Racialization: Single Mothers, Sexual and Religious Minorities

Catalog description

This course offers an introduction to the study of minority and majority group relations in the United States with a comparative focus drawing from examples in Latin America and Europe. We examine the historical factors that have led to the creation of a white majority and a black minority in America and other national contexts; how a minority or majority status is created and internalized by individuals and their youth. We pay close attention to how increasing economic and wealth inequality, globalization and immigration affects the formation of new, minority groups and statuses drawing on the example of growing share of working poor or "missing class" individuals in America; the life chances of the undocumented, and those of single migrant mothers, religious minorities such as Muslim youth and the networks of sexual minorities that help them integrate in society and cope with glaring discrimination and exclusion. Students will be able to engage in informed debates about how increases in family, ethnic, racial and sexual diversity in the US and other nations will help close the historical divides between white and black groups in America. They will also master new knowledge on how race and racialization processes take place in Latin America or in nations such as Brazil and the Dominican Republic where efforts have been made to alleviate racial inequality and tensions, but where blacks and mulattoes have historically make up the majority of the poor and whites and light-skin people still make up the ruling elite.