Source: Midterm Study Guide | University of California, Berkeley
Tags: ethnic studies, 21AC, midterm, key terms, prison industrial complex, abolition, mass incarceration, settler colonialism, social death, racial justice, UC Berkeley
This section covers the core vocabulary for the Ethnic Studies 21AC midterm. Terms span the prison industrial complex, abolition, slavery and its afterlife, settler colonialism, and key legal and political frameworks. Knowing these definitions and their connections to one another is essential for the exam.
Prison Industrial Complex (PIC)
The overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social, and political problems. The PIC maintains authority for those who hold power through racial, economic, and other privileges.
Key mechanisms include:
Mass media images that sustain stereotypes of people of colour, poor people, queer people, immigrants, and youth as criminal or deviant
Huge profits for private companies involved in prisons and policing
Political gains for "tough on crime" politicians
Growing influence of prison guard and police unions
Elimination of social and political dissent from oppressed communities demanding self-determination
Abolition (PIC Abolition)
A political vision aimed at eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance, and creating lasting alternatives to punishment. Abolition is not simply about removing buildings full of cages. It requires undoing the society that feeds and maintains oppression through punishment, violence, and control.
Key dimensions:
Building models today that represent how we want to live in the future
Developing practical strategies and small steps toward structural change
Living this vision in daily life
Functions as both a practical organising tool and a long-term goal
Relevant reading: Angela Davis, Chapter 2, "Slavery, Civil Rights, and Abolitionist Perspectives Toward Prison." Davis draws a direct connection between the PIC and the system of slavery, noting that if prisons are racist institutions and racism should not define the future, abolition follows logically.
Mass Incarceration
The large-scale imprisonment of people, disproportionately targeting Black and brown communities. Closely linked to the concepts of reform, reentry, recidivism, and rehabilitation.
Core features:
Sentencing and racial disparities
Involuntary labour and punishment
Described as "slavery's afterlife," connecting Jim Crow and the legacy of slavery
Isolation and removal from society
Stripping of Bill of Rights protections, including voting rights (disenfranchisement; process to regain rights varies by jurisdiction)
Slave (Three Fundamentals)
According to the course framework, a slave is defined by three conditions:
Socially dead (removed from social life and community)
Generally dishonoured
Suffering from natal alienation (no rights at birth, alienation from progeny, loss of lineage)
Social Death
The condition in which a person is stripped of social existence and community ties. Black people trace their heritage to slave ships; separation from one's child is a defining feature. Natal alienation severs connection to ancestors. Native genocide operates through a similar logic: creating identity crises to breed internal conflict and destroy shared notions of identity.
13th Amendment
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
The critical loophole: the amendment permits involuntary servitude as punishment for crime, which connects to the argument that the carceral state cannot exist without the Black body. Also tied to illegality and Latinx communities. Described as a social extension of slavery.
Relevant reading: "Fugitive Justice" argues that the abolition of slavery could not redress the crime of slavery but could only commute its death sentence.
Settler Colonialism
A structure, not an event. Distinct from colonialism in the traditional sense: coloniality refers to long-standing patterns of power that define culture, labour, and social relations well beyond formal colonial administration. It is an ongoing process.
Manifest Destiny fits here as the ideological claim of a god-given right to bring "knowledge" to the Western world.
Gerrymandering
The creation of voting district lines designed to separate people of colour from political participation and dilute their electoral power.
Reconstruction
Periodised as: First (radical), Second (civil), Third (civil; voting, and broadly "anything we make it"). W.E.B. Du Bois called Reconstruction a "splendid failure" because, despite its promise, attitudes did not change and new forms of oppression replaced the old.
Third World Liberation Front (TWLF)
A coalition that fought for institutional change at UC Berkeley. Their demands included:
Implementation of departments such as Chicano Studies
More diverse faculty
Expanded admission, financial aid, and academic assistance
Work-study positions
Permanent funding for Chicano Studies projects
Third World people involved in decision-making
No discipline for striking
The 50th anniversary was on 22 January 2019. Harvey Dong headed the Ethnic Studies department.
Chinese Exclusion Act
A major immigration law that specifically barred people from China from entering the US through racially based moralistic claims. Targeted women in particular to disrupt ideas of family and reproduction. Often cited as the first race-based immigration act, though that distinction belongs to the Naturalization Act of 1790.
Nativism
The exclusion of those not native-born; an intellectual discourse used to justify restricting immigration and denying rights to foreign-born people.
Neoliberalism
A policy model bridging politics, social studies, and economics that seeks to transfer control of economic factors from the public sector to the private sector. It tends towards free-market capitalism and away from government spending, regulation, and public ownership.
Third World
In this course context, refers to the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Trayvon Martin
A 17-year-old African American male killed by George Zimmerman in 2012. His death is a touchpoint for discussions of racialised violence, spatial control, and the "outsider" status assigned to Black bodies in certain spaces.
⚠️ The 13th Amendment's "except as a punishment for crime" clause is central to arguments connecting slavery to mass incarceration. Know this exact language.
⚠️ Settler colonialism is framed as a structure, not an event. This distinction will likely appear in exam questions.
⚠️ Abolition is not simply "getting rid of prisons." Be ready to articulate it as a broad social vision involving daily practice and alternative models.
⚠️ The three fundamentals of slavery (social death, dishonour, natal alienation) are a concise framework that connects to social death and the broader argument about slavery's afterlife.
⚠️ Know the TWLF demands. They represent the methodology behind the creation of Ethnic Studies as a discipline.
Q: What is the prison industrial complex, and how does it maintain power?
A: The PIC is the set of overlapping government and industry interests that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment to address social, economic, and political problems. It maintains power through media stereotyping, private profit, "tough on crime" politics, police and guard unions, and the suppression of political dissent from oppressed communities.
Q: How does Angela Davis connect the PIC to slavery?
A: Davis argues that slave labour and racism are embodied in the PIC. If we accept that racism should not define the future and that prisons are racist institutions, the logical conclusion is abolition.
Q: What is the "exception clause" in the 13th Amendment, and why does it matter?
A: The 13th Amendment abolishes slavery "except as a punishment for crime." This loophole allows involuntary servitude for convicted persons, which critics argue extends the logic of slavery into the modern carceral state.
Q: What distinguishes settler colonialism from colonialism?
A: Settler colonialism is a structure, not an event. It refers to ongoing patterns of power (coloniality) that shape culture, labour, and social life well beyond formal colonial administration, and it persists today.
Q: Why does W.E.B. Du Bois call Reconstruction a "splendid failure"?
A: Because despite formal legal changes, underlying attitudes did not change. People found new ways to oppress people of colour, leaving the promise of Reconstruction unfulfilled.
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