Teaching and Learning Guide for: Race and Ethnic Relations
Authors: Coates Rodney D. 
Published: June 2009

Syllabus

This course will explore the concepts of race and ethnicity and the dynamics of inter‐group relations. It will cover the main historical and global processes that have led to the formation of ethnic groups and racial minorities. In the process, we will examine several groups, historical periods, and geo‐political issues in detail. Class sessions will consist primarily of group discussions, supplemented by lectures, films, and in‐class projects.

Goals statements

Develop working understanding of basic theoretical issues associated with race and ethnicity in sociology.

Develop working understanding of how these theoretical issues effect policy, national and international discourse, and inter/intra‐group relations.

Develop working understanding of how economic policies and institutions, political systems, and social institutions effect race and ethnic relations.

Develop an understanding of how theories are used to interpret race and ethnic relations.

Develop understanding regarding how the processes of racialization and/or ethnicity produce and sustain segregation, discrimination, and inequality.

Develop understanding regarding how political processes are affected by systems of racialization (Massey and Denton).

Develop understanding of overt and covert racism, and how they explain current racial trends in both US and international contexts.

Recommended reading

David R. Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White.

Marylyn Halter, Shopping for Identity: The Marketing of Ethnicity.

Lecture and discussion topics:

Week 1

Introduction to Race and Ethnicity

Course Expectations, initial orientation to the subject matter, goals

Race and Ethnicity in Global Terms

 Rodney D. Coates, ‘A Simple Typology of Racial Hegemony’, Societies Without Borders, 1 (2006). (Distributed on blackboard)

Week 2 Global Race and Ethnic Relations – Rwanda

Viewing of Hotel Rwanda – In Class

Never Again: The World's Most Unfulfilled Promise (Links through  blackboard)

What are the lessons of Rwanda?

Week 3 – Global Race and Ethnic Relations – Chechens and Russia

Q&A: The Chechen conflict

Conflict in Chechnya

From the Chechens themselves

Week 4 – Global Race and Ethnic Relations – Middle East

Israeli and Palestinian Conflict

Iraq Conflict – Civil War in Iraq

Week 5 – Ethnicity in America – The Making of Whiteness

Seeing Race in New Immigrant History (Roediger: 1–56)

Week 6 – Ethnicity in America – The Making of Whiteness continued

In Betweeness (Roediger: 57–110)

Week 7 – White on Arrival

In Betweeness (Roediger: 111–132)

The Ironies of Immigration Restriction (Roediger: 133–156)

Week 8: Entering the White House

Finding Homes in an Era of Restriction (Roediger: 157–199)

Week 9 Race and Ethnic identity within Corporate and business systems

Industrialization, Unions and Politics (Roediger: 199–234)

Creating and Manufacturing Racial and Ethnic Identity (Halter: 1–40)

New forms of racism

Week 10

Rodney Coates, Covert Racism in the U.S. and Globally

Eduardo Bonilla‐Silva, Color Blind Racism

Week 11

Picca and Feagin, Two‐Faced Racism (Handout)

Marketing Race and Identity around the Globe (Halter: 42–96)

Week 12

Ethnic by Design (Halter: 104‐end)

Racial and Ethnic Relations – Where do we go from here

Week 13

Rodney D. Coates, ‘From Civil Rights to Social Justice’ (New Black, UK: Elsevier, forthcoming)