Syllabus for Race, Politics, and the Atlanta Paradox

The purpose of this course is to explore what has been called "democratic community economics" (Jessica Gordon-Nembhard) and its relevance for addressing deep, persistent political-economic problems in African American Communities. The focus will be on a set of alternative institutional arrangements including producer and consumer cooperatives, community development credit unions and community land trusts and specifically their deep roots in African American politics, their various current manifestations, and their potential contemporary policy relevance for promoting inclusive sustainable, local, community development. In the nature of the case, this course is somewhat experimental. Why? Because Gordon-Nembhard persuasively complains that democratic community economics generally is neglected in programs in African-American Studies (to say nothing of Political Science or Economics). While her challenge is our inspiration, we will be basically making things up as we go along. Class Format: This is a strange time. It is an anxiety producing time. And a frustrating time. My aim in the class is to support you as you try to navigate the strangeness, anxiety and frustration so you can learn and move toward your degree. If at any time you need to rant or vent or just talk about the strangeness, anxiety and frustration, or anything else, we can arrange to do that. Reach out. Until further notice we will hold all group meetings remotely-via your favorite platform, Zoom. Why? Because the UR President has decreed it so. But also, given my age I am in an especially susceptible population covid-wise. Yes, even as a fully vaxed + boosted person. I hope to have our meetings be largely discussion based rather than lectures. We can talk about how to navigate that via Zoom at our early meetings. Here please note this: On-Line Etiquette: Several things I will insist on. (1) Mute your mic except when speaking. (2) Cameras on!-No Avatars or blacked out screens, please. I will ask you to reveal yourself if you are hiding! (3) Use the chat function to raise questions or get in the queue to speak. (4) Feel free to interrupt me if you need clarification or whatever. (5) As you speak, don't just address me; talk to one another. If you are not in Rochester and have time-shift problems due to being in another time zone, let me know. I will record all the zoom sessions and upload them to Blackboard for your viewing pleasure. The bottom line however is that class attendance is not optional. I also will ask you to each meet me one-on-one four times over the course of the term. We can do these meetings during office hours or can schedule them to accommodate your schedule. At the outset these will be 'virtual' encounters-at least until whenever everything might return to in-person. Each meeting will last 20-30 minutes. I understand that for some of you this will seem like a daunting prospect. I am not trying to terrorize you! Instead, this is an opportunity for me to make contact and check in with you about how you are doing in the course and otherwise. I hope you will think of these meetings more like a conversation than as an interrogation. More on this on day one of the class. READINGS: The required reading for this course is difficult, it is diverse, and there is a lot of it. Moreover, none of the reading is presented in predigested textbook form. In both senses the reading load for this course might seem totally unreasonable! It is. My excuse is that the problems we will be addressing are crucially important and complex. I also respect you students enough to not dumb the material down to the lowest common denominator. It is imperative that you do the reading and that you do so prior to class. I have ordered books (marked *) at the University Bookstore. But because I cannot tell whether any of you will actually be on campus, all also are readily available from your preferred e-purveyor. I've also asked for them to be on reserve at Rush Rhees. I will make the other readings available via a course Blackboard page. A number of the assigned readings are, as is clear from the syllabus, available directly on line-I have indicated where this is the case. A rough (aspirational!) schedule for the semester is at the end of the syllabus. I expect you to do the assigned reading prior to coming to class. https://www.epi.org/blog/the-racial-wealth-gap-how-african-americans-have-been-shortchanged-out-ofthe-materials-to-build-wealth/

Public Health Prologue Many folks-including the University administration-seem to thing Covid is "over." That, I believe, is naïve and dangerous. Not only is the direct experience of contracting Covid dangerous, but we know little about the long-term and downstream implications. What we do know about such things tends to be disturbing. However, College and University policies insist that we engage in risky behavior. And I (Professor Johnson) am part of an age cohort for whom Covid is especially dangerous. So please, if you feel even the faintest bit ill stay away from class. Feel free to mask and maintain as. Much social distancing as our classroom allows. I encourage you to do all three things. ***** This is a course about democracy in contemporary America. This year we will start from a discussion of persistent, dire racial injustice. Our premise will be that racial minorities will not, on their own, successfully remedy the tangle of injustices captured by the idea of 'structural racism.' Instead, real progress will require support from the white majority of the country. So, we will spend most of the course talking about white people, specifically 'white working class,' people. This is a difficult task because many of us have no access to working class life. And the very idea of treating others as an object of study is itself an inauspicious basis for making political progress. Hence our predicament. Nearly everyone recognizes significant racial injustice in the US. Sophisticated analyses also recognize that progress in addressing such injustice demands a coalition that will include a significant contribution by members of the white working class. Much of the white working class is ill-disposed to that undertaking-indeed, they seem to have become increasingly conservative politically. Mostly, it is difficult to understand-as opposed to dismiss, condemn or ridicule that conservatism. As a result, it seems like we are stuck with racial injustice and fated to relive the conflict, violence, and so forth that has characterized our recent and not so recent history. Are we? The topics we will be taking up are fraught: race, solidarity, social class, coalition politics, resentment, anger, inequality, contempt, economic hardship and death. These substantive matters are central to contemporary politics and will surely elicit strong views and disagreements. They are unavoidably normative, meaning they involve tasks of criticizing, justifying, and assessing actions, practices and institutions. Those are central tasks for political theory. And our aim in this course is to learn to think like political theorists. That said, there is no party line in the course, meaning I do not care if you agree or disagree with me, with one another, or with any (or all?) of the readings. I care about your willingness to stick your neck out, to think critically, and to articulate and defend your views clearly both orally and in writing. So, whether or not you agree with the instructor has no bearing on your grade. ***** Class Format: The course primarily will be lecture and discussion based. I will encourage participation and not only welcome but solicit questions and observations. That means that I expect you not only to keep up with the reading, but also to read with care and to demonstrate this in class discussions. In lectures I will not just cover assigned materials but incorporate research and writings not found on the list for the course. Required Readings: What follows are the assigned readings for the course. You are correct. There is a totally unreasonable amount of quite disparate material. None of it comes in pre-digested form. This is unavoidable given the nature of the subject. Our aim is to think like political theorists-to draw connections, make inferences, and think creatively not just about what is the case but what might be. Doing that across these sorts of reading is hard. I know that.

2020

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2023

In this iteration of the class, I had a much better sense for the rhythm of the semester and how different units could flow into each other. In the previous semester, I took note of texts that had a lot to say to each other and revised my reading schedule to accentuate those resonances. This class had much higher enrollments than the previous iteration, which changed the nature of the conversations in the classroom. I was glad to have the previous semester's experience with the reading because it helped give more structure to our larger conversations (the previous semester had much more space for discovery, for wandering around the texts). As an aside, the readings for this class and the conversations in the room helped me formulate the arguments I made in my forthcoming essays "The Sea Birds, Still" and "Learn Futility."