Course description
This course elucidates American racial politics through a combination of theoretical and historical approaches. Theoretical issues include race as a social construct, political friendship theory, and racial contract theory. Historical material includes settler colonialism, Harvard's racial history, enslavement, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, migration, and the census. Politics in practice covers dog-whistle politics, representation, race and the presidency, race and the Supreme Court, policing, mass incarceration, and reparations. Students learn to think critically and have informed conversations about race, connecting course content to current events.