As a consequence of the election of Barack Obama, race and racism were neatly packaged into a post-racial-America didactic. The Trump era, however, has ushered in a new "lost cause" narrative in which a sense of diminished overrepresentation has become the dog whistle for returning America to better days. This course uses a developing structural understanding of race relations to examine the strange enigma of race in 20th-century and contemporary American democracy. What Eduardo Bonilla-Silva describes in his book, Racism Without Racists, as "The Sweet (but deadly) Enchantment of Color Blindness in Black Face", will provide the analyses by which we can fully examine America. This includes the backlash in support of Black Lives Matter campaigns, marches, and protests against disparate treatment of individuals across race, gender, ethnic/cultural lines culminating in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on education, and other recent unconstitutional legislation. The course also touches on certain nuances of our selection process for the Supreme Court and some important cases (Dred Scott, Plessy, Ozawa, Thind, Lim, Scottsboro, McClesky) in addition to certain events such as Rosewood, Emmett Till, Brown v. The Board of Education and its progeny, Wilmington and Tulsa incidents, etc.
Tuesday, Oct. 26 to Dec. 7; 7 to 8:30 p.m. ET (six sessions).
Cost: $180
JHU full-time faculty/staff can now register online with the 80% tuition remission benefit. You will still need to submit a tuition remission form. For details, contact odyssey@jhu.edu.
For details about this course and to see the full schedule of classes, click here.
