Writing Questions: Write 1 page, double spaced, following the directions below. This week’s question is meant to get you to think about what it means to think of racism as structural – that is,...

Writing Questions:

Write 1 page, double spaced, following the directions below.

This week’s question is meant to get you to think about what it means to think of racism as
structural
– that is, not defined only by individuals with racist attitudes, but as a combination of individual beliefs with larger structures which exist to further things like profit, political power, and so on. It comes in three parts.

(1) Pick one specific policy, institution, formal technique, or informal practice, and explain how it helped create racial segregation. (2) Who did segregation benefit? Was it produced for profit, to entrench racial beliefs, to uphold political power, etc? (hint: it is almost certainly a mixture). And (3) What is the role of
ideology
– beliefs and assumptions about how the world works – in hiding and covering up its role in helping to produce segregation, and even in
naturalizing
racial separation?