Race and Ethnicity and Social Control

Soci 263 Final Exam
Spring 2020
Due Monday May 11 at 1 pm
Submit on Canvas
Essay (Worth 75% of grade): Choose to answer either Essay Prompt A or B. The essay should be
4-6 pages with one-inch margins in a standard academic font 11 or 12 point. Please include in-text
citations from class materials: lectures, discussions, films, and documentaries. Use the sections of
the prompt
Prompt 1: Race emerged in the New World
Race is not a biological fact; instead scholars argue that it is a social construction. In this essay,
please discussion how race emerged and how it shapes contemporary society. In your answer:
1. Briefly, discuss colonializations of the New World and how this set the stage with the
emergence of race as a concept that we have inherited today. (Hint: English vs. Spanish
colonial projects, especially with regard to indigenous peoples in the New World)
2. Discuss how wealth building operated in the construction of race before the US became a
nation and more contemporarily.
3. Discuss how bringing people from Europe and Africa cemented the construction of race.
(Hint: Indentured servants and slavery before the Bacon Rebellion.)
4. Discuss how at least three forms of social control and social bargains became a key feature
for maintaining the illusion of race as a category of difference. (Hint: Slavery, Whiteness, Jim
Crow)
5. Discuss 2 ways that race has had real consequences on groups of people in contemporary
society. (There are so many different examples you can use!)
Prompt 2: Forms of Social Control
In this essay I want you to discuss social control and its role in maintaining racial boundaries. I
want you to consider why incarceration is a key tool as a form of social control around race.
A) Discuss two ways in which social control was used during slavery.
B) Discuss how discourses and narratives about groups of people around race justify the
treatment of them and the use of particular forms of social control. (You might think about
Ethnic Notions, controlling images, and Hall’s race as a signifier)
C) Discuss how the 13th Amendment did not end slavery. Why is the wording a social bargain
to the South?
D) Discuss Jim Crow and why it was a form of social control.
E) Discuss Mass Incarceration and its relationship to (only discuss one example of each):
a. Politics
b. Work/The creation of wealth
c. Housing
d. War on Drugs
Short Answers 5 pt./ question (25% of grade): Choose 5 out of the 8 choices. In your answer
please define the concept and give an example to support your answer.
Redlining
One Drop Rule
Race as a Signifier
Double Consciousness
Tokenistic Fallacy
Institutional Racism
Jim Crow
White Privilege