American Culture Studies – Flashcards
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Dona maria aka La Malinche
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american indian who played a critical role in the spanish conquest of mexico. she was thought to be a princess of an aztec speaking tribe and was sold to coastal slave traders in her youth. 1519 she was presented to cortez as well as 20 other female slaves. when he found out she could speak the aztec language, he took a special interest in her. she was very intelligent and made herself indispensible to cortez. she sometimes would over hear the enemy making plans and warned cortez to avoid warfare, she became an advisor to cortez -cortez's prostitute. an idian slave who was thought of a traitor because she translated and was thought of as the link by which her people were killed/enslaved
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corridos
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narrative song and poetry form, a ballad, of the mestizo Mexican cultural area
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historias
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stories
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cabeza de vaca
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-ship wrecked for nine years. When he came back he was "stripped naked". -dealt with the notion of "real people" who he could not just impose his will upon them. felt for them because of the numbers who were dying and they had to keep moving. he learned to speak their language and culture and understand them -became acculturated to native american practices and learned their practices becoming the first cultural mestizo -he wanted to find others that shipwrecked like him. when he encountered the Spaniards they did not recognize him as European. he was strangely dressed and in company of Indians. his Indians friends refused to associate him with the European cruelty as well. he created his own hybrid identity neither fully Indian or fully European -because he adapted the conqueror became conquered.
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Bernal Diaz del Castillo
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Soldier in Cortez's army, wrote the True History of the Conquest of New Spain, a populist history, exalting courage of common soldier. Along with Cortes he greatly admired the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. -one of cortez's foot soldiers who was one of the first to depict how brutal it was. wrote true history of the conquest of the new spain. he was the first to depict dona maria as a traitor. begin a unique latino and american identity
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Gloria Anzaldua
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Key Points 1. Mexican-American writer, most famous for writer "The Borderlands/ La Frontera" in the 1980's and "How to Tame a Wild Tongue 2. born in 1948, ranchsettlement of Jesus Maria in South Texas, Anzaldua grew up in the small town of Hargill, TX 3. In her poetry, fiction, essays, and autobiography, she writes eloquently of the indignities a chicana lesbian feminist overcomesas she escapes the strictures of patriarchal Chicano traditions and confronts the injustices of dominant culture 4. grew up asa 6th generation Tejana from TX, Chicana backround; influenced by death of her father when she was 14 5. succeeded being the only member of her immediate family to graduate from college 6. recieved her B.A. from Pan American Univ., and her M.A. from the Univ. of Texas at Austin 7. died on May 15, 2004 only weeks upon finishing her dissertation and receiving her doctorate from UC Santa Cruz 8. describes rebel inside of her as shadow beast: unwillingness to take orders from anyone. refuses to take order from the conscious will and kicks out when it feels it is restrained 9. women's 3 options: nun a prostitute or a home
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Americo Paredes
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Author of George Washington Gomez; wrote in 1930s, published in 1990 and didn't change anything; professor at UT. Also wrote With a Pistol in His Hand -wrote george washinton gomez. came from mixed races and didnt know who to choose (similar to creoles who were mixed between black and european). he was being rased to be a leader of his people compared to george washington who was the first leader he is first leader of mestizo culture
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mestizo/a
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-a person of mixed racial ancestry (especially mixed European and Native American ancestry) -Mestiza women: -Our lady of Guadalupe: shrouded in the light. shroud is called a tilk to maker her more endearing to her crowd. she is portrayed arond god and the poor -la llorona: image of the crying woman. crying because she has lost her children. she made the choice to be a mother and her children were all she had so when her child dies she has lost her life essentially. caught within pain and torture. -la malinche: she could not betray her people when she had no people. has been raped of her culture and identity. she is also a sign of abandonment. she is a monument to latin women carrying the "turtle" on their back. a shell from protection as well as being independent by floating, and rising above the rest, can withdraw into itself and be self contained by withdrawing into its own, and finally keeping ones home with them no matter where they go
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borderland
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-land along a frontier -• "A Borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary" (25). For Anzaldua, there are two border territories: " The actual physical borderland that I'm dealing with in this book is the Texas-U.S Southwest/Mexican border. The psychological borderlands, the sexual borderlands and the spiritual borderlands are not particular to the Southwest" (19). There are internal stereotypes that stick into your mind. -cultures coming together mixing often violently
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George Washington Gomez
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Idea of success; family wants him to be a great man for his people; father killed by Rangers; doesn't want him to grow up with hate; Feliciano takes care of everyone; sisters sacrifice school and happiness so he can go; two different parts of himself (school=AM, home=MX), trying to balance
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Aztlan
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-Place where the legend says the aztecs came from -Borderlands were called Atzlan (bringing ancestors into present), San Diego -notion of where Macias came before they came into Mexico. located in the US southwest. Anglos are interlopers in their land
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Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
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-Treaty that ended the Mexican War, granting the U.S. control of Texas, New Mexico, and California in exchange for $15 million -forced on Mexico -Southern Boundary of Texas set at the Rio Grande -US gained: present day states CA, NV, and UT, most of AZ and NM, parts of CO and WY -US agreed to pay $15 million to Mexico and pay debts of Mexico to US citizens
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border
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the boundary line or the area immediately inside the boundary -both a place and idea -perfect metaphor for both identity and conditions that frame life in the world today
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barrios
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where many Mexican and Mexican Americans of the California region ended up living as the lower end of the state's working class, mostly in Los Angeles. -a crowded inner city area
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cultural tyranny
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-Borderlands -In a section of her essay entitled "Cultural Tyranny" she claims that "culture expects women to show greater acceptance or, and commitment to the value system than men" and that these expectations form women's identities and their 'role' in society.
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tejanos
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Mexican residents of Texas. Many fought with the Americans in the Revolution, but after Texas was independent, the Americans didn't trust them. The Americans feared they were spies and drove many out of Texas.
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linguistic terrorism
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-how to tame a wild tongue -
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Shadow Beast
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-Anzaldua describing the rebel inside of her -unwillingness to take orders from anyone. refuses to take order from the co nscious will and kicks out when it feels it is restrained
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half and half
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-super natural transgender individuals. breaks the idea that men and women could be acceptable -call this into question. what if you can have both mentally physically and spiritually. get to model a new option. -"i am two in one body both male and female...the coming together of opposite qualities with in" (41).
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la Chingada
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-offspring of the male spanish and the indian woman is usually identified as thins; perhaps the strongest insult in mexico.
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viboras
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-snakes, How to Tame a Wild Tongue - Anzaldua was scared by a snake. There was a myth about that snake. "A snake will crawl into your nalgas, make you pregnant" (Anzaldua 29). Anzaldua thinks that it is la Vibora, snake woman. This snake woman becomes the symbol of the Serpent. The symbol represents evil, death.
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la Virgen de Guadalupe
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shrouded in the light. shroud is called a tilk to make her more endearing to her crowd. she is portrayed around god and the poor.
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la llorona
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image of the crying woman. crying because she has lost her children. she made the choice to be a mother and her children were all she had so when her child dies she has lost her life essentially. caught within pain and torture.
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la facultad
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In attempt to explain the psyche of those on the border, Anzaldua explains that many on the border develop la facultad—"the capacity to see in surface phenomena the meaning of deeper realities to see the deep structure below the surface. It is an instant "sensing," a quick perception arrived at without conscious reasoning. It is an acute awareness mediated by the part of the psyche that does not speak, that communicates in images and symbols which are the faces of feelings, that is behind which feelings reside/hide" (60).
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barrioization
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the formation of residentially and socially segregated Chicano barrios or neighborhoods (4). A complex of dominating social processes originating outside of the barrios (4) was not imposed without significant responds by the Mexicans living within and acting on behalf of their developing residential milieus (bad put into a place)
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barriology
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-Study of life in the barrios. The expressive practices of barrio social and cultural reproduction from the mundane exercises of daily-round and leisure activities to the formal articulation of community defensive goals in organizational forums and discursive media reveal multiple possibilities for re creating and re imagining dominant urban space and community-enabling place. (ways to make positive experience of out of negative situation. Place making) -Quotation: "to broadly identify a historical continuity between past and present circumstances influencing the production of barrio social space and its representations" (8).
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the law effect
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the social control of space by state legal institutions and police authorities
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the media effect
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-the ideological control of space via the interpellation of citizen-subjects through educational and informational apparatuses -media and educational or research apparatuses to influence policies and actions detrimental to the social status of subordinate groups
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the landscape effect
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the physical regulation and constitution of space (via land-use decisions and the built environment
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deterritorialization
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-The process by which a group of people lose their territory and their traditional ways of living. - the consequences of deterritorialization for mexicanos in the newly annexed territories literally put them in their designated place within the emergent social space of Anglo-American capitalism
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Foreign Miners Tax
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-One of the first acts of California state legislature was to pass this tax, which imposed a $20 a month tax on foreign miners. -mexicano expulstion -employed to pressure "alien miners" out of the region
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the "mexican problem"
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o Immigration: the Mexican problem is that they come over for jobs but they are not accepted as people. They appreciated the heart of the culture (fiestas ect) so they celebrated but didn't give them any rights. So there was a Mexican problem/Spanish romance love hate relationship.
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placas
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(in southwestern US) graffiti as of initials or slogans spray painted on an outdoor wall especially in the lettering style and colors identified with an individual or a street gang
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Zoot Suit Riots
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Factors leading to Zoot Suit Riots: • After the bombing of pearl harbor Japanese citizens were taken to "relocation centers" • Racial anxieties of white community transfer over to the zoot suiters Race and the media during the Zoot Suit Riots: • Media very responsible in influencing public opinion with their racial biases At the time of the riots papers centered their focus on the wrong doing of the minorities pointing out their involvement in gangs and petty crimes • They did not focus on the truth Anglo soldiers with their racial prejudices were actually the people inciting the chaos in summary • Mexicans were sometimes stripped of their clothing • Cops sometimes started the riots and that opinions of Mexican American service men were apart of the war effort but not apart of the white thought
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Chavez Ravine
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Battle of chavez ravine (dodge stadium) area w/the 3 main mexican barrios where stadium is now. Emerged from displacement of Mexican families btn 1951-1961. in effort to move brooklyn dodgers to LA, LA housing authority began condemning area in 1951 as blighted, poverty stricken, and crime ridden adding made city planners. All latino inhabitants kicked out of area by 1953, on May 19th 1959 last family in area arechigas frocibly removed form homes by LAPD. He sat in a tent next to demolished home w/shotgun protecting remains of ruined home for years ( battle of chavez ravine) agreed to leave after city paid him $10,000
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Bracero Program
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-United States labor agents recruited thousands of farm and railroad workers from Mexico. The program stimulated emigration for Mexico. -demand for farm labor led to this which gave mexican workers the chance to work in the us -corporate farmers, state governors, and fed gov't solicited mexican workers or passively encouraged them... before 1940s
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Federal Housing Act 1949
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•Pledged a decent home for every American family •Called on local public bodies to encourage the development of "well planned, integrated residential neighborhoods" o Initially the act displaced lower income families and fostered segregation •Reflected paramount national concern over the quality of the housing stock particularly in rural areas •Makes several references to the structural quality of housing and calls for "sound standards of design, construction, livability, and size adequate for family life" •Owning ones home is no longer a privilege reserved for the elite
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Helena Maria Viramontes
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Her short stories have been published in a variety of literary journals. The major themes of her stories are informed by her childhood experiences in East Los Angeles, and the impact of César Chávez and the United Farm Workers on the life of her family. Many of her works feature strong female characters, and child protagonists figure prominently into her work. Other works have been deemed "democratic novels", in that no single protagonist dominates the storyline. Throughout all of her work, a love of life and of all of humanity pervades, despite poverty and the other challenges her characters face.
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Gil Cuadros
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-wrote vignette "My Atzlan: White Place" -evokes motifs of evisceration, burial, and social death common of Chicano urban places -addition of gay experience to social coordinance of race and place that predominate in Chicano critical discourses of social geography -his approach paints his experiences as dark, shares alienation for being gay -wrote poem "There Are Places You Don't Walk Alone at Night": starts off with "the cholos.... they'd cuff me from behind..."
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Luis Alfaro
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-performance artist and playwright -recipient of MacArthur Foundation "genius" fellowship -mediates his experience of double displacement, noting that neither the white gay nor straight chicano communities can wholly embrace his multiple identifications - poem starts off by saying "the mexicans only want me when they want me to talk about mexico but what about mexican queers in la?" -renders the contradictions of his familial and ethnic urban landscape in intimate but critically uncompromising terms in various texts of his larger dramatic and poetic corpus
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Gloria Alvarez
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-lyric poem "Contrastes/Contrasts":refers to signs of social inequity built into the dichotomous cultural geography of downtown la -bunker hill's manhattanized skyline is scrutinized by her to reveal its devastating impact on those past and present inner-city residents who fall under or are felled by omnipotent shadows -the conspicuous use of spanish further implies the intercultural differences of race and class manifest in the antithetical landscapes of skid row and bunker hill
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Elysian Park
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-location: Intersect by the I-10 and I-5. Next to the police academy. -literary and artistic context: Recites old American English (helps back track racial profiling) -evidence of barriorization: Zoot suit riots. Physical border does not restrict him and neither does the border. Park was a source of life. They created a lively hood here. Mario was afraid to be targeted as Chicano even in the park. Into the river removes them from the smog both physically and emotionally. -evidence of barriology: Snow cloud and recreation of carnival that it makes.
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Barrio Logan's Chicano Park
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-location: In Logan Heights underneath I-5 and the ramp for the Coronado bridge. From the freeways all to Coronado bay. Struggle for space. -Literary and artistic context: Torres is the architect. They created murals on pillars that mix American and Mexican tradition equally. Poems that described the area. Poster for 20th year contains the flag and a fist. RCAF (rebel Chicano art front/ air force) (185) -Evidence of Barriorization: The love of their park led them to fight for it regardless of the bad "fumes" (174). Conjure a specific sense of place (174). -Evidence of Barriology: The art and films that were created
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Southside Park
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-location: Downtown sac. Inside of a large shopping center. Across from the mall is very green and beautiful. By I-5. Created as a division between old and new -Literary and artistic context: What citizens produce vs. market value -Evidence of Barriorization: Semiotics: the designation of special signs. Goes against opposition of the old and the new. Denied access to a public pool on page 193 -Evidence of Barriology: They would rather go to the park and enjoy the outdoors than the consumerism of the mall. Bring together with cook-offs and barebeuqes with entertainment and art to keep kids of the street
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"higher and better use"
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-reasoning to rebuild on the land on which communities of low-income residents lived -1949 Federal Housing Act allowed local redevelopment agencies to use 10% and later 30% (1960) of federal funds for commercial, nonresidential projects -
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Manifest Destiny
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-The drive to consume others lands and cultures (manifest destiny)
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Victor Valle
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-poem "cuervos" relates the specific and disabling intrusions of the freeway as the mechanism of hegemonic urban planning in his home milieu -valle intimates a social critique of the urban designs that destroyed a socially enacted place (his "home") whose significance is constituted in the relationship between a specific quasi-rural environment and the lived uses to which it was put by him and others living in the area -poem "Los Angeles" -critic and historian whose projects have interrogated the assumptions behind the social imaginary of Anglo establishment
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Willie Herron and Jesus Velo (Los Illegals)
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-American Chicano punk band in Los Angeles -lyrics of Internal Exile (1983) the band lashed out at the powerful urban interests that "rip out our houses/just to build a freeway" -willie herron gives unflinching accounts of the internecine gang violence by which a small but significant element of barrio youth were self-destructing in the late 1970s
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Shelley v. Kraemer
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o Segregation was asked by home owners o Restricted covenants- white neighborhoods would not allow colored people to move in. Although the law was not new it was prehistoric and not changed. o Made restrictive covenants illegal and unenforceable but by itself this did little to increase the access that black American had to home purchases o Showed the power of the court process to advance civil rights but also the limitations of the court in fighting discrimination.
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Brown v Board of Education
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o Got rid of deguero segregation and not defacto segregation. o The browns wanted their daughter to attend the local white only school o The black school was far from the browns home o Thurgood marshal argued that such segregation mandated by the topek board of edu was unconstitutional because it denied Linda brown the equal protects of the laws guaranteed by the 14th amendment o In a unanimous decision on may 17 1954 the supreme court agreed overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessey vs Ferguson
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Brown v Board of Education II
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o The NAACP argued that the court put an immediate end to the racial segregation while attorneys for the southern states argued for gradual implementation. The court needed to decide who would uphold these changes o Warren explained that local school authorities will face various problems with implementation the federal districts o This is a transition period . public schools should admit children of a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed. o When it all became clear however that critics of desegregation were using the doctrine to delay and avoid compliance with Brown the court began to express reservations about the phrase. In 1964 less than a decade after "all deliberate speed" was prescribed Justice Hugo Black declared
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Civil Rights Act of 1964
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o Johnson signed the civil rights act of 1964 into law on July 2 1964. o The law banned discrimination in employment and in public accommodations o President Johnson asked for and received a tough voting rights law o The voting rights act of 1965 passed in congress with large majorities o Proved to be one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation ever passed.
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Voting Rights Act
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This act in 1965 eliminated literacy tests, that had traditionally been used to restrict voting by black people. It authorized the enrollment of voters by federal registrars.
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Fair Housing Act (1968)
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-Prohibited discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing, and in the provision of brokerage services on the basis of race, color, religion or nationality -passed after MLK's death
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Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
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-A 1978 Supreme Court decision holding that a state university could not admit less qualified individuals solely because of their race. -He argued against black students with a GPA lower than his instead of white people who had lower GPAS or students whos parents had donated.
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Proposition 187
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-lipsitz believes that it was designed in order to secure the benefits of European Americans -Instilled fear upon middle-upper classes by portraying illegal immigrants as a "serious threat to job system -white man would be a "victim of the unfair advantages supposedly secured by racial minoritie: taking tons of jobs, inflating pop with unrestrained sexual behavior, health care -political process presented opportunity for whites to openly express racial resentment, predjudices previously entertained in private (51) -passed in 1994 (over 60% support)-found unconst. in federal court ("illegal alien") -IMPACT: racial tension, discrimination against Hispanic people living in US, made people suspicious that Hispanic people in the us were "illegal aliens" merely because of their ethnic backround
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new patriotism
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-concept: acts as a form of 're-iinvestment'in the values of whiteness and white privilege -refocused ideal of white society as being one that is "male patriarchal, heterosexual' -wars helped add to image of whiteness -economic downturn and reduced investment was due to change in market economy of country. new pat. helped put the blame for these problems on other raes while allowing those responsible to go unpunished -monority groups such as asians suffered at hand of new patriotism, since they were 'foreign' to the ideal of whiteness as well as being castigated for image as being enemies of whiteness -media played a huge role in propagating the images that added to concept of new patriotism
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love and theft
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eric clapton idolized robert johnson but white people who saw eric clapton thought eric clapton created that musical style
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crossroads
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dont know where you're going in life
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white privilege
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-possessive investment and economy are benefitted by practices of war -brutalities toward asian americans stems from conflict of wwII,korea, and vietnam---also rises from asia economies as competitors to us -mob violence was directed at anyone who looked asian and no one stopped to think if they were part of the problem -beatings from prison guards, killing, innocent people, us marines killed teenagers who looked malevolent -white privilege i systematic and plays out on many different levels: individual, interpersonal, culture, and institutional
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Robert Johnson
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crossroads
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With His Pistol in His Hand
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-book explores ballad of gregorio cortez, a popular corrido from South TX -relates to the story of peaceful and hardworking man w ho was unjustly attacked and forced to flee for a crime he didnt commit -essentially unmasks falsity and absurdity of prevailing Anglo racial slurs against Mexicans -inverted dominant Anglo stereotypes about mexicans -LIPSITZ ON BOOK: ground breaking book for ethnic studies for several reasons, can also speak to expenses of other ethnic groups
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affirmative action
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programs intended to make up for past discrimination by helping minority groups and women gain access to jobs and opportunities
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neoconservatism
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maquiladoras
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Those U.S. firms that have factories just outside the United States/Mexican border in areas that have been specially designated by the Mexican government. In such areas, factories cheaply assemble goods for export back into the United States.
