8/24/11
Harvard University
U. S. in the World 15“Is the American Racial Order Being Transformed?” Crosslisted in Government Department and Department of African and African American Studies
website
Professor Jennifer Hochschild
Fall 2011
Monday and Wednesday, 10:05 -11 a.m.
CGIS South: S-010 Lecture Hall
Room N412, CGIS
1737 Cambridge Street
Office hours: Tuesday, 1:40 to 4 p.m.
Teaching Fellow:
Katherine Levine Einstein (Head TF)
Office hours: Wednesday, 3-4:30, CGIS cafe
Introduction
Why did Barack Obama win the presidency, and what does his election reveal about racial and ethnic politics in the United States? Are cross-racial political coalitions feasible and desirable? Do multiracial individuals exemplify the future of American racial and ethnic politics? Why is immigration such a politically contentious and complicated issue in the United States (which is, after all, a “settler society”)? How will genomic science change the way that Americans understand and practice group identification and identity? Are young adults leading the way toward a new racial order? Will incarceration, wealth disparities, or hostility to Muslims block or distort desirable changes in the racial order? Most important, what is the likely future for race and ethnicity over the next few decades in the United States – and how can political action turn that future in the direction that you think best?
This course addresses these questions, and suggests an array of possible answers (though never the correct answer!). It provides some historical context, useful concepts, empirical research, and normative arguments to help us understand the questions and develop answers. The underlying assumption is that the United States is balanced between movement toward a largely desirable transformation in the racial and ethnic order, on the one hand, and persistence of the old and perhaps less desirable order, on the other hand. We will explore what is entailed in that assumption, and how politics can be used to foster desirable changes.
Course Requirements: Participation in lectures and discussion section (25% of grade), short analytic paper (25% of grade), group “real world” project (25% of grade), and take-home final examination (25% of grade). You must pass each section of the course to pass the course as a whole.
As part of the General Education program, we want to ensure that the material you are engaging with in class is connected with beliefs, activities, politics, and institutions in “the real world” outside the university. In order to foster that link, we have obtained agreement from a set of organizations in the Boston area for small groups of students to spend some time in that organization. The organizations’ work brings them into contact with issues having to do with race, ethnicity, and/or immigration. You will be divided into groups of 2 to 4 students, and will have some sort of interaction for several hours with an organization (the interaction will be determined later – it could be interviews, meeting with clients, shadowing organizational personnel, volunteering to help in the organization, etc.) You will take field notes, submit them to the course website, and share your experiences and ideas with other students. Finally your group will submit a paper linking your own and other students’ organizational experiences with some set of ideas, arguments, or evidence in the course materials.
Books and Other Materials: We will be reading parts of various books; all are on order at the Coop. All are also on reserve at Lamont Library, and many can be found in used bookstores or in online used bookstores. We have compiled a Coursepack, which is available the Coop as well. It is on reserve at Lamont Library and at the library in the Quad, but we strongly recommend that you buy it. Sources that are available electronically (with links indicated in the syllabus) will not be in the Coursepack. Books:
Richard Alba (2009). Blurring the Color Line: The New Chance for a More Integrated America. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press.
Dalton Conley (2009). Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America, 2nd ed. Berkeley, University of California Press.
Gwen Ifill (2009). The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. New York, Anchor Books.
Philip Kasinitz et al. (2009). Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age New York and Cambridge MA: Russell Sage Foundation and Harvard University Press.
Philip Klinkner and Rogers Smith (2002). The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America. Chicago IL, University of Chicago Press.
Helen Marrow (2011). New Destination Dreaming. Palo Alto CA: Stanford University Press.
Dowell Myers (2008). Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America. New York, Russell Sage Foundation.
Renee Romano (2003). Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press.
Coursepack for USW15, fall 2011.
Weekly Topics and Assignments
NOTE: these are in rough sequential order within each topic so you should complete about the first half of the topic’s reading for the first session on that topic. However, lectures and discussions may range across all the readings.
Framework and Context
August 31: Introduction to the course: what is a racial order?
September 7: What is the American racial order?
David Hollinger (2008) "Obama, the Instability of Color Lines, and the Promise of a Postethnic Future." Callaloo 31 (4): 1033-1037. Electronic
Peniel Joseph (2009) ”Our National Postracial Hangover.” Chronicle of Higher Education: B6. Electronic
September 12: The American racial order before the 1960s
Klinkner and Smith, The Unsteady March, chaps. 4, 7
September 14: The American ethnic order before the 1960s
Matthew Frye Jacobson (1998) Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Harvard University Press, chap. 2. Electronic
Daniel Tichenor (2002) Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America, Princeton University Press: 89-108, 128-132, 138-146. Coursepack
Race, Immigration, and Ethnicity
September 19: The contemporary American racial order
Klinkner and Smith, The Unsteady March, chaps. 8, 9
September 21: The contemporary immigration order
Kasinitz, et al., Inheriting the City, chaps. 3, 5, 8, 10.
September 26: Dynamics of incorporation and exclusion
Myers, Immigrants and Boomers, chaps. 4, 6.
Deborah Schildkraut (2007) “Defining American Identity in the Twenty-First Century: How Much ‘There’ is There?” Journal of Politics, 69 (3): 597–615. Electronic
September 28: How do institutions foster incorporation or exclusion?
Marrow, New Destination Dreaming, chaps. 6, 7. S. Karthick Ramakrishan and Tom Wong. 2010. “Partisanship, Not Spanish: Explaining Municipal Ordinances Affecting Undocumented Immigrants,” in Monica Varsanyi, ed. Taking Local Control: Immigration Policy Activism in U.S. Cities and States. Stanford University Press. Coursepack
Multiracialism
October 3: Racial mixture in the United States
Mae Ngai (2004). Impossible Subjects, Princeton University Press, chap. 3 (esp. pp. 109-116). Electronic
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) Electronic
Romano, Race Mixing, chaps. 2, 6, 8.
October 5: “Mark one or more”
U.S. House of Representatives (1997) Hearings on “Federal Measures of Race and Ethnicity and the Implications for the 2000 Census,” April 23, May 22, and July 25. Testimony of Ramona Douglass, Susan Graham, Carlos Fernandez, Harold McDougall, Newt Gingrich, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Eric Rodriguez, Jacinta Ma. Electronic
Office of Management and Budget (1997) Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity. Washington D.C., Executive Office of the President, OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Electronic
October 12: Contemporary politics of multiracialism
Eugene Robinson, Disintegration, chaps. 7, 8. Coursepack
Jennifer Lee and Frank Bean, The Diversity Paradox, chaps. 7, 8, 10. Coursepack
October 14: First paper due, to Government Dept. office, by 4:30 p.m.
Genomics
October 17: What is a race? Race, Ethnicity, and Genetics Working Group (2005). “The Use of Racial, Ethnic, and Ancestral Categories in Human Genetics Research,” American Journal of Human Genetics 77 (4): 519-532 Electronic
Natasha Wright and Wendy Roth (2011). “Aboriginal Claims: DNA Ancestry Testing and Changing Concepts of Indigeneity.” In Biomapping and Indigenous Identities, ed. Susanne Berthier, Sandrine Tolazzi, and Sheila Collingwood-Whittick. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Coursepack
Optional, for recent broad framework on genomics: Eric Green et al. (2011). “Charting a Course for Genomic Medicine from Base Pairs to Bedside.” Nature. 470: 204-213. Electronic.
October 19: Race-based medicine
Neil Risch et al. (2002). “Categorization of Humans in Biomedical Research: Genes, Race, and Disease.” Genome Biology 3 (7): 1-12. Electronic.
Troy Duster (2005) "Race and Reification in Science." Science 307 (5712): 1050-1051. Electronic
Sandra Soo-Jin Lee et al. (2008). “The Ethics of Characterizing Difference : Guiding Principles on Using Racial Categories in Human Genetics.” Genome Biology 9 (7): article 404. Electronic
October 24: DNA and the law
Henry Greely et al. (2006) "Family Ties: The Use of DNA Offender Databases to Catch Offenders' Kin." Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics 34: 248-262. Electronic
Samuel Gross (2008) "Convicting the Innocent." Annual Review of Law and Social Science 4: 173-192. Electronic
“Grim Sleeper: How LAPD followed the DNA to an arrest,” Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2010. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/07/how-dna-led-to-the-arrest-of-the-grim- sleeper.html
Cohort Change
October 26: Racial attitudes
Howard Schuman and Willard Rodgers (2004) "Cohorts, Chronology, and Collective Memories." Public Opinion Quarterly. 68 (2): 217-54. Electronic Ian Shapira (2009) "Tackling Toni Morrison: Obama-Generation Readers See Civil Righrs Era with Different Eyes." Washington Post. January 21, B1 ff. Electronic
Kerem Kalkan, Geoffrey Layman, and Eric Uslaner (2009) "'Bands of Others?' Attitudes toward Muslims in Contemporary American Society." Journal of Politics. 71 (3): 847-62. Electronic
October 31: Political and social practice
Kasinitz, et al., Inheriting the City, chaps. 9, 11.
Myers, Immigrants and Boomers, chaps. 8, 9.
November 2: Obama and other “new” politicians
Ifill, Breakthrough, chaps. 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, Afterword.
Thomas Sugrue (2010) Not Even Past, Princeton University Press: chap. 3. Coursepack.
What Might Derail Transformation?
November 7: Incarceration
Jeffrey Manza and Christopher Uggen (2004) "Punishment and Democracy: Disfranchisement of Nonincarcerated Felons in the United States." Perspectives on Politics 2 (3): 491-506. Electronic
Todd Clear (2007) Imprisoning Communities… Oxford University Press: chap. 6. Coursepack
Bruce Western and Becky Pettit, “Incarceration and Social Inequality,” Daedalus, summer 2010, pp. 8-19. Electronic
November 9: Illegal immigration
Douglas Massey (2010) Brokered Boundaries, Russell Sage Foundation, chaps. 4, 5. Coursepack
Peter Schuck (2009) “Immigrants' Incorporation in the United States after 9/11: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back.” In Bringing Outsiders In: TransAtlantic Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation. Eds. J. Hochschild and J. Mollenkopf. Cornell University Press: 158- 175. Coursepack
November 14: Are Muslims a new pariah group?
Akbar Ahmed (2010) Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam (Brookings Institution Press), chaps 4, 5. Coursepack
Kerem Kalkan et al. (2009) “ ‘Bands of Others’? Attitudes toward Muslims in Contemporary American Society” Journal of Politics 71 (3): 847-862. Electronic
November 16: Wealth disparities across racial and ethnic groups
Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red, 2nd ed., chaps. 3, 4 Afterward
Lingxin Hao (2007) Color Lines, Country Lines. Russell Sage Foundation: chap. 3. Coursepack.
November 21: Persistent discrimination
Before the class session, students are required to take two Implicit Association Tests (IATs), at http://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/takeatest.html
Shankar Vendantum (2005) “See No Bias,” Washington Post Magazine, January 23, pp. W12 ff. Electronic
Michael Haederle (2008). “How a Race about Race Could Be Less about Race,” Miller- McCune, September 29. Electronic
Thierry Devos and Mahzarin Banaji (2005), “American=White?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 447-466. Electronic
What Is, and Should Be, America’s Racial and Ethnic Future?
November 23: Racial and ethnic incorporation
Alba, Blurring the Color Line, chaps. 3, 4, 5.
Myers, Immigrants and Boomers, chaps. 10, 12.
November 28: Splits between advantaged and disadvantaged
Richard Ford (2009) "Barack Is the New Black: Obama and the Promise/Threat of the Post-Civil Rights Era." Du Bois Review. 6 (1): 37-48. Electronic
Cathy Cohen (2010) Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics (Oxford Unversity Press), chaps. 4, 6 Coursepack
Shalini Shankar (2008) Desi Land: Teen Culture, Class, and Success in Silicon Valley, Duke University Press, chaps. 5, 6 Coursepack
Ronald Brownstein, “Eclipsed,” National Journal, May 27, 2011. Electronic
November 30: Political empowerment, of whom?
Jennifer Hochschild, “Looking Ahead: Racial Ttrends in the United States.” Daedalus, winter 2005: 70-81http://www.mitpressjournals.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/toc/daed/134/1
Joel Alvarado and Charles Jaret (2009). Building Black-Brown Coalitions in the Southeast: Four African American-Latino Collaborations." Georgia State University and the Southern Regional Council, Electronic
Immigration Policy Center (2010). The New American Electorate: The Growing Political Power of Immigrants and Their Children http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/docs/New_American_Electorate_101410.pd f
December 9: Group project paper due
December ??: 24 hour take-home exam