Chapter 5 Flashcards
Busing
In the context of civil rights, the transportation of public school students from areas where they live to schools in other areas to eliminate school segregation based on residential patterns.
Affirmative Action
A policy in educational admissions or job hiring that gives special attention or compensatory treatment to traditionally disadvantaged groups in an effort to overcome present effects of past discrimination.
Civil Disobedience
A nonviolent, public refusal to obey allegedly unjust laws.
Civil Law
The law regulating conduct between private persons over noncriminal matters, including contracts, domestic relations, and business interactions.
Civil Rights
Generally, all rights rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.
Common Law
Judge-made law that originated in England from decisions shaped according to prevailing customs. Decisions were applied to similar situations and thus gradually became common to the nation.
Criminal Law
The law that defines crimes and provides punishment for violations. In criminal cases, the government is the prosecutor.
De Facto Segregation
Racial segregation that occurs because of past social and economic conditions and residential racial patterns.
De Jure Segregation
Racial segregation that occurs because of laws or administrative decisions by public administrative decisions by public agencies.
Feminism
Feminism
The movement that supports political, economic, and social equality for women.
Fertility Rate
Fertility Rate
A statistic that measures the average number of children that women in a given group are expected to have over the course of a lifetime.
Gender Discrimination
Gender Discrimination
Any practice, policy, or procedure that denies equality of treatment to an individual or to a group because of gender.
Grandfather Clause
A device used by southern states to disenfranchise African Americans. It restricted voting to those whose grandfathers had voted before 1867.
Hispanic
Someone who can claim a heritage from a Spanish-speaking country. The term is used only in the United States or other countries that receive immigrants - - Spanish-speaking persons living in Spanish speaking countries normally do not apply the term to themselves.
Latino
An alternative to the term Hispanic that is preferred by many.
Literacy Test
A test administered as a precondition for voting, often used to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote.
Majority
The age at which a person is entitled by law to the right to manage her or his own affairs.
Necessaries
Things necessary for existence. In contract law, necessaries include whatever is reasonably necessary for suitable subsistence as measured by age, state, condition in life, and the like.
Poll Tax
A special tax that must be paid as a qualification for voting. In 1964, the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution outlawed the poll tax in national elections, and in 1966 the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in state elections as well.
Reverse Discrimination
The situation in which an affirmative action program discriminates against those who do not have minority status.
Seperate-but-Equal Doctrine
The doctrine holding that separate-but-equal facilities do not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Sexual Harassment
Unwanted physical or verbal conduct or abuse of a sexual nature that interferes with a recipient’s job performance, creates a hostile work environment, or carries with it an implicit or explicit threat of adverse employment consequences.
White Primary
A state primary election that restricts voting to whites only; outlawed by the Supreme Court in 1944.
