Discussion Topics 17 and 18 PDF

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Discussion Topics 17 and 18...

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Drawing from this week's reading and any outside knowledge you see fit, to what extent would you agree/disagree with the notion that World War II helped set the stage for the Civil Rights Movement and why? Do you think the Civil Rights Movement would have come about when it did regardless of WWII? What significant impact, if any, do you think the war had on race relations and racial dynamics in the US? In what ways did the war diminish racial differences? In what ways did it heighten them--for example, as with the Japanese American internment and/or the continued segregation of troops as reflected in this week's radio piece, "The Port Chicago 50?" And how do you see the lessons of the WWII period affecting the later push for Civil Rights, if at all? Or put another way, how might looking at WWII in relation to the Civil Rights Movement affect how you see the relationship between major historical events/eras in general? To what extent do you think events at one point can affect what might be possible years, decades later? James Baldwin’s 1963 essay, "My Dungeon Shook" (on Blackboard), directly addresses the notion of internalized racism —that is, ways in which an individual comes to believe, consciously or not, the various negative racial/racist stereotypes about themselves and members of their own racial group. On the topic of internalized racism, there’s also the famous experiment by African American psychologists Mamie and Kenneth Clark in the 1930s and 40s in which black children were presented with black and white dolls and then asked to pick the one that they preferred, the one that was such things as "nice,” “bad,” etc.— the overwhelming majority of the children in the original experiment associated the white doll with positive attributes and the black doll with negative, which for many raised concerns about internalized racism in children. Contemporary filmmakers, activists, and scholars have raised questions about the extent to which internalized racism continues to be a concern (I’m providing links to a 2006 film and a more recent panel discussion which address contemporary versions of the experiment for those interested). All that said, to what extent do you see “internalized racism” as a significant factor in self esteem and/or in society in general, past and present? Do you think it has been as destructive in the lives of some African Americans historically as Baldwin’s essay seems to suggest? Why/why not?

Media coverage of the 2006 film: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2553348 The 2006 short film, A Girl Like Me: http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/watch/6/a_girl_like_me Panel discussion on race aired on msnbc (note: this is not to say I would endorse msnbc as an unbiased resource any more than I would any other commercial news network, but just thought the discussion itself raised some interesting questions. Once at the website, scroll to top of menu of clips on the right side to find/play the first clip referring to the Clarks' doll experiment): http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24165209/...