RACE AND SOCIAL CHANGE
ANT 324L 30470/AFR 374 D 35780 FALL 2009
Tu-Thurs 2-330 Bur 134
João H. Costa Vargas
EPS 2.112 A
E-mail: costavargas@mail.utexas.edu
The main objective of this course is to comprehend the historical background and the
contemporary circumstances within which progressive political projects emerge and
become effective. Since the political organizations and perspectives we will be focusing
on are rooted in the racialized cities within which they struggle, we will also investigate
the ways in which our experiences with race are shaped by the necessary politicization of
urban space, and how our experiences with urban space become inflected by race. If there
exist hopes for a more equitable society, such hopes must be grounded in a
comprehension of the political perspectives emerging out of radical and inclusive
critiques of life in the city.
This course is organized around the following topics: 1) how urban spatial relations both
encourage and inhibit the formation of racial and ethnic identities; 2) how public policies
give a spatial dimension to ethnic and racial experiences; 3) how urban culture registers
the points of division and unity in city life; and 4) how political projects of social change
elaborated by members of underprivileged communities emerge from and challenge
power relations at the local, national, and transnational levels.
Required texts
Books are available at the Resistencia Bookstore: 1801 S 1st St # A, Austin, TX 787044255, tel.: 416-8885. The reader is available at Abel’s: 715 W 23rd Street, tel.: 472-5353.
Books and the reader are on the PCL reserves.
1. Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton. American Apartheid (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
U.P., 1993).
2. Robin D.G. Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional! (Boston: Beacon, 1997).
3. The South End Press Collective, What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of
the Nation (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007)
4. Max Rameau, Take Back the Land (Miami: Nia Interactive Press, 2008)
5. Reader
Course dynamics
I encourage you to develop the habit of studying, debating, and writing reading reports
and short papers with at least one or two colleagues.
It is crucial that readings be completed prior to the date when they are scheduled. Besides
completing the reading, you will be responsible for the following:
A) 2-page typed reports, one every two weeks, covering the previous two week’s
readings. These reports will be turned in at the beginning of each third week, unless
otherwise noticed.
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These reports will be brief critical summaries of what you consider to be the main
points in the texts assigned.
Rather than restating what the texts present, you should (a) draw parallels and
contrasts between the texts assigned for each week, and (b) engage with the
authors in such way that you are constantly asking critical questions.
o Why does the author make such claims? What is the evidence s/he
presents? How does s/he interpret her/his data? Do you agree with the
argument? Why?
You should attempt to connect the reading to current events and lectures;
The reports should include at least one question and/or insights you consider
important to discuss in class.
Late reports will not be accepted. At the end of the semester you will have turned in 7
two- page reports. For your final grade, I’ll only consider your 6 highest graded reports.
Since there will be a report every two weeks, consistency is key in securing a good final
grade.
B) Participation in class discussions. You will be expected to participate in class
discussions in two ways.
 The first will be through your critical interventions during lectures, and
presentations by other students.
 The second will be in the group setting. Each participant will be assigned a group,
which will present twice on the semester-long ethnographic project: once the
design, and once on the result of their research. It is important that the research,
writing, and presentation work be divided as equally as possible among members
of each group.
o I encourage you to find ways to render your presentation as interesting and
captivating as possible. You can use multimedia (film, photograph, music)
and other means to make your arguments and engage your colleagues.
C) A final, 10-15-page ethnographic report. This paper, written collectively by each
group, will be a critical analysis of the ways in which individuals and communities
occupy, make sense of, challenge, and maintain spatial configurations in the city. How
are race and urban space marked by each other? You must start collecting material about
an area of Austin at the beginning of the semester. The area can be a community
organization, a public space (swimming pool, library, park), et cetera. Examples of
research material that you can collect are: ethnographic notes, photographs, newspaper,
journal, and magazine articles, interviews, and so on. More information on this will be
provided during the semester.
Participation
The participation grade will depend on your consistent and active engagement in class
discussion by way of critical, insightful commentaries based on our readings. For those
who are not used to talking in class, group presentations will be good opportunities to
speak while supported by the colleagues with whom you prepared your interventions.
Your participation grade will also depend on your attendance. It is impossible to obtain a
good participation grade with a poor attendance.
A note on attendance
Each time you have 4 unjustified absences, your final grade will be diminished by a letter
grade. The rule is cumulative, so that your grade will be dropped another letter grade with
the 8th, 12th, and 16th absence.
Grading
Your final grade will be calculated as follows:
Reading reports: 40%
Final paper: 30%
Participation: 30%
Notice
Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the
Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Services for Students with
Disabilities, telephone 471-6259.
Course structure
Part I (Weeks 1-3)
 Historical background: genesis of race thinking
 Colonialism and violence
 The Black Radical Tradition
 Strategic essentialism versus strategic universalism
 Black feminist theory
Part II (Weeks 4-6)
 Race and urban space: facets of U.S. segregation
 Anglos and Mexicans in the U.S. Southwest
 The politics of black representations
 Oppression and resistance: social movements and racial solidarity
Part III (Weeks 7-8)
 Black Power
 Women and the Civil Rights Movement
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
The Black Panther Party
Government repression against organized radical movements
Part IV (Weeks 9-12)
 Urban rebellions in the mid-1960s
 Black Wealth/White wealth
 Youth resistance
 The limits and consequences of contemporary conservative ideologies
Part V (Weeks 13-15)
 The effects of Hurricane Katrina and new social movements
 Black diaspora utopias: multiracial/multiethnic transnational alliances
 Taking back the land: a case study
Meeting and reading schedule
Readings marked with an asterisk * are in the course reader
Week 1
August 27 Introduction
Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina University Press, [1983] 2000), pp. 121-155.*
Week 2
September 1 Tuesday
September 3 Thursday
Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina University Press, [1983] 2000), pp. 155-171.*
Paul Gilroy, Against Race: Imagining political culture beyond the Color Line
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 11-53.*
Patricia Hill Collins, “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought.” In KumKum Bhavnani, editor, Feminism & ‘Race’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001), pp. 184-202.*
Week 3
September 8 Tuesday: Report 1
September 10 Thursday
bell hooks, Feminism is for everybody: Passionate politics (Cambridge, MA: South End
Press, 2000), pp.vii-x; 1-47.*
Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of
Liberty (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), pp. 22-55.*
Angela Davis, Blues Legacy and Black Feminism (New York: Vintage, 1998), pp. 3-41.*
Luke Charles Harris, “The Challenge and Possibility for Black Males to Embrace
Feminism.” In Devon Carbado, editor, Black Men on Race, Gender, and Sexuality
(New York: New York University Press, 1999), pp. 383-386.*
Week 4
September 15 Tuesday
September 17 Thursday
Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1993), pp. 1-59.
Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine
Books, [1964] 1973), pp. 1-58.*
Week 5
September 22 Tuesday: Report 2
September 24 Thursday
Tomás Almaguer, “We Desire Only a White Population in California.” In Racial
Faultlines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: U
of California Press, 1994), pp. 17-41.*
David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin: U of
Texas Press, 1987), pp. 158-178, 220-234.*
Week 6
September 29 Tuesday
October 1 Thursday
Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1993), pp. 60-114.
Robin Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in urban America
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), pp. 1-42.
Week 7
October 6 Tuesday: Report 3
October 8 Thursday: Groups I-V presentations (groups turn in written
report on research design and progress)
Robert F. Williams, Negroes with Guns (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, [1962]
1998), pp. vii-xiii; xv-xxxiv; 2-27; 72-86.*
Belinda Robnet, How Long? How Long? African-American Women in the Struggle for
Civil Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 53-70.*
Kwame Ture and Charles Hamilton, “Black Power: Its need and substance.” In Martin
Bulmer and John Solmos, editors, Racism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp.
236-242.*
Mumia Abu-Jamal, “A Life in the Party: An Historical and Retrospective Examination of
the Projections and Legacies of the Black Panther Party.” In Kathleen Cleaver and
George Katsiaficas, editors, Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party
(New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 40-50.*
Week 8
October 13 Tuesday: Groups VI-X presentations (groups turn in written
report on research design and progress)
October 15 Thursday
Akinyele Omowale Umoja, “Repression Breeds Resistance: The Black Liberation Army
and the Radical Legacy of the Black Panther Party.” In Kathleen Cleaver and
George Katsiaficas, editors, Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party
(New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 3-19.*
Assata Shakur, Assata (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1987), pp. vi-xiv; 195-207; 216233.*
Ward Churchill, “To Disrupt, Discredit and Destroy”: The FBI’s secret War Against the
Black Panther Party.” In Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas, editors,
Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party (New York: Routledge,
2001), pp. 78-117.*
Week 9
October 20 Tuesday: Report 4
October 22 Thursday
Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar
Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 230-271.*
Suzanne E. Smith, Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 209-246.*
Week 10
October 27 Tuesday
October 29 Thursday
Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1993), pp.115-147.
Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black Wealth/White Wealth (London:
Routledge, 1997), pp. 127-170.*
Week 11
November 3 Tuesday: Report 5
November 5 Thursday
Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1993), pp.148-185.
Robin Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in urban America
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), pp. 43-77.
Week 12
November 10 Tuesday
November 12 Thursday
Jacqueline Jones, “Back to the Future with The Bell Curve: Jim Crow, Slavery, and G.”
In Steven Fraser, editor, The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future
of America (New York: Basic Books, 1995), pp. 80-93.*
Robin Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in urban America
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), pp. 78-124.
Kenneth J. Neubeck and Noel A. Cazenave, Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card
Against America’s Poor (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 147-176.*
Week 13
November 17 Tuesday: Report 6
November 19 Thursday: Groups I-V presentations (groups turn in final
research report)
Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1993), pp. 186-236.
South End Collective, What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation
(Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007): vii-53.
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1984), pp. 110-113,
145-175.*
Week 14
November 24 Tuesday
November 26 Thursday – Thanksgiving Day
Robin Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in urban America
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), pp. 125-158.
South End Collective, What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation
(Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007): 54-119
Max Rameau, Take Back the Land: Land, Gentrification and the Umoja Village
Shantytown (Miami: Nia Press, 2008): 7-76.
Week 15
December 1 Tuesday: Report 7; Groups VI-X presentations (groups turn
in final research report)
December 3 Thursday
South End Collective, What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation
(Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007): 99-169.
Max Rameau, Take Back the Land: Land, Gentrification and the Umoja Village
Shantytown (Miami: Nia Press, 2008): 77-133.