Course Title：Racial Inequality in American Politics and Society

The goal of this module is to study the politics of the United States through the lens of its racial divisions. The module will help students understand why race, particularly the black-white divide, has been and continues to be central to American political life and development. In the module, students will gain a deep theoretical and historical understanding of racial formation in the United States before moving on to apply these insights to current debates about the role of race in American democracy and public policy. The module will focus centrally on the experience of African Americans, but the experiences of other groups -- Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos -- feature prominently. This course engages with both classic and ground-breaking research on the politics of race in the United States. The course will take seriously the role of the state in constructing racial categories and racial hierarchies through law, bureaucracy, and targeted policies. The course will examine how these policies intersect with American political economy and culture. Ultimately, this module concludes that in order to understand the politics of the United States, we must understand its unique relationship with race.