Race and Ethnic Relations (SOC 1104)

Prep

• Charles M. Blow, ‘When All-White Was All Right’, New York Times (30 January 2022)
• Join our Slack Workspace!

Zoom Session

• Attendance
• Introductions
• The Big Picture
• Reading Notes for Next Time

For Next Time

• Michael A. Caulfield, Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers (2017), Part I (‘Four Strategies and a Habit’); Part II (‘Look for Previous Work’), Sections 1 (‘How to Use Previous Work’), 2 (‘Fact-Checking Sites’), 3 (‘Wikipedia’); Part III, Section 1 (‘Going Upstream to Find the Source’); Part IV (‘Reading Laterally’), Sections 1 (‘What Reading Laterally Means’), 26 (‘Evaluating News Sources’), 27 (‘National Newspapers of Record’), and 29 (‘Activity: Find Top Authorities for a Subject’)

Prep

• Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer (2016), Ch. 2 (‘The Invention of Race’): ‘Modernity Rising’; ‘Colonization of the Americas’; ‘The Invention of Whiteness and Blackness’; ‘Africans Enslaved’; ‘Manifest Destiny’; ‘Immigration from Asia and Europe’; Racial Discourses of Modernity’; ‘America’s Racial Profile Today’; ‘We, the Past’.

As I stated in class, you should pay special attentionton the sections entitled ‘The Invention of Whiteness and Blackness’, ‘Africans Enslaved’, and ‘Racial Discourses of Modernity’.

Zoom Session

• Attendance
• Introductions, cont’d
• Q&A
• Reading Notes for Next Time

For Next Time

• TENTATIVE: Martin Luther King, Jr., ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ (1963). keywords: massive resistance; nonviolent resistance; Satyagraha. 

Prep

• Desmond and Emirbayer (2016), Ch. 11 (‘Toward Racial Democracy’): ‘What Are the Goals?’; How Do We Bring About Change?’; ‘We Who Believe in Freedom’. keywords: colour-blindness; is/ought distinction; multiculturalism; racial democracy.

Zoom Session

• Attendance
• Review: Take-Home Essay Final Exam
• Q&A: Towards Racial Democracy

For Next Time

• Make your final revisions to your exam essays ASAP.

Prep

• Genevieve Glatsky, ‘Ballroom Takes Root in Colombia. But Who Is It For?’, New York Times (25 November 2021). As the scene expands, so too have concerns about cultural appropriation and inclusion.

Zoom Session

• Attendance
• Q&A: TBA
• Core Concepts
  • Review: The White Aesthetic
  • Review: The Racist Aesthetic
    • Cultural Appropriation
    • Racist Appropriation
  • Review: The Antiracist Aesthetic
    • Antiracist Appropriation
• Review: Take-Home Final Exam (13:45)
• Reading Notes for Next Time

For Next Time

• Desmond and Emirbayer (2016), Ch. 11 (‘Toward Racial Democracy’): ‘What Are the Goals?’; How Do We Bring About Change?’; ‘We Who Believe in Freedom’. keywords: is/ought distinction.

Prep

• Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer (2016), Ch. 8 (‘Aesthetics’): ‘The Racialization of Art Worlds’; ‘Cultural Appropriation’; ‘The Sociology of Art, the Art of Sociology’. keywords: antiracist appropriation; cultural appropriation (pp. 308-314); highbrow and lowbrow culture (pp. 305-308); racist appropriation; white gaze, the.
• ‘Why Does the Ethnic Food Aisle Still Exist?’, All of It (15 September 2021)

Zoom Session

• Attendance
• Review: Take-Home Essay Final Exam
• Q&A: TBA
• Reading Notes for Next Time

For Next Time

• Genevieve Glatsky, ‘Ballroom Takes Root in Colombia. But Who Is It For?’, New York Times (25 November 2021). As the scene expands, so too have concerns about cultural appropriation and inclusion.

Prep

If you can, be sure to see Dune (Denis Villeneuve, 2021) before class on Monday, either in the theatre or on HBO Max. 

• Ali Karjoo-Ravary, ‘ Is Dune a White Savior Narrative?’, Slate 26 October 2021). Frank Herbert’s novel drew from Islam to critique the idea of the messianic Western man. Does the movie?
• Katherine (Hyun-Choo) Everett, ‘Reckoning with and Remaking “Dune”: The Limitations of World-Making in Sci-Fi’, The Lantern (3 March 2021)
• Audio: ‘Matthew Hughey on His Tripartite Methodological Approach to Understanding Film’ (2015). In this episode we are joined by Matthew Hughey. Matthew is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of number books [sic] including [The] White Savior Film: Content, Critics and Consumption, The Wrongs of the Right: Language, Race, and the Republican Party in the Age of Obama, and White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race. Matt joins us to discuss his multi-methods approach to studying film, film criticism, and film consumption.

Zoom Session

• Attendance
• Q&A: TBA
• Reading Notes for Next Time

For Next Time

• Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer (2016), Ch. 8 (‘Aesthetics’): ‘The Racialization of Art Worlds’; ‘Cultural Appropriation’; ‘The Sociology of Art, the Art of Sociology’. keywords: antiracist appropriation; cultural appropriation (pp. 308-314); highbrow and lowbrow culture (pp. 305-308); racist appropriation; white gaze, the.

Prep

• Jason Parham, ‘Tik Tok and the Evolution of Digital Blackface’, Wire (4 August 2021)

Zoom Session

• Attendance
• Q&A: TBA
• Reading Notes for Next Time

For Next Time

• Ali Karjoo-Ravary, ‘ Is Dune a White Savior Narrative?’, Slate 26 October 2021). Frank Herbert’s novel drew from Islam to critique the idea of the messianic Western man. Does the movie?
• Katherine (Hyun-Choo) Everett, ‘Reckoning with and Remaking “Dune”: The Limitations of World-Making in Sci-Fi’, The Lantern (3 March 2021)
• Audio: ‘Matthew Hughey on His Tripartite Methodological Approach to Understanding Film’ (2015). In this episode we are joined by Matthew Hughey. Matthew is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of number books [sic] including [The] White Savior Film: Content, Critics and Consumption, The Wrongs of the Right: Language, Race, and the Republican Party in the Age of Obama, and White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race. Matt joins us to discuss his multi-methods approach to studying film, film criticism, and film consumption.

Prep

• Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer (2016), Ch. 8 (‘Aesthetics’): ‘Race and Art in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century America’; ‘Racial Representation in Art’. keywords: antiracist aesthetic, minstrelsy; the; multiculturalism; racist aesthetic, the; white aesthetic, the; white saviour trope.

Zoom Session

• Attendance
• TBA
• Reading Notes for Next Time

For Next Time

• Ali Karjoo-Ravary, ‘ Is Dune a White Savior Narrative?’, Slate 26 October 2021). Frank Herbert’s novel drew from Islam to critique the idea of the messianic Western man. Does the movie?
• Katherine (Hyun-Choo) Everett, ‘Reckoning with and Remaking “Dune”: The Limitations of World-Making in Sci-Fi’, The Lantern (3 March 2021)
• Audio: ‘Matthew Hughey on His Tripartite Methodological Approach to Understanding Film’ (2015). In this episode we are joined by Matthew Hughey. Matthew is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of number books [sic] including [The] White Savior Film: Content, Critics and Consumption, The Wrongs of the Right: Language, Race, and the Republican Party in the Age of Obama, and White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race. Matt joins us to discuss his multi-methods approach to studying film, film criticism, and film consumption.

Prep

• Review Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer (2016), Ch. 7 (‘Education’): ‘Combating Educational Inequality: The Case of Affirmative Action’
• Read Kyle D. Stedman, ‘Annoying Ways People Use Sources’, Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Vol. 2 (2011)

Zoom Session

• Attendance
• Review: Monday’s Discussion Prompt
• Review: Midterm Take-Home Essay
  • Concept-Mongering: What do we mean by white privilege?
  • Finding Sources
    • What Not to Do
    • What To Do Instead, Pt. I
  • Using Sources
  • Using Empirical Research As Evidence to Support Your Argument
  • ASA Style
• Reading Notes for Next Time

For Next Time 

• Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer (2016), Ch. 8 (‘Aesthetics’): ‘Race and Art in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century America’; ‘Racial Representation in Art’. keywords: antiracist aesthetic, minstrelsy; the; multiculturalism; racist aesthetic, the; white aesthetic, the.

Prep

Hi, sorry for the delay in putting this particular agenda together: I’ve been dealing with Jamaican bureaucracy the last few days, as I’ll be in Kingston, JA, for a few days for my mother’s 80th birthday, and I’m still unsure that I’ll have the technical support I need in order for us to meet on Zoom. I am crossing my fingers that this will be possible on Wednesday. Remember that we are not doing a Zoom session today (Monday).

We spent most of class discussing the concepts of cultural capital and social capital, without discussing affirmative action at all. So please make sure to review the relevant material in Ch. 7 and we’ll talk about it on Wednesday. There’s also a prompt I’d like for you all to respond to over the next few days on Slack (see below).

Asynchronous Work

• Identify at least one way whiteness informs your major field of study or one of the classes in which you are currently enrolled. Explain precisely how racial domination is normalised; offer at least one consequence of this normalisation and advance at least one suggestion for how whiteness might be effectively confronted (this question is almost verbatim from Desmond and Emirbayer 2016:279). 

For Next Time

• Review Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer (2016), Ch. 7 (‘Education’): ‘Combating Educational Inequality: The Case of Affirmative Action’