Race and Ethnicity in US Politics
Professor: Diane Wong
E-mail: dw633@rutgers.edu
Course Description
In this seminar, we start with the basic premise that race matters. How do we understand the conceptualization of race across time? How has the production of racial difference shaped our own experiences and relationships to the American state? What are the connections between racial power and protest — what are the possibilities for change? Together we will survey the literature in political science, sociology, history, urban studies, ethnic studies, and other fields to explore how race and racialization processes are articulated in the production of everyday life and entangled with other social structures including gender, class, sexuality, nation, empire, and colonialism. We will spend the first half of the semester interrogating the roots of race and racism in the United States, discussing the intersecting histories of the Transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, migration, and borders. The second half of the semester will focus on resistance and political agency — emphasis will be place on contemporary moments for racial justice from the movement for Black lives uprisings to recent calls to #StopAAPIHate. Topics include but are not limited to ethnic and panethnic identities, diasporic intimacies, immigration, spatial segregation, incarceration, displacement, solidarity and abolitionist futures. Texts include Lisa Marie Cacho‘s’ Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected, Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s From Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation, and Kevin Mumford’s Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America, and more. As we read these texts together, you will be exposed to intersectional, comparative, and emergent approaches to the study of race, power, culture, and politics that can inform contemporary movements for racial justice.
The course has several main objectives: 1) to investigate the role of race and racialization in the production of American politics 2) to understand the effect of race on shaping American political institutions and systems 3) to become comfortable with key concepts and terminologies in critical race studies 4) to develop a shared vocabulary for talking about race and racism beyond the walls of our classroom 5) to learn about diverse methodologies that include qualitative, quantitative, experimental, and community-rooted research and how to produce scholarship that extends beyond the campus audience.
Course Requirements
Attendance: This seminar is designed to be participatory and collaborative in nature, attendance is necessary for you to understand the course material. I ask for regular attendance, if you are unable to attend due to illness or an emergency you should notify me over email before class begins.
Readings: Make sure that you have access to the required texts online or in print, it is expected that you will complete all assigned reading before class. Keep in mind that our syllabus is a living document, with future readings and content updated regularly based on our conversations together and also what unfolds in the world around us. For accessibility, most of our readings are accessible via Rutgers libraries or can be found under the files tab on Canvas.
Participation: I expect that you will come to class prepared to share, reflect, and challenge each other in a respectful manner. Be prepared to discuss the readings assigned for each week, actively engaging the course materials will help make our seminar more interesting and relevant for everyone. Part of participation will involve your facilitation of one class discussion.
Office hours: My office hours are virtual and on Friday mornings from 10 am-12pm, use the recurring zoom link sent via email to join office hours.
Assignment Overview:
Weekly Memos: You are required to write weekly memos about the readings to be uploaded in our shared One Drive folder by 6 pm on Wednesday night. Each memo should be one single spaced page and engage with at least two of the week’s readings. The purpose of these memos is not to summarize the texts but to become comfortable in articulating your own thoughts, critiques, contradictions, and arguments that stem from the readings. The goal is to develop a consistent practice of writing that improves our substantive, methodological, theoretical, or practical understanding of the readings covered each week.
Facilitating Discussions: Over the course of the semester, you will be asked to co-facilitate one class discussion. I will share a sign up sheet the second week of class. In addition to coming up with a list of guiding questions for everyone to discuss, facilitators are responsible for incorporating multimedia materials beyond written texts to supplement our readings for the week, for instance short films, exhibits, photographs, audio interviews, songs or mixtapes, which we will view together in class and then discuss.
Newark Collaborative Mapping Project: In a series of brainstorming sessions, you will be asked to identify a site of interest in Newark for a collaborative mapping project and walking tour. As part of this project, you will be required to visit your site at least once over the course of the semester. You can use a variety of approaches to document the importance of your site: oral history interviews, archival research, photography, video documentation, etc. Each group will collaboratively write a one page single spaced write up related to the selected site. Your collective write up is due on Thursday November 10, upload it to our shared folder. Rather than a traditional paper, you will write a three page single spaced reflection of the walking tour that will be due on Thursday December 1. As you work on your reflection paper, you should bring into context at least three readings that we have read together in class. I also ask that you consider these questions: How can memory work facilitate dialogue around issues of racial inequality and social change? What are ethical ways to conduct research? What are specific ways in which memory work can build community power?
Racial Futurities Collage Project: Throughout the semester, you will learn different methodological approaches to study race that links the past, present, and future. This project asks you to critically consider this question: What is the future of race in America? Each of you will be asked to create a collage that draws from and incorporates various materials that you have easiest access to answer this question. This assignment emphasizes imaginative, speculative, and futurist approaches to understanding the future of a specific theme or issue area that we explored in our seminar (i.e.. immigration, displacement, abolition, whiteness, protest politics, solidarities, and more). The collage can incorporate a variety of mixed media including text from your own family archives, drawings, photographs, poetry, magazines, etc. Your final project will be the production of a collage and a 10 page artist statement that includes the title of your collage and analysis of the collage that engages several of our readings and themes covered in class. The assignment is broken down into two parts: 1) an in class collage workshop on December 1 and 2) the final project due on Thursday December 15. Note, send me a digitized version of your collage and paper in a single PDF.
Reflection: Instead of a final memo, each of you will be asked to write a one page reflection due before class on December 8. The reflection will provide a chance for you to reflect on our semester together. What were some of the most important lessons gained from our course materials and conversations? How would you describe your personal grow this semester? How will the knowledge gained from this course support your goals and visions for the future? There is no right way to write a reflection so long as it include your own thoughts and visions inspired by our conversations.
Grading Policy
Participation………………………………………….….………....…..30%
Weekly Memo………………………………………………….…..……20%
Newark Oral History Mapping Project……………….…...…..….20%
Racial Futurities Collage……………………………..……………….20%
Final Reflection………………………………………………………...10%
Other Course Information
Email Policy: Feel free to email me with questions, I will check my email more frequently during the week and before assignments are due. Please do not wait until the last minute.
Electronic Devices: The success of our seminar rests on active participation and mutual respect for the space we build together. During class, I expect that you will abstain from sending emails and doing other work on your devices.
Campus Resources
Students with Disabilities: Academic accommodations are available for students with disabilities, Rutgers is committed to the creation of an inclusive and safe learning environment for all students, and welcomes students with disabilities into all the University’s educational programs. The Office of Disability Services (ODS) is responsible for the determination of appropriate accommodations for students who encounter barriers due to disability. More information can be found at www.ods.rutgers.edu. You can contact ODS at (848)445–6800 or via email at dsoffice@echo.rutgers.edu.
Statement of Nondiscrimination: Rutgers enforces non-discrimination and anti-harassment policy and complaint procedures at all levels in order to create an environment free from discrimination, harassment, retaliation and sexual assault. Discrimination or harassment based on race, religion, gender and/or gender identity or expression, religion, age, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, pregnancy, marital status, citizenship status, or on any other legally prohibited basis is unlawful and will not be tolerated.
Academic Integrity
At Rutgers you belong to a community of scholars and practitioners who value honest and open intellectual inquiry. This relationship depends on mutual respect, responsibility, and integrity. A few examples of behaviors that would compromise academic integrity include plagiarism, illicit collaboration, doubling or recycling coursework, and cheating. Plagiarism means knowingly misrepresenting someone else’s work as your own. This includes offenses like buying a paper off the internet, as well as appropriating another author’s words or ideas without citation: http://academicintegrity.rutgers.edu.
Course Schedule
Week 1: Introduction.
Thursday, September 8
— Introductions
Week 2: What is race?
Thursday, September 15
— Michael Omi and Howard Winant (1986) Racial Formation in the United States, “The Theory of Racial Formation”
— George Lipsitz (1998) Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics, “The Changing Same” and “Possessive Investment in Whiteness”
— Claire Jean Kim (1999) “Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans,” in Politics and Society
— In class film: Race The Power of Illusion
Week 3: Entanglements of race and empire.
Thursday, September 22
— Christina Sharpe (2016) In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, “The Wake”
— Lisa Yun (2008) The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers and African slaves in Cuba, “Historical Context of the Coolie Traffic to the Americas”
— Gary Okihiro (1994) Margins and Mainstreams, “Is Yellow Black or White”
— Saidiya Hartman (2006) Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, “Prologue: The Path of Strangers”
— Thora Siemsen (2018) “On Working with Archives: An Interview with writer Saidiya Hartman,” published in The Creative Independent
— Bergis Jules (2016) “Confronting Our Failure of Care Around the Legacies of Marginalized People in the Archives”
Week 4: War and the refugee condition.
Monday, September 29
— Thi Bui (2017) The Best We Could Do
— George Lipsitz (1998) Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics, “Whiteness and War”
— Lila Abu-Lughod (2002) “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” in American Anthropologist
— In lieu of the weekly memo, attend “Responding to Anti-Asian Hate: Politics, Organizing, and Education” seminar on September 28 at Express Newark
Week 5: Colonial histories and intimacies.
Thursday, October 6
— Lisa Yun (2008) The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers and African slaves in Cuba, “The Coolie Testimonies”
— Lisa Lowe (2015) The Intimacy of Four Continents, “Introduction”
— Saidiya Hartman (2008) “Venus in Two Acts” in Small Axe
— Vivek Bald (2015) Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America, “Bengali Harlem” and “Life and Times of a Multiracial Community”
— Alessandro Portelli (1998) The Oral History Reader, edited by Alistair Thomson and Robert Perks, “What Makes Oral History Different”
— Class visit to artist Renluka Maharaj’s exhibit Bhumi’s Daughters at Project for Empty Space Gallery
Week 6: Immigration and the boundaries of whiteness.
Thursday, October 13
— David Roediger (1991) Wages of Whiteness, “Irish American Workers and White Racial Formation in the Antebellum United States”
— George Lipsitz (1998) Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics, “Finding Families of Resistance: Frantic to Join… the Japanese Army”
— Monami Maulik (2011) “Our Movement Is for the Long Haul: Ten Years of DRUM’s Community Organizing by Working-Class South Asian Migrants,” in Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts
— Linda Shopes (2002) “Oral History and the Study of Communities: Problems, Paradoxes, and Possibilities,” in Journal of American History
Week 7: Intersectionality in theory and practice.
Thursday, October 20
— The Combahee River Collective Statement
— Patricia Hill Collins (1990) Black Feminist Thought, “Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination”
— Kimberle Crenshaw (1991) “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, Violence Against Women of Color,” in Stanford Law Review
— Cathy Cohen (1997) “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics,” in Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies
— Jennifer Nash (2008) “Rethinking Intersectionality,” in Feminist Review
— Sami Schalk and Jina B. Kim (2020) “Integrating Race, Transforming Feminist Disability Studies,” in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
Week 8: Racial capitalism and the question of ownership.
Thursday, October 27
— Cedric Robinson (1983) Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, “Forward by Robin D.G. Kelley” and “Introduction”
— Jodi Melamed (2015) “Racial Capitalism,” in Critical Ethnic Studies
— Kevin Mumford (2006) Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America, “Introduction” and “Brutal Realities and the Roots of the Disorders”
— Laura Pulido (2016) “Environmental racism, racial capitalism, and state-sanctioned violence,” in Progress in Human Geography
— Ananya Roy (2019) “Racial Banishment,” in Antipode
— Listen to one episode of New Dawn: Race and Capitalism podcast
Week 9: Mapping a politics from below.
Thursday, November 3
— Yusef Omowale (2018) We Already Are, on Medium
— Robin D.G. Kelley (1993) “We Are Not What We Seem: Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in Jim Crow South,” in Journal of American History
— Cathy Cohen (2004) “Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics,” in DuBois Review
— bell hooks (1990) yearning, race, gender, and cultural politics, “choosing the margin as a space for radical openness”
— Andrea Roberts (2018) “Performance as Place Preservation: The Role of Storytelling in the Formation of Black Counter Publics” in Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage
— Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, view (Dislocation):Black Exodus zine
Week 10: Slow violence and necropolitics in the age of pandemic.
Thursday, November 10
— Achille Mbembe (2003) “Necropolitics,” in Public Culture
— Thom Davies (2019) “Slow violence and toxic geographies: Out of Sight to Whom?” in Environment and Planning: Politics and Space
— Jordan T. Camp (2009) “We Know This Place: Neoloberal Racial Regimes and the Katrina Circumstance,” in American Quarterly
— Shatema Threadcraft (2017) “North American Necropolitics and Gender: #BlackLivesMatter & Black Femicide,” in South Atlantic Quarterly
— Elijah Adiv Edelman (2014) Queer Necropolitics, “Necropolitical Regulations of Trans Feminine Bodies of Colour in the US Nation’s Capital”
— In class film: Mossville
Week 11: Protest politics and the movement for Black lives.
Thursday, November 17
— Charles Payne (1989) “Ella Baker and Models of Social Change,” in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
— Kevin Mumford (2006) Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America, “Testimonies to Violation and Violence” and “The Reconstruction of Black Womanhood”
— Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (2016) From Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation, “Black Lives Matter: A Movement, Not Moment”
— Kelly Lytle Hernandez (2017) City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, “Rebel Archives”
— Movement for Black Lives, Platform and Demands
— Letters for Black Lives (2017) “An Open Letter to Our Families About Black Lives Matter”
Week 12: Wedge politics and cross-racial solidarities.
Thursday, December 1
— Laura Pulido (2006) Black, brown, yellow, and left: radical activism in Los Angeles, “Serving the People and Vanguard Politics: The Formation of the Third World Left in Los Angeles”
— Luis Alvarez and Daniel Widener (2008) “A History of Black and Brown: Chicana/o and African American Cultural and Political Relations,” in Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies
— Mari J. Matsuda (1996) Where Is Your Body, “We Will Not Be Used: Are Asian Americans the Racial Bourgeoisie”
— Diane Wong (2021) “The Future Is Ours To Build: Asian American Abolitionist Counterstories for Black Liberation,” in Politics, Groups, Identities
— Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018) Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, “Care Webs: Experiments in Creative Collective Access”
Week 13: The carceral state and abolition politics
Thursday, December 8
— Angela Y. Davis (2003) Are Prisons Obsolete, “Introduction — Prison Reform or Prison Abolition”
— Kelly Lytle Hernandez (2011) “Amnesty or Abolition? Felons, Illegals, and the Case for a New Abolition Movement,” in Boom
— Vesla Weaver and Amy Lerman (2010) “Political Consequences of the Carceral State,” American Political Science Review
— Rachel Kushner (2019) “Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind,” in New York Times Magazine
— Mark Tseng-Putterman (2017) “On Vincent Chin and the Kind of Men You Send to Jail,” in Asian American Writers Workshop’s The Margins
Week 14: Dreaming of otherwise worlds.
Thursday, December 15
— To be determined…
