TOPIC IN AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURE: RACIAL INJUSTICE AND HISTORICAL INEQUITY

Catalog description

This course explores the history, concepts, and media that make up the global structures and policies that have established anti-Black rhetoric, racial discrimination and race ideologies in the United States. Utilizing primary and secondary research students will gain an understanding of the processes which generated the status quo, and note how many of these uncomfortable histories are marginalized in favor of national pride and interpersonal civility. This course aims to engage learners in critical analysis of the social construct of race and how it has been implemented to hinder Black progress and maintain Black people as an un-class, while privileging certain races and ways of being that benefit a few. As a result, the course interrogates the power dynamics within systems, looking particularly at history and cultural products (language, art, social mores, media) for how race, othering, and blackness operate within societies.