ETHN 100: Racialization and collective experience

1. ETHN 100: Racialization and collective experience Monday, October 8th

2. Last Session’s Goals and Activities • Prepare for Assignment 1c by discussing claims, evidence, examples, and elaboration. • Reflect on Assignment 1b. Trends and Take-Aways

3. Today’s Goals and Activities • Introduce Part II of the course by discussing its goals, topics, and assignments. • Discuss the meaning of racial formation and racialization by comparing selections in groups and analyzing passages as a class. • Recall the origins of ethnic studies by analyzing a student documentary.

5. Part II: Goals and Topics • Goals • To trace the development of the concept of “race” in the United States • To compare and contrast racialized experiences • To situate our experiences in the national context. • To develop a theory of why social inequality among racial and ethnic groups persists. • Topics • Focus on four ethnic groups: Native American, African American, Chicano/a and Latino/a, and Asian and Pacific Islander American.

6. Part II: Writing Assignments • 2a: Poem on racial or ethnic identity • 2b: Dialogue and analysis about racial differences inspired by real events • 2c: Analytical paper that compares/contrasts two racialized experiences in Takaki’s book.    

7. Omi and Winant – Passage 1 “Scientific interpretations of race have not been alone in sparking heated controversy; religious perspectives have done so as well. Most centrally, of course, race has been a matter of political contention. This has been particularly true in the United States, where the concept of race has varied enormously over time without ever leaving the center stage of US history.” “Race is indeed a pre-eminently socio-historical concept. Racial categories and the meaning of race are given concrete expression by the specific social relations and historical context in which they are embedded. Racial meanings have varied tremendously over time and between different societies.”

8. Omi and Winant Passage 2 “The meaning of race is defined and contested throughout society, in both collective action and personal practice. In the process, racial categories themselves are formed, transformed, destroyed and reformed. We use the term racial formation to refer to the process by which social, economic and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories, and by which they are in turn shaped by racial meanings. Crucial to this formulation is the treatment of race as a central axis of social relations which cannot be subsumed under or reduced to some broader category or conception.”

9. Omi and Winant Passage 3 “We employ the term racializationto signify the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice or group. Racialization is an ideological process, an historically specific one. Racial ideology is constructed from pre-existing conceptual (or, if one prefers, "discursive") elements and emerges from the struggles of competing political projects and ideas seeking to articulate similar elements differently. An account of racialization processes that avoids the pitfalls of US ethnic history remains to be written.”

10. Next Session • Read Takaki, Ch. 1-2. • Unlike our treatment of Kozol, we will be discussing Takaki periodically in class. Your Personal Reflections of these readings will be crucial for success in class and on Assignment 2c.