Social:
Author: Keeler Park
School/Organization:
Philadelphia High School for Girls
Year: 2023
Seminar: W.E.B. Du Bois and Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward
Grade Level: 9-12
Keywords: analysis, annotation, Critical Race Theory, criticality, DBQ, discussion, document-based questions, Equity, Geography, History, map reading, power, primary source, race, Slavery, social studies, society, Sociology, world history
School Subject(s): Social Studies
World History or White History? Focuses on developing students’ perception of race as a socially constructed phenomenon as well as the key historical skills of primary source analysis, geography, and crafting a historical perspective. Students will read a variety of primary and secondary sources, as well as appraise images while exploring concepts like racial hierarchies, the connections between legality and whiteness, and ultimately will see students crafting a historical argument based on the work they do over the course of the unit.
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I am a history teacher at an all-girls high school in the School District of Philadelphia. While my school is not coed, we are a magnet school and we serve an incredibly diverse range of student backgrounds, languages, and cultural practices. We teach students whose families originate in the Caribbean Islands, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and of course Philadelphia. This wide range of backgrounds makes being a world history teacher an incredibly enriching and challenging experience. On one hand, I have to work hard to expand the scope of the curriculum to teach about such a wide variety of cultures. But on the other hand, I can always lean on the cultural knowledge and experience of my students to guide classroom discussions. With that said, the world history curriculum at my school is overwhelmingly the history of white cultures with the occasional digression to cover empires in China or Africa. Put simply, the curriculum is not representative of the diverse student backgrounds that fill the seats of my classroom. Even more problematic is the fact that the curriculum does not specifically address issues of race or where the idea of race even comes from. Rather, race is treated as something that is, always was, and always will be. Because of this, students grow up accepting race as an essential category into which people can be grouped, and miss out on analyzing human history through a more pointed, critical lens. This unit will seek to disrupt that lack of criticality surrounding (the creation of) race in human history. Standards: This unit is aligned with the Pennsylvania Department of Education Academic Standards for Social Studies. These standards are designed to support instruction and development of content knowledge related to geography, history, sociology, and a variety of other domains. The goal of this unit is to expand upon PDE standards for Social Studies by introducing critical discussions of race in history. Standard – 7.1.9.B Explain and locate regions and their shared connections as defined by physical and human features. Standard – 8.1.9.A Compare patterns of continuity and change over time, applying context of events. Standard – 8.1.9.B Compare the interpretation of historical events and sources, considering the use of fact versus opinion, multiple perspectives, and cause and effect relationships. Standard – 8.1.9.C Construct research on a historical topic using a thesis statement and demonstrate use of appropriate primary and secondary sources. Standard – 8.4.9.D Analyze how conflict and cooperation among groups and organizations have influenced the history and development of the world. The following resources were used in researching/writing this unit: Objectives This unit is designed for a 9th grade World History course; however it could also be applicable to an American History class or even a Civics and Government class depending on time and contextual understanding. There are no prerequisites to this unit, however it is expected that this unit would be taught around two thirds of the way through the year after students have already been given some foundational skills for studying history. This unit is designed for a 45-minute daily period schedule, but can be revised for an alternate schedule as needed. The objectives for this unit include the following: “He looks upon these slums and slum characters as unpleasant things which should in some way be removed for the best interests of all.” The Philadelphia Negro, page 6 On its most fundamental level, history is a collection of stories from the past. Whether ancient or contemporaneous, history is essentially a collection of information about how we understand the massive amount of stuff that has happened on the planet Earth. Of course, history can be so much more than that. Far too often, however, students engage with history in this way. As though it were a wholly known, discussed, and decided upon story. Instead, this unit seeks to utilize history as a tool through which students can employ a critical lens in order to understand the past and their present-day world. In this sense, students should be interacting with history directly to ask questions of it as opposed to taking it as objective fact. While the idea of treating history as non-objective may cause some trepidation in some educators who went through school in an era where history was treated as a known quantity (with a conveniently patriotic slant). I am one of those teachers, yet the fact of the matter is that many contemporary historians encourage and even suggest viewing history as something that is malleable, subjective, and even personal.[1] Indeed, there is no shortage of literature from historians and educational scholars alike which stresses the importance of critical analysis when approaching new information. Botelho & Rudman suggests not only that, “we should analyze how dominant ideologies function in text and images,” but also goes as far as to say that, “Critical multicultural analysis can contribute to the construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of ourselves and U.S. society.”[2] This transformative nature of employing a critical lens is especially important in the history classroom, where educators should seek to transform students understanding about what they know versus what they think they know. Beyond simply introducing new information, a significant task of history educators is to meet the misconceptions, misunderstandings, and even the ignorance of students head on and transform it into a more nuanced understanding of the facts. As noted above employing a critical lens is crucial to this transformative task. There is ample evidence of the ways that critical analysis of history and text can be beneficial for students across a range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. When discussing culturally sustaining pedagogy for students from marginalized backgrounds, Lee & Walsh found that “educational policies continue to judge immigrant students against the standards of whiteness still dominant in the United States,” in order to point out how current models of education do not adequately serve the ever-changing demographics of American classrooms.[3] As a potential answer to this problem, Gibson offers the concept of using critical analysis to approach history from the perspective of “multiculturalism as the normal human experience.” Gibson notes how using criticality when approaching history allows for more nuanced and humanizing views of marginalized backgrounds, and is indeed required to build a curriculum in which marginalized groups can see themselves reflected.[4] Put simply: employing a critical lens allows students to challenge common historical narratives which often position minority groups as passive, deficient, or otherwise irreconcilable with western culture. While the benefits of utilizing a critical lens in the history classroom may seem obvious for improving the education of students from marginalized backgrounds, it is also true that employing a critical lens enriches students of dominant identity groups as well. In their foundational work which paved the way for critical race theory, scholars Ladson-Billings & Tate point out how, “naming one’s own reality with stories can affect the oppressor. Most oppression does not seem like oppression to the perpetrator.”[5] This is certainly not to say that students of dominant identity groups ought to be cast as active oppressors within the classroom. Instead, the use of critical analysis helps to peel back the curtain of our contemporary reality and reveal the exploitative foundations that our current society is built upon. By engaging students of both marginalized and dominant backgrounds in critical discussions of race, history, and society, history classrooms will naturally resemble Gibson’s vision of multiculturalism as the normal human experience and create a more democratic classroom in the process. “Rule-following, legal precedence, and political consistency are not more important than right, justice and plain common-sense.” Black Reconstruction in America, page 336 The Pennsylvania Department of Education specifies that all students take four history credits in order to receiving a diploma, and most districts stipulate one year of World History, one year of United States History, and one year of Civics & Government. Some districts like Philadelphia School District have moved to require African American History in addition to these more commonly taught courses. At a glance, this seems like a reasonable curriculum with ample historical coverage. Yet, in practice, the curriculum is limited to an extremely concerning extent. Civics & Government is a critical course to prepare students to be fully independent young adults, but its curriculum is almost entirely focused on government policies, procedures, and precedents. While much has been made of the “crisis” that civic education is in the midst of, yet the truly problematic nature of the current curriculum is never cited as a cause for this crisis.[6] For example the course will certainly teach students about the 14th Amendment and the concept of “equal protection,” but the curriculum makes no use of critical analysis to square the fourteenth amendment with something like Japanese internment during WWII. This is unfortunate, as these moments of dissonance in American government reveal the underlying racial inequities that we are still working through today. Surely some teachers are taking the steps to include this criticality themselves, but the actual curriculum itself does not include nor specify the use of critical analysis. US History is a course that does employ critical analysis. Almost anyone who has been through a US History class will have investigated the quote “all men are created equal” and deduce what the founders really meant by “all men,” and this is a good thing. However, even for its admirable use of criticality, the US History curriculum used by the School District of Philadelphia is woefully inadequate in terms of its coverage. For instance, outside of the Trail of Tears, Native Americans receive no mention in the US History textbook that the school district uses. Similarly, the contributions of Asian Americans in the Pacific Coast are entirely omitted, and the history of Asian Americans is essentially boiled down to just Japanese Internment during WWII.[7] This lack of inclusion of different background is problematic and does not meet the needs of Philadelphia’s diverse student body. Gibson points out the importance of representation in the curriculum, and James Banks outlines the consequences of failing to represent students in the curriculum: namely, the concept of failed citizenship. Failed citizenship happens when “individuals or groups who are born within a nation or migrate to it and live within it for an extended period of time do not internalize the values and ethos of the nation-state, feel structurally excluded within it, and have highly ambivalent feeling toward it.”[8] Without representing students and engaging them with critical discussions of history and power, how can we ensure that students internalize a sense of national identity? African American history courses are an admirable step that the district has taken to rectify some of the issues mentioned above. While there is little for which to knock the African American history curriculum, it is undeniable that a single year dedicated to the history of non-white people in America is shamefully inadequate. Furthermore, the fact that the course is African American history gives it a distinctly America-centric focus. Not that this is inherently a bad thing, but when the coverage of global affairs of non-white people is so poor, the America-centric focus of African American history means that students will still graduate with blind spots in their historical understanding. World History, at least in theory, is the course which is designed to bridge this gap and illuminate these blind spots. The problems with using World History as the gap-bridger are threefold. First and foremost, World History is a massive curriculum to cover within one school year. This typically means that coverage of various cultures is kept short and surface level, or the number of cultures that will be covered is whittled down into a more reasonable number. Either way, depth is sacrificed in the name of coverage. Another issue with World History is its status as the Freshmen level social studies course. Students come to this course, the only one they’ll take that covers global cultures, with very little in terms of historical skills or background knowledge. Lastly is the issue of which cultures the textbook and resources for World History seem to be focused on. If, in a land of freemen, eight million of human beings were found to be dying of disease, the nation would cry with one voice, “Heal them!” The Philadelphia Negro, page 387 Theorizing race as a socially constructed phenomenon may feel like a very contemporary way of thinking, but in fact it has long been described as such. One early example of this type of thinking can be found in the work of W.E.B. DuBois. In his breakthrough text, The Philadelphia Negro, DuBois carried out a study of the “Negro problem” in Philadelphia by going door to door in Philadelphia’s predominantly black seventh ward and interviewing its residence. What he found was that the “Negro problem” had little to do with Philadelphia’s black residents. Instead, DuBois concluded that a feeling of wide spread distain for black people as humans with inalienable rights contributed to a social situation in which the proverbial deck was stacked against them. In the opinion of DuBois, “this feeling, widespread and deep-seated is, in America, the vastest of the Negro problems.”[9] DuBois’ work is essential for understanding race as a social construct because he reveals that while for some, blackness may be associated with social problems, these social problems have roots which have no inherent connection to the color of one’s skin. What DuBois found was that the black population of Philadelphia was mired with societal issues due to a collective failure to serve their community, and that these social problems were in turn branded as “Negro problems.” Thus, DuBois makes it clear that one’s race has little connection to one’s social viability, but one’s social viability could surely be erroneously branded as a race problem. Indeed, DuBois’ analysis extended to other “races,” who were also denied their fundamental humanity and seen as problems that required solving. Historically and contemporaneously, race has been viewed as a problem to be solved, and whiteness has traditionally been proposed as the solution to that problem. Whiteness is not a term that shows up in many history curricula, at least not directly. Instead, the curricula note things like “enlightened thought,” “democratic values,” and “the arts” as the markers of white culture as it evolved over time in Europe. This indirect approach to teaching students about the formation of race and racial thinking serves only to confuse, especially considering that, “the concept of ‘whiteness,’” and conversely, blackness, “as applied to humans is full of paradox and contradiction.”[10] Race is something that most adults, and nearly all students, take for granted as a simple fact of life. In reality, race has no scientific basis and it has been thoroughly shown that “visible differences in skin color and features are a matter of relatively trivial aspects of history and geography.”[11] This significantly bolsters DuBois’ conclusion that “race problems” are less a matter of one’s “race” than they are a matter of the macro-social view that dominant forces in society take towards minorities. Understanding this, and more generally the history of how race came to be such a fundamental structure in our contemporary lives should be considered essential work of the World History classroom. Being the dominant identity group in America, whiteness will surely feel real to students, regardless of their own racial background. This is why it is especially important to use history to reveal the fact that whiteness, like any other racial identity, is a social construct. Though race has become one of the most widely used categorizations of a person’s identity, the origins of racial identity, whiteness included, are in the not so distant past. While different historians point to different moments and artifacts to pinpoint the invention of race to its exact origins, it is clear that during the Transatlantic Slave Trade, racialized thinking skyrocketed and became a fundamental lens through which European people viewed the world. Helen Morgan notes that, “prior to the use of enslaved Africans there was virtually no link between slavery and ‘blackness,’” and conversely no link between freedom and whiteness. Instead, those links stemmed directly from the transatlantic slave trade as simple answers to justify abhorrent treatment and conditions.[12] Moreover, “once the idea of the ‘races’ was established with the black regarded as ‘primitive’ and the white as ‘civilized’, there could develop a justification of colonization and slavery of the former by the latter.”[13] As white Europeans explored the world and encountered civilizations that they deemed as weak or ripe for taking advantage of, ideas about a white race that was destined to “tame” and lead the world were convenient excuses for practices like slavery and legalized oppression. The creation of racial categories was further entrenched through a longstanding commitment by the American legal system to equate whiteness with legality and non-whiteness with illegality. Consider for a moment the concept of “illegal immigration,” what image pops up in one’s head? Almost certainly not that of a white Canadian sneaking into Vermont to tap maple trees. Throughout the history of the United States, laws like the one drop rule and decisions like Dred Scott have contributed to a contemporary landscape where non-whiteness is criminalized. Cheryl Harris’s work on the legality of race focuses on whiteness as a form of literal and metaphorical property. She states how, “although the systems of oppression of Blacks and Native Americans differed in form… undergirding both was a racialized conception of property implemented by force and ratified by law.”[14] Even more bluntly, she notes that “the origins of property rights in the United States are rooted in racial domination.”[15] Property rights are merely one example of the legal system creating and enforcing laws that uphold a fundamentally racial view of human society. Michelle Alexander’s foundational text, The New Jim Crow, outlines the way that anti-blackness has come to shape our laws surrounding drug enforcement, policing, schooling, and just about every public facing institution we have.[16] All of these things work in tandem, out of sight, to create the illusion that the world is made up of people who are inherently different due to their race. In reality, these factors are overwhelmingly similar to what DuBois found in Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward over one hundred years ago: social inequities enforced by those in power serve to link “problems” with non-whiteness and “solutions” with whiteness. [1] Field, Kendra Taira. Growing Up with the Country: Family, Race, and Nation After the Civil War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018., Offner, Amy C., Sorting Out the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States In the Americas. Princeton, NJ :: Princeton University Press,, 2019., Zimmerman, Andrew, Alabama In Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South. Princeton, NJ :: Princeton University Press,, 2010. [2] Botelho, Maria JoseÌ, and Masha Kabakow Rudman. Critical Multicultural Analysis of Children’s Literature: Mirrors, Windows, and Doors. New York: Routledge, 2009: 259. [3] Paris, Django, H. Samy Alim, Stacey Lee, and Daniel Walsh. “Socially Just, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy for Diverse Immigrant Youth.” Essay. In Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World, 194. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2017. [4] Gibson, Margaret Alison. “Approaches to Multicultural Education in the United States: Some Concepts and Assumptions.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 15, no. 1 (1984): 94–119. [5] Ladson-Billings, Gloria, and William F. Tate. “Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education.” Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education 97, no. 1 (1995): 57 [6] Litvinov, Amanda. “Forgotten Purpose: Civics Education in Public Schools.” NEA, April 10, 2019. https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/forgotten-purpose-civics-education-public-schools. [7] Cayton, Andrew R. L. America: Pathways to the Present, Modern American History. Teacher’s ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2003. [8] Banks, James A. “Failed Citizenship and Transformative Civic Education.” Educational Researcher 46, no. 7 (2017): 367. [9] DuBois, W.E.B., Elijah Anderson, and Isabel Eaton. The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023: 387 [10] Morgan, Helen, The Work of Whiteness: A Psychoanalytic Perspective. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021: 12 [11] Morgan, Helen, The Work of Whiteness: A Psychoanalytic Perspective. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021: 1 [12] Morgan, Helen, The Work of Whiteness: A Psychoanalytic Perspective. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021: 27 [13] Morgan, Helen, The Work of Whiteness: A Psychoanalytic Perspective. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021: 28 [14] Harris, Cheryl I. “Whiteness as Property.” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (June 1993): 1715 [15] Harris, Cheryl I. “Whiteness as Property.” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (June 1993): 1716 [16] Alexander, Michelle. The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York, New York: New Press, 2020.Content Objectives
Background
Employing a Critical Lens
World History, or White History?
Deconstructing Race
In this unit students will be required to engage in critical analysis, text annotation, primary source reading, and academic group discussions in order to explore the creation of whiteness in World History as well as in our contemporary world. Students will be guided through material with teacher led discussions to scaffold understanding, but as the unit progresses, they will slowly be given more and more autonomy in how they interact with and analyze unit materials. In order to achieve this a number of instructional strategies will be employed. See the text below for a list of strategies, many of which have materials attached in Appendix A: Guided Notes Guided notes are useful for introducing background information and context to students when covering new content. Unlike regular note taking where students simply copy content from the board to a notebook, guided notes utilize prompts and questions in order to engage students with critical though about content as they write it down. Guided notes are also extremely helpful for leading students to conclusions so that you can ensure the class comes to a common understanding of important themes and content. Primary Source Analysis This unit will make heavy use of primary sources in the form of text, images, and maps. Students will interact directly with these primary sources in order to act as historians and draw conclusions that are not influenced by mainstream ideas about history. One of the important themes of this unit is rejecting the common narratives (or lack thereof) about whiteness in order to come to new understandings about how whiteness has shaped history and contemporary society. Several key primary documents are attached in Appendix B. Gallery Walk There will be several uses of gallery walks in this unit to encourage students to get up, interact with images or maps, and discuss materials in a controlled format. Gallery walks involve posting images, texts, or maps around the classroom, grouping students, and having them walk from resource to resource interacting with them, often writing on a communal note sheet as they go. Gallery walks are especially useful in this unit because they allow students to add to the discussion in a nonverbal way through communal note sheets and require all students to read what their peers write without being tempted to disagree or start an argument. In a unit where the topics will be touchy at times, this is very valuable. Map Analysis Geography is one of the essential skills that the World History curriculum covers, so this unit will make use of maps in order to engage students with the geography of race. By reading informational maps, students will utilize map reading skills while also drawing conclusions about the historical realities of exploration and exploitation. Maps will appear in gallery walks, notes, and document-based questions which will culminate the unit. Annotation Bookmark Annotation bookmarks are simple, effective tools which guiding students’ reading of primary and secondary sources with minimal interactions or interruptions. Essentially, students are given a bookmark with specific reading tasks to complete for each source, image, or resource. The content of an annotation bookmark can take many forms, it is unlikely that a critical reading bookmark for a history text will contain identical tasks to say, that of a science text, but this is one of the advantages: we can subtly encourage students to use specific strategies for specific types of text. An annotation book mark that can be used for this unit is attached in Appendix A (Figure 5). Document Based Questions Document based questions are one of the essential tasks of contemporary history classrooms as they engage students with a collection of primary sources, ask students to do the work of a historian by analyzing the documents in tandem, and ultimately organize the docs based on thematic relevance or some other criteria. During this process, students are expected to utilize their knowledge from class as well as annotation strategies to keep their research organized. Document based questions, combined with a document-based essay, are the culminating project of this unit. See Appendix A (Figure 6) for the document-based questions which accompany this unit. Document Based Essay After completing the document-based questions, annotating them, and organizing them thematically, student will utilize their work in order to write an essay. Their essay will utilize the documents from the document-based questions to answer a larger historical, open-ended question. For this unit, the DBQ essay will focus on the various avenues through which a white identity was created, formulated, and normalized. Students will need to use all of the skills and resources from the unit to write this essay, so it will serve as the culminating assessment to gauge how well students have learned the material. A copy of the document-based essay question and assignment overview are available in Appendix A (Figure 6). Exit ticket Students will complete small writing/discussion tasks prior to completing a lesson. The purpose of these tasks is to check for students’ understanding and allow for teacher reflection. If necessary, these exit tickets may be factored in as grades.
Objectives: Students will discuss and analyze the concept of “race” as it relates to our present day society in order to define race as a socially constructed phenomenon with limited scientific consensus. Materials and resources: Phase One: Begin the lesson by displaying the question “do you feel that race impacts your daily life directly or indirectly? Explain.” on the board at the front of the room. Allow students to take some time to write their response and encourage them to think deeply, as the issue of race will be the topic of discussion for the next several classes. As students are answering, feel free to provide your own answer to the question as a model and to set the tone for open conversations. After students have had some time to answer, allow them to volunteer their responses. As you build a conversation, remind students that everyone experiences race differently in our society, and that it is important to hear everyone out and take their experiences at face value. If students are freely adding to the discussion, allow them to keep going until momentum starts to fall off. Conversely, if students are less willing to jump into this discussion immediately, don’t push students to give answers they may not be comfortable sharing yet and acknowledge that these conversations can be difficult. Phase Two: After the discussion begins to lose momentum or all students have said their piece, note how everyone, even people who we might view as being the “same race,” will experience their race in different ways. Ask students to consider if race is a real thing, or simply a way that we categorize and make distinctions between people. If students offer answers to this question, allow them space to discuss. Next, tell students that they will be reading a brief article about race and human genetics. Inform them that while they read, they will be recording some thoughts and highlights from the article in order to guide their reading. Distribute materials and give students the appropriate time to read (this may vary depending on student ability level). Phase Three: Once students have completed their reading and reflection questions, have everyone in the room read aloud their selection of the most important quote from the article. To bring the lesson to a close, distribute the Race and Genetics DBQ question and have students complete it as an exit ticket. Objective: Students will analyze maps of racial demographics in order to discuss the limitations of connecting race to geography or physical location. Materials and resources: Phase One: To start the lesson, display the question “how do we determine a person’s race in our society? What types of factors, metrics, or other criteria do we use?” on the board. Allow students to take about five minutes to answer this question and encourage them to make an exhaustive list so that the board ends up full of ideas. After students have had some time to think and write, ask for students to share their responses and write them on the board as they share. Try to highlight the different methods we use to determine one’s race and build categories as you organize the list (for instance: the answer “skin color” could go into a “physical features” category while something like “where someone is from” could go into a “geography” category, etc.). Be sure to guide students towards the concepts of physical differences and geographic differences if they don’t offer these answers themselves. Ask students if they notice any trends or patterns in their answers. If there is no conversation being generated, ask students if they feel that this list gives any insight into who someone is as a person. Phase Two: Highlight the connections students made regarding visual elements of race like skin color and geographic elements of race like where someone comes from. Project onto the board the map of the US Census race categories (Fig. 2 Appendix B) onto the board and ask students if it seems comprehensive. Next, tell them they will be completing a map analysis worksheet which is made up of thematic maps focused on racial demographics. Distribute the worksheet and go over directions with students. Once students are clear on how to proceed with the worksheet, give them time to work through it and record their thoughts. Phase Three: While students are working through the worksheet, write the question “What are some challenges of using geography or physical location in order to determine race?” on the board. After students have had ample time to work independently, turn their focus to the question on the board and encourage them to utilize the thoughts they have written down in front of them. Facilitate a conversation about the problematic nature of using geography to determine race, making space for students to raise questions, pose disagreements, or support one another’s claims. Bring the lesson to a close by Objective: Students will discuss and analyze images of race from the 19th and 20th centuries in order to draw conclusions about from where commonly accepted narratives about race and culture stem. Materials and resources: Pre-lesson Phase: Prior to beginning this lesson, print out the images in Figure 4 Appendix B and hang them around the rooms in stations. Note that each station has two images, so those images should be displayed alongside one another to get the most out of the gallery walk. Additionally, hang a blank sheet of paper next to the images at each station so groups can make note of what they notice. Phase One: Have the image of ‘The White Man’s Burden’ (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling) projected onto the board when students enter the classroom along with the question “what does this image show us about how people thought of race in the 19th century?” Give students several minutes to inspect the image and formulate an answer. After all students have recorded a response, have students share out significant things they notice about the image, or their answer to the entry prompt. Phase Two: After students have discussed the entry prompt thoroughly, draw their attention to the images around the room and inform them that during today’s lesson, they will be doing a gallery walk to analyze how race has been portrayed, and in the process made real, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Distribute the Gallery Notes Tracker (Fig 4 Appendix A) and go over the directions with students to ensure that there are no questions prior to beginning. Phase Three: To begin the gallery walk, group the class into 4 groups. Inform each group that, while they will work together to complete their notes tracker, they are especially responsible for analyzing the station that corresponds to their group number (1-4) and will ultimately share out their findings at the end of the gallery walk. After groups have formed, give students ample time to stop at, discuss, and make notes on all five stations. Phase Four: After the gallery walk has concluded and all students have gotten to stop at all stations, have students stand at their groups assigned station. Go around the room from station one to six and have each group speak on the images in their station, their major conclusions and wonderings, or any responses they may have to things other students wrote. Once all students have gotten a chance to share, the lesson will be over. Objective: Students will analyze IOT draft a free written response in which they will highlight real world examples of racial injustice. Materials and resources: Phase One: Begin the lesson by displaying the prompt “do you believe our justice system treats people of different ethnic backgrounds equally?” on the board. As students are thinking through their responses, encourage them to consider recent events as well as things that have happened throughout history. Once students have had some time to respond in writing, create a list on the board of historical and contemporary examples of the law being used to privilege white people or disadvantage non-white people. As the list grows, remind students that the law has been used as a way of defining race for centuries, and the privileges or disadvantages that people of different racial backgrounds deal with today largely stem from legal privileges or disadvantages. Phase Two: After finishing with the entry activity, have students take out individual laptops (if you are not in a school that uses a one-to-one laptop model students may work in groups, or the article can be printed and distributed to students on paper). Once all students have taken out their laptops, pass out the annotation guide (Figure 5 Appendix A) and remind students of how it works. Instruct students to access the following URL: https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/fall-2018/what-is-white-privilege-really. Students should read the article and complete the annotation guide as they read. Once students are clear on directions, give them about fifteen to twenty minutes for reading time. Phase Three: After students have had time to read the article and complete the annotation guide, inform them that prior to closing the lesson with a free write, there will be a quick discussion of their annotations just to ensure everyone is on the same page. Project the annotation guide onto the board (or open it on a smart board) and have students guide you through it with their own responses and annotations. Allow students to build on one another’s points to get a discussion flowing. Phase Four: After students have fully discussed their responses, inform them that before leaving, they will complete a quick free response answer to a prompt as preparation for their upcoming DBQ set. Project the prompt “how have laws shaped racial status in our culture” onto the board and give students the final five minutes of class to write uninterrupted. Collect student responses as they exit the classroom. Objectives: Students will analyze and annotate historical documents and secondary sources in order to organize information into a cohesive essay structure. Materials: Phase One: Begin the lesson by reviewing annotation strategies with students. You can accomplish this with an entry question along the lines of “what factors should you consider when annotating a primary or secondary source?” or through more direct instruction. However you choose to begin the lesson will depend to an extent on how practiced students are in text annotation and DBQ sets. Through discussion or direct instruction, ensure that all students are clear that while they approach documents, they should be considering place and time, author, audience, reason, the main idea, and why the source has value. After all students are brought up to speed, hand out the Construction of Race DBQ set. Phase Two: Inform students that they will be led through the first document in order to get the ball rolling. Project document 1 onto the board (ideally a smart board or something that can be annotated while projected) and ask for a student to read it out loud to the class. Next, model the first two annotation strategies by noting the place/time of the document as well as the author. Continue to model the PAARTY strategy for students, slowly handing over the reins and asking for volunteers as you go. By the end of the PAARTY annotation, have students come up with a unified response to the specific document-based question for document one. Be sure to model academic language and phrasing when copying their response onto the board. Phase Three: After modeling the first document, allow students to work independently on Part A of the DBQ set until five minutes remain in class. Students may work in groups or utilize one another as resources, but they should all be individually annotating every document and answering every question, otherwise they will not have what they need to respond to the essay prompt in Part B. As students are working independently, circulate the room to provide assistance when needed. Phase Four: With about five minutes remaining in class, reset the room so that all students are back in their original place to complete an exit ticket. Project the prompt “Which document thus far sticks out to you the most, and why? Make use of your annotations.” onto the board and allow students to freely respond in writing until class ends. Objectives: Students will organize key annotations and ideas raised in Part A of their DBQ set in order to synthesize and defend a historical thesis that directly answers a given prompt. Materials: Phase One: To begin the lesson, have students review the information they collected in Part A of their DBQ set by having them respond to the prompt “what are three examples or cultural phenomena that highlight race as a social construct?” Remind students that they have essentially already answered this question while annotating and writing responses in Part A, but now they need to reiterate their findings and stick to an idea. After students have listed out their three main points. Instruct them to go to Part B of their DBQ document. Phase Two: Once students are clear on the main points, they will use to defend their thesis, remind them of the format a DBQ essay should follow (5 paragraphs, introduction, three body paragraphs explaining materials from Part A, conclusion). Inform them that the next two classes will be dedicated to drafting a response to the prompt in Part B. Circulate the room as students work so that you can offer troubleshooting and support as students flesh out their ideas. Phase Three: With about five minutes left in the class period, distribute the Self Check in sheet so that students can reflect and comment on their progress for the day, what they are struggling with, and what they still need to complete. Have students’ hand these in as they leave class for you to review.Lesson 1
Lesson One: Race as a Social Construct
RaceLesson 2
Lesson Two: The Geography of “Race”
Lesson 3
Lesson Three: Racial Imagery Gallery Walk
Lesson 4
Lesson Four: The Legality of Whiteness
Lesson 5: DBQ Document Analysis
Lesson 6: DBQ Document Analysis
Scientific American Article: Guided Questions Directions: As you read the article, respond to the prompts below. Remember that whenever possible, you can quote directly from the article in your answer. _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Race and Genetics Mini DBQ Directions: Read the excerpt full, then read the prompt. As you read the excerpt, annotate key words and ideas from the text. Provide a detailed response to the prompt below. You will see this information again later in the unit, so the deeper you go today, the easier the final assignment will be. This excerpt from scientist Noah Rosenberg comments on the extent that race and genetics are connected. “Humans are remarkably genetically similar, sharing approximately 99.9% of their genetic code with one another. We nonetheless see wide individual variation in phenotype, which arises from both genetic differences and complex gene-environment interactions. The vast majority of this genetic variation occurs within groups; very little genetic variation differentiates between groups. Crucially, the between-group genetic differences that do exist do not map onto socially recognized categories of race.” Source: Noah Rosenberg, Genetic Structure of Human Populations, 2002 According to this quote, to what extent is race based in genetics? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ How does this quote complicate the idea that people of different races are biologically distinct? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Geography and Race: Map Analysis Directions: Carefully look over each map. After looking at the maps, answer the prompts attached to each map. Be sure to use the map reading skills we have talked about in class when forming conclusions. Map 1 Does this map seem comprehensive and accurate? Why or why not? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ What would you add or how would you change this map to make it more representative of reality? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Map 2 Does this map seem more flawed, less flawed, or equally flawed as map 1? Explain your answer with specific details. _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ What does this map say about the connection between race and geography? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Map 3 _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Gallery Walk Note Tracker Directions: Walk around the room and stop by each station. As you stop at each station, collect your thoughts and notes here. We will utilize these notes for a discussion after the gallery walk. Station 1 Station 2 Station 3 Station 4 DBQ: The Social Construction of Race Historical Context: By the 1700s, racial hierarchies and race-based slavery were some of the most prominent beliefs on the planet. People who identified as white enjoyed considerable social and political power over non-white peers, and these power discrepancies were often seen as proof of a natural racial hierarchy. However, only a few hundred years prior to the 1700s, people of white (European) descent were in the middle of a dark age and lagged behind other cultures from around the globe significantly. Moreover, there is ample historical evidence that for thousands of years, humans did not consider physiological differences to be matters of fundamental difference or race. Somewhere along the lines, a belief about race, whiteness, and racial hierarchies emerged which continues to shape our world today. Directions: The following question is based on the accompanying documents in PART A. As you analyze and annotate the documents, consider as many relevant historical factors as possible. Be sure to complete each of the following steps for each document: Question: In what ways is race socially constructed? Consider and discuss at least three historical examples or cultural domains through which the construct of race has been made real. Part A: The following documents provide information about the formation of race and racialized thought. Examine each document carefully and answer the questions which follow. Document 1 This excerpt from W.E.B. DuBois discusses the “Negro Problem” of the United States circa 1899. “And still this widening of the idea of common Humanity is of slow growth and today but dimly realized. We grant full citizenship to the World Commonwealth to the “Anglo-Saxon” (whatever that may mean), the Teuton and the Latin; then with just a shade of reluctance we extend it to the Celt and the Slav. We half deny it to the yellow races of Asia, admit the brown Indians to an anteroom only on the strength of an undeniable past; but with the Negroes of Africa we come to a full stop … This feeling, widespread and deep-seated is, in America, the vastest of the Negro problems.” Source: W.E.B. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro, 1899 According to the author, what is the true nature of America’s “Negro Problem?” _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Document 2 The following political cartoon details the situation in government ran schools for the Native population of the Americas. Source: Frank Bellow, late 1860s According to this political cartoon, what beliefs did white Americans have about Native people’s education? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ What is the role of violence in Bellow’s cartoon? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Document 3 This map shows the regions of the world that are associated with the racial categories provided by the U.S. Census. Source: U.S. Census Bureau How many identity groups are represented in this graphic? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Does this graphic accurately portray race around the globe? Why or why not. _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Document 4 This excerpt from scientist Noah Rosenberg comments on the extent that race and genetics are connected. “Humans are remarkably genetically similar, sharing approximately 99.9% of their genetic code with one another. We nonetheless see wide individual variation in phenotype, which arises from both genetic differences and complex gene-environment interactions. The vast majority of this genetic variation occurs within groups; very little genetic variation differentiates between groups. Crucially, the between-group genetic differences that do exist do not map onto socially recognized categories of race.” Source: Noah Rosenberg, Genetic Structure of Human Populations, 2002 According to this quote, to what extent is race based in genetics? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ How does this quote complicate the idea that people of different races are biologically distinct? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Document 5 The following document is an example of a “one drop rule” law. Source: Virginia State Legislature, 1924 According to this document, how did the state of Virginia legally define a persons status as “white?” _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ What possible social impacts could a law like this have on the general population? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Document 6 This excerpt from W.E.B. DuBois attempts to define the term “race.” “What, then, is a race? It is a vast family of human beings, generally of common blood and language, always of common history, traditions and impulses, who are both voluntarily and involuntarily striving together for the accomplishment of certain more or less vividly conceived ideals of life.” Source: W.E.B. DuBois, The Conservation of Races, 1897 According to DuBois, what are the key features of “race?” Do these features agree or conflict with mainstream ideas about race? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Document 7 This image shows the forced conversion of Native people in the Americas conducted by the Roman Catholic Church Source: Compulsory Conversion of Native Americans to Christianity by Spanish Jesuit Missionaries, 1500s How does this illustration depict the Native population, how does it depict members of the Roman Catholic Church? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Document 8 The following political cartoon by Dr. Seuss depicts Japanese Americans during WWII Source: Dr. Seuss, Marshall Field Publications, 1942 What point is Dr. Seuss’s illustration attempting to make about Asian Americans during a time of war? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Part B: Directions: Using the space below, plot the main points and information you will draw from in order to support your thesis. Once you have planned out your essay, use a word processor to complete your draft. Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue Racial categories are weak proxies for genetic diversity and need to be phased out. Published by Scientific American, written by Megan Gannon More than 100 years ago, American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois was concerned that race was being used as a biological explanation for what he understood to be social and cultural differences between different populations of people. He spoke out against the idea of “white” and “black” as discrete groups, claiming that these distinctions ignored the scope of human diversity. Science would favor Du Bois. Today, the mainstream belief among scientists is that race is a social construct without biological meaning. And yet, you might still open a study on genetics in a major scientific journal and find categories like “white” and “black” being used as biological variables. In an article published today (Feb. 4) in the journal Science, four scholars say racial categories are weak proxies for genetic diversity and need to be phased out. More than 100 years ago, American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois was concerned that race was being used as a biological explanation for what he understood to be social and cultural differences between different populations of people. He spoke out against the idea of “white” and “black” as discrete groups, claiming that these distinctions ignored the scope of human diversity. Science would favor Du Bois. Today, the mainstream belief among scientists is that race is a social construct without biological meaning. And yet, you might still open a study on genetics in a major scientific journal and find categories like “white” and “black” being used as biological variables. In an article published today (Feb. 4) in the journal Science, four scholars say racial categories are weak proxies for genetic diversity and need to be phased out. They’ve called on the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to put together a panel of experts across the biological and social sciences to come up with ways for researchers to shift away from the racial concept in genetics research. “It’s a concept we think is too crude to provide useful information, it’s a concept that has social meaning that interferes in the scientific understanding of human genetic diversity and it’s a concept that we are not the first to call upon moving away from,” said Michael Yudell, a professor of public health at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Yudell said that modern genetics research is operating in a paradox, which is that race is understood to be a useful tool to elucidate human genetic diversity, but on the other hand, race is also understood to be a poorly defined marker of that diversity and an imprecise proxy for the relationship between ancestry and genetics. “Essentially, I could not agree more with the authors,” said Svante Pääbo, a biologist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, who worked on the Neanderthal genome but was not involved with the new paper. “What the study of complete genomes from different parts of the world has shown is that even between Africa and Europe, for example, there is not a single absolute genetic difference, meaning no single variant where all Africans have one variant and all Europeans another one, even when recent migration is disregarded,” Pääbo told Live Science. “It is all a question of differences in how frequent different variants are on different continents and in different regions.” In one example that demonstrated genetic differences were not fixed along racial lines, the full genomes of James Watson and Craig Venter, two famous American scientists of European ancestry, were compared to that of a Korean scientist, Seong-Jin Kim. It turned out that Watson (who, ironically, became ostracized in the scientific community after making racist remarks) and Venter shared fewer variations in their genetic sequences than they each shared with Kim. Assumptions about genetic differences between people of different races have had obvious social and historical repercussions, and they still threaten to fuel racist beliefs. That was apparent two years ago, when several scientists bristled at the inclusion of their research in Nicholas Wade’s controversial book, “A Troublesome Inheritance” (Penguin Press, 2014), which proposed that genetic selection has given rise to distinct behaviors among different populations. In a letter to The New York Times, five researchers wrote that “Wade juxtaposes an incomplete and inaccurate account of our research on human genetic differences with speculation that recent natural selection has led to worldwide differences in IQ test results, political institutions and economic development.” The authors of the new Science article noted that racial assumptions could also be particularly dangerous in a medical setting. “If you make clinical predictions based on somebody’s race, you’re going to be wrong a good chunk of the time,” Yudell told Live Science. In the paper, he and his colleagues used the example of cystic fibrosis, which is underdiagnosed in people of African ancestry because it is thought of as a “white” disease. Mindy Fullilove, a psychiatrist at Columbia University, thinks the changes proposed in the Science article are “badly needed.” Fullilove noted that by some laws in the United States, people with one black ancestor of 32 might be called “black,” but their 31 other ancestors are also important in influencing their health. “This is a cogent and important call for us to shift our work,” Fullilove said. “It will have an enormous influence. And it will make for better science.” So what other variables could be used if the racial concept is thrown out? Pääbo said geography might be a better substitute in regions such as Europe to define “populations” from a genetic perspective. However, he added that, in North America, where the majority of the population has come from different parts of the world during the past 300 years, distinctions like “African Americans” or “European Americans” might still work as a proxy to suggest where a person’s major ancestry originated. Yudell also said scientists need to get more specific with their language, perhaps using terms like “ancestry” or “population” that might more precisely reflect the relationship between humans and their genes, on both the individual and population level. The researchers also acknowledged that there are a few areas where race as a construct might still be useful in scientific research: as a political and social, but not biological, variable. “While we argue phasing out racial terminology in the biological sciences, we also acknowledge that using race as a political or social category to study racism, although filled with lots of challenges, remains necessary given our need to understand how structural inequities and discrimination produce health disparities between groups,” Yudell said. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/ Figure 2 Standards: This unit is aligned with the Pennsylvania Department of Education Academic Standards for Social Studies. These standards are designed to support instruction and development of content knowledge related to geography, history, sociology, and a variety of other domains. The goal of this unit is to expand upon PDE standards for Social Studies by introducing critical discussions of race in history. Standard – 7.1.9.B Explain and locate regions and their shared connections as defined by physical and human features. Standard – 8.1.9.A Compare patterns of continuity and change over time, applying context of events. Standard – 8.1.9.B Compare the interpretation of historical events and sources, considering the use of fact versus opinion, multiple perspectives, and cause and effect relationships. Standard – 8.1.9.C Construct research on a historical topic using a thesis statement and demonstrate use of appropriate primary and secondary sources. Standard – 8.4.9.D Analyze how conflict and cooperation among groups and organizations have influenced the history and development of the world. Appendix A:
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Briefly describe the two images:
What details are the most important in your group’s opinion?
How are the different subjects in these images being depicted, and what message does it communicate?
Briefly describe the two images:
What details are the most important in your groups opinion?
How are the different subjects in these images being depicted, and what message does it communicate?
Briefly describe the two images:
What details are the most important in your groups opinion?
How are the different subjects in these images being depicted, and what message does it communicate?
Briefly describe the two images:
What details are the most important in your groups opinion?
How are the different subjects in these images being depicted, and what message does it communicate?
Figure 5
Let’s PAARTY!!!!
Response w/ Supporting Text Evidence
P(lace/time)
A(uthor)
A(udience)
R(eason)
T(he main idea)
Y (why would I have you read this?
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Appendix B
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Sation 1
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Appendix C