Essay on Midterm Study Guide

1. political economy a structural analysis of how politics, law, and economics influence one another
2. surplus population those who are unemployed or unemployable and are thus considered the "dangerous class"; economically marginal persons; those with little attachment to the conventional labor market and little "stake in conformity"; "marginal classes"
3. slave codes
From 1619 to 1865, constituted the criminal law and procedure applied against enslaved Africans. The codes regulated slave life from cradle to grave and were virtually uniform across the states in upholding the institutions of chattel slavery. Their primary purposes were to enumerate applicable laws and to prescribe the social boundaries for slaves: where they could go, what types of activity they could engage in, and what type of contracts they could enter into.
4. black codes
Class, Race, Gender, and Crime: Adopted in 1865 to create a new system of involuntary servitude, expressly prohibited by the recently adopted Thirteenth Amendment. Example: vagrancy laws.

Race, Control, and Punishment: The Mississippi Black Codes enacted in November 1965 contained apprentice statues that required justices of the peace and sheriffs to give their names of all African American "orphans" or children whose parents could not adequately provide for them to the county judge. The judge's responsibility was to bind the child to a competent adult with preference given to their former owners. The apprenticeship would bind the child to the authority of the master until the age of 21 for males, 18 for females. This program destroyed the integrity of the African American family as a unit and effectively re-enslaved the African American child. Southern states made "vagrancy" a crime immediately after the Civil War. In essence, it made unemployment, for African Americans, a crime and they were subject to imprisonment, fines, or, at the court's discretion, serving the penalty bonded to an employer.
5. Jim Crow laws
Began to take hold in the early 1900s following the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. These laws mandated separate public facilities for blacks and whites and applied to cemeteries, hospital wards, water fountains, public restrooms, churches, swimming pools, hotels, movie theaters, trains, phone booths, lunch counters, prisons, courthouses, buses, orphanages, school textbooks, parks, and prostitution. Also dictated where they could rent or buy property, which spoke to how extensively these laws sought to regulate both the private and public lives of blacks.
6. What 4 assumptions does the book Class, Race, Gender and Crime bring to the study of class, race, and gender?
1. These categories of social difference all share similarities in that they convey privilege on some groups and marginalize others, so they relate to power resources in society. Ideology works to naturalize privilege, so those who have privilege do not see themselves as having it and are much more likely to believe there is a "level playing field"
2. Systems of privilege and inequality derived from the social statuses of class, race, and gender are overlapping and have interacting effects that can be more than the sum of their parts. Here, 1+1 is more than 2, or gendered racism is much more powerful than simply adding gender and race
3. While class, race, and gender privilege all tend to be similarly invisible because of ideology, the experience of marginalization will vary considerably, depending on the specific nature of the prejudice and stereotypes. Understanding the marginalization also requires appreciating the diversity within categories - American Indians represent hundreds of different tribes; Hispanics and Asians represent dozens of different countries and cultures
4. There are connections between these systems of class, race, and gender. Few people are pure oppressors or victims, so it is a complex matrix in which all people are more aware of their victimization than of their privilege
7.

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Midterm Study Guide

Midterm Study Guide