Rhetorics of Race

Rhet 114	William Lewis
Spring 2004	128 Howard
Office Hours: MWF 8:00-10:00, R 2-4	271-2194
or by appointment	william.lewis@drake.edu

Course Description

"Almost as color defines vision itself, race shapes the cultural eye–what we do and do not notice, the reach of empathy and the alignment of response."

Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters, 1988

Americans in the 21^st century often think of racism as a problem of the past that crops up occasionally in prejudiced individuals or in flawed social forms. This course will offer instead the view that race is all around us–it is as pervasive and as powerful as the air we breathe or the language we speak. American public speaking and writing is suffused with assumptions about race, with a variety of consequences. Using a range of written and visual, historical and contemporary texts, we will explore some of the competing and often contradictory ways in which "race" pervades our public understandings.

Texts

James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare, Orbis Books, 1991.

David Roediger (ed.). Black on White: Black Writers on What it Means to be White, Schocken Books, 1999.

Curtis Stokes, Theresa Meléndez, & Genice Rhodes-Reed (eds.). Race in 21^st Century America, Mich. St. Univ. Press, 2001.

These books may be ordered from the University Book Store at Drake University or obtained through other bookstores or such online sources as www.amazon.com

Papers and Projects:

You will do two types of papers in this class. Short response papers will ask you to explain, analyze, or apply the readings and other class materials. Longer project papers will ask you to do case studies or to justify positions on disputed policies, practices, or theoretical positions.

You will make two types of presentations. Group Presentations will ask groups to make substantial presentations to the rest of the class on a topic or text. The most important requirement for this type of project is that the group must function as a group rather than as a collection of individuals. The presentations will also be evaluated on their substance and effectiveness. Each student will make Individual Presentations to the rest of the class based upon their own work.

Grading:

Papers 70%

Presentations 20%

Participation 10%

Incompletes (I) will be granted only if the student suffers a medical or familial emergency, requests the grade, and agrees to a plan for completing the course. I do not expect plagiarism but if I have reason to believe it has occurred I will follow the University's policy for prosecution.

Note on Plagiarism

Plagiarism means submitting someone else’s work as if it were your own. Plagiarizing is one of the worst things that you can do in academic life and it will be treated accordingly.

You may not:

· hand in a paper that was written, in whole or in part, by someone else

· borrow directly from another writer without giving credit to the writer

· borrow directly from another writer, even if you do give credit, by just changing a few words or some of the phrasing

The results of plagiarism will be, at the least, a 0 on the assignment (far worse, you should notice than just getting a failing grade which, unlike a plagiarized paper, can be revised and resubmitted). More likely, it will mean failing the class. Possibly, it could mean expulsion from the University.

Before you cheat, you should think about what it means. Handing in a paper you have not written or copying from someone else on a test violates the basic principle of education—because you cannot learn anything or give the teacher any indication of your own (and possibly the class’) understanding if the work is not yours. Plagiarizing violates a trust between you and your professor—students should not tolerate professors who do not teach and professors cannot tolerate students who refuse to learn. Plagiarizing and cheating are not just abstractions that do not hurt anyone; they are an attempt to gain an advantage over fellow students, many of whom are your friends. And it cheapens your accomplishment—even if you do not get caught, you will still know that your degree was not achieved by your own effort.

please feel free to consult with me or with other students in the class about the readings, the papers, or other concerns. I am available either by appointment or during my office hours. The easiest and most reliable way to be sure that I will get your messages and respond is to use e-mail.

Course Structure

Week 1, 1/14: Race and Rhetoric

Definitions

Categories

6 Days, 7 Nights

Week 2, 1/21: “White”: Race, Representation, and Privilege

Reading:

“The Great White Influx,” LA Times, July 31, 2002

http://www.uwm.edu/~gjay/Whiteness/

Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”

http://www.spokanehumanrights.org/ccrr/packet/article.htm

Cornel West, Preface, Intro, & “The Pitfalls of Racial Reasoning,” Race Matters

Patricia Williams, “Death of the Profane,” The Alchemy of Race and Rights

Stuart Hall, “The Whites of Their Eyes”
Richard Dyer, “White”

Response Paper #1—Discuss at least three of the readings. You might compare them, apply one to the others, or use them to explicate some common problem. 2 pages.

Week 3, 1/28: Understanding “Whiteness”

Reading:

Intro & Pt I: Confronting Whiteness and Seeing Through Race, BW, 1-99

Media: Matrix Reloaded

Response paper #2—Explain bell hooks’ essay on “Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination,” discuss the ways in which other essays in this section reinforce, modify, or oppose the conception that she offers, and consider how her perspective relates to your own experience of race relations. 2-3 pages

Week 4, 2/4: Black, White, & In Color—Media and Race

"Blacks now occupy a kind of limbo status in White America's thinking, neither fully accepted nor wholly rejected by the dominant culture. The ambiguity of Blacks' situation gives particular relevance and perhaps potency to the images of African Americans in the media."—Entman & Rojecki, 7

Entman & Rojecki, The Black Image in the White Mind, chs 4, 5, 6 & 8

Benjamin DeMott, “Put on a Happy Face: Masking the Differences Between Blacks and Whites” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/readings/happy.html

Week 5, 2/11: Papers and Presentations

Group Project on a movie of your choice.

Each group will analyze one movie. Each group member will write a paper analyzing the movie chosen by their group.

Week 6, 2/18: “Black”—Slavery and Resistance

"Slavery is the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons."—Orlando Patterson, Slavery as Social Death, 13

Reading:

Smedley, “Social Origins of the Idea of ‘Race’”, 21^st Century, ch. 1

“Slavery in the 19^th Century” from Afro-American History: Primary Documents

Frederick Douglass, “What to a Slave is the 4^th of July?”

Sojourner Truth, “Ar’n’t I a Woman?”

Stephen Railton, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Slavery”

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/interpret/intexhp.html

Nell Painter, “Slavery as Soul Murder,” BW, 326-31

Response Paper: Several different images of the nature of slavery and of the means for opposing it are evident in the readings. Explain the differences and discuss their significance.

Week 7, 2/25: Space and Place—Discourses of Lynching

Reading:

Joel Williamson, “Black Images in Southern White Minds.” Rage for Order, 70-99

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, “The Case Stated,” BW, 286-94

Trudier Harris, “White Men as Performers in the Lynching Ritual,” BW, 299-304

Marion Vera Cuthbert, “Mob Madness,” BW, 338-41

Ralph Ellison, “A Party Down at the Square,” BW, 342-49

Media: Eyes on the Prize, Awakenings

Week 8, 3/3: Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I Have a Dream”

Reading:

Statement by Eight Alabama Clergymen, 12 April 1963

MLK, “I Have a Dream,” 28 August 1963

MLK, “A Time to Break Silence,” 4 April 1967

Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America, chs 1, 3, 8

Week 9, 3/10: Resistance Traditions: Integration, Inter-Marriage, and Color Blindness

Reading:

George M. Fredrickson, “Beyond Race: Ideological Color Blindness in the United States, Brazil, and South Africa, 21^st Century, ch. 4

Nathan Glazer, “The Future of Race in the United States,” 21^st Century, ch. 5

Dinesh D’Souza, “A World Without Racial Preference,” 21^st Century, ch. 15

Manning Marable, “On Race and History,” 21^st Century, ch. 16

Week 10, 3/17: Movie and Conferences

Media: Malcolm X

Conferences: Schedule a conference to discuss the final project

Week 11, 2/31: Malcolm X: “I See a Nightmare”

Reading:

“Death and Transfiguration,” Time, 5 March 1965

Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America, chs. 2, 4, 7

Ward Churchill, “The FBI’s Secret War against the Black Panther Party: A Case Study in State Repression,” 21^st Century, ch. 17

Week 12, 4/7: “Brown”—Borders and Boundaries

Reading:

Richard Rodriguez, “Brown”

Arturo Madrid, “Aliens, Misfits, and Interlopers: The Racialized Imagining of the US Latino Communities at the End of the 20^th Century,” 21^st Century, ch. 7

Deena González, Lupe’s Song: On the Origin of Mexican/Woman-Hating in the US,” 21^st Century, ch. 9

Dionicio Nodin Valdés, “’Not All Borders are the Same’: Immigration and the ‘Mexican Menace’ in the Midwest,” 21^st Century, ch. 14

Guadalupe Luna, “The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and Dred Scott v. Sandford: ‘Aren’t They All Illegal Anyway?’”, 21^st Century, ch. 18

Week 13, 4/14: Images of Immigration

Reading:

Hussein Ibish, “’They are Absolutely Obsessed With Us’: Anti-Arab Bias in American Discourse and Policy,” 21^st Century, ch. 8

Robert G. Lee, “Introduction: Yellowface,” Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture, 1998

Week 14, 4/21: Possible Futures—Where Do We Go From Here?

Reading: TBA

Week 15, 4/28: Papers and Presentations

Week 16, 5/5: Papers and Presentations

Final Paper Due