BASC50097 - 21st-Century African-American Perspectives on Race

Course Description

Through close reading and discussion of a number of modern classics—including Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me and Derrick Bell’s Faces at the Bottom of the Well—this course will seek to better understand two lines of African American thinking about racism today. One, a more mainstream, “liberal” school of thought, contends that America has always been—and remains—a fundamentally racist nation. The other, a less well-known, “conservative” school of thought, asserts that America has made great racial progress and the greatest obstacle to further advancement is the “liberal” narrative itself. Prior to the first class, students should complete the readings indicated on the syllabus and watch the 2020 documentary What Killed Michael Brown?

Course Outline

Purchased Texts

1. Bell, Derrick. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism, rev. ed. (2018 [1992]). Basic / 978-1541645530.
2. Steele, Shelby. White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (2020). HarperPerennial / 978-0060578633.
3. Steele, Shelby. The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (1998). HarperPerennial / 978-0060974152.
4. Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me (2015). Random House / 978-0525510307.
5. McWhorter, John. Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, with a new afterword. (2001 [2000]). HarperPerennial / 978-0060935931.
6. Kendi, Ibram X. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2017). Bold Type / 978-1568585987.
7. Loury, Glenn. The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, 2nd. ed. (2021 [2004]). Harvard / 978-0674012424.
8. Sowell, Thomas. Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005). Encounter / 978-1594031434.

Handouts

• Steele, Shelby. “The Loneliness of the ‘Black Conservative’” [Excerpt] (1998)

Films

• What Killed Michael Brown? (dir. Eli Steele, 2020, 109 min.)

Due to the topic of this course, students may wish to to become familiar with the Chicago Principles which can be found at https://freeexpression.uchicago.edu/.

Notes

Online registration deadline: Thursday, March 24, 5 pm CT.