• Joseph F. Healey, 1996. Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the United States. London: Verso.

• Various Authors. Class Readings on Dr. Santos' World Wide Web site.

This course provides the student with a broad introduction to the field of race & ethnic relations, mostly as it has developed and exists in the United States, but also as it exists elsewhere in the world, especially in the Americas. The historical and contemporary experiences of various ethnic and panethnic groups in the United States -- the so-called European Americans, Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos/Hispanics, and Asian Americans -- are analyzed, using various theoretical perspectives and tracing their historical evolution. In short, we seek to understand the history and dynamics of modern peoplehood, as mediated by sociological concepts.

Emphasis is placed on how race, ethnicity, & nationhood were and are socially (re)constructed, and how they relate to other social constructs such as gender, native/immigrant status, and social class. We seek to reveal and understand the context in which these modern social categories originated and evolved, how they were affected by, and in turn affected, the broader political, economic, and cultural processes of the five-centuries-old modern world-system.

Attention is also given, via a large selection of readings placed in Dr. Santos' website, to various contemporary controversial issues in the United States and worldwide related to peoplehood (see list of issues below). Students will be asked to select, organize and carry out a group research project on an appropiate topic.

Attendance:

Attendance to lectures is mandatory. Unauthorized absences, tardiness, and/or early departures will be penalized. If you need to be excused (or leave early/arrive late) please call or talk with Dr. Santos ahead of time.

Weekly Reading & Writing Assignments:

Students are expected to come to class fully prepared to discuss the assigned textbook chapter or web readings for the week. They are also expected to select and read, on their own, a weekly quota of readings among those located in Dr. Santos' website for this course, and finally, to write, share, and critique e-mail reports on the textbook chapters and self-selected web readings, using an electronic bulletin board.

Accessing the Web Readings:

When students try to access the actual readings placed in Dr. Santos' web site, that is, those listed in the syllabi webpage, they will have to enter two password codes to get through: for "username" enter [see instructor], and for "password" enter [see instructor]. You only need to do this once per session. Students are encouraged to browse through the reading lists as much as possible before they select what to write about, and to identify to each other the readings or web links they find most interesting.

E-mail - Research Project Groups:

Each student will participate in one of ten electronic discussion groups set up for the course; every message sent is received by all members, and Dr. Santos automatically receives copies of all the messages sent to these "bulletin boards." Besides writing and sharing the weekly messages, students in each group will also choose a topic around which to design and execute a research project; the topics may be from those described below, or the group may propose another pertinent topic; regardless, all group topics must be discussed with, and approved by, Dr. Santos during his office hours no later than May 1.

Research Issues and topics:

Students will be asked to select, organize and carry out a group research project on one of the following topics:

• identity issues involved in past and present U.S. ethnotransformations (e.g., from racial to ethnic or national identities; or from national origin to panethnic identities; or the evolution of a single ethnic identity);
• human & civil rights experiences of U.S. racial and ethnic groups (e.g., genocide, exclusion, expulsion, occupational/residential/social segregation & discrimination, political disenfranchisement/persecution,cultural genocide/imposed assimilation/robbery);
• U.S. immigration history, current trends, & policy;
• the history & contemporary dynamics of U.S.-Mexico border communities;
• U.S. affirmative action policy debate, political initiatives, and factual conditions;
• persistent institutional discrimination and borad & persistent socioeconomic inequalities in the U.S. by class, race, gender & immigrant status;
• the new ideology of multiculturalism: its proponents and and its adversaries; the debate over college ethnic studies programs and curriculum content in the disciplines;
• U.S. language dynamics & policy debate; the new political initiatives and their impact;
• the historical and contemporary misuse of science in race relations;
• the historical evolution of world diasporas, one case or several.
• the impact of increasing globalization on U.S. ethnic relations;
• the resurgence of ethnonationalism in a post-cold-war context; one case or several.
• environmental racism; in the U.S. or other regions of the world.
• the conditions and mobilization of the indigenous peoples of the world, outside the U.S..

Students may alternatively elect to focus their research project on the history of race, ethnic, or national relations in specific countries or regions of the world (other than the United States.) Good candidates for country-based research projects are the following: Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Trinidad & Tobago, Haiti, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Israel, Kuwait, Iran, India, China, Tibet, Indonesia (East Timor), Malasia, the Philippines, Japan, Germany, France, Spain, Beligium, Switzerland, the Baltic states, the former Yugoslavia, the former U.S.S.R.. Transnational groups may also be considered -- examples: the Jewish diaspora, the Palestinian diaspora, the Kurds, the Chinese diaspora, the African diaspora, the indigenous Andean world, the indigenous Mesoamerican world, African tribalism, the Islamic world, world refugees.

Research Paper Guidelines:

Though the final product should reflect a group effort, each student will individually write his or her own contributing paper for the volume. For the guidelines on how to write a good research term paper click here, (or look it up in Dr. Santos' Syllabi webpage).The deadline for turning in the research volume is the time and day of the final exam (when it is scheduled to start). The volume should be bound, have a title page, a table of contents listing each individual title and student author, and if possible, continuous page numbering and a single, common bibliography, though the latter two aspects are not required.

There are two ways to join these discussion groups: from a campus account or from a home account. All students have a campus (VAX) e-mail account of the form "a#####@academic.csubak.edu" (where the "#"s are five digits). You can find out what your student account & password are at the library computer lab. Many students have home (external) accounts with much better e-mail systems. Dr. Santos will try to get everyone a so-called campus FirstClass account - a much simpler and user friendly email software - for the duration of the term.

If you do not have a home account and do not know how to use your campus e-mail VAX account, and ofr some reason you don't get a FirstClass account, please read the extensive tutorial placed in the Syllabi webpage in Dr. Santos' website, or click here: Tips on How to Use Your Campus E-mail Account. Regardless of where you have an email account, do the following:

Minimum weekly e-mail contributions:

Each week, all students must send at least three e-mail messages: (1) an original message on the Healey chapter assigned for that week; (2) another one on a self-selected web reading, from among the web-reading categories assigned for that week; and (3) at least one reply to someone else's message(s). Beyond this minimum, students are encouraged to send as many messages as they wish, hopefully to generate discussions.

Note 1: It is important that you submit your original messages in the weekly time frame in which they are assigned: All textbook chapters or web readings assigned or selected for a given week are meant to be read and commented on from the previous Friday night to the current week's Thursday night, (your replies may be filed up to Friday night). Messages on the Healey chapters and the web readings submitted past their assigned deadlines will be automatically deleted and ignored for grading purposes by Dr. Santos - no late postings will be accepted.

Note 2: Students are strongly urged to always save their own messages within their own accounts. You are responsible for demonstrating your dated work in case Dr Santos files are lost!

Note 3: Please write at the beginning of your subject heading the name of your e-mail group, then the chapter or article or issue you are commenting about.

EXAMPLES: Subject: soc3 chapter 5

Subject: soc7 immigration reading 10

Subject: soc10 let's get together after class!

Length: All messages on the textbook and web readings should be about one-to-two pages long if it was printed, and the format of the text should be as follows:

Manners:

It is important at all times to maintain a tone and language that is respectful, thoughtful, and to the point. Disagreements may and should be forcefully expressed - in fact, they are expected and invited, given the very controversial nature of most of these topics, but do it without relying on sarcasm, ridicule, insults, guilt-mongering, or ganging-up on dissenters and lone voices. Remember, you are trying to persuade others in your group, not browbeat them into submission. Nobody will be allowed to "flame out" (go ballistic). And please, do not ramble on and on - 2 pages at the most. Finally, do not write in upper case - it's irritating.

Evaluation of your e-mail; Private e-mail to Dr. Santos:

Dr. Santos will be monitoring and filing all messages, and he will eventually evaluate each student's participation and quality of reports in the e-mail groups. He may occassionally participate in the group discussions himself, make important class announcements, or send someone a private message. Look for his messages. If you wish to send him a private message, do not send it to your group, but send it to his address: santos_class@csub.edu and type in the subject heading something like "SOC7 PRIVATE MESSAGE TO DR. SANTOS". Dr. Santos prefers students to either come to his office during office hours, see him after class, or call him by phone, rather than to receive private e-mail messages from students, which often get lost in the flood of electronic traffic (over 5000 per term!)

Extra Points: Class Webpage Project & Field Work:

For those of you well versed on the arts of web authoring, web surfing, or just image optical scanning, here's something you can do for extra points: create and submit to Dr. Santos your own website projects, or at least Netscape files with GIF or JPEG images accompanied by explanatory text, citing the content and websource of all the submitted image files. The images are supposed to be impressive examples of contemporary race & ethnic relations (meaning in the last decade).

The contributions submitted will be edited and added to a webpage (yet to be built) entitled Student Web Projects. To see examples of past student-generated webpages, click here: Past Student Web Projects .

Students may also propose a group project for extra points, such as a group visit to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, or a group viewing of a series of movies, or some sort of "field work."

Exams:

There will be a mid-term exam on Monday, May 11. There will be a final exam on Wednesday, June 10, 2:00 - 4:30 pm. Both exams will be based on the lectures and the Healey textbook (the final will also include the web readings on Canada and Brazil). Both exams will consist of two parts: a multiple choice part and an essay part. Please bring pencils and a large blue exam notebook to each test. The final exam will only cover the second half of the course.

Grading:

Each exam is worth 30 points. The participation in the e-mail group discussions is worth 20 points. The research project is worth 20 points (15 for each individual chapter + 5 for the whole volume). Extra points for individual or group projects may go up as high as 10 extra points, depending on effort and quality of results. The final letter grade will be assigned, on a scale of 0 to 100, as follows:

Office Hours/E-Mail to Dr. Santos:

All students are encouraged to visit the instructor regularly during posted office hours (see above) or by appointment, especially to ensure their group projects are approved, well chosen and organized, their individual research papers are well focused, or to discuss any question they may have from the class lectures, the textbook, the web readings, or their group interactions.

Private but very brief and infrequent e-mail messages to Dr. Santos may be sent to

but NOT as a substitute for office visits, please. Remember, always write your group name in the Subject heading, e.g.: