Course Description:
This course has three themes: (1) understanding and critiquing American racism and the role law plays in perpetuating it; (2) understanding and critiquing popular and legal conceptions of “race” itself; and (3) understanding and critiquing the ways that people have struggled against racism and sought equal opportunity through law. These themes will be examined in the historical context in which concepts of race and racism arose, but half the class will be devoted to contemporary issues. Materials are designed to provoke both scholarly and pragmatic discussions of these themes.
