MAS565

This course starts from the premise that race is an essential social category for analyzing the policies and everyday practices experienced in American society. Students will review a variety of theories and discussions of race to learn how to take this premise seriously and understand the relevance of race in their own studies. The review starts with the early race theorists (Boas, Dubois, Sanchez.) who were countering the racist notion of biological inferiority among people of color. Students will move from discussing biological discourses to cultural explanations of racial difference. Postmodern perspectives, which center on the social construction of race, will be discussed. The review also includes an examination of Critical Race Theory (CRT) scholarship and how this school of thought comes to bear on contemporary social problems, such as educational inequities, legal injustice, and xenophobic nationalism. The course covers key and ongoing debates in race theory, including the relationship between capitalism and racism, the limitations of the black/white binary, the intersectionality of race with other social categories (class, gender, sexuality, etc.) and the veracity versus the chimera of social constructions.