Class Notes 5/2

Checklist for class today-

• Reading response to, between the world and me- How did it make you feel to read Between the World and Me and why?
• Understanding- Wealth and equality among African Americans and white Americans
• Red- negro concentration- category for whether a neighborhood was good or bad was based on race- 1930s-1940s
• FHA granting mortgages, would not finance a home in a red area- “Red lining”
• FHA refused to finance home in these red areas
• Return to groups- think about quotes in lens of the rest of the book
• Use quotes as a catalyst for discussion
• Have big discussion about quotes etc.
• Go in groups, chronologically, pausing to discuss what the groups have shared
• 1. Coates- Definition of racism- right quotes
• Whiteness becomes an idealized norm
• Race is a by product of racism
• Psychological perception of your own race
• White people held to a standard as well
• What does he mean by the people who believe that they are white? 42,98
• “In order to believe in your whiteness you have to ascribe to it”- Dr. West
• White Supremacy- language of cultural superiority
• 3. What role does innocence play in this story? Why does that matter? 96-97
• Flip side to innocence is naivety
• How do we determine who is guilty?- Dr. West
• Part of what Coates learns that he is not innocent and if he is flawed everyone is flawed.
• 2. Democracy and American Exceptionalism- What does American exceptionalism mean?
• Comparing our government to other countries- creates an allusion
• Fine print- involuntary capitalist exceptionalism
• 4. Because criminal justice system is flawed- it has potential to break someone
• We think about racism as individual acts of meanness”
• He is talking about systemic injustice/institutional injustice- Housing, jailing
• “I'm not a racist”- washes the hand of what inequality does exist
• we blame the victim
• 5. The dream-
• Intention- slave owners didn’t mean to be cruel or some were good to their slaves- the dream is a way in which we hope for a way of living without realizing the effects on other people, minorities- this white picket fence dream is not beneficial to all
• 6. What it means to be a writer-
• Means of recognizing- no one is really innocent
• Motive
• Pg. 29- writing as a means to getting an answer to the question at hand
• He learns he has a different way of seeing the world and wants to ask questions
• Personal Responses to the Book
• Who is the intended audience beyond his son?
• Dreamers who might not see themselves but might relate to the logic of cultural superiority

Dehumanization, which marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also (though in a different way) those who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of becoming more fully human” -  Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed