The state of Florida has passed laws that effectively ban the teaching of race and racism in k-12 public schools. Florida is trying to do the same thing with college education. Texas and Tennessee are following close behind, as are many other “red” states. Write a 5-page, double-spaced essay that explains what is lost by leaving out race and racism from American history. Your essay will cover the period from the American Revolution to Reconstruction (inclusive) and use specific examples from Unit 4-7 lectures to make your case. I do not want you to simply list events that involve race or racism. I want you to make an argument about how excluding the events involving race or racism changes our understanding of history. How does the American Revolution look different without consideration of race or racism? How about northern industrialization? What about westward expansion? The sectional conflict that led to the Civil War? The Civil War itself? Reconstruction? I’m not asking you to do some counter-factual history that imagines what would have happened if no one had been racist or race didn’t matter in the past. Instead, I’m asking you to reflect on what happens to history and our understanding of it when we ignore the very real racism that existed in the past and the central role that race played in shaping the major events of American history, starting with the Revolution and ending with Reconstruction. Your goal is to take a step back and ANALYZE the different ways that race and racism worked historically—not just list examples of racism. ( MAKE ARGUMENTS and support your arguments with SPECIFIC EXAMPLES drawn from the lectures).
The more events/groups you consider and the more specific examples you provide, and the more ANALYTICAL your essay, the better it is.
Remember to consider a wide rage of events from the perspective of race and racism.
USE SPECIFIC EXAMPLES FROM THE LECTURES TO MAKE YOUR CASE.
The essay will ONLY use examples cited in the lectures. You can the find the pdf for the lectures in attach files
You also need to CITE the lecture where you found each example. After each specific example (or set of examples) you use, you need to cite the lecture number in parenthesis. So, if you cite the example of a racist backlash against the Irish, you would follow the example with “(Lecture 10)”.