Deck 5: African Americans

Question 1

Discuss the events of the 1960s and how they finally broke many formal patterns of discrimination against African Americans.

Answer 1

Answers will vary

Question 2

Discuss the various ways that African Americans have protested discrimination against them, from slavery to the present.

Answer 2

Answers will vary

Question 3

What does it mean to say that a "black underclass" exists in America?

Answer 3

Answers will vary

Question 4

How have blacks been excluded from the political arena-especially the voting process?

Question 5

What were some of the social and economic factors that "pushed" southern blacks to northern states?

Question 6

The percentage of African Americans living in poverty would increase if official statistics more accurately reflected costs of living in urban areas.

Question 7

The official poverty rates for African Americans have been declining.

Question 8

Since a low point in the mid-1970s, the poverty rates for African Americans have been increasing.

Question 9

The educational attainment gap between whites and blacks has increased for high school graduation rates and decreased for college graduation rates.

Question 10

The infant mortality rate of blacks is more than twice that of whites.

Question 11

Because of increased access of African Americans to the health care system, black and white infant mortality rates are approximately the same.

Question 12

African Americans are more than twice as likely to die from diabetes, kidney disease, and hypertension as whites.

Question 13

Discrimination based upon African Americans' skin color is less important than their culture and demeanor.

Question 14

After the Civil War up to the end of the century, beliefs about the biological inferiority of African Americans declined in favor of more sociocultural explanations of inferiority.

Question 15

After the Civil War, the South maintained a belief in the biological inferiority of African Americans, while the North dropped such notions.

Question 16

Homer Plessy was the judge who mandated segregated facilities in the South at the end of the last century.

Question 17

Beliefs about African Americans still emphasize their cultural inferiority.

Question 18

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was designed to overrule the "black codes" emerging in the South after the Civil War.

Question 19

It is during the first half of the 20^th century that the legal basis of discrimination at state and local levels in the South was dismantled.

Question 20

The public is hostile toward affirmative action.

Question 21

Slavery emerged and persisted because of the South's need for inexpensive labor.

Question 22

Slavery was confined only to the agricultural sector of the southern economy.

Question 23

The period between 1914 and 1920 marks the first large-scale migration of African Americans out of the South.

Question 24

The migration of African Americans to the large industrial cities was not accompanied by violence.

Question 25

Unlike whites, blacks made significant economic progress during the Great Depression.

Question 26

Unlike World War I, World War II did not cause a large-scale black migration.

Question 27

While discrimination can still be found in the initial hiring of white-collar employees, once they are hired, there is little evidence of discrimination.

Question 28

The justice writing against the majority opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson had been in the Confederate army.

Question 29

The Plessy v. Ferguson case created the legal mantle justifying segregated facilities.

Question 30

There is strong evidence that black-owned businesses fail more often than white businesses, causing lenders to back off financing black-owned businesses.

Question 31

Lincoln University was the first black university in America.

Question 32

Oberlin College was the first mainstream and white university to open its doors to African Americans.

Question 33

As late as 1969, illiteracy among African Americans in the South was four times that of whites.

Question 34

It was not until 1975 that black enrollment in schools reached parity with white enrollments.

Question 35

The Federal Housing Authority and its loan programs were one of the few forces operating against housing segregation between 1945 and 1960.

Question 36

With the dramatic decline in formal discrimination, the resource shares of African Americans have also increased dramatically.

Question 37

During radical Reconstruction after the Civil War, African Americans began to vote in large numbers.

Question 38

The legal framework for slavery prevented blacks from acquiring or inheriting property.

Question 39

The availability of FHA mortgages for blacks increased the movement of blacks into white neighborhoods.

Question 40

Desegregation efforts in public schools have reduced the chances that black children will attend schools in which they are the numerical majority.

Question 41

The idea of a "glass ceiling" means that women and minorities have limited access to career and occupational mobility.

Question 42

By the dawn of the Civil War, only a very small part of the southern economy depended on slave labor.

Question 43

Brown v. Board of Education (1951) was a signal that American society was growing intolerant of educational segregation for black school children.

Question 44

An aspect of abolitionist ideology was to argue for the inhumane treatment of blacks.

Question 45

Programs such as affirmative action have increased white resentment toward blacks.

Question 46

Most of the negative portrayals of blacks in American history were rooted in the popular belief that blacks are biologically inferior to whites.

Question 47

Blacks are an easy target for discrimination because of a superficial trait such as skin color.

Question 48

Blacks live longer than whites on average.

Question 49

Residential segregation for blacks is relatively low.

Question 50

The gap between blacks and whites with high school diplomas has been closing over the last thirty years.

Question 51

Poor blacks were worse off in the 1990s than they were in the 1950s.

Question 52

Increases in income for blacks have enabled them to close the gap with white incomes.

Question 53

Poverty in the African American population has been declining since the mid-1960s.

Question 54

The legacy of slavery for African Americans has greatly reduced their access to valued resources in American society.

Question 55

According to the study, lynching created a culture of violence that still influences homicide rates for African Americans.

Question 56

Which statement is least true of African Americans?

A) Poverty rates today are lower than they were in 1959.
B) Poverty rates have steadily gone down since the late 1980s.
C) Poverty rates were lowest in 2000.
D) Poverty rates declined dramatically in the 1990s.

Question 57

Which is least true of African Americans' income?

A) Incomes have been going up, even controlling for inflation.
B) Income as a percentage of white income has increased in recent years.
C) Income as a percentage of white income is less than in 1960.
D) Income as a percentage of white income is less than in 1970.

Question 58

What least accounts for the drop in black income as a percentage of white income in the 1980s?

A) increase in single-parent families
B) cutbacks in government jobs
C) increases in unskilled jobs
D) increase in dual-income white families

Question 59

Which is least true of African Americans?

A) The number and percentage of middle-class blacks have increased dramatically.
B) Poorer African Americans are worse off relative to whites than ever.
C) Incomes of the poorest African Americans tend not to come from job-market participation.
D) Government programs account for the increase in African Americans' income.

Question 60

The ratio of black unemployment to white unemployment is (closest to)

A) 4 to 1.
B) 2.4 to 1.
C) 3.5 to 1.
D) none of the above.

Question 61

Which is least true of African American incumbency in white-collar jobs?

A) Blacks still lag behind whites.
B) Increases are the result of the shift away from manual to low-paying clerical work.
C) Only college-educated men have achieved parity with white men.
D) Only college-educated women have achieved parity with white women.

Question 62

Which is not true of African American educational attainment?

A) Blacks have increased as a percentage of the college population in recent years.
B) The percentage of blacks with a college degree has risen over the last thirty years.
C) The gap between blacks and whites with four years of college has not closed.
D) All of the above statements are false.

Question 63

Which is not true of residential segregation of African Americans?

A) Rates of segregation are high.
B) Rates of segregation declined dramatically in the 1980s.
C) Segregation in the least segregated metropolitan areas is very low.
D) Segregation in the most segregated metropolitan areas is very high.

Question 64

Which is most true of the life span of African Americans?

A) It has increased for both men and women.
B) It has increased for adolescents.
C) Black female life span now equals that of white females.
D) All of the above statements are true.

Question 65

During the period immediately before the Civil War when abolitionists challenged slavery, the negative beliefs toward African Americans changed toward

A) the "Sambo" stereotype.
B) the "uncivilized, bestial heathen" stereotype.
C) the "childlike dependency" stereotype.
D) both a and c.

Question 66

Progressive beliefs about African Americans crystallized only in the

A) post-Civil War era.
B) post-World War I era.
C) post-World War II period.
D) both a and c

Question 67

Which was not part of the broad legal framework of slavery?

A) Slaves were to be slaves for life.
B) Children would inherit the father's status.
C) Whites and blacks could not marry.
D) Blacks could not enter civil contracts.

Question 68

Which amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery?

A) Fourteenth Amendment
B) Thirteenth Amendment
C) Twelfth Amendment
D) Twenty-First Amendment

Question 69

In terms of the numbers of black slaves executed, which statement is not true for the period between 1641 and 1965?

A) Male slaves were most likely to be executed.
B) More slaves were executed for revolts than for any other offense.
C) More slaves were executed for murder than for any other offense.
D) More slaves were executed for revolt than rape.

Question 70

Which is not true of the legal framework of slavery?

A) Slaves inherited their father's status.
B) Slavery was lifelong.
C) Slaves could not marry whites.
D) Slaves could not acquire or inherit property.

Question 71

The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution

A) abolished slavery.
B) abolished the "black codes."
C) abolished Jim Crow practices.
D) extended suffrage to African Americans.

Question 72

In Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court

A) ruled that segregated facilities for blacks and whites were not in violation of the Constitution.
B) outlawed Jim Crow practices.
C) reaffirmed the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.
D) took the right to vote away from blacks.

Question 73

The U.S. Supreme Court did not overrule its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson until

A) the 1940s.
B) the 1930s.
C) the 1960s.
D) the 1950s.

Question 74

Which of the following periods represents the most dramatic assault on the legal basis of discrimination against African Americans?

A) 1920-1940
B) 1900-1920
C) 1950-1970
D) 1980-1990

Question 75

In which of the following U.S. Supreme Court decisions did the Court strike down school segregation?

A) Plessy v. Ferguson
B) Henderson v. United States
C) Smith v. Alwright
D) Brown v. Board of Education

Question 76

Which of the following statements is not true about African Americans at the turn of the century?

A) Ninety percent of all African Americans lived in the South.
B) Seventy-five percent lived in rural areas in the South.
C) Conditions for blacks began to improve.
D) None of the above is true.

Question 77

In which of the following years did Congress enact specific legislation designed to eliminate the tactics used to exclude blacks from voting?

A) 1965
B) 1972
C) 1960
D) None. Congress has yet to enact legislation designed to eliminate the tactics used to exclude blacks from voting.

Question 78

Compulsory "ignorance laws" were part of

A) slavery.
B) Jim Crow.
C) radical Reconstruction.
D) the civil rights movement.

Question 79

According to survey data, which of the following is not true of white beliefs about blacks?

A) Whites believe that blacks get too much consideration in hiring practices.
B) Whites believe that blacks are prone to violent crime.
C) Whites believe that blacks are worse off because they are not sufficiently motivated.
D) Whites believe in group-preference programs as a way to overcome the problems of blacks.

Question 80

Which was the first black university in America?

A) Oberlin College
B) Lincoln University
C) Hampton College
D) Alabama A&M