I. Essay Questions. I will choose three essay questions from the following and ask you to write on two of them:
A. Why were blacks and Indians racialized in colonial America, and why did that racialization persist for such a long time?
B. What was it that motivated the immigration of Irish and later Jewish immigrants to the United States. What is the evidence that that Irish and Jewish immigrants were also racialized upon arrival in the United States, and why were these groups able to overcome their racialization in a shorter time than Blacks or Indians?
C. Explain Takaki's mirror story. What does he want us to see in a "different mirror," and why? What are you seeing thus far in broad scope as you read his book?
D. Why all the reversals in U.S. government policy toward American Indians between acculturation and cultural pluralism? Why have Indians themselves sometimes been divided by these issues, and what has been the role of the courts the resurgence of Indian nationalism?
E. Why was the United States so much slower than the English to abolish slavery, and why did the freed slaves after the Civil War remain in such a subservient role in much of the country and especially in the South? What is the best case that can be made for reparations payments to the descendants of America's slaves?
F. Compare (similarities) and contrast (differences) the situation of those who came to the United States as slaves (African Americans) and those who came as voluntary immigrants (Irish, Jews, Mexicans).
G. How do immigrant groups end up in distinct occupational niches, and what are the tools they can use in the eventual struggle to escape those niches and end up with a broader avenue of opportunity. Make use of sociological theory, as well as some of the empirical materials (including Waldinger) in constructing your answer.
II. Multiple choice. 20-25 multiple choice questions will be based on readings, lectures, and videos. You should start your review with the reading guide to cover Takaki and in addition, be familiar with the videos, concepts, events and people listed below:
A. Videos:
The Power of An Illusion: the Difference Between Us. How much of the difference between races is based on biological difference? How have recent advances in genetic research allowed us to have a better answer to that question? How can differences in skin color be explained?
Matters of Race: The Divide. What is bringing the large infux of Mexican immigrants to Siler City, and how is their advent affecting the climate of race relations there? What are the main complaints of black and white Siler City residents? What do you see as signs of hope for improved race relations and what do you see as persistent problems?
Spirit of Crazy Horse. How did the Lakota "lose" the Black Hills in the first place, and what did the federal court have to say about events associated with that loss? What were the basic issues related to the occupation at Wounded Knee? What were the issues tending to divide the Lakota themselves, and how were those issues overcome by the cultural revival that began in the 1970s?
The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: Don't Shout Too Soon. What was the shape taken by the "domestic terrorism" that kept backs in "their place" during the Jim Crow years? In particular, what can we learn about the nature of that terror from events in Tulsa? What was the controversy about the nature of the program at Fisk University during the 1920s? What was the basis for the split between W.E.B. DuBois and Walter White in the 1930s?
Destination America: The Golden Door. What were the pushes and pulls that spurred Norwegian, Irish, and Mexican immigration to the United States. What were the main factors that determined the kind of reception they would get once they were here? Why are immigrants almost invariably subject to stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination? Why do Mexicans, documented and undocumented, now constitute by far our largest group of immigrants?
B. Concepts, events, people:
race, ethnic group, identity, assignment, culture, prejudice, stereotype, discrimination, institutional discrimination, assimilation, acculturation, caste system, cultural pluralism, racialization, ethnogenesis,ethnic revival, racial formation,split labor market(Bonacich), neocolonialism, internal colonialism, middleman minority,, double consciousness(DuBois), nativism, potato famine, talented tenth, pogrom, anti-Semitism,Thomas theorem, Sambo stereotype, Jim Crow, , Naturalization Act of 1790, Indian Removal Act of 1830, boarding school policy, Dawes Allotment Act, Indian Reorganization Act, Termination policy, queuing theory, American Indian Movement (AIM), Bacon's Rebellion, Plessy vs. Ferguson, rule of hypo descent, , Rodney King, W.E.B. DuBois, Robert Park, Oliver Cox (Marxist theory), Milton Gordon (assimilationist theory), neo-Marxist theory, Charles Hamilton Houston, Gunnar Myrdal, Siler City (North Carolina)