Final Exam Study Guide Forward Introduction Crime is a conduct that society sees as threatening o When crime involved a different color i e black it becomes even more threatening Racism is a permanent phenomenon in American because whites are put at the top of the economic ladder and it makes them fearful of minorities thus furthering the gap African Americans have had far more empirical studies done on their experience with crime because they are seen as facing the worst of the injustice from our legal system Race is a socially constructed word which means that it only exists because we as a social audience give meaning to it o Race has a meaning in history o Racial dynamics are flexible and political Racism social practices which attribute merits values to members of racially categorized groups solely on the basis of race Intersectionality how each person simultaneously experiences racial and gender oppression at the individual level Petite apartheid realities everyday activities that contribute to the poor relations between police and those of color o An aspect of institutionalized racism Racial formation the process by which people attach meaning and importance to racial categories o Individual racial formation the process by which people formulate their identities o Societal racial formation social relations between groups The author tells us we need to look at the way we define crime because Yes they believe racial and ethnic stereotypes are gendered and the three cannot be split Chapter 1 Cultural heritage has influenced and shaped the worldviews customs and values of contemporary Native Americans but not without hostility from whites who want them to conform to the normal American traditions Millennia one thousand years Words like squaw and savage and redskin make Indians seem less human o Dehumanize Average Americans benefit more from federal programs than Indians do The trail of tears was the forced removal from Georgia to the Indian Territory Oklahoma o Many died of starvation or disease along the way The Indian Removal Act was when the government opened up thousands of acres for non Indian settlement forcing Indians out of their homes Chapter 2 Chapter 3 The idea that American is a hostile complex world that demands conformity goes along with the idea of assimilation because this is the logic that people of the minority should conform to fit the ideas and beliefs of the majority and lose their own During Columbus reign as governor of Hispanola 1493 1500 over half a million Indians died from poor treatment disease war or execution they enslaved them and were very brutal Proselytism is the act of trying to convert someone to a new religion o This is relevant to Native Americans because many Europeans justified moving into Indian territory to convert them to Christianity Benjamin Franklin s view of Indians was that they could not be changed he was not a friend of the Indians because he advocated their extermination In the 1860s the US Army s medical personnel dug up buried Indian bodies to decapitate their heads and show that their brains were inferior than ours and they were unable to use land properly Pot hunters are people who steal artifacts from Native American graves to sell Lost Birds are children that were stolen away from their families on reservations to be sold on the black market for adoption o Some led good lives others suffered many different types of abuse Pettiway s grandfather was born on the day that the Emancipation Proclamation was effective I know what it means to be labeled different as an outsider o Because he is black he can empathize with others who are seen as the out group The position held on the gay liberation movement is that there is little appreciation for racism within the gay community and their sentiments have less depth o This movement has little to do with color because so many white gays still hate blacks even though they both suffer from some form of oppression Colorism within the black community means that the lighter your black skin tone is the smarter you were considered this was based solely on how light your skin was or how little your hair was kinky instead of actual intelligence The relevance of eye color is that hazel green eyes are seen as prettier and better than brown because they were more like a white persons Latino youths are now seen as a symbol or representation of gangsta culture The relevance of the memoir Always Running La Vida Loca Gang Days in LA was that it created a significant interest in gang youths Mano Dura Firm Hand is a policy in place in El Salvador Honduras Guatemala and Mexico that any children suspected of gang activity who are deported to these countries are imprisoned o In one case many were allowed to burn in suspicious fires Racist pundits use the large numbers of blacks and Latinos in prison with crime statistics to prove the alleged inferiority and criminality of these racial groups o Yet they ignore the fact the years of slavery they endured the growing poverty levels and social barriers making it more difficult for them to get ahead The connection between the color of skin and the color of crime was that the two are completely related the color of crime is the color of your skin The distortion of Latino youths in the media only fuels the basest emotions in us o It only enhances our fear of them The image of Latino youth and the reality can never be reconciled because people have to open themselves up completely to get to them and relate to them which isn t happening The point of the authors work was to show how she as a white female compared to the black African American females she worked with and the opportunities and advantages she had because of her race o Didn t want to cause guilt only to have people realize that there in a system of privilege that needs to end White privileges are in line with the idea that white is good and color is bad the criminal justice system is controlled by whites and thus gives whites an unfair advantage whites are seen as less criminal that other races and those who are criminal are the outliers People of color misread her paper because the things she is saying are obvious to them and they believe that all white people see their unfair advantage they don t see that whites are socialized to be blind to this unearned privilege When Columbus landed he thought he was in India The catholic church believed that Indians were indeed human with gold and land to be