Course for international guest/part time students

Faculty

Faculty of Social Sciences

Organization

TÁTK Minority Studies Department

Code

EKIP11.1

Title

Racial thinking and xenophobia

Usual semester

Autumn

ECTS

5

Language

en

Learning outcomes

The seminar aims to examine ethnic, racial and minority issues from a demographic perspective. Racial Thinking and Xenophobia: Racism is a part of our everyday lives. For the past 500 years, people have been taught how to interpret and understand race. We have learned that races are structured in a hierarchical order and that some races are better than others. Even if you are not a racist, your life is affected by this ordered structure. Does this mean we are born into a racist society? The problem with any social construction so profoundly embedded is that it is self-evident and invisible simultaneously. Since racism is part of our global culture and also well established to be reprehensible, racism is something that other people are guilty of. This creates the uncanny reality of modernity, where racism is everywhere and yet nowhere to be found.

Course content

Racism is a part of our everyday lives. For the past 500 years, people have been taught how to interpret and understand race. We have learned that races are structured in a hierarchical order and that some races are better than others. Even if you are not a racist, your life is affected by this ordered structure. Does this mean we are born into a racist society? The problem with any social construction so profoundly embedded is that it is self-evident and invisible simultaneously. Since racism is part of our global culture and also well established to be reprehensible, racism is something that other people are guilty of. This creates the uncanny reality of modernity, where racism is everywhere and yet nowhere to be found.

Bibliography

Sussman, Robert W. The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.

Programmes of the course