American Culture 399
Fall 2001, MW 3:00-4:30
1401 Mason Hall
Matthew Countryman
220 University Towers
Office Hours: T, 2:30 4:30
or by appointment
Mailbox: 2408 Mason Hall
email: mcountry@umich.edu
Phone: 647-2434 or 945-6736
Graduate Student Instructor: Jason Chang
Course Description:
This course will use scholarly texts, newspaper articles, fiction, feature and documentary films, and the personal experiences of teachers and students to examine how the concepts of race and ethnicity have operated and continue to operate in American society. What are race and ethnicity, racism and ethnic bias? How has the challenge of racial and ethnic diversity impacted American efforts to construct a good society over the course of the nations history? Do race and ethnicity continue to structure American society? Or are racial and ethnic bias little more than a vestige of an unfortunate part of the nations past? Our assumption will be that there is no "right" answer to these questions. Rather, students will be introduced to a range of critical voice on race and ethnicity and encouraged to explore and challenge their own views, those of their fellow students and those of the professor.
"Race, Racism and Ethnicity?" serves as an introduction to the Race and Ethnicity track of the American Culture major.
Textbooks
The following texts are available for purchase at Shaman Drum Bookshop, 111 S. State and have been placed in University Reserves in the Shapiro Undergraduate Library. In addition, a two-part coursepack will be available for purchase at Accu-Copy on E. William St.
Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1992)
George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (1998)
Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (1996)
Randall N. Robinson, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks (2001)
Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Post-World War Detroit (1998)
Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (1994)
Optional: Anne Moody, The Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968)
Course Requirements:
This course will consist of twice-weekly lectures and one discussion section per week. In addition to lectures, class meetings will also include small group discussions and exercises, film showings and discussions, Since course meetings will compliment the assigned readings, opportunities for free writing, students will be expected to keep up with both. Attendance at discussion sections is required and students will also be expected to a keep a journal on course readings
There will be five graded written assignments in this course:
Detailed descriptions of both paper assignments will be made available well before their due dates. Final grades will be determined as follows: attendance and participation in section: 25%; first paper: 5%; mid-term- 20%; second paper: 20%; in-class final exam- 10%; take-home final- 20%
SCHEDULE OF READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS
Sept. 5 Introduction
Sept. 10
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "Skin Deep: Shouldnt a Pill Be Colorblind," The New York Times, May 13, 2001 (CP)
Beverly Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, (1997), 1-13 (CP)
Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 2nd Edition (1994), 53-76 (CP)
II. Race and American Historical Memory
Sept. 12 Race and the Founding Narrative
Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror, 1-50
Phil Deloria, Playing Indian, (1998), 1-37 (CP)
Thomas Bender, "Founding Fathers Dreamed of Uprisings, Except in Haiti," The New York Times, Jul. 1, 2001 (CP)
Film: Pocohontas
Sept. 17 Immigration Narratives I
Takaki, 139-165, 277-310
Sept. 19 Immigration Narrative II
Takaki, 191-221, 246-276
Sept. 24 First Paper Due
Sept. 24 Narratives of Colonization and Slavery
Takaki, 79-131, 166-190
III. The Meaning of Whiteness in American Society
Sept. 26 Whiteness as Americaness
George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, 69-98
Film: Birth of A Nation
Oct. 1 </span>Whiteness as Ethnicity
Emma Lazarus, "The New Colussus," http://www.libertystatepark.com/emma.htm
Nathan Glazer, "The Emergence of an American Ethnic Pattern," (1975) in Ronald Takaki, ed., From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America, 13-25 (CP)
Suzanne Model, "The Ethnic Niche and the Structure of Opportunity: Immigrants and Minorities in New York City," (1993) in Michael B. Katz, ed., The Underclass Debate: Views from History, 161-193, (CP)
Mary C. Waters, "Optional Ethnicities: For Whites Only?" (1996), in Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins eds., Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, 403-412 (CP)
Patricia J. Williams, "On Imagining Foes, Imagining Friendship," (1997) in Jack Salzman and Cornel West eds., Struggles in the Promised Land: Towards a History of Black-Jewish Relations in the United States, 371-383 (CP)
Film: The Jazz Singer
Oct. 3 Power and Privilege
Lipsitz, 1-23Peggy McIntosh, "White Privilege and Male Privilege," (1988), in Andersen and Hill Collins, 94-105 (CP)
Film: The Color of Courage
Oct. 8 Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 3-14, 57-123,
Oct. 10 Sugrue, 209-258
Lipsitz, 99-117
IV. African American Slavery, Its Legacies, and the Call for Reparations
Oct. 15 Slavery and (African) American Memory
Randall Robinson, The Debt, 1-58
David Brion Davis, "The Enduring Legacy of the Souths Civil War Victory," The New York Times, Aug. 26, 2001 (CP)
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "The Future of Slaverys Past," The New York Times, Jul. 29, 2001 (CP)
Oct. 17 Black Life in the Era of Segregation
Takaki, 131-138, 340-369Robin Kelley, "We Are Not What We Seem: Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South," (1993) in Raymond D'Angelo, ed., The American Civil Rights Movement: Readings and Interpretations, 121-146 (CP)
(Optional: Lipsitz, 158-183)
Oct. 22 </span>World War II and the Origins of the Modern Civil Rights Movement
Gunnar Myrdal: An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and American Democracy, lxix-lxxxiii, 3-25 (CP)
Sugrue, 17-55 (Optional, 125-177)
Lipsitz, 184-210
Takaki, 378-399
Oct. 24 </span>Integration, Nonviolent Protest and Its Critics
Takaki, 399-414
"Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Statement of Purpose," (1960) in Clayborne Carson, et al., eds., The Eyes on the Civil Rights Reader, 119-120 (CP)
Ella J. Baker, "Bigger than a Hamburger," (1960) in Carson, 120-122 (CP)
Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from the Birmingham City Jail," (1963), 320-331 (CP)
Malcolm X,"The Ballot or the Bullet," (1965) in DAngelo, 414-427 (CP)
Film: Aint Scared of Your Jails
Oct. 29 </span>The Persistence of the Racial Divide
Robinson, 59-120 (optional 161-198)
Lipsitz, 24-46
Sugrue, 259-271
Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom, "We Have Overcome," The New Republic, (Oct. 13, 1997) 23-28 (CP)
Reed Abelson, "Anti-Bias Agency is Short of Will and Cash," The New York Times, Jul. 1, 2001 (CP)
David Cole and John Lamberth, "The Fallacy of Racial Profiling," The New York Times, May 13, 2001 (CP)
(Optional Sugrue 181-207)
Oct. 31 Midterm Exam (30 minutes)
V. Race and "The New Immigration"
Nov. 5 </span>Immigration Outside the Black-White Binary
Robert Blauner, "Colonized and Immigrant Minorities," (1972) in Takaki, From Different Shores, 149-160 (CP)
Lisa Lowe, Immigrants Acts, 154-173
Lipsitz, 211-233
Takaki, 414-428
Liz Cobbs, "Hispanic Population, Influence Rise," Ann Arbor News, (CP)
Derek Green and Eve Silberman, "Latino Ann Arbor," Ann Arbor Observer, May 2001, (CP)
Nov. 7 </span>Immigrant Identities in Post-World War II U.S.: Asian-Americanness
Lowe, 1-37, 60-83, 174-176
Alan James Frutkin, "The Faces in the Glass are Rarely Theirs," The New York Times, Dec. 24, 2000 (CP)
Film: Rabbit in the Moon
Nov. 12 </span>Immigrant Identities in Post-World War II U.S.: Latinoness
David G. Gutierrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants and the Politics of Ethnicity, (1995), 117-151 (CP)
Edward J. Escobar, "The Dialectics of Repression: The Los Angeles Police Department and The Chicano Movement," The Journal of American History (March 1993) 1483-1514 (CP)
Juan Flores, "Que Assimilated, Brother, Yo Soy Asimilao: The Structuring of Puerto Rican Identity in the U.S.," (1993), in Mary Romero, et al., eds., Challenging Fronteras: Structuring Latina and Latino Lives in the U.S., 175-185 (CP)
Arturo Madrid, "Missing People and Others: Joining Together to Expand the Circle," (1988), in Andersen and Hill Collins, 21-26, (CP)
Gregory Rodriguez, "150 Years Later, Latinos Finally Hit the Mainstream," The New York Times, Apr. 15, 2001 (CP)
Susan Sachs, "Redefining Minority," The New York Times (CP)
Nov. 14 </span>Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, 3-85
Film: My American Girls
Nov. 19 Alvarez, 68-191 (optional 195-290)
Ruben Martinez, "The Shock of the New," (1994) in Antonia Darder and Rodolfo Torres, eds., The Latino Studies Reader: Culture, Economy and Society, 170-179 (CP)
Nov. 21 No Class
Nov. 26 </span>Debating the New Immigration: Remaking Place, Remaking Nation
Lipsitz, 47-68
Max J. Castro, "The Politics of Language in Miami," (1992) in Romero, 279-294 (CP)
Edna Acosta-Belen and Carlos E. Santiago, "Merging Borders: The Remapping of America,"(1995) in Darder and Torres, 29-41 (CP)
Susan Sachs, "Cracking the Door for Immigrants," The New York Times, Jul. 1, 2001
Catherine Hausman, "Great Expectations," The New York Times Education Life," Apr. 8, 2001
Janny Scott, "Rethinking Segregation Beyond Black and White," The New York Times, Jul. 29, 2001
Second Paper Due
Nov. 28 </span>Are Reparations the Solution to Antiblack Racism?
Robinson, 199-247
Brent Staples, "The Slave Reparations Movement Adopts the Rhetoric of Victimhood," The New York Times, Sept. 2, 2001 (CP)
Nicholas Lemann, "Taking Affirmative Action Apart," in Francis J. Beckwith and Todd E. Jones, eds., Affirmative Action: Social Justice or Reverse Discrimination?, 34-55. (CP)
Glenn C. Loury, "How to Mend Affirmative Action," The Public Interest, (Spring 1997), 1-7 (CP)
Film: TBA
Howard Winant, "Behind Blue Eyes: Whiteness and Contemporary U.S. Politics," (1997) in Michelle Fine et al., eds., Off White: Readings on Race, Power, and Society, 40-53 (CP)
Becky Thompson and White Women Challenging Racism, "Home/Work: Antiracism Activism and the Meaning of Whiteness," (1997) in Fine, 354-366 (CP)
Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom, "The Prescience of Myrdal," The Public Interest (Summer 1997), 36-54 (CP)
Charles Murray, "White Popular Wisdom: Losing Ground," (1984) in Takaki, From Different Shores, 241-246 (CP)
Film: Racism 101
Dec. 5 </span>Towards a New Racial System: Multiculturalism and its Critics
Lowe, 37-59, 84-96
Arthur Schlesinger, "The Return to the Melting Pot," in Ronald Takaki, From Different Shores, (CP)
Ronald Takaki, "At the End of the Century: The Culture Wars in the United States," in Takaki, From Different Shores, (CP)
Holland Cotter, " Beyond Multiculturalism, Freedom?," The New York Times, Jul. 29, 2001 (CP)
Gregory Rodriguez, "Forging a New Vision of Americas Melting Pot," The New York Times, (CP)
Dec. 10 Towards a New Racial System: Intra-Ethnic Alliances and Tensions
Sumi K. Cho, "Korean Americans vs. African Americans: Conflict and Construction," (1993) in Robert Gooding-Williams, ed., Reading Rodney King: Reading Urban Uprising, 196-211 (CP)
Elaine H. Kim, "Home is Where the Han Is; A Korean American Perspective on the Los Angeles Upheavals," (1993) in Gooding-Williams, 215-235 (CP)
Rosaura Sanchez, "Mapping the Spanish Language along a Multiethnic and Multilingual Border, (1992-6) in Darder and Torres, 101-123 (CP)
Jorge Klor de Alva, Earl Shorris, and Cornel West, "Our Next Race Question: The Uneasiness Between Blacks and Latinos," (1996) in Darder and Torres, 180-189 (CP)
Mireya Navarro, "The Latino Candidate: Yours, Mine, Ours?," The New York Times, May 6, 2001(CP)
Eric Schmitt, "Blacks Split on Disclosing Multiracial Roots," The New York Times, Mar. 31, 2001 (CP)
Film: Fires in the Mirror
Take-Home Final Exam Distributed
Dec. 12 In-Class Final Exam (30 Minutes)
Dec. 17 Take-Home Final Exam Due at 4 p.m.