study guide

What is the labor market and how is it important in understanding inequality?
What is Wilson’s comparison between labor market opportunities in segregated inner cities from the 1960s to the 1990s? When is worse for African American males? (pg. 236-237).
Refer to inequality data on pg 240 (note that Figure 9-3 on that page mislabeled “Blacks” and “Whites”-those should be switched)
What is the relationship between education and income? How does the case of Asian American earnings illustrate the complexity of race and earnings along with educational attainment?
What does figure 9-8 display?
What are 3-D jobs? Who works these jobs?
Deindustrialization
What shift is shown in figure 9-9? How does this shift relate to education levels?
What is a split labor market?
How are housing and wealth inequality related?
What does the excerpt on pg 268 show about wealth levels and intergenerational inequalities?
What does residential segregation have to do with wealth inequality?
Restrictive covenants
Steering
FHA
What’s a segregation index?
What’s a dissimilarity index?
What does figure 10-2 show?
What is the argument in Michelle Alexander’s work on The New Jim Crow?
What is the significance of a felony conviction?
What does the ‘war on drugs’ have to do with institutional racism and mass incarceration?
Note arrest rates for drug crimes cited on pg. 301
How are prisons in Germany and the Netherlands in contrast to the US? Do you think the evidence supports one strategy or the other?
What are the negative side effects of mass incarceration?
What do the graphs on pg 303 show?
What are the economics of prison and prison growth? Why did California decide to reduce its prison population in 2009?
Describe the Prison-Industrial Complex
See Pager’s study on pg 320-321; what did it find?
What does figure 12-2 show?
Why is segregation important when discussing health outcomes?
Discuss the life-course, cumulative disadvantage perspective and the weathering hypothesis that can be used to explain health inequalities.
What is the ‘Hispanic Paradox’ described on pgs 340-341?
Environmental racism
What is nativism? How is it related to racism?
Naturalization law of 1790
Chinese Exclusion Act
Immigration Act of 1924
Bracero Program
1965 Immigration and Nationality Act
What did it change?
What are the racial dynamics of contemporary immigrants to the US?
As we look at the last bit of material and the final chapter in our book, I want to highlight the connections between systems of inequality—notably racial and ethnic inequality that we have now spent so much time on—and our economic and political systems. These are not isolated—see Alexander’s comment on pg 390-391. As we saw at the start of this semester, the very origins of the idea of race lies in the global expansion of capitalism, and the labor exploitation that followed this expansion. The tragedy of mass incarceration is linked to a political system that is largely indifferent to poverty and sponsored by large and powerful interests; profits have not only motivated the incarceration of increasing numbers of people, but companies and labor organizations, including police officers associations and prison guard unions have all lobbied elected officials to extend punitive measures to drug and other offenders. Race, inequality, politics, and the economy are integrated social systems, as they have always been.
What is Yamamoto’s four step program?
What is intersectionality?