Black and
in America: The Economics of Race
Jenny Wahl
jwahl@carleton.edu
Office hours: 12-2 M; 3-5 TT
Willis 321, x4007
In one of his campaign speeches, soon-to-be-President Barack Obama stated that “[R]ace is an issue that
I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now . . . we . . . need to remind ourselves that so many
of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to
inequalities passed on from an earlier generation.” Our seminar will use journal articles, court cases,
speeches, newspaper columns, data, statistics, and historical documents to explore today’s racial
conditions from an economic perspective, to see how we got here, and to discuss what we have done and
what we might do to address the disparities to which President Obama alludes.
Like all Carleton first-year seminars, this course centers upon argumentation and inquiry. Your grade
will depend on the quality of your classroom performance and your completed assignments. I will use
the following weights to determine your grade:
Preparation for and participation in class
Short writing assignments (6 of 7 data/statistics papers, 4 of 5 response papers)
Long paper (draft, comments on classmate’s paper, final version)
15
60
25.
All materials for this course are available at the indicated url, in the course folder, or in the indicated
electronic database at the library. You should read all materials before class on the day under which they
are listed (except for the first day – you may read those after class). I have included some helpful
handouts on basic statistics in the course folder that are not listed in the syllabus.
EXPECTED SCHEDULE
Sept 13
Overview and Practice with GSS data file
Barack Obama, Speech on Race (18 Mar 2008), http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/us/politics/18textobama.html
John Hope Franklin, “Race in America: Looking Back, Looking Forward,” Bull Am Acad A&S (Aut
2001). (JSTOR)
Read this syllabus. Questions? Email me or raise questions in class.
Data/Writing Assignment (due Sept 15): “Mapping America” (FOLDER)
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Sept 15
Foundations: America’s Beginnings and Slavery
Declaration of Independence (4 July 1776),
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
U.S. Constitution, Art. 1, §2, Art. 4, §§2-3 (17 Sept 1787),
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
David Galenson, “White Servitude and the Growth of Black Slavery in Colonial America,” J Econ Hist
(Mar 1981). (JSTOR)
Highlights, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857),
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=334;
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/personality/landmark_dred.html
Frederick Douglass, “What is to a Slave the 4th of July?”
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=162
Jenny Wahl, “Slavery in the United States” (background reading),
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/wahl.slavery.us
Response Paper Writing Assignment (due Sept 20): Either
Jenny Wahl, “The Bondsman's Burden: An Economic Analysis of the Jurisprudence of Slaves and
Common Carriers,” J Econ Hist (Sept 1993). (JSTOR) or
David Walker, “Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World: Preamble, Art. 1, Art. 4,”
http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/walkerhp.html
Sept 20
Foundations: Segregation and Civil Rights
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). (LEXISNEXIS ACADEMIC)
A sampling of Jim Crow Laws,
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/remembering/laws.html
John F. Kennedy, “Civil Rights” (June 1963), http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/ReadyReference/JFK-Speeches/Radio-and-Television-Report-to-the-American-People-on-Civil-RightsJune-11-1963.aspx
Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream” (August 1963),
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm
Civil Rights Act of 1964 (2 July 1964) (focus on the big picture – names of each title, substance rather
than procedural issues, and the like),
http://www.dotcr.ost.dot.gov/Documents/YCR/CIVILR64.HTM
George Wallace, “The Civil Rights Movement: Fraud, Sham, and Hoax” (4 July 1964),
http://www.vlib.us/amdocs/texts/wallace64.html
Data/Writing Assignment (due Sept 22): “Racial Attitudes” (FOLDER)
Sept 22
Foundations (continued)
Statistics/Writing Assignment (due Sept 27): “Demographic Differences” (FOLDER)
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Sept 23
REQUIRED CONVO: Bryan Garsten, “What is College For?”
Sept 27
Demographic Status
“Sex and the Single Black Woman,” (Apr 2010), http://www.economist.com/node/15867956/print
Erol Ricketts, “The Origin of Black Female-Headed Families,”
http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc121e.pdf
Steven Ruggles, “The Origins of African-American Family Structure,”
http://www.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/Articles/Af-Am-fam.pdf
Data/Writing Assignment (due Sept 29): “Economic Differences” (FOLDER)
Sept 29
Economic Status, Hiring, and Employment
Labor force characteristics by race and ethnicity (read the text, skim the tables), 2009,
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsrace2009.pdf
Kenneth Arrow, “What Has Economics to Say about Racial Discrimination?” J Econ Persp (Spring
1998). (JSTOR)
William Darity and Patrick Mason, “Evidence on Discrimination in Employment: Codes of Color,
Codes of Gender,” J Econ Persp (Spring 1998). (JSTOR)
Glenn Loury, “Discrimination in the Post-Civil Rights Era: Beyond Market Interactions,” J Econ Persp
(Spring 1998). (JSTOR)
Response Paper Writing Assignment (due Oct 4):
Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and
Jamal?” Am Econ Rev (Sep 2004). (JSTOR)
Sept 30
REQUIRED CONVO: Gavin Wright: “The Civil Rights Revolution”
Oct 4
Hiring and Employment
Lior Strahilavitz, Privacy versus Antidiscrimination, 75 U Chi L R 363 (Winter 2008),
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1003001 (then download)
Oct 6
Employment (continued)
Jesse Helms campaign commercial (“white hands”),
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIyewCdXMzk&feature=player_embedded
Response Paper Writing Assignment (due Oct 11):
Ricci v. DeStefano, 530 F.3d 87, http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-1428.ZS.html
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Oct 11
Schooling (primary and secondary)
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 US 483 (1954); 349 US 294 (1955). (LEXIS NEXIS ACADEMIC)
Nathan Grawe and Jenny Wahl, “Blacks, Whites, and Brown: Effects on the Earnings of Men and Their
Sons,” J Af Am Stud (2009). (FOLDER)
David Card and Alan Krueger: “School Resources and Student Outcomes: An Overview of the
Literature and New Evidence from N. and S. Carolina,” J Econ Persp (Aut 1996). (JSTOR)
“Resegregation of US schools deepening,” http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2008/0125/p01s01ussc.html
Statistics/Writing Assignment (due Oct 13): “School Desegregation” (FOLDER)
Oct 13
Schooling (preK-12 policy)
“School Readiness: Closing Racial and Ethnic Gaps: Introduction,” Future of Children (2005), 5-14,
http://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/docs/15_01_FullJournal.pdf
Art Rolnick interview, “Stop Investing in Stadiums, Start Investing in Kids,”
http://www.clevelandfed.org/Forefront/2010/09/ff_2010_fall_05.cfm
Daarel Burnette II, “Red Wing High grad sues over ‘Wigger Day’,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune (4 August 2011, p.
B1). (FOLDER)
Howard Fuller, “Black Power: The Struggle for Parental Choice in Education.” (FOLDER)
Louis Schubert, “School Choice: A Desperate Gamble.” (FOLDER)
Oct 18
Schooling (post-secondary)
Sweatt v. Painter, 339 US 629 (1950). (LEXIS NEXIS ACADEMIC)
MacLaurin v. Oklahoma, 339 US 637 (1950). (LEXIS NEXIS ACADEMIC)
Review of Richard Sander’s “A Systematic Analysis of Affirmative Action in Law Schools,”
http://www.adversity.net/Sander/RHS_main_frame.htm
Response Paper Writing Assignment (due Oct 20): Both
Gratz v. Bollinger (23 June 2003),
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=02-516
Grutter v. Bollinger (23 June 2003),
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=02-241
7-9 pm “Adapting to College” exercise – location to be announced
Oct 20
Migration, Housing, and Mortgage Lending
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns (Excerpt) (FOLDER)
Daniel Fusfeld and Timothy Bates, “The Black Sharecropping System and Its Decline.” (FOLDER)
Philip Foner, “The Rise of the Black Industrial Working Class, 1915-1918.” (FOLDER)
Residential Segregation in the U.S., http://www.censusscope.org/us/map_segregation_black.html
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Segregation Indices (click on the full list in the article to obtain city indices)
http://www.salon.com/news/race/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/04/03/myth_10_segreg
ated_cities
“Racial and Ethnic Separation in the Neighborhoods: Progress at a Standstill” (focus on text)
http://www.s4.brown.edu/us2010/Data/Report/report1.pdf
William Frey, “The New Great Migration: Black Americans’ Return to the South, 1965-2000”
http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2004/05demographics_frey.aspx
Response Paper Writing Assignment (due Oct 25): Either
Lior Strahilevitz, “Exclusionary Amenities in Residential Communities,” 92 Va LR 437 (2006). (LEXIS
NEXIS ACADEMIC) or
Alicia H. Munnell, et al., “Mortgage Lending in Boston: Interpreting HMDA Data,” Am Econ Rev (Mar
1996). (JSTOR)
Oct 25
Housing and Mortgage Lending
Vikas Bajaj and Ford Fessenden, “What’s Behind the Race Gap?” NY Times (4 Nov 2007),
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/weekinreview/04bajaj.html
Gregory Squires, et al., “Segregation and the Subprime Lending Crisis,” EPI Briefing Paper 244
(November 2009), http://www.epi.org/page/-/pdf/110409-briefingpaper244.pdf?nocdn=1
“Subprime Mortgages Across the Country,” NY Times (3 Nov 2007),
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/11/03/weekinreview/20071103_SUBPRIME_GRAPHIC.
html?ref=weekinreview
Carol Leonnig, “How HUD Mortgage Policy Fed the Crisis,” Washington Post (June 2008),
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/09/AR2008060902626.html
Oct 27
Credit
“Unbanked Households,” pp. 10-12, http://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/full_report.pdf
Gary Dymski and Patrick Mason, “Racial Inequality and African Americans’ Disadvantage in the Credit
and Capital Markets.” (FOLDER)
Nov 1
Wealth and Intergenerational Issues
“Black-White Wealth Gap is Widening,” http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/culture/report-wealthgap-is-widening/791/
Thomas Shapiro, et al., “The Racial Wealth Gap,” Res Pol Brief IASP (May 2010),
http://iasp.brandeis.edu/pdfs/Racial-Wealth-Gap-Brief.pdf
Anna Aizer, et al., “Biology, Stress, and the Intergenerational Transmission of Inequality,” Working
Paper, UC Irvine, http://www.economics.uci.edu/files/economics/docs/micro/s07/Aizer.pdf
First draft of reparations paper due (Nov. 1)
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Nov 3
Public Spending and Public Goods
For information about federal/state/local spending: http://usgovernmentspending.com/
Brian Purnell, “Taxation without Sanitation is Tyranny,”
http://www.nyc.gov/html/cchr/justice/downloads/pdf/taxation_without_sanitation_is_tyranny.pdf
Robert Bullard, “Considerations of Race and the Road towards Equitable Allocation of Municipal
Services: Addressing Urban Transportation Equity in the US,” Fordham Urb. LJ (Oct 2004).
(LEXIS NEXIS ACADEMIC)
Pete Kasperowicz, “Rangel says cutting government spending will hurt African-Americans,”
TheHill.com blog, (pay particular attention to the comments), http://thehill.com/blogs/flooraction/house/171471-rangel-says-cutting-government-spending-disproportionately-hurts-africanamerican-jobs?page=1#comments
Philip Rubio, “What we lose if we lose our post offices,”
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/otherviews/126804563.html
Comments on classmate’s paper due (Nov. 3)
Data/Writing Assignment (due Nov 8): “Getting to Work” (FOLDER)
Nov 8
Crime and Punishment
“Characteristics of Drivers Stopped by Police,” Bur Justice Stat (1999),
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=548
David Harris, “The Stories, the Statistics, and the Law: Why ‘Driving While Black’ Matters,” 85 Minn
L.R. 265 (1999) (LEXIS NEXIS ACADEMIC)
Steven Levitt, “Why Crime Fell in the 1990s,” J Econ Persp (Winter 2004). (JSTOR)
“US Prisoners Sentenced under Strict Crack Cocaine Laws Get Relief, Chr Sci Monitor (2011),
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2011/0630/US-prisoners-sentenced-under-strict-crackcocaine-laws-get-relief
Crack Cocaine Laws, http://www.fd.org/odstb_crackcocaine.htm
Statistics/Writing Assignment (due Nov 10): “Crime and Punishment” (FOLDER)
Nov 10
Crime and Punishment
Charles Ogletree, “Black man’s burden: Race and the death penalty in America,” Oregon LR (2002),
http://www.law.uoregon.edu/org/olr/archives/81/81_Or_L_Rev_15.pdf
Gallup poll on death penalty, http://www.gallup.com/poll/28243/racial-disagreement-over-deathpenalty-has-varied-historically.aspx
“Pervasive Disparities in the Federal Death Penalty,” http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/12/us/pervasivedisparities-found-in-the-federal-death-penalty.html
Stephen Klein, et al., “Race and the Decision to Seek the Death Penalty in Federal Cases,” Rand Tech
Rep (2006), http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2006/RAND_TR389.pdf
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Nov 15
Reparations
“Against Reparations,” http://nlpc.org/pdfs/Final_NLPC_Reparations.pdf
Jenny Wahl, “Double Takes” (forthcoming 2012) (FOLDER)
Alfred Brophy, “The Cultural War over Reparations for Slavery,” DePaul LR (2004), download from
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=561441
“Black Manifesto,” http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1969/jul/10/black-manifesto/
Final paper (with all drafts attached) due (Nov. 15)
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GUIDELINES FOR WRITING PAPERS
The papers will give you practice in reading, writing, and analysis. The material to which you should respond
(note that you may have a choice) and the due dates for the papers appear on the course outline. I expect clear,
organized, and interesting writing. I have attached a list of writing tips to help with this task.
For response papers: DON’T summarize the article or case. Instead, I want you to tie it to concepts you’ve
learned in this class, and I want to hear your well-supported reaction. You don’t have to respond to the entire
piece; if you’d like, you can pick out a point that piques your interest and discuss it. DON’T ASSUME THAT
THE MATERIALS CONTAIN GOOD REASONING OR GOOD WRITING – part of your task is to decipher
what good reasoning is and how writing style can enhance or detract from content. We will use your papers as a
foundation for some class discussion. RESPONSE PAPERS SHOULD BE NO MORE THAN 1 PAGE LONG.
GUIDELINES FOR DISCUSSION OF MATERIALS
Please come to class prepared to discuss ALL assigned materials. You will learn more if you come well-prepared
and willing to engage in intellectual discourse. You will also gain skills that will help you after Carleton. And, of
course, the better the quality of your discussion, the better your grade! Discussion will be friendly and open, with a
give-and-take atmosphere among you, your classmates, and me.
Here are some things to keep in mind as you read the articles/cases/speeches and prepare to discuss them:
What questions do the authors investigate?
Why is the subject interesting and important (or not)?
What theories do the authors propose or rely upon?
What tools and techniques do the authors use?
What data and statistics do the authors use? Are these well-suited to the questions posed?
What findings do the authors present?
What flaws do you detect?
What parts did you find confusing and why? (Don’t be shy in addressing this question – for instance, some
articles use techniques that you may not have encountered before; part of my job is to explain certain tools
and approaches. Before you raise questions, however, check the course folder to see if I’ve included a
relevant handout.
GUIDELINES FOR COMMENTING ON OTHERS’ WORK
Offering constructive comments to your peers can be extremely useful for your intellectual development as well as
for theirs. It goes without saying (but I will say it anyway) that we will conduct ourselves civilly and respectfully.
This does not mean that we must agree with one another. Exciting intellectual conversations can arise from
conflicting viewpoints. Of course, well-reasoned opinions are superior to mere opinions. Opinions buttressed by
logic and grounded in empirical work are even more persuasive.
As you listen to your classmates or read their work, think about what they say or write well and what they need to
improve. If you see holes in their logic, let them know. If you have questions about their methodology or thesis,
ask. If you have suggestions for alternative approaches, say so. If they say or write something particularly
profound, tell them.
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A FEW TIPS ON WRITING WELL
Write from the top down. Start with your most important point, then develop it. Don’t keep your reader guessing.
Use good topic sentences. Topic sentences should tell your reader the point of the paragraph.
New thoughts generally require new paragraphs.
Use transition sentences for flow. When you turn to a new thought, be sure your reader can connect backward and forward to other parts of
the text.
Eschew the passive voice. “Mary hit the ball” is better than “The ball was hit by Mary.” (PASSIVE)
Avoid indirect wording. As much as possible, eradicate the phrases “there are,” “it is,” and the like from your writing. Use participles and
gerunds if appropriate.
Avoid run-on sentences. (R/O)
Vary sentence structure to enliven your writing.
Watch your spelling (sp), grammar, and punctuation. Look out for singular/plural agreement. (S/P) Note: the word “data” is plural. Use
semicolons appropriately (that is, to separate complete sentences). Don’t overuse parentheticals – dashes can be your friends as well.
Watch for dangling clauses. “Hot from the oven, I ate the pizza.” This sentence implies that I (not the pizza) am hot from the oven.
Use parallel phrases. “I like to swim, read, and eat” is better than “I like swimming, to read, and food.”
Avoid unclear referents (like “it” without an obvious connection to what “it” is).
Plain English is best. Don’t overwrite.
Use your topic paragraph effectively.
Good titles are nice. So are zippy first sentences.
Learn the difference between “because” and “since.” “Since” refers to time: “Since 1940, women’s hemlines have crept up.”
Know the difference between “that” and “which.” Generally, if you can use “that,” do so.
Don’t be wordy. For example, you rarely need to use the term “in order to.”
Rewriting is the key to writing well.
Consider your audience. Use the appropriate tone and style; above all, don’t be boring!
GOOD WRITING RESOURCES: Strunk and White, Chicago Manual of Style, Zinsser (On Writing Well, Writing to Learn), Turabian,
Harcourt-Brace College Handbook
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