DHIS 25A25 - Racial Inequality in US History from 1619 to Black Lives Matter

This class aims to familiarize students with the history of racial inequality in the United States from the arrival of the first African slaves in Virginia in 1619 to the recent emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement. Throughout, we will discuss the following questions: how unequal is the United States? Where does racial inequality come from, and why has it proved so enduring? How has it changed over time? What role did the U.S. government play in this process? How does racial inequality influence U.S. politics, economics, and culture? And what solutions have been proposed? Course goals: 1. To familiarize students with the multiple facets of racial inequality in the U.S. today. 2. To understand the history of racial inequality in the U.S. 3. To develop critical reading and writing skills in assessing and crafting complex arguments. arguments.
Olivier BURTIN
Séminaire
English
Students are expected to be fluent enough in English (at least C1) to participate actively in class discussions and read scholarly and primary sources in this language every week. No previous knowledge of US history is required, but students are highly encouraged to familiarize themselves with this topic, for instance by reading relevant textbooks (cf. syllabus).
Spring 2024-2025
1. Class participation (10%) 2. Reading report (20%) 3. Midterm paper (30%) 4. Final paper (40%)
Grossman, James R. Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989
Hacker, Jacob S., and Paul Pierson. Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality. New York: Liveright, 2020
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations, The Atlantic, June 2014
Katznelson, Ira. When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005
James W. Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (2018)
Morgan, Edmund S. Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox. The Journal of American History 59, no. 1 (1972): 5–29.
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845)
Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975)
Wilder, Craig Steven. Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013
Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America, 3rd ed. (2017)
Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (2008)
Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010)
Supreme Court, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954):
South Carolina declaration of secession from the Union, 1861
Abel Meeropol, Strange Fruit, 1937
Walter White, The Eruption of Tulsa, Nation 112 (June 29, 1921)
The Negro Green Book (1949):
Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (1996)
Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America (2017)
Harrison George, The Chicago Race Riots (1919)
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press, 2010