EDST 391-083
Color-Blind Nation: Worthy or Worthless Ideal?

Background

People of good will disagree about where, if anywhere, we should emphasize racial identity and where the consideration of racial identity should be deemphasized or even prohibited.

As contentious as racial preferences in college admissions are, they may actually represent one of the easier cases to decide. In your projects you are starting to address some of the more interesting and difficult cases. What if individuals prefer to associate mostly with "their own kind"? Should institutions--like UD--try to prevent that, encourage it for some kinds of people but not others, or just let people segregate themselves however they might wish? Also, what principles should guide us in making these decisions--personal freedom, racial integration, interracial peace and harmony, racial loyalty and self-development, equal material outcomes for all groups, equal chance for dignity and respect, and so on?

Pick a specific topic

Pick some "choice point" in social life where individuals or institutions have to decide how much they are going to emphasize or deemphasize race. It can be something that your project is focusing on, something else already mentioned in class, or anything else that really interests you. Please also decide who you are going to focus on as the "chooser" (that is, who is faced with the choice point). Examples include but are not restricted to the following.

• Choice points
  • dorms
  • fraternities, sororities
  • public housing (e.g., low-cost city housing)
  • school-sponsored clubs, associations, teams, centers
  • private clubs, associations, etc.
  • churches and other religious organizations
  • mentorships, scholarships
  • training, recruitment
  • busing for racial balance in the public schools
  • racial quotas tomaintain diversity in public schools where parents are able to choose which schools they send their children to under "school choice" plans
  • friends, acquaintances
  • dating and marriage
  • personal identity
  • perceptions of other individuals (stereotypes)
  • news reporting
  • TV and movies
  • anything else you are interested in except the following:
    • not college admissions (we have already done that)
    • not issues where there is general consensus or law, such as whether it is OK to refuse to serve some races in restaurants, rent apartments to them, incite hate or bodily harm, etc.

• Chooser
  • individuals making choices for themselves
  • individuals making choices for their children
  • leaders of small groups
  • heads of organizations or subunits
  • other

Analyze the issue and make a recommendation

Analyze the broader social and ethical questions involved in the choice point you have selected (on whether to emphasize or deemphasize racial identity), and explain what you think the decision should be. Be sure to explain all the following.

• the specific choice you are examining

• the social and ethical questions that emphasizing or deemphasizing racial identity in this particular situation raise. For example, what tradeoffs in goals and rights might be involved if UD let (or refused to let) students segregate themselves by race in university housing, social, or educational settings? Or if blacks (but not whites) could voluntarily segregate themselves in one-race schools--as Brooks suggests? What might be the tradeoffs in group development, racial harmony, and personal dignity be if individuals were discouraged from lodging their identities and loyalties in their racial groups--as Kennedy suggests? (These are just sample questions. Think through yourself what the important questions are!)

• how the choice fits into the larger debate about race in America. For example, is this a choice in the public sphere and one which government should try to influence, or is it a purely private choice that governments, colleges, employers, and other institutions should stay out of? Is this an issue that people have been ignoring but is fundamentally more important than college admissions, which is much debated? (Once again, these only sample questions. It's up to you to determine what the best questions are here! My goal here is simply to have you put your specific issue into the broader context.)

• what, in your view, is the best choice to make at this choice point, and why.

Grading criteria

You know what they are by now!

• a crystal clear, well organized, and well supported line of argument
• depth of thought (dig down deep, go past the obvious!)
• coherent, concise, graceful writing
• no irrelevancies, misspellings, or other unsightly blemishes