In this course, we will explore how inequalities and spatial conflicts based on racial and ethnic identities have played a significant role in shaping the society and cities of the United States. We will also examine how communities of color have built neighborhoods, mutual aid, and institutions based on racial justice principles as forms of resistance to displacement, impoverishment, and state-led violence.
We will raise questions about the difference between race and ethnicity and how these markers shape everyone's everyday life. What is the difference between whiteness and white supremacy? How does white supremacy as a political construct inform structural and interpersonal experiences of harm and inequity in US cities? How does white supremacy underpin the imperialist approach of the US in the current global geopolitics and does that effect its own people in different ways? Students will conduct research and do writing exercises and creative exercises to investigate their own communities’ histories of spatial conflict and struggles for justice, safety, and belonging or those of communities they feel curious to learn more about.