The spectacles of violence against people of color, acts of xenophobia, and patterns of persistent racial inequalities (of housing, health care, and education) across the United States remind us that earlier celebrations of an American “post-racial” society were strikingly premature. Political rhetoric and policies of the last few years, in fact, point to a rapid return to racial incivility. But what does a “post-racial” or “racially liberal” society mean, and why are these our chief ways of imagining a socially just society?
This honors seminar will explore the various ways that conceptions of race have organized and shaped modern American society into the twenty-first century. This exploration requires posing several other key questions: If race is a social construction, what exactly does that mean? How do specific conceptions of race predominate, and how do they change over time? What does racial difference mean in our current post-9/11 Trumpian moment? How do we define and identify racism, and how do we then combat it?
We will approach these questions from a variety of angles: legal studies, history, literature, film, cultural studies, sociology, and geography. This course asks students to think about race as a changing cluster of ideas and a range of practices that form one of our defining categories of difference. That approach involves an accounting of social power that, on one level, seems baldly apparent, and yet, in other ways, often remains unspoken, invisible, or stubbornly hard to pin down. Part of what has made race so slippery is the popular and legal adoption of colorblindness—the attempt to not recognize race—as a way to address racial disparities. But its controversial roots and assumptions provide us with reason to scrutinize this approach that continues to define our contemporary moment. We will, thus, pay particular attention to colorblindness and its role in the formation and reformation of American culture.
About Professor Robolin
Stéphane Robolin is an associate professor of English and director of the Center for African Studies. He is the author of Grounds of Engagement: Apartheid-Era African American and South African Writing (2015). He studies post-colonial African literature, African American literature, critical race theory, and spatial theory.