Social Psychology of Race and Racism

Catalog description

The human mind has a fundamental need to create categories. In this course we will examine how historical, developmental, cognitive, and motivational factors give rise to the construction of the social category race in the United States. We will also consider how racial group membership - and its intersections with other group memberships - can profoundly influence one's experience of the world and each other. To understand the construct of race and its consequences we will perform close reading and critical analysis of theoretical and empirical work in social psychology. As social psychologists, we are uniquely poised to answer why it is we are so drawn to categorizing people based on race, how our minds construct these categorizations, and what the downstream consequences of these categorizations are - ultimately guiding our ability to intervene. The aims of the course are to enhance students' ability to evaluate and analyze existing theory and research and to apply these readings to aid understanding of real world discrimination, disparities, and violence.