TOPIC 1.5 Labor, slavery, and caste in the Spanish colonies

Let’s Talk About race: it’s not real, but racism is

KC-1.2.II.C European traders partnered with some West African groups who practiced slavery to forcibly extract slave labor for the Americas…

Objective: Students will begin the process of “unlearning” the deeply ingrained societal myth that race is a biological reality by tracing the origins of the invention of “race.”

THIS KEY CONCEPT IN AN ANTIRACIST CLASSROOM:

“Racism is real, Race is not...so race does not account for racism.” - Dr. Barbara Fields

If race isn’t real, where does racism come from? This lesson follows the research of Dr. Barbara Fields and Dr. Ibram X. Kendi to show to students that racism does not actually come from ignorance or hate, but from racist policies which were created for the financial benefit of people in power. Later, racism was invented to justify those racist policies. Unfortunately, the made-up idea of race is going to have a gigantic impact on the story of American history.

Notes

I do this lesson the very first week of the year. American culture is saturated with myths about race and many students need to start the “unlearning” process right away.  

The goal of an AP teacher is to be a “guide on the side” rather than “sage on the stage,” and I achieve that goal most days. However, this lesson is much more focused on the teacher as the presenter of information because there are some things we have to get straight before we can jump into class discussion. In a way, this lesson presents the ground rules for the language we use in further class discussions on social issues. 

In this lesson, we practice the HIPP analysis of a primary source for the first time. (Actually, I am not a fan of HIPP but I use it for the first few weeks before I transition to my own “S.P.Y. Method” for approaching a primary source. We use S.P.Y. for the whole year and since adopting it, my students have performed higher on the DBQ.)

The following ideas are not my own, this is straight from experts in the field and our students deserve this background knowledge before taking the deep dive into US history.