Race - the Power of an Illusion

Race - the Power of an Illusion

Part 2

Objective:

GC.33 Describe the role of the media as a means of communicating information and how it influences the importance of issues and public opinion. 

 

GC.27 Identify and explain legislation and legal precedents that established rights.

Open Ended

What are some ways that race has been used to rationalize inequality? How has race been used to shift attention (and responsibility) away from oppressors and toward the targets of oppression?

Open Ended

What is the connection of American slavery to prejudices against African-descended peoples? Why does race persist after abolition?

Open Ended

Why was it not slavery but freedom and the notion that “all men are created equal” that created a moral contradiction in colonial America, and how did race help resolve that contradiction?

Open Ended

Contrast Thomas Jefferson’s policy to assimilate American Indians in the 1780s with Andrew Jackson’s policy of removing Cherokees to west of the Mississippi in the 1830s. What is common to both policies? What differentiates them?

Open Ended

What did the publications of scientists Louis Agassiz, Samuel Morton, and Josiah Nott argue, and what was their impact on U.S. legal and social policy?

Open Ended

What role did beliefs about race play in the American colonization of Mexican territory, Cuba, the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico?