Course Overview:
Recent media reports have focused on the small but growing phenomena of interracial dating, interracial marriage, and multiracial children. On the one hand, these trends have been framed as demonstrating that race is “disappearing” or showing the ways race “doesn’t matter” the way it did in the past. On the other hand, some claim that racial mixture weakens a sense of community identity and that people should “stick to their own kind”. This debate has a long history and it is ultimately is an attempt to answer the question, “What is Race is America and how is it changing”? This course is an attempt to tackle this question as we examine race mixing (i.e. interracial interaction, multiracial identity) from a sociological perspective. We will take a broad view of this phenomenon and discuss the origins of American notions of what racial interaction means and how that impacts how race is organized and experienced.
This course will cover several areas. We begin with an introduction to racial identity (“What does it mean to be Black, White, Asian, Latino, or American Indian in America?”) and explore how racial mixture complicates what we think we know about our race and the race of others. We will then take a step back and explore the scientific, statistical, and legal origins of racial distinctions and explore how our understanding of these boundaries as “absolute” continues on today, even as individuals seem more willing to cross racial boundaries. We will then tackle the issue of how contemporary notions of racial mixture speak to the goals of racial equality by focusing on the debate around the changes in racial classification that occurred in the 2000 U.S. Census.
While this class takes an in-depth look at many aspects of race, students is not required to have taken “race” classes to successfully complete this course. Race is something we all experience in one way or another and it is analyzing and understanding these experiences [in addition to doing the course readings] that will best prepare you for this class.
Required Texts
- Zuberi, Tukufu. 2001. Thicker Than Blood: How Racial Statistics Lie. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
- Moran, Rachael. 2001. Interracial Intimacy: The regulation of Race and Romance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
- Williams, Kim M. 2006. Mark More Than One: Civil Rights in Multiracial America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press
- Larsen, Nella and Thadious Davis 1998 [1929]. Passing New York, NY: Penguin Books
Several articles and book chapters are also assigned and available through library’s Course Reserves. Please go to the following website: http://alexandria.rice.edu/uhtbin/reserves/ and enter the course number (SOCI 329). The login and password to get the readings are as follows.
Username: soci329
Password: 3kawdus