Law and Racial and Ethnic Inequality

Question 1

Critical Race Theory

Answer 1

Analyzes how law maintains dominance and privilege of white society and subordinates status of African Americans

Question 2

Themes of CRT

Answer 2

Perspective (perspective of minorities toward the law, through storytelling)

Racism (racial discrimination) (a prevalent theme in American society)

Construction of race (race as a social construct, how races are associated with negative stereotypes)

Property (white racial identity is a property right, white privilege) (owning your whiteness has benefits)

Law and subordination (law is a mechanism to obtain white dominance)

Law in context (anti-discrimination laws focus on specifics not the broad)

Legal equality (theme, even laws developed to protect minorities are not a genuine commitment to equal rights)

Intersectionality (minorities are at a disadvantage through race, gender, and class)

Essentiality (minorities suffer disadvantages beyond race gender and class) (systemically at a lower position in society)

Alternative legal analysis (existing legal practices fail to offer protection to minorities)

Question 3

African Americans and the CJS

Answer 3

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
Thirteenth Amendment, 1865
Fourteenth Amendment, 1868
Fifteenth Amendment, 1870
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Question 4

Racial profiling

Answer 4

relying on race or ethnicity to determine whether an individual engaged in criminal activity

Question 5

Discriminatory justice

Answer 5

selective enforcement of law against an individual based on characteristics (e.g., race, ethnicity, class, gender)

Question 6

Stand your ground laws

Answer 6

An individual may rely on self-defense to “prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony”

Question 7

War on Drugs

Answer 7

Identification of substance abuse with minorities and the blaming of minorities for social unrest and instability

Question 8

Hate Crimes - Federal Laws

Answer 8

Civil Rights Act of 1968 – federal prosecution for injuring, intimidating, or interfering with another person by force because of their race, color, religion or national origin
1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act – disability
2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act – actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability

Question 9

Hate Crimes - State Laws

Answer 9

45 states and DC have hate crime statutes for race, religion, and ethnicity

Question 10

Immigration law

Answer 10

regulates process through which individual residents abroad are authorized to enter and remain in U.S.

Question 11

Arizona Immigration law

Answer 11

Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act of 2010
Arizona v. United States (2012) found law unconstitutional
Racial profiling