History 186 Study Guide (will be posted on course website)
Final exam will be at the SJSU scheduled time, on Wednesday, May 25 at 2:45 p.m.
Bring a BIG blue book to the exam.
You will answer two questions from Part I and one question from Part II in your final exam. You
must write in complete sentences. Do not use bulleted lists.
Part I. (40 points each)
1. Rockman, Manring and Frederickson discuss race as a response to social anxiety.
How does Rockman explain the emergence of a white workingman’s identity in the early
nineteenth century?
How does Manring explain the conditions for Aunt Jemima’s appeal in the 1880s-1920s?
How does Frederickson discuss the turn from ethnoracial to ethnoreligious prejudice in
the twenty-first century?
2.
Clarence Walker talks about Afrocentrism as a retreat from historical engagement.
What is Afrocentrism?
Discuss at least four reasons why Walker dismisses the content of the Afrocentrist
argument.
Why does Walker call the Afrocentrists homophobic and anti-semitic?
3. How did scientific racism affect Asian immigrants’ legal battle for citizenship in the United
States?
Explain scientific racism.
Discuss how judges ruled on the “whiteness” of Asians in three legal cases.
How did some Asians - the Japanese and Indians in particular – strategize to be
considered “white?”
4. How has the relationship between race and citizenship affected the place of Africans, the Irish,
and the Asians in the American colonies/United States? Consider all of the following:
slave codes of the seventeenth century (Jordan essay),
the 1790 immigration law
the 1875 citizenship laws
anti-miscegenation laws
5. We began the class by talking about hope. Explain the reasons for the optimism or pessimism of
each of these historians:
Kincaid,
Rockman,
Manring,
Walker
Frederickson
Conclude by explaining where you would situate yourself and why.
6. We have spent many weeks studying the racialization of Africans and African-Americans in the
United States. We have followed their historical trajectory with Jordan, Rockman, Johnson, and
Walker.
Using each of these four authors, explain how the racialization of these Americans
changed from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.
Explain why we must understand black history before we can understand the place of
other ethnicities/races.
Part II (20 points)
1. Use any four examples of our “From my Life” presentations to discuss some issues that
preoccupied students in our class.
Begin by describing the four presentations briefly.
Given our location and institution, how would you contextualize our preoccupations?
Explain your answer using any three class texts. You may use Jordan, Rockman, Johnson,
Manring, Walker, or Frederickson.
2. Use any four examples of the final image presentations to discuss how racial representations
shape our current world.
Begin by describing any four images briefly.
What is common in the images you selected? Do the images show the emergence of a
new historical trend? A continuation of earlier trends?
Explain your answer using any three class texts. You may use Jordan, Rockman, Johnson,
Manring, Walker, or Frederickson.
3. Read the attached article on “American Exceptionalism.” Based on your understanding of race
and ethnicity in this class, what could you add to this article?
On the Commons / By David Morris
We're #1 -- Ten Depressing Ways America Is Exceptional
America is exceptional in the advantages we’ve had over other nations, not what we’ve done with those advantages.
April 20, 2011 |
Recent research contradicts the fundamental tenet of American exceptionalism. A Brookings Institution report
comparing economic mobility in the United States and other countries concludes, “…“Starting at the bottom of the
earnings ladder is more of a handicap in the United States than it is in other countries.”
For Republican presidential candidates the phrase American Exceptionalism has taken on almost talismanic qualities.
Newt Gingrich’s new book is titled, A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism Matters. “American the
Exceptional” is the title of a chapter in Sarah Palin’s book America by Heart.
And woe be to those who take issue with the phrase. 2008 Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee declares, “To deny
American exceptionalism is in essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation.” 2012 Presidential candidate Mitt
Romney insists, “The reorientation away from a celebration of American exceptionalism is misguided and bankrupt.”
What is this American exceptionalism Republicans so venerate? After interviewing many Republican leaders,
Washington Post Reporter Karen Tumulty concludes it is the belief that America “is inherently superior to the world’s
other nations”. It is a widely held belief. Indeed, most Americans believe our superiority is not only inherent but
divinely ordained. A survey by the Public Religious Research Institute and the Brookings Institution found that 58
percent of Americans agree with the statement, “God has granted America a special role in human history.”
Let me make it clear at the outset. I too believe in American exceptionalism, although I don’t think God has anything
to do with it. But I suspect my perspective will find little favor among Republicans in general and Tea Party members
in particular. For I believe that America is exceptional in the advantages we’ve had over other nations, not what we’ve
done with those advantages.
Indeed, to me there are two American exceptionalisms. One is the exceptionally favorable circumstances the United
States found itself in at its founding and over its first 200 years. The second is the exceptional way in which we have
squandered those advantages, in the process creating a value system singularly antagonistic to the changes needed
when those advantages disappeared.
Americans did not become rich because of our rugged individualism or entrepreneurial drive or technical
inventiveness. We were born rich. Ann Richards’ famous description of George Bush Sr. as an individual is equally
applicable to the United States as a whole, “He was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.”
When asked to identify the single most important difference between the Old and New World, renowned historian
Henry Steele Commager responded, in the New World your baby survived. The New World had an abundance of
cheap land which meant the New World, unlike the Old World, was largely populated by self-reliant property owners.
Coupled with a moderate climate and rich soil, immigrants could grow all the food needed for their families, livestock
and horses. There was plenty of clean water and sufficient free or low cost wood to build and heat one’s house.
The fact that Americans could choose to live on a farm also gave them significant bargaining power with employers.
As a result wages in the New World were much higher than in the Old World.
The United States also benefited enormously from tens of millions of immigrants who, through a Darwinian-like
process of natural selection, were among the most driven and entrepreneurial and hardy of their native countries. And
on the dark side of the immigration picture, we also benefited immensely from millions of involuntary immigrants who
provided an army of unpaid labor for southern plantations.
American exceptionalism must also include our unique advantage in having two oceans separating us from potential
enemies. After 1815, no foreign troops ever again set foot on American soil. Indeed, America has benefited mightily
from foreign wars. Arguably, the conflict between France and England had more to do with our winning independence
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than our own military efforts. In the first half of the 19 century, European wars led political leaders to peacefully sell
huge quantities of land to the United States for a pittance (e.g. the Louisiana purchase of 1803 doubled the size of
our infant nation).