Source: Final Review, Prof. Victoria Robinson | UC Berkeley
Tags: short answer, exam prep, quick reference, Part B, ethnic studies final
Part B of the exam consists of short-answer questions that do not require cited sources but do require detailed, specific responses. The professor's guidance: "answering the question, not need sources, muscles, more in the details." Below is a quick-reference card for each of the ten questions with the key points to hit.
Racism is in close proximity to death.
The concept of "surplus" populations – people rendered disposable by racial capitalism.
Frame racism not as prejudice but as a system that produces premature death (echoes Ruth Wilson Gilmore's definition).
The criminalisation of immigration and the culture behind border militarism.
The border serves a "function of death."
"Accumulation by dispossession" – wealth extracted through displacement.
Challenge the assumption that immigration is inherently linked to the border. The border is not malfunctioning; the idea that it should work is itself "compelling and seductive."
The border creates a category of "foreigner" that would not otherwise exist in the same way.
Reference the Bill Moyers report (available on bCourses) in which he interviews members of the commission.
This is a specific source. Review the video before the exam.
"Refugee policy is a subject of foreign policy" – refugees are managed according to geopolitical interests, not humanitarian ones.
No judicial discretion in refugee decisions.
The removal of judicial oversight (attributed to "Bill Anking").
Central question: to whom is the state responsible when it comes to refugees?
Know the concept thoroughly (see detailed notes in Document 3).
Be ready to explain how it operates across immigration, abolition, and LGBTQ rights contexts.
Almost parallel, but not a simple inverse.
Institutionalisation with intent in both cases.
Education equals liberation – the school as a counter to the prison.
Prison-to-school pipeline framing (rather than only school-to-prison).
Underground scholarship.
Berkeley School of Criminology as an example of institutional complicity.
Under-resourced schools with security guards instead of counsellors.
The corridor from Mexico to the US was created, not natural.
Prop 187 constructed the "illegal alien" at the state level; California turned its framework into federal policy.
1986 reform laws created and then tore apart mixed-status households.
Urban Shield Initiative merges police and immigration enforcement.
Secure Communities shares databases between local law enforcement and ICE.
"Crimmigration" names the sharing of resources between criminal and immigration enforcement.
The Black body is defensible – people have the right to defend their bodies.
Self-determination means defining what a community controls and defends.
The BPP 10-Point Program as the primary example.
These two processes work together.
Cultural examples: the Harriet Tubman $20 bill conversation, Beyonce's "Lemonade."
Both examples ask who is allowed to occupy which spaces (symbolic and physical) and on what terms.
COINTELPRO as the historical template.
Contemporary surveillance of Muslim communities.
Virtual internment – confinement without physical walls.
The airport as a specific site of surveillance and racial profiling.
SAMAH is a key reference (review this source).
⚠️ Part B answers do not require sources, but they do require detail. The professor says "muscles, more in the details" – give specific names, laws, programmes, and concepts rather than generalities.
⚠️ Several Part B questions overlap with essay topics (Q2 with immigration, Q6 with carcerality, Q7 with border militarization). Prepare material that works for both formats.
⚠️ Q3 references a specific video (Bill Moyers report on bCourses). If you have not watched it, do so before the exam.
⚠️ Q10 references SAMAH specifically. Review this source or concept before the exam.
Q: In one paragraph, explain the "function of death" that the border serves.
A: The border is not a neutral line that happens to be poorly enforced. It is a structure designed to control the movement of people while allowing capital to move freely. The result is that people die crossing it, are detained in life-threatening conditions, and are deported into danger. The "function of death" is not a failure of the border – it is what the border does. It produces the category of "foreigner" and attaches lethal consequences to that category.
Q: How does Ruth Wilson Gilmore's definition of racism connect to the idea of "surplus" populations?
A: Gilmore defines racism as the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death. "Surplus" populations are those that racial capitalism renders economically unnecessary and therefore disposable. The connection is direct: racism produces the conditions under which certain groups die earlier, and the concept of surplus explains why – they have been deemed expendable by the economic system.
Q: Why does the professor say the idea that the border "should work" is "compelling and seductive"?
A: The assumption that immigration is inherently a border problem makes enforcement seem like a reasonable solution. If the border just worked better, the logic goes, immigration would be managed. The professor calls this "compelling and seductive" because it feels intuitive but obscures the actual function of the border: creating a category of foreigner, controlling labour, and serving the interests of capital. The border is not broken. It is working as designed.
Part B, short answer, exam prep, quick reference, racism and death, surplus population, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, criminalisation of immigration, border militarism, accumulation by dispossession, refugee policy, foreign policy, judicial discretion, respectability politics, schools and prisons, prison-to-school pipeline, crimmigration, Secure Communities, Urban Shield, Black Panther Party, 10-Point Program, COINTELPRO, virtual internment, Muslim surveillance, SAMAH, Bill Moyers, Beyonce Lemonade, Harriet Tubman, Prop 187, ethnic studies, Prof. Victoria Robinson, UC Berkeley