Sociology 4949: Outline--Week One
I. Syllabus and Schedule: Introduction
A. Takaki: A Different Mirror
1. Source of the title
2. Interweaving the histories of various minorities in America... for example,
industrial employment finally opened up for African-Americans only when immigration
from southern and eastern Europe was drastically curtailed in the 1920
B. Sociology as a science: comparative... the history of race and ethnicity in the United States as a source for building our theories
C. Gallagher: Rethinking the Color Line--a particularly good anthology
of sociological work on race relations in the United States
1. Use "Questions to Consider" at the beginning of each article to guide your reading. When you finish an article, go back and see if you can answer those questions.
2. Appendix: "Race by the Numbers (pp. 419-438)
II. Using the American
Factfinder from the Census Bureau to get race/ethnic statistics on cities/states(http://www.census.gov/)... let's look at statistics for Duluth: notice choice of 2000(census) vs. 2005-2009 (sampling)... Notice also that I could use the figures for a race "alone" or "in combination" and I did the former here. And before too long we will get figures from the 2010 census and since we've been in a period of major immigration, we can expect lots of change.
2000 Census
| Minority |
Duluth |
Minneapolis |
St. Paul |
Minnesota |
United States |
| African-American |
1,415(1.6%) |
68,818(18.0%) |
33,637(11.7%) |
171,731(3.5%) |
36,419,000(12.9%) |
| Asian/PacIs |
993(1.1% |
23,465(6.1%) |
35,488(12.4%) |
141,968(2.9%) |
11,899,000(4.2%) |
| American Indian |
2,122(2.4%) |
8,378 (2.2%) |
3,259(1.1%) |
54,967(1.1%) |
4,119,000 (1.5%) |
| Hispanic |
921(1.1%) |
29,175(7.6%) |
22.715(7.9%) |
143,382(2.9%) |
35,316,000(12.5%) |
III. Groups: "Seeing the Big Picture: the Social Construction of Race, 1790 - 2000," using Figure 1 and 2 in the appendix (p. 420) .
1. Introduce yourself to the members of your group, including where you grew up and what your community was like in terms of race/ethnic diversity (Look it up before Friday with American Factfinder and print it out for your own reference as we move through the semester. How do the statistics you found in American Factfinder compare with the impressins you shared with your group on Wednesday? ).
2. Look at the changing categories of race and ethnicity in figure 1 and try to figure out why certain categories were added or subtracted? What does it show about the "reality" of our race and ethnic categories? What does it show about race as a "social construction?"
3. In figure 2, look at the projected changes by 2050. How do you think U.S. politics has been and will be affected by the growing percentage of minorities? What will happen to the concept of "minority" when the white population falls below 50%?