AP GOV CHAPTER 5 Flashcards
What is discrimination?
The use of an unreasonable and unjust criterion of exclusion.
What are civil rights?
Obligation imposed on the government to take positive action to protect citizens from any illegal action of government agencies and of other private citizens.
What is the Equal Protection Clause?
Provision of the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing citizens ‘the equal protection of the laws.’
This clause has been the basis for the civil rights of African Americans, women, and other groups.
What did the Thirteenth Amendment accomplish?
It abolished slavery.
What did the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee?
It guaranteed equal protection and due process.
What did the Fifteenth Amendment guarantee?
It guaranteed voting rights for African American men.
What were Jim Crow Laws?
Laws enacted by southern states following Reconstruction that discriminated against African Americans.
What is the ‘Separate but Equal’ Rule?
Doctrine that public accommodations could be segregated by race but still be considered equal.
What was the significance of Brown v. Board of Education?
The 1954 Supreme Court decision that struck down the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine as fundamentally unequal.
This case eliminated state power to use race as a criterion of discrimination in law and provided the national government with the power to intervene by exercising strict regulatory policies against discriminatory actions.
What is Strict Scrutiny?
A test used by the Supreme Court in racial discrimination cases that places the burden of proof on the government rather than on the challengers.
What does De Jure mean?
‘By law’; refers to legally enforced practices, such as school segregation in the South.
What does De Facto mean?
‘By fact’; refers to practices that occur even when there is no legal enforcement, such as school segregation in much of the United States today.
What is redlining?
A practice in which banks refuse to make loans to people living in certain locations.
What is Intermediate Scrutiny?
A test used by the Supreme Court in gender discrimination cases that places the burden of proof partially on the government and partially on the challengers.
What is Affirmative Action?
Government policies or programs that seek to redress past injustices by making special efforts to provide members of specified groups with access to educational and employment opportunities.
