(De)Constructing Race and Color

Catalog description

This course addresses the racialization processes involved in the social construction of the color of race — White, Yellow, Brown, Red and Black — through interdisciplinary studies including the arts, humanities, social sciences, biology, law and education. The course identifies the key parameters of the racialization process (historical subjugation through involuntary immigration and migration, voluntary immigration, prejudice, stereotypes, scientific racism, cultural racism, and systemic) of institutional racism and how various groups in the United States were raced into a color. Students are tasked with thinking about why race matters within educational, economic, political and social institutions. The course involves intentional discourse on the complexity of the color of race through scientific interrogation, analysis and interpretation of the course materials to understand the social construction of the color of race and how race can be deconstructed in the 21st century.