41

Like the earlier Articles of Confederation, the new Constitution used the term "white" in setting the formula for enumerating the country's population.

Question 42

James Madison enslaved many black Americans.

Question 43

Not one of the 55 delegates advocated that the abolition of slavery and freedom for all Americans should be an integral part of the new Constitution.

Question 44

Large-scale action against the slavery system did not take place among non-blacks until the nineteenth century.

Question 45

Ten presidents, from George Washington to Ulysses S. Grant, at some point held African Americans in bondage.

Question 46

Abraham Lincoln, often called the "Great Emancipator," was willing to support a constitutional amendment making slavery permanent in the existing southern states if it would prevent a civil war.

Question 47

A projected pro-slavery amendment was supported by many Republicans in the U.S. Congress in 1861, but opposed by President Abraham Lincoln.

Question 48

The words "slave" and "slavery" do NOT appear in the Constitution's sections dealing with slavery.

Question 49

The white "founders" did occasionally display guilt over slavery. James Madison, for example, argued that it would be wrong to state openly in the U.S. Constitution the "idea that there could be property in men."

Question 50

Into the mid-nineteenth century, most whites participated directly in slavery or the economic trade around slavery, or did not object to those who did so.

Question 51

The openly racist provisions, although overridden by later constitutional amendments, have NOT been deleted from the U.S. Constitution.

Question 52

Kwame Ture and Charles Hamilton demonstrated in empirical and theoretical detail the importance of institutionalized racism, which involves more than the individual actions of scattered bigots.

Question 53

By the late 1960s, many white scholars and analysts were moving in the direction of accenting institutional racism.

Question 54

Black labor was extensively and unjustly used for building up the wealth and prosperity of whites from the 1600s to at least the 1960s (i.e., the slavery and Jim Crow segregation periods).

Question 55

Michael Omi and Howard Winant have shown with much evidence that "race" cannot be reduced to class or ethnicity, but remains an "autonomous field of social conflict, political organization and cultural/ideological meaning."

Question 56

Recent government data indicate that black full-time workers earn about the same per week (median weekly earnings) as white full-time workers.

Question 57

Recent government data indicate that black workers have unemployment rates equal to white workers.

Question 58

Almost all government-subsidized home mortgages provided on a large scale to soldiers returning after World War II went to whites and their families.

Question 59

Due to class and gender differences, not all white Americans benefit from white privilege.

Question 60

Younger black Americans will be more likely than whites to backslide financially over their lifetimes.

Question 61

In recent decades, African Americans have undergone markedly more upward mobility.

Question 62

In recent decades, African Americans have undergone considerably more upward mobility from generation to generation than white Americans.

Question 63

The demographic make-up (white and male) of those drafting the racialized U.S. Constitution in 1787 is very different to the demographic make-up of those who dominate the top positions in most sectors of U.S. society today.

Question 64

A majority of white feminist leaders accepted white racial privileges and the new racist theories of U.S. imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century.

Question 65

Historically, there has been a trans-racial world of workers in which all U.S. workers hold a strong and common class identity and loyalty across the racial line.

Question 66

Historically, there has been a trans-racial world of gender where all women hold a strong common identity and loyalty across the color line.

Question 67

Historically, most white workers and most white women have been interested in building unity of identity and protest with, respectively, black workers or black women across the color line.

Question 68

According to Benjamin Franklin, a relatively liberal U.S. founder, the ideal of the virtuous American was grounded in whiteness.

Question 69

Political liberals among the "founders," including those opposed to importing more enslaved Africans, argued that other "founders'" preferences for "lovely white" people was racist.

Question 70

Explain how slavery was central at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, including James Madison's emphasis on slave/not-slave divisions among the states.

Question 71

While all delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention agreed that the new government should protect private property, and thus existing economic inequality, the right wing, center, and left wing of the white male elite had opposing views. Explain. Be sure to include the similarities in thinking between conservative and center delegates at the convention and thus the limits on what the left wing of this white elite was able to specify.

Question 72

Describe what was at "the heart of the Constitution"?

Question 73

Explain what historian Herbert Aptheker meant when he wrote that the Constitution was a "bourgeois-democratic document for the governing of a slaveholder-capitalist republic."

Question 74

Joe Feagin and Kimberley Ducey write: "The harsh reality of slavery conditions and the often death-dealing slave trade hung over the convention like a demonic specter." Explain.

Question 75

Joe Feagin and Kimberley Ducey write: "Enslaved blacks were to be counted as human beings only when it suited whites to do so. Otherwise, they were just white property." Explain.

Question 76

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, slavery intruded on important debates, including debates over representation in the new Congress. Northern and southern delegates vigorously argued the matter and reached the famous three-fifths compromise on counting those enslaved for the purpose of white representation. What significance, if any, does the compromise have today?

Question 77

Discuss the following: "Enslaved blacks were to be counted as human beings only when it suited whites to do so. Otherwise, they were just white property."

Question 78

Explain how the "founders" built a racially based republic in the face of monarchial opposition and against those on the North American continent that they defined as inferior.

Question 79

What was the significance of the compromise reached and placed in Article 1, Section 9?

Question 80

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a few of the elite white male delegates spoke critically of chattel slavery or the slave trade on the basis of political, not moral, grounds. Describe, for example, the protestations of George Mason and Elbridge Gerry.