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Race
in US Politics Syllabus
PS 303, Race in
U.S. Politics Fall Semester 2003
NORTH
CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY
Department
of Political Science & Public Administration
Professor Floyd W. Hayes, III
One
is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the
idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over.
We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but
only remember that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer.
We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner,
or that Thomas Jefferson had mulatto children, or that Alexander
Hamilton had Negro blood, and simply remember the things we
regard as creditable and inspiring.
The
difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history
loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect
men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.—W.
E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880
Buttressed by their belief that their God had
entrusted the earth into their keeping, drunk with power and
possibility, waxing rich through trade in commodities, human and
non-human, with awesome naval and merchant marines at their
disposal, their countries filled with human debris anxious for
any adventures, psychologically armed with new facts, white
Western Christian civilization during the fourteenth, fifteenth,
sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, with a long, slow, and
bloody explosion, hurled itself upon the sprawling masses of
colored humanity in Asia and Africa….For the West to disclaim
responsibility for what it so clearly did is to make every white
man alive on earth today a criminal. —Richard
Wright, White Man, Listen!
America
became white—the people who, as they claim, “settled” the
country became white—because of the necessity of denying the
Black presence, and justifying the Black subjugation.
No community can be based on such a principle—or, in
other words, no community can be established on so genocidal a
lie.
White
men—from Norway, for example, where they were
Norwegians—became white: by slaughtering the cattle, poisoning
the wells, torching the houses, massacring Native Americans,
raping Black women….But this cowardice, this necessity of
justifying a totally false identity and of justifying what must
be called a genocidal history, has placed everyone now living
into the hands of the most ignorant and powerful people the
world has ever seen: And
how did they get that way?...By deciding that they were white.
By opting for safety instead of life.
By
persuading themselves that a Black child’s life meant nothing
compared with a white child’s life.
By abandoning their children to the things white men
could buy. By
informing their children that Black women, Black men and Black
children had no human integrity that those who call themselves
white were bound to respect.
And in this debasement and definition of Black people,
they debased and defamed themselves. —James
Baldwin, “On Being ‘White’…and Other Lies”
In
ways so embedded that it is rarely apparent, the set of
assumptions, privileges, and benefits that accompany the status
of being white have become a valuable asset—one that whites
sought to protect and those [blacks] who passed sought to
attain, by fraud if necessary. Whites
have come to expect and rely on these benefits, and over time
these expectations have been affirmed, legitimated, and
protected by the law.
Even
though the law is neither uniform nor explicit in all instances,
in protecting settled expectations based on white privilege,
American law has recognized a property interest in whiteness
that, although unacknowledged, now forms the background against
which legal disputes are framed, argued, and adjudicated. —Cheryl
Harris, “Whiteness as Property”
By
racism I mean the self-deceiving choice to believe either that
one’s race is the only race qualified to be considered human
or that one’s race is superior to other races.--Lewis
R. Gordon, Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism
PURPOSE
OF THE COURSE:
This course investigates the impact of
race(ism) on US political development.
Hence, the broad purpose of this course is to encourage
students to think and write critically about the manner in which
white supremacy, as a modern global system of thought and
practice, came to function as the keystone in the making and
maintenance of America. We
will examine the manner in which modern Western ideas of racial
superiority and inferiority legitimized the strategies of
conquest, colonialism, genocide, enslavement, and land
expropriation in the establishment of the United States as a
white republic.
We will explore how whiteness has operated as
the invisible norm in American political culture, a transparent,
yet ubiquitous frame of reference so pervasive that even today
most whites consider themselves absolved from race matters.
We will investigate how white intellectuals have
constructed the national identity as white, excluding any direct
reference to African Americans and other people of color.
We will examine closely how white supremacy operates to
protect the power, privileges, profits, and pleasures that
whiteness affords.
Finally, we will examine critically a number
of contemporary public policy issues and the manner in which
America continues to deny racial justice to African Americans
and other people of color. In the last analysis, we will want to answer the following
questions: What does it mean for Americans to speak and write
about such lofty principles as freedom, justice, and equality,
but then to devalue these values (historically and presently) by
denying them to African Americans and other native populations?
Does America’s racist political culture call into
question the United States as a democratic polity?
REQUIRED
TEXTS:
Feagin,
Joe R.
2000.
Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future
Reparations. New York: Routledge.
Mills,
Charles W.
1997.
The Racial Contract. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press.
Morrison,
Toni.
1992.
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary
Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Rothenberg,
Paula S.
2002. Ed.
White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other
Side of Racism. New York: Worth Publishers.
Walters,
Ronald.
2003. White
Nationalism, Black Interests: Conservative Public Policy and the Black
Community. Detroit:
Wayne State University Press.
COURSE OUTLINE AND READING ASSIGNMENTS
RECOMMENDED
READING (Not Required)
Drucker,
Peter F.
1993.
Post-Capitalist
Society. New York: HarperCollins.
Fernandez,
John
P. 1993.
The Diversity Advantage.
New York: Lexington Books.
Handy,
Charles.
1989.
The
Age of Unreason. Harvard Business School Press.
Marable,
Manning,
and Leith Mullings. 2000. Eds.
Let Nobody Turn Us Around:
Voices of Resistance, Reform, and Renewal. Lanham: Rowman
& Littlefield.
Reich,
Robert B.
1991.
Work
of Nations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Rifkin,
Jeremy.
1995.
The
End of Work. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Takaki,
Ronald.
A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America.
Boston: Little, Brown & Company.
Toffler,
Alvin.
1990.
Powershift.
New York: Bantam Books.
SECTION B: WHITE
SUPREMACY AS THE UNNAMED POLITICAL SYSTEM: THE RACIST CONTRACT
MADE VISIBLE
W Aug. 27
READ: Racial
Contract, Introduction
F Aug. 29
READ: Racial
Contract, Chap. 1
M Sept. 1
Holiday: No Class
W Sept. 3
READ: Racial
Contract, Chap. 2
F Sept. 5
READ: Racial
Contract, Chap. 3
SECTION C: CONSTRUCTING
THE WHITE REPUBLIC: DECONSTRUCTING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
M Sept. 8
READ: Racist
America, Introduction
W Sept. 10
READ: Racist
America, Chap. 1
F Sept. 12
READ: Racist
America, Chap. 2
M Sept. 15
READ: Racist
America, Chap. 3
W
Sept. 17
READ: Racist
America, Chap. 4
F Sept. 19
READ: Racist
America, Chap. 5
M Sept. 22
READ: Racist
America, Chap. 6
THOUGHT
PAPER DUE
W Sept. 24
READ: Racist
America, Chap. 7
F Sept. 26
READ: Racist America, Chap. 8
SECTION D: THE
POLITICAL CULTURE OF WHITENESS: RACIST EVASIONS AND NATIONAL
IDENTITY
M Sept. 29
READ: Playing in
the Dark, Preface
W Oct. 1
READ: Playing in
the Dark, Chap. 1
F Oct. 3
READ: Playing in
the Dark, Chap. 2
M Oct. 6
READ: Playing in
the Dark, Chap. 3
MID-TERM EXAMINATION DUE
W-F Oct. 8-10 FALL
BREAK
SECTION E: WHITENESS
AS PROPERTY: POWER, PRIVILEGE, PLEASURE, AND PROFITS
M Oct. 13
READ: White
Privilege, Introduction
W Oct. 15
READ: White
Privilege, Part I, Chap. 1
F Oct. 17
READ: White
Privilege, Part I, Chap. 2
M Oct. 20
READ: White
Privilege, Part I, Chap. 3
W Oct. 22
READ: White
Privilege, Part II, Chap. 1
F Oct. 24
READ: White Privilege, Part II, Chap. 2
M Oct. 27
READ: White
Privilege, Part II, Chap. 3
THOUGHT PAPER DUE
W Oct. 29
READ: White
Privilege, Part II, Chap. 4
F Oct. 31
READ: White
Privilege, Part III, Chap. 1
M Nov. 3
READ: White
Privilege, Part III, Chap. 2
W Nov. 5
READ: White
Privilege, Part III, Chap. 3
F Nov. 7
READ: White
Privilege, Part III, Chap. 4
SECTION F:
WHITE SUPREMACY, NEOCONSERVATISM, AND
THE ASSAULT ON RACIAL JUSTICE
M Nov. 10
READ: White Nationalism, Black Interests, Introduction
W Nov. 12
READ: White Nationalism, Black Interests, Chap. 1
F Nov. 14
READ: White Nationalism, Black Interests, Chap. 2
M Nov. 17
READ: White Nationalism, Black Interests, Chap. 3
THOUGHT PAPER DUE
W Nov. 19
READ: White Nationalism, Black Interests, Chap. 4
F Nov. 21
READ: White Nationalism, Black Interests, Chap. 5
M Nov. 24
READ: White Nationalism, Black Interests, Chap. 6
W Nov. 26-28
THANKSGIVING HOLIDAYS
M Dec. 1
READ: White Nationalism, Black Interests, Chap. 7
W Dec. 3
READ: White Nationalism, Black Interests, Chap. 8
F Dec. 5 READ:
White Nationalism, Black Interests, Chaps. 9 and 10
M Dec. 8
FINAL EXAMINATION (8:00-11:00 AM)
EXPECTATIONS:
You
are expected to read thoroughly and think seriously about all
assignments before coming to class and be prepared to discuss
them effectively in class.
Indeed, this course will emphasize active discussion as
the major pedagogical strategy employed in this class.
Therefore, you should develop personal syntheses of class
discussions and readings. This course will test your ability to integrate these bodies
of knowledge and to communicate this learning both through
speaking and writing. Hence,
simply memorizing isolated facts and regurgitating them are
insufficient in regard to class discussions, examinations, the
research paper, and grading.
My
intent is to challenge you to demonstrate the ability to think
analytically, independently, and critically about the subject
matter of this course. The
aim is to encourage you to formulate and defend your own
arguments thoughtfully, intelligently, and persuasively.
At times we may contest the interpretation of the authors
we read and discuss. The
political, social, economic, and cultural life experiences of
African Americans are complex and complicated, allowing for
differing and competing explanations.
Thus,
I urge you to forego the usual anxiety about always having to
discover and articulate the "right" answer to
questions posed. Multiple
and sometimes competing explanations or interpretations may be
more appropriate than a single all-encompassing one.
Our task, in the final analysis, is to develop the
ability to think, speak, and write intelligently and critically
about race(ism) in American politics.
This kind of critical reflection and discussion also can
be a formula for changing ourselves and for changing society.
The
character of class dialogue enhances the process of learning
about political life. Political
dialogue also encourages the development and refinement of
skills needed to practice political knowledge in complex and
diverse social settings—the ability to keep an open mind, to
stand in another person's shoes, to make decisions with others,
and to make compromises while maintaining integrity.
Ideas should be openly discussed and debated so that
people can choose which ones they will endorse or reject.
Hence, it is important that all class members actively
participate in class discussions.
To
accomplish these objectives, students will be divided into
discussion groups that will review and analyze each day’s
reading assignment. Following
this, there will be a general class discussion of the reading;
each group will present to the class the major points of its
deliberation. Groups should be careful to describe the
reading’s subject, theme, or issue; state the author’s
purpose and thesis or argument; briefly summarize the
assignment’s key points, identifying the evidence used to
support the thesis or argument; provide constructive criticism
when appropriate; and raise questions in the reading for class
discussion.
In
order to maintain continuity and improve the learning process,
discussion groups should point out the present reading’s
relationship to previous reading assignments.
An important learning mechanism, class discussion also
can result in problem identification and handling, political and
cultural change, resisting cultural imperialism and enslavement,
and societal renewal and advancement. It enhances mutual understanding and respect.
In the absence of communication, misunderstanding, rage,
resentment, and cynicism can become the order to the day.
EDUCATIONAL
PHILOSOPHY:
As
this course suggests, we live in a period of rapid, uncertain,
and often chaotic change. My
educational philosophy is both simple and complex, drawing
strongly from The Hidden Curriculum by Benson R. Snyder:
"We are confronted with the necessity of educating students
without either the students or their education becoming
obsolete." Education
is the practice of liberation.
I view learning as a struggle for knowledge, wisdom, and
understanding in order to prepare for a future of freedom.
Therefore,
I will challenge you not so much to agree or disagree with me as
to grow intellectually, personally, and socially.
Don’t be afraid to learn something new, and be prepared
to take intellectual risks.
The classroom needs to become a setting in which to
create an environment where you can discover who you are and
where you are encouraged to be more of who you already are.
Free your mind! Think
independently and critically!
Act audaciously in the world!
To
what passions may we surrender with assurance that we will
expand rather than diminish the promise of our lives?
The quest for knowledge that enables us to unite theory
and practice is one such passion.
To the extent that professors bring this passion, which
has to be fundamentally rooted in a love for ideas we are able
to inspire, the classroom becomes a dynamic place where
transformations in social relations are concretely actualized
and the false dichotomy between the world outside and the inside
world of the academy disappears.
bell
hooks,
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of
Freedom
Every
university student own and use a dictionary as well as a good
writing handbook. There
are numerous writing guides.
I find the following quite helpful.
Gibaldi,
Joseph. 1998.
MLA Style Manual and Guide for Scholarly
Publishing, New York: The Modern Language Association of
America.
posted 30 December 2005
updated 15 October 2007 |
