Soc. 269, Asian American Experience

• Cultural Encapsulation


  A lack of contact with cultures outside of our own promotes insensitivity to cultural differences.
• The Civil Rights Act (1964)


  Banned discrimination on the grounds of race, color, religion, national origin, and gender.
• Factors that Facilitated the Success of The Civil Rights Movement

  • Changing economic, social, and political environment
  • The movement embraced the dominant code of American values and beliefs
  • Support from other groups
  • The influence of the mass media
• Culture of Poverty Thesis


  • Certain groups and individuals tend to persist in the state of poverty because they have distinct beliefs, values, and ways of behaving that are incompatible with...
• 5 Central Components of Slavery


  1. Slavery was for life
  2. The status was inherited
  3. Slaves were considered mere property
  4. Slaves were denied rights
  5. Coercion was used to maintain the system
• Why Africans? (Slavery)

  • Physically different
  • Non-Christians
  • Not familiar with the territory
  • Lacked organization
  • Ideological belief that they were different
• The Blauner Hypothesis


  Africans as a colonized minority group:

  • Forced into minority status by superior military power and political power of the dominant group.
  • They were "chattel"
  • Subjected to massive inequalities and attacks on their culture
  • Perpetuated and reinforced through their distinctive physical traits
  • Paternalistic relations/Caste system
• Chattel


  Two forms of chattel:

  • Domestic chattel- household duties
  • Productive chattel- working in the fields or mines
• Civil Disobedience


  • Based on the belief that people have the right to disobey the law under certain circumstances:

  1. Active nonviolent resistance to evil
  2. Not seeking to defeat or humiliate opponents but to win their friendship and understanding
  3. Attacking the forces of evil rather than the people who happen to be doing the evil
  4. Willingness to accept suffering without retaliating
  5. Refusing to hate the opponent
  6. Acting with conviction that the universe is on the side of justice
• Paternalism

  • Members of the minority group are viewed as being docile, child-like, in need of supervision.

  1. Vast power differentials and large inequalities between dominant and minority group
  2. Repressive system of control
  3. Caste system (a closed stratification system-no mobility between social positions)
• Dred Scott Decision


  • The Supreme Court ruled that African Americans had no rights which whites were bound to respect.
  • They could never become citizens of the U.S.
• Emancipation Proclamation


  Proclaimed slaves to be free and authorized the armed forces of the United States to enlist free slaves
• Civil Rights Act (1866)


  • Declared Black people to be citizens of the United States
  • Gave them equal civil rights
  • Gave federal courts jurisdiction over cases arising under the act
• 14th Amendment


  Declared that states could not deprive any person of Life, liberty, or property without 'due process of the law
• De Jure Segregation


  • The system of rigid competitive race relations that was characterized by laws mandating racial separation and inequality
  • Replaced slavery
  • "Jim Crow System"
• De Facto Segregation


  Racial segregation that occurs in schools, not as a result of the law, but as a result of patterns of residential settlement
• Backlash Against African Americans


  • Ku Klux Klan
  • Jim Crow Laws (De Jure Segregation)
  • Voting restrictions
  • Separate but Equal (Plessy V. Ferguson)
• Booker T. Washington


  • An influential and powerful spokesperson for Black America
  • Argued that Blacks were still too recently removed from slavery to take their place as equals among the Whites
  • Emphasized that Black people must adopt an economic program of manual labor and self-help as the best means to win their full rights as citizens rather than engaging in political action (The "Atlanta Compromise" Speech)
• W.E.B. Du Bois


  • Formed the Niagara Movement to oppose Washington's views
  • Advocated that Blacks should protest the curtailment of their political and civil rights
  • Blacks should strive to establish economic independence
  • The ultimate goal should be the full acceptance of African Americans as 1st class citizens.
• NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)


  • Niagara group's members merged with a group of White liberals to form the NAACP
  • Called on Congress and the president to enforce strictly the Constitution's provisions on civil rights
• Brown v. Topeka Board of Education


  • Supreme court ruled that education must be available to all children on equal terms
  • Reversed Plessy v. Ferguson: "Separate is not equal."
• Marcus Garvey


  • Organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association- goal to help African Americans leave the U.S. and settle on an independent nation in Africa
  • Believed that the solution to America's racial problem was the Renunciation of American citizenship and permanent separation of the two races.
• Martin Luther King


  • One of the leading figures in the Civil Rights Movement
  • Founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to gain civil rights through nonviolent protest and confrontation
• Malcolm X


  • Emphasized separation and power
  • "Black is Beautiful"
  • Advocate for a separate nation in the US
  • Suggested that several states should be set aside for this purpose
• Ethnic Resource Model


  Cultural strengths (e.g., extended families, strong kinship bonds, high values on family stability) have protected the Black family through devastating effects of slavery and recent pattern of Black male unemployment
• Secondary Assimilation


  • African Americans have moved in many ways toward the goal of full secondary assimilation.

  BUT

  • Large gaps still persist between whites and blacks in regards to income, jobs, education, and housing.
• Primary Assimilation


  • Black - White relations in the US are changing as the social and historical contexts of racial relations change.
  • Contact in the 'public' sphere is more common than contact in the 'private' sphere
• Marital Assimilation


  1. Out-marriages among Blacks have been less common than out-marriage among other racial and ethnic groups
  2. Rate of Black/White intermarriage went up rapidly during the 1960s and nearly doubled in the 1980s and 1990s
  3. More black families headed by women who have never married due to decline eligible black male partners (encourages interracial relations)
• Indentured Servants


  • Contract laborers who are obligated to serve a master for a specific number of years
  • Servants became free citizens at the end of the indentureship
• Plantation System


  Based on cultivating and exporting crops such as sugar, tobacco, and rice grown on large tracts of land using a large, cheap labor force.
• Sharecropping


  A system developed by the plantation elite to solve their labor problem
• Primary Labor Market


  • Includes jobs usually located in large bureaucratic organizations
  • Higher pay
  • More security
  • Better opportunities for advancement
  • Other benefits/amenities
• Secondary Labor Market


  • "Competitive Market"
  • Low-paying, low-skilled, insecure jobs
  • Little opportunity for upward mobility
• The Noel Hypothesis


  "If two or more groups come together in a contact situation characterized by ethnocentrism, competition, and a differential in power, then some form of racial or ethnic stratification will result"
• Group Threat Model


  • The larger the outgroup, the more the ingroup perceives it to threaten its own interests
  • Results in the ingroup members having more negative attitudes toward the outgroup
• Critical Race Theory


  • A movement in social, political, and legal theory that aims to discern the subtle effects of racism and related forms of prejudice
  • Studies the relationship among race, racism, and power
• Voting restrictions for African Americans


  • Grandfather Clause
  • Literacy tests
  • Poll taxes
  • Intent: to take away African Americans ability to vote to silence them in the political system
• Ku Klux Klan


  -Founded in the 1860s in the south

  -Meant to control newly freed slaves through threats and violence

  -Other targets: Catholics, Jews, immigrants and others thought to be "un-American"
• Rosa Parks


  • Secretary of NAACP
  • Spurred the Montgomery Bus Boycott
• Reparations for slavery


  • Idea that Black Americans deserve reparations for slavery and its lingering effects

  Issues/Arguments:

  • Discrepancy when distributing reparations with people of mixed race
  • Argument that Black Americans today are too far removed from slavery/reparations are not necessary
  • Argument that reparations have already been paid in the forms of welfare, civil rights agencies, bills, etc.