Final Response Paper
In place of a final exam, you will write responses to the three situations posed below. Ultimately,
the purpose of these response questions is to prepare you for conversations about race outside of
the classroom. In your responses, you must draw on materials and examples from this course.
Please cite these in your responses. The purpose of citing the materials from class is so that you
can easily pinpoint these if you are ever asked about them.
You will respond to all three of the following prompts:
(1) Your good friend Amy tells you she thinks racism is a thing of the past. Write a
compassionate response to Amy. In your response, consider at least two different
definitions of racism and provide at least three examples of how racism persists,
drawing on the readings and lectures.
(2) Your good friend Joe tells you he doesn’t understand what people mean when they
say race is socially constructed. Write a compassionate response to Joe. In your
response, explain the social construction of race and provide at least three examples
from the readings and lectures of how race is socially constructed.
(3) Your good friend Taylor runs a blog on issues related to race, ethnicity, and
immigration (REI). They invite you to write a blog entry on an area of REI inequality
of your interest that ends with a call for action. The area of inequality must come
from one of the areas we covered in unit 2 of the class. Provide a description of the
inequality and how it persists, drawing on statistics and explanations from the class
and readings.
The purpose of giving these questions to you in advance is so that you can be thinking about
them throughout the course. And of course, you may write your response to any of these
whenever you feel you’ve been adequately equipped to do so! Together, these responses should
be around 9 pages double spaced. Please use one inch margins, Times New Roman font, with a
font size of 12.
To cite lecture, cite it as (Lecture, Week X, slide #). To cite the textbook, cite it as (Textbook, Ch
X, page #). To cite any of the other readings from class, cite as (Author’s last name, Year article
was published). You may also draw on outside sources, however this is not required. Any
outside sources must be cited as (Author name, Year published) and must be from a peer-
reviewed academic journal or book press. Complete bibliographic information of outside sources
must be included in a references page at the end (which will not count towards your page count).
A references page is not needed if you do not draw on outside sources. The written responses
will be due on Monday, May 13, by 11:59 pm on Canvas. These should be uploaded as a word
document.
