Midterm

Question 1

Liberal:

Answer 1

Def: willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own; open to new ideas.

Ex: generally support free markets, free trade, limited government, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), capitalism, democracy, secularism, gender equality, racial equality, internationalism, gay rights etc.

Significance: liberal is important because it fosters an appreciation for human cultures and their interaction with the natural world that allows us to engage with current ‘big questions’ facing humanity. Big questions like freedom of speech, racial equality, gender equality, and among others.

Question 2

Panethnicity:

Answer 2

Def: sense of group identity and identification that goes beyond an individual’s national origin group. The development of solidarity between ethnic subgroups as reflected in the terms Hispanic
Ex: terms “latino” and “hispanic” include several national origins. Can apply to a sociopolitical collectivity made up of people of several different national origins.

Significance: Panethnicity is important because it generates a community capable of real power and political action! Panethnicity encourages us to take intra group dynamics seriously and explore how conflicts between subgroups are often negotiated or muted in ethnic mobilization and categorization processes.

Question 3

Citizenship

Answer 3

Def: The status of a person recognized under the custom or law of a sovereign state or local jurisdiction as a member of or belonging to the state.
Ex: An example of citizenship is someone being born in the United States and having access to all the same freedoms and rights as those already living in the US. Of which many Latinos fight long and hard to become US citizens themselves while being in the country illegally
Significance: Citizenship is important because it ensures equal access to critically important benefits for older people and people with disabilities. Many immigrants feel a strong connection to their country of origin. Many countries even allow dual citizenship so that you can maintain your status both in your home country of Mexico for example, and in the U.S.

Question 4

Mobilization:

Answer 4

Def: the process by which political candidates, political parties, activists, and groups try to induce other people to participate and get involved.

Ex: participation involves three key ingredients: resources, psychological orientations, and recruitment

Significance: Mobilization is important because latinos are being mobilized to engage in politics. While political parties and candidates are critical sources of political mobilization, they are not the sole facilitators of Latino civic engagement. In fact, Latinos are encouraging each other to participate in politics

Question 5

Marielitos:

Answer 5

Def: The name given to the Cuban immigrants that left Cuba from the Port of Mariel in 1980. Cuban American gang.

Ex: Approximately 135,000 people left the country to the United States from April to September in what became known as the Mariel boatlift. Sent massive flotilla of yachts, merchant ships, and fishing boats to Mariel. 125,000 immigrate in 6 months

Significance: Marielitos is important because they played an important role in latino politics regarding the many Cubans that emigrate to the U.S. on boatlifts. Some made it and some did not.

Question 6

Pull Factors:

Answer 6

Def: Inducements from new country to leave old country

Ex: Economics: jobs, job programs, new industry growth, natural resources, education.
Cultural: promise of freedom
Environmental: hospitable conditions for life

Significance: Pull factors are important because it draws a population or someone or a family in particular, to another area or place. For reasons like better economy, jobs, money, and better living conditions.

Question 7

Partisanship:

Answer 7

Def: prejudice in favor of a particular cause; bias. Democrat/Republican (Independent)

Ex: partisanship is passed through your parents. Few change their partisanship in their lifetime

Significance: Partisanship is important because it can have a few factors that can impact latinos in ways like socialization, agreement with a party’s major issues, demographic factors like race, ethnicity, gender, religion. It can also dive into other factor issues like subgroups, class, socialization differences, and foreign born status.

Question 8

Social Construction:

Answer 8

Def: Any concept created by a society. A group of persons who define themselves as distinct due to perceived common physical characteristics.

Ex: Examines the development of jointly-constructed understandings of the world that form the basis for shared assumptions about reality.

Question 9

Protective Factors for Voting:

Answer 9

• Efficacy
• Empowerment
• Group Politics: Group identity, Group consciousness, Linked fate

Question 10

Bracero Program:

Answer 10

Def: a series of laws and diplomatic agreements, initiated on August 4, 1942, when the United States signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement with Mexico.

Ex: Program popular with farmers and extended until 1964

Significance: It is important because many workers face mistreatment, the program brought over more than 5 million Mexicans to the US legally and illegally to work and hundreds of thousands stayed. The program helped from farm labor shortages caused by American entry into World War II, by bringing Mexican workers to replace American workers dislocated by the war.

Question 11

Packing:

Answer 11

Def: the process of putting as many Latnios into a district as possible.

Significance: Majority-minority district capable of electing a co-ethnic, but results in “white-washing” in surrounding districts.

Street Level Bureaucrats

Question 12

Conservative

Answer 12

Def: usually someone or group of people, averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values.

Ex: hard-line stances on moral issues, such as opposition to abortion and homosexuality, gay marriage, “all lives matter,” gender equality. They conduct society as prescribed by a religious authority or code.

Significance: conservatives are important because they believe in limiting government in size and scope, and in a balance between national government and states’ rights.

Question 13

Registered Voters:

Answer 13

Def: group of people who are eligible to vote in the U.S.

Ex: those registered can vote either early, by-mail, or in person on election day. Allows for voices to be heard, and brings about real change.

Significance: Registered voters is important because it ensures that we get our voices heard and implement real change. This is especially true among latino voters, by voting, it can help necessary changes in local communities, poverty, and can help dispel assimilations towards latinos.

Question 14

Community of Culture:

Answer 14

Def: exists when individuals are linked closely by their participation in a common system of meaning with concomitant patterns of customary interactions of culture.

Ex: Common interests, heritage, country of origin, ancestry. Language, religion, customs, observance of holidays and festivals, family networks and structure, folklore.

Question 15

Zoot Suit Riots:

Answer 15

Def: Series of conflicts between June 3-8, 1943 in Los Angeles which pitted American servicemen stationed in Southern California against young black and Mexican-American city residents.

Ex: Week-long battle between Zoot suit teens and sailors on leave.

Significance: This riot is important because it symbolized the tensions between white Californians and Mexican Americans.

Question 16

Community of Interests:

Answer 16

Def: refers to the conditions, statuses, and experiences that Latinos share with members of other Latino subgroups.

Ex: Connection from occupational concentration. Residential enclaves. Experience with political disenfranchisement. Differential treatment (discrimination) based on ancestry, phenotype, immigrant status, language, religion

Significance: It is important because community of interests allows people to work together to learn from each other and help each other think of solutions everybody can use to make things better in their own areas.

Question 17

Group Consciousness:

Answer 17

Def: The awareness exhibited by individual group members about the group, its members, and their commonalities.
Ex: It is the other necessary condition for pan-ethnicity. Encompasses the cognitive elements of group attachment. Requires individual to:
Incorporate group identity as part of THEIR social identity strategically
Incorporate evaluative assessments about the groups relative position in society

Significance:Group consciousness is important because it allows us to explore more about a group or individual’s relationship with self and society.

Question 18

Color Blind Society:

Answer 18

Def: racial classification does not limit a person’s opportunities. Dissuades usage by asking us not to consider “difference” whether good or bad.

Ex: “When i look at you, I don’t see color,” “there is only one race, the human race”

Significance: Color blind society is important because its a very political viewpoint that has race-neutral governmental policies that reject discrimination in any form in order to promote the goal of racial equality. It basically allows to get the necessary issues done for the benefit of humankind, regarding race, and cultural background.

Question 19

Microaggressions:

Answer 19

Def: Brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership.

Ex: “you are so articulate!” “you speak good English.” Generally happens below the level of awareness of well-intentioned members of the dominant culture. Often intend no offense. Unawareness of harm.

Significance: Microaggressions are important because they can cause an impact on the latino community in regards to unconscious bias even though its not intended to offend. Such comments or remarks can cause an unawareness of harm or give a feeling to a minority that they’re not as successful as the dominant culture.

Question 20

Balsero:

Answer 20

Def: The name given to the persons who emigrate illegally in self constructed or precarious vessels from Cuba to neighbouring states including the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and, most commonly, the United States.

Ex: Tens of thousands risk death to make 90 mi. crossing.
- Used homemade vessels, inner tubes, converted cars, cheap plywood rafts (balsos)

Significance: It is important because hundreds died attempting to flee. Conditions worsened in Cuba following the fall of the Soviet Union which caused Cubans to flee. Increased desperation led to in

Question 21

Golden Exile:

Answer 21

Def: The emigration of Cubans, from the 1959 Cuban Revolution to October of 1962. Most of the refugees came from the upper and middle strata of Cuban society. The majority were urban, middle-aged, well-educated, light-skinned, and white-collar workers.

Ex: Examples of fleeing would be the Bay of Pigs invasion. 200,000 arrived in the US by 1962.

Significance: It is important because while the revolution did not fail, those who allied themselves to overthrow the Batista regime, had to leave the country.

Question 22

Ideology:

Answer 22

Def: a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy

Ex: Converse 1964: most Americans non-ideological. Level of ideological thinking varies with education and attention. Opinions not “constrained” by an underlying organizational principle.

Significance: Ideology is important because it concerns with usage among Latinos. Are Latinos more ideologically moderate than non-Latino whites? Latinos may be less ideological than non-latinos. That in itself can be taken as a form of a racialized concept, the idea that Latinos think less and throw “random” opinions that lack underlying consistency.

Question 23

Wealth Gap:

Answer 23

Def: the unequal distribution of assets among residents in the United States.

Ex: households, businesses, savings, investments, earnings, in comparison to whites and blacks.

Significance:Wealth Gap is important because it lets us know which subgroups in particular are making more per capita than the other. Latinos face a wealth gap that leads to poorer socioeconomic outcomes for latino families. They have made less than whites in terms of wealth gap increase since the great recession ended

Question 24

Majority-Minority Districting:

Answer 24

Def: political jurisdictions in which residents are primarily minority (over 50% of the population)

Ex: districts with a Hispanic/Latino majority, areas in a particular city or country. Districts with an African-American majority etc.

Significance: Majority-Minority districting is important because it shows us data on the many areas in a particular city or country that is resided by minority groups like Latinos, African-Americans, and other groups that are non-Hispanic, whites.

Question 25

Voter Turnout: Low turnout means an election can be biased.

Answer 25

Def: the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election.

Significance: Voter Turnout is important among Latinos because they tend to have a low turnout mainly because of US voter registration tends to be costly, US voting is non-compulsory, even if it was compulsory, voter turnout would only be raised by 15% on average. Other factors include that Election day is on a Tuesday, folks work, voter fatigue, Polarization.

Question 26

Language Minority:

Answer 26

• Section 203 of Voting Rights Act protects language minorities
• Must be a “covered” state or political subdivision (not national)
• Covered language minorities only include: Alaskin natives, Asian Americans, American-Indians, Spanish-hertitatge
• 24 states have covered political subdivisions

Question 27

Strategic Identity

Answer 27

• Referred to as situational identity
• Identity changes based on context or interest of individual
• Identity is dynamic and context specific, particularly for latinos
• Creation of the term latino/hispanic is strategic

Question 28

Essay 2: Applicability and Creation of Pan-ethnic Identity

Answer 28

Pan-ethnicity: Group identity and identification that goes beyond an individual’s national origin group (its socially constructed, its changeable)
Panethnicity goes beyond national origin groups to create a greater and broader sense of group membership. The terms Latino and Hispanic both are instances of panethnicity. Both encompass several different national origins each with cultural and interior differences. It can be a sociopolitical concept to group people of different national origins into one demographic. This creates a community capable of real change in politics. It also encourages how identity is a dynamic concept.

Negative: discrimination
Pros: it generates a community capable of real power and political action strong pan-ethnic identifiers are more likely to participate in community activities, political engagement, political awareness, group consciousness

Question 29

-Latino Demographics

Answer 29

Before looking at demographics it is important to ask a question, “who are Latinos?” There are many aspects to defined Latino in America, but some common ways how people do it is by self-identification, culture, language, subgroups, and political interest. However, if we want to analyze demographics, we must look paper into the legal definition, the changing demography in the US, the percent of Latino by state, but her age, and nativity trends.

Question 30

Essay- Latino Political Participation

Answer 30

Latino Political Participation involves the process of influencing the distribution of social goods and values. The critical factors that take place in being involved in such political participation of some sort involves resource, time, opportunities, beliefs, values ideology, and participatory political attitudes. In addition to Latinos, of which they are more likely to attend rallies, donate, petition, volunteer, join an interest group, attend political meetings, and other non voting participation, causes their voting turnout to be lower. The percentage of Latinos who are registered say that they have attended a public meeting or demonstrated in the community of where they live. About 26% say that they have done so, while 22% went their way in calling an elected official. 16% of Latinos have contributed money to a candidate running for public office, 7% have worked as a volunteer or for pay for a political candidate, and of the 7% registered Latinos who have worked for a political candidate, 23% say the candidate was not Latino, therefore, it was not specific to Latino concerns. So the issue here is very stagnant because Latinos are more likely to participate in non-voting events than ACTUALLY going out to vote and participation tends to be very low as well which causes a low voter turnout for Latinos in general.