This past summer (2021), over 90 teachers and several renowned scholars came together to explore the history of racial categories for a three-day workshop supported by the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program. We looked at different historical case studies to explore how race has been constructed, how it’s changed over time, and its role in shaping our contemporary circumstances.
We heard from Dr. George Lipsitz of UC Sa
nta Barbara, who talked about the long fetch of racial progress and used sources that traced the persistence of racism within various US institutions that include housing and the US postal service.
We talked with Dr. Zeus Leonardo of UC Berkeley who keyed into debates on the workings of whiteness and discussed the ways in which we might teach about the Enlightenment differently given its intertwinement with the emergence of white supremacy.
Finally, we heard from our very own UCSC scholars: Ian Slattery, a PhD student in the Education department, talked about white racial identity and offered subject positions as a way forward in developing white students’ critical consciousness; Dr. Saugher Nojan, a newly minted professor of Sociology at San José State University, traced the ways in which Muslims have been differently racialized at different points in US history; and Watsonville teacher and UCSC MA/C alumnus, Priscila Rodriguez modeled how she teaches students to analyze primary sources in her classroom. Their talks are available here.
Participants engaged in discussion and examined source sets about a range of issues related to race. These sources, in varied states of finished-ness, are available for your perusal here. We invite you to take them further and share with us any work that you do with them or questions or ideas you have about them.
This work continued this fall (2021), with a delightful visit from from Professor of Law, Jack Chin, of UC Davis, who talked about how anti-Asian racism has shaped law and policy.
Stay tuned for more soon!