- Hello, and welcome to the course, Race and Ethnic Minorities. My name is Dr. Karen Monique Gregg, and I will be your instructor this semester. I'm really excited about teaching you online because I love teaching online. I think I've prepared a fun and creative course that you'll find engaging and super interesting as you learn about race and ethnicity in society. Why should we study race and ethnicity in society? Well, race touches on everything we do in society, in the family, in relationships, in schools, at work, and in politics, but discussing racial issues can be difficult and personal for us. This will be a challenge that we'll all have to overcome as we learn about the different races and ethnicities, as well as what goes on in different countries as we move through the course. We'll mostly discuss the United States, but we'll also make comparisons with other countries. Race is important today because racial conflict continues to be an important social issue we all have to deal with in our lives. Even if we don't experience it personally, we all need to heighten our awareness of racial inequalities that exist in society. This course will help with that, but it will also teach us about why movements such as the Black Lives Matter movement have emerged in response to the persistence of discrimination and racism in society not only on the individual level, but also at the institutional level, in law enforcement, the criminal justice system, in hiring practices, and in healthcare. What materials will you need to succeed? We'll be using the called "Race and Ethnicity in America" by John Iceland. Many people today argue about what constitutes a fact. People bandy about the term fake news and question science at many turns. Iceland acknowledges this trend and wants to make it clear that many of the arguments we hear about today are not based on empirical evidence. This is important. Empirical evidence is how we know what constitutes absolute and relative truth. So the goal of this book is to address this by providing an empirical overview of patterns and trends in racial and ethic inequality, as well as a consideration of the causes and consequences for different groups. Iceland wants us to stop talking past one another and face the facts born out in the data that social scientists collect, analyze, and use to discuss differences in groups in our country. The book is only eight chapters long, but the data and information provided take a deep dive into the histories, backgrounds, and current data pertaining to Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, Asians, and the multicultural population that has emerged in society today. We will also make some international comparisons between countries about the degree of immigration and the different policies countries use to integrate immigrant populations into their cultures. This will lead us into policy debates about the best way to incorporate immigrants into a host society. The book has a great conclusion that reviews for us many of the major takeaway points of the earlier chapters. I hope you'll enjoy Iceland's book. The bookstore should be able to help you get it. We will need it right away in this course, so please do not delay. Okay, what will your assignments be in this course? In other words, how will you demonstrate your mastery of the material that I assign? There are five types of assignments in this course: quizzes, final exam, evaluation essays, discussions, and writing assignments. To start the course off right, there's a quiz over the syllabus due in the first week of the course. If you read the syllabus and watched this video, you should be set to do well on this quiz. After that, there are eight more are quizzes over the chapters in the Iceland book. You have to take all eight quizzes in the course. Don't skip any of them. Quizzes are made up of 10 questions that are either true-false or multiple choice. At the end of the course, there will be a final exam over all eight chapters of Iceland's book. Don't worry. Both the chapter quizzes and the final exam are open book and open notes, so if you've read and carefully studied the information in each chapter, you will do very well on the quizzes and exam. I personally wrote every question in the question bank. You should know that some questions are easy and others are more difficult and indicate whether or not you understand the big points Iceland is trying to convey. In addition to quizzes and tests, there are two evaluation essays and two discussions. Let's discuss these next. At the beginning of the course, you are asked to complete a short essay on what motivated you to take this course, what you hope to learn, and your thoughts on the current state of racial and ethnic relations in the United States. At the end of the course, you're asked to complete another short essay, but this time it is a reflection on what you've learned and what you thought of Iceland's book, then you're asked to tell me something about this class that you will discuss with other people. Early in the course, you will watch a short film about Billie Holiday's song "Strange Fruit." Afterwards, you will answer four short essay questions about the film and the power of music and other forms of culture to change society. This assignment is intended to get about music and the power of lyrics to shape society. It leads you into picking your own song to analyze in a formal paper called the song assignment. Prior to writing this paper, you will participate in the first discussion and share with the class different songs about race and ethnicity that you're considering using for the song assignment and why. Then you will follow very specific instructions to write a very structured paper about your song pick. In fact, this paper is so structured, you should really consider it a written exam. After you complete this paper, you are asked to participate in another discussion and openly reflect on the process of writing the song assignment with your peers. I hope you like the reflection essays and the discussions. I think they lead students to be very intentional about why they are taking this course and what they're learning. That's it. That's all I think you need to know to get started in the course. If this sounds like a lot, don't worry, everything you need to know is very clearly explained in the syllabus and in the learning management system, and you always have me or the TA to ask if things are a little overwhelming or unclear. I hope this introduction to the course helped you and that you all do very well in the course. (logo ticking)
