Could you help with my discussion?

Discussion 1 Rubric

· Finally, you should conclude with a question or two that you think would foster further sociological discussion.

Online Reading for In text citations and Reference Page

· (Web Readings) I've gathered the following materials that address recent race-related issues surrounding the Charlottesville White supremacist/NeoNazi/White nationalist march. I encourage you to think through how these readings relate to the readings from our text for this week.

· Reed, Adolph, Jr. 2017. " Monumental Rubbish. (Links to an external site.) " Commondreams. (June 25). I've included this reading because it is a clear discussion of important history regarding the confederacy/civil war, the later erection of confederacy-related statues, and contemporary debates regarding racism versus heritage. Understanding history accurately is important to sociological analyses, as it helps make racial power relations more visible.

· Zhang, Sarah. 2017. " When White Nationalists Get DNA Tests That Reveal African Ancestry (Links to an external site.) ." The Atlantic (8/17/2017). I've included this link because it summarizes very recent but not-yet-published research regarding how white supremacists understand race as purely biological and how genetic testing challenges their assumptions. Note that this is a journalistic account of social science research. The study authors, Panofsky & Donovan, are critical of genetic ancestry tests, since they reify (to make a thing out of an idea) race, which is a social construct and not a biological fact. Interestingly, the White supremacists, when their results indicate that they are not as racially "pure" as they would like, find ways of challenging the methodology of the genetic tests in order to preserve their racial/racist ideology. Some of their criticisms of the genetic tests are quite similar to academic critiques of the tests, including the criticisms offered by Panofsky & Donovan.

· The Movement for Black Lives Platform (Links to an external site.) : Explore the elements of the platform developed by the coalition of organizations that make up the movement, which is also often referred to as Black Lives Matter. Note how their critique and proposed solutions are institutional, an approach which is consistent with sociological understandings of racial/ethnic inequality.

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