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Difficulty Level: Difficult
102. Explain how the Constitution’s protections of civil rights and liberties apply to
noncitizens.
1. Explain that resident aliens enjoy fewer protections than U.S. citizens.
They may not run for elective office, and their right to vote may be denied.
2. Identify protections that are extended to aliens, including freedom of
religion and freedom of speech.
3. Explain that citizens and noncitizens alike are protected under the due
process and equal protection clauses.
Topic: Equality and Equal Rights
Learning Objective: LO 15.1: Explain the concept of equality and explain the
rights of citizens.
Page Reference: 449
Skill Level: Understand the Concepts
Difficulty Level: Moderate
103. Compare and contrast the use of nonviolent resistance and litigation during the
civil rights movement. Which was more successful and why?
1. Compare nonviolent resistance and litigation, noting that both were
2. Contrast nonviolent resistance, noting that the former may involve
breaking the law, while litigation entails using the law.
3. Make an argument that either nonviolent resistance or litigation was a
more successful strategy during the civil rights movement. Nonviolent
resistance led to public uproar in the North over discriminatory and
segregationist laws in the South. This eventually led Congress to enact the
Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Litigation, however, brought
down Jim Crow laws (Brown v. Board) without using young people as
human targets, as often occurred during direct action events.
Topic: The Quest for Equal Justice
Learning Objective: LO 15.2: Compare and contrast the efforts of various
groups to obtain equal protection of the law.
Page Reference: 450 – 451
Skill Level: Analyze It
Difficulty Level: Difficult
541
104. Compare and contrast the due process clause and the equal protection clause in
the Constitution. Define each clause and identify the amendment from which it
comes, and tell how they are alike and different.
1. Define the due process clause as a clause in the Fifth Amendment that
limits the power of the national government, and explain how a similar
clause in the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits state governments from
depriving any person of life, liberty, or property arbitrarily.
2. Define the equal protection clause as a clause in the Fourteenth
Amendment that forbids any state to deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, and explain that by
interpretation, the Fifth Amendment imposes the same limitation on the
national government.
3. Compare the due process clause and the equal protection clause, noting
that together they include both state and national governments and that
both have been important for expanding civil rights.
4. Contrast the due process clause and the equal protection clause. An
ideal response might note that the due process clause prohibits government
from taking away one’s civil liberties arbitrarily, while the equal
protection clause, in contrast, requires that government treat everyone
equally, regardless of race, national origin, or sex.
Topic: Equal Protection of the Laws: What Does It Mean?
1. Define majority-minority districts as those in which a majority of the
constituents are members of a minority group.
2. Note that the Supreme Court has determined that such districts are
constitutionally permissible as long as race is not the main factor used to
draw the district lines.
3. Evaluate whether or not states should create more majority-minority
districts.
Topic: Voting Rights
542
Learning Objective: LO 15.4: Trace the evolution of voting rights and analyze
the protections provided by the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Page Reference: 463
Skill Level: Analyze It
Difficulty Level: Difficult
Essay Questions
106. What does the term “Asian American” describe? Describe how Chinese
Americans first came to America. What kinds of discrimination did they face?
When did Japanese Americans enter the United States? What kinds of
discrimination did they face? What is the status of Chinese Americans and
Japanese Americans today?
1. Identify the term “Asian American” as a description of approximately
10 million people from many different countries and ethnic backgrounds.
2. Describe how the Chinese, often young men, were the first to come to
the United States in the mid-nineteenth century and how they moved to the
American West to work in mines, on railroads, and on farms.
3. Discuss the anti-Chinese sentiment that grew after their arrival,
resulting in attacks on Chinatowns and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
that restricted Chinese immigration and excluded Chinese already in
America from citizenship.
4. Describe how Japanese Americans migrated first to Hawaii and then to
California in the mid-1800s.
5. Identify that Japanese Americans in the early 1900s were excluded from
owning land and becoming citizens, and their children were excluded from
school, and describe how during World War II many of them were sent to
internment camps and lost their businesses and property.
6. Detail the status of both groups today: the Chinese have moved into
mainstream U.S. society and are beginning to run for local political
offices, while discrimination against the Japanese persisted long after
World War II, and only in 1988 did the U.S. government sign a law
providing restitution to the World War II internees.
Topic: The Quest for Equal Justice
543
Learning Objective: LO 15.2: Compare and contrast the efforts of various
groups to obtain equal protection of the law.
Page Reference: 455 – 456
Skill Level: Understand the Concepts
Difficulty Level: Moderate
107. What are the strict scrutiny standard and the rational basis standard? What sort of
classification system would cause the Supreme Court to apply each standard to
determine if a discriminatory law is constitutionally permissible? Under what
circumstances would it apply a quasi-suspect or heightened standard? Give an
example of a law that would be subject to each standard of review. Do you agree
with this three-tiered approach? Why or why not?
1. Define the strict scrutiny standard, which requires that the
discrimination must be the least restrictive way to achieve a compelling
governmental interest.
2. Define the rational basis test, which refers to the fact that the
government must have a rational foundation for the discrimination.
3. Identify racial classifications as those that are given strict scrutiny by
the Supreme Court.
4. Identify a range of classifications such as age, wealth, mental capacity,
and sexual orientation as those that are subject to the rational basis test.
5. Identify gender classifications and those involving fundamental rights
as ones that would be evaluated by the courts using a quasi-suspect or
heightened standard.
6. Provide an example of a law that would receive strict scrutiny, such as
racial affirmative action programs.
7. Provide an example of a law that would be judged under the rational
basis test, such as a law requiring those over the age of 80 to get a new
driver’s license more frequently than those 80 years old or younger.
8. Provide an example of a law that would be evaluated using the quasi-
suspect or heightened standard, such as a law restricting a group of
people’s right to vote.
9. Indicate agreement or disagreement with this three-tiered approach.
Answers will vary, but some may argue that all forms of discrimination are
equally troubling and should all be treated the same. Others may argue that
some sorts of discrimination may be reasonable under some
circumstances, but other sorts of discrimination are seldom tolerable
(giving examples). Therefore, different sorts of standards are appropriate.
Topic: Equal Protection of the Laws: What Does It Mean?
1. Identify equality of opportunity as the idea that all people deserve a
chance at individual achievement regardless of race, ethnic origin,
religion, sex, or sexual orientation, while equality of results refers to issues
of social justice, such as the question of whether genuine equality can
exist in a nation where some people have so much and others so little.
2. Discuss how equality in terms of either opportunities or results is
difficult to achieve when large disparities in wealth and advantage exist
between groups, whether it is men and women, black and white, or rich
and poor.
3. Detail how the growing gap between rich and poor is causing some to
contend that that more attention needs to be paid to economic inequality
and class differences, focusing on how to support policies that will help
the disadvantaged have more opportunities.
4. Evaluate how focusing on economic disparity issues could help all
people. Answers will vary, but some may discuss the Occupy Wall Street
movement, the global economic network and multinational corporations,
and so on to illustrate the growing gap between rich and poor, and how it
makes achieving equal opportunity as well as results difficult for those
without wealth and advantage, and how it harms civil rights by putting so
many at a disadvantage from the outset.
Topic: Equality and Equal Rights; Equal Rights Today
Learning Objective: LO 15.1: Explain the concept of equality and assess the
rights of citizens; LO 15.7 Assess the status of civil rights in the United States
today.
Page Reference: 446 – 447, 469 – 470
Skill Level: Analyze It
Difficulty Level: Difficult
109. How does de facto segregation differ from de jure segregation? In Plessy v.
Ferguson, what did the Supreme Court say about the relationship between de jure
segregation and equality? What did the Supreme Court say about this relationship
in Brown v. Board of Education? Evaluate the extent to which de facto
segregation leads to inequality, and illustrate your answer with two examples.
545
1. Compare de facto segregation, which results from the decisions of
private individuals, with de jure segregation, which is legally mandated
segregation.
2. Explain how Plessy v. Ferguson upheld de jure discrimination in the
form of Jim Crow laws as permissible as long as the facilities were equal.
3. Explain how Brown v. Board of Education overturned the separate-but-
equal doctrine, arguing that de jure segregation necessarily produced
inequality.
4. Evaluate whether citizens’ private decisions to segregate lead to
inequality. Those who believe that it does may point to the same logic
used by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education. Those who
believe that it does not may point to the fact that the two concepts are
completely distinct: individuals can be both segregated and equal or both
integrated and unequal.
5. Illustrate the relationship between de facto segregation and inequality
with two examples. For example, describe whether residential
neighborhoods and churches (two entities with de facto segregation)
promote inequality.
Topic: Education Rights
Learning Objective: LO 15.6: Evaluate the historical process of school
integration and the current state of affirmative action.
Page Reference: 466 – 467
Skill Level: Analyze It
Difficulty Level: Difficult
110. What sorts of affirmative action programs are prohibited, according to the
Supreme Court? What sorts of programs are acceptable? Describe the Top Ten
Percent program in Texas. How has de facto segregation enabled this policy to
produce diverse enrollment at colleges and universities? Do you think a university
valuing diversity should use a traditional affirmative action program or a policy
like the Top Ten Percent program? Justify your answer.
1. Describe the affirmative action policies that the Supreme Court has
prohibited: programs that use quotas or mathematical formulas.
2. Describe the affirmative action policies that the Supreme Court has
affirmed: programs that use race as one of several factors in a holistic
admissions assessment.
3. Describe the Ten Percent Plan in Texas, which grants automatic state
school admissions to anyone who graduates in the top 10 percent of a
Texas high school class.
4. Explain how de facto segregation enables the Ten Percent Plan to
produce a diverse study body. Since there is considerable de facto
segregation in residential neighborhoods and schools, many schools have
high concentrations of African American or Hispanic students. Therefore,
the top 10 percent of students from these schools adds diversity to Texas
universities.
5. Evaluate whether a traditional affirmative action program or a top 10
percent program is a better way to achieve a diverse study body. The
argument should be well-reasoned, with supporting statements backing up
a thesis.
Topic: Introduction
Learning Objective: Introduction
Page Reference: 444 – 446
Skill Level: Analyze It
Difficulty Level: Difficult
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