It's difficult to fathom that in America's earliest days Native Americans were pushed out of their homes and eventually sequestered to reservations, or that God-fearing white men buying and selling black slaves was perfectly acceptable to the ruling class. Or that "No Irish Need Apply" signs were commonly posted by potential employers in the mid-eighteenth century. Nearly a century later at the height of WWII, the United States forced nearly 120,000 Japanese-Americans into internment camps. Even today, United States citizens are increasingly wary of the vast number of Hispanics seeking to make their home here in America.
Of course, this kind of discrimination wasn't always called racism. Far too often inequality has been institutionalized through our laws and our social customs. So how does the "natural order" come to be recognized as "racism?" In this 4-session study participants will explore these concepts and will take a walk through time to discover the unfolding of racism in the United States.
The following is a listing of the time period covered in each session: Session one: 1492-1790 European Colonialism and U.S. Nation Building; Session two, 1790-1954 U.S. Apartheid, Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism; Session three, 1954-1973 Movement Time: From Overt to Covert; and Session four, 1973-Present Post-Movement Time: Racism Redefined.