1. What do social scientists mean when they say that Race is a social construct, not a natural category? Please be as detailed as possible in your answer...give examples from various fields...support your answer with knowledge from the history of science, history, the study of societies (etc...)
2. Give a detailed account of the development of the racial construct? include possible explanation of the development of the racial construct in the U.S; for this question you must give an explanation of why and how such a construct would develop in modernity...what
where the necessary conditions that would make such a construct possible and desirable...for this you must include topics like Cartesian epistemology (how Descartes thinks we gain knowledge of the world, and what constitutes real knowledge), imperialism, the scientific and technological revolutions, the racial contract, etc...
3. What is Systemic racism? Explain not only the theory as presented by Faegin, but give evidence of its occurrence...(this may be done using Feagin, Zinn, Blackmon, Wise)
4. The lectures, Charles Mills and Gobineau, demonstrated that during the "enlightenment" of Europe and thereafter, there was much that European thinkers (philosophers, anatomists, "anthropologists") truly misunderstood, omitted, overlooked, forgot or distorted... some examples: the anatomists depicted other "races" in truly ridiculous ways, the amount of inhabitants were completely miscalculated (as though 10 "natives" counted for one), even ideas like the high threshold of pain that natives were said to have, genocides against so many, so many non-white peoples were simply forgotten buried in the "useless knowledge" of history, etc... Mills calls this phenomenon an "epistemology of forgetfulness" (epistemology here refers to how we know what we know), or "white moral cognitive disorder. Why did this forgetting, misinterpreting, misrepresenting happen? How can we rationalize this? How does it make sense (and it does make sense), and what are some of its contemporary repercussions?