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Racism
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What is Racism?

Racism is one of the most extensively examined subjects in academic writing, appearing across disciplines such as sociology, history, political science, literature, and criminal justice. It asks students to confront how systems of racial hierarchy are constructed, maintained, and challenged within societies. The topic is academically rich because it connects individual experience to structural power, requiring writers to analyze not only prejudice at the personal level but also how race shapes institutions, culture, and opportunity. Works like Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness appear frequently as literary entry points, while frameworks linking racism to sexism, classism, and heterosexism push students toward intersectional thinking about how overlapping identities shape lived experience in America and beyond.

Student papers on this topic take a wide range of approaches. Literary analysis essays examine how race and racism operate within specific texts, while historical and comparative essays trace how attitudes and policies have shifted across time, including the particular experiences of Arab Americans before and after 9/11 or the Chicano community's relationship with racial identity. Other papers take a sociological or policy focus, investigating racism within the criminal justice system, in educational settings, or in relation to the rise of multiculturalism. Some essays engage documentary sources and media to assess how race functions as a social construction rather than a biological reality.

A strong essay on racism establishes a clear, arguable thesis rather than simply asserting that racism exists or does not exist. Evidence drawn from specific historical events, legal structures, community case studies, or close textual analysis carries the most weight. Writers should avoid treating racism as a monolithic, unchanging force — acknowledging its evolving forms and contexts produces sharper, more credible analysis.

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Paper Doctorate

Paris Is Burning and Mass Media: Race, Gender & Identity

A Deconstruct of the movie "Paris is Burning" as it relates to 6 Chapters in our textbook

Paper Doctorate

Masculinism in Science Fiction: Le Guin vs. Haldeman

Science fiction has always been a masculine genre, no matter that Mary Shelley invented it in her novel Frankenstein. Until fairly recent times, most science fiction writers were men, and they dealt with subjects like technology, power, space battles, featuring male heroes, explorers and adventurers. In film, science fiction has been a perfect subject for ultra-masculine actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger, although Lieutenant Ripley in the Alien trilogy proved that women could be masculine heroes as well and very effective at destroying hostile creatures that threaten humanity. Joe Haldeman's novel Forever Peace certainly fits within this conventional masculine narrative in science fiction, since the story is related by a male narrator named Sergeant Julian Class, an alienated soldier of the First World who opposes his own government and society. He is a class type of alienated and disillusioned male hero who nevertheless hopes that the world can achieve peace and prosperity through better use of technology. Even though it was written thirty years before, Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness is a radical departure from these types of themes and characters, since it takes place on an underdeveloped planet called Gethen far in the future.

Paper Doctorate

Immigration from Mexico and Its Impact on Women's Rights

Like many of the issues discussed in this course it is difficult to see a clear path to equal rights for female immigrants. This issue is particularly troubling because of the fact that there are layers of complex…

Thesis Undergraduate

Racism, Segregation, and Inequality in Urban Public Schools

Massive institutional racism and structural inequalities still exist in the United States, especially in housing, public education and the criminal justice system in inner city areas. In every urban area, the quality of education available to poor and minority students is demonstrably worse by any measure than that of their white peers in the suburbs. This type of institutional discrimination is not caused by genetic or cultural deprivation but by the fact that the U.S. has always been and remains a highly segregated and unequal society based on race and social class. Of course, this violates the liberal, egalitarian and meritocratic ideals on which the nation was (supposedly), but after all, the U.S. managed to survive with slavery for almost a hundred years after its founding, and with legal segregation and disenfranchisement of blacks for a hundred years after that. Chicago, Detroit, East St. Louis, Camden, New Jersey all have crumbling public school systems serving mostly black and Hispanic students funded at levels far below those of white suburban districts.

Paper Undergraduate

Race, Myth, and Capitol Sculpture: Pocahontas and Smith

Antonio Capellano's sculpture The Preservation of Captain Smith by Pocahontas (1825) is still in the Capitol Rotunda along with other works of the same period such as William Penn's Treaty with the Indians and The Landing of the Pilgrims, although they no longer resonate with audiences in the same way as they did in the 19th Century. In the 20th and 21st Centuries, more sophisticated and educated viewers at least would realize that these are all the product of an era of Western expansion and a highly romanticized view of history that is heavily tinged with racism and white nationalism.

Cuban Exodus of the 1960s: Revolution, Migration & Identity

Of all the historical events and happenings of the 1960s, the focus of this paper will be upon the exodus from Cuba during this decade. Cuba was a country at the forefront of world news for many reasons during the 1960s, including the mass exodus of Cubans from the island during a revolutionary period. In the 21st century, people do not conceive of Miami without thinking of Cuba, Cubans, and Cuban culture, but in the 1960s, Miami endured a great cultural transition with the entrance of many Cubans into the city.

Research Paper Doctorate

Cultural Variables in Career Counseling for Minority Students

Good career counseling always takes place within a cultural context, which is true regardless of ethnicity. Current theoretical models may not be adequate to explain the career behavior of racial and ethnic minorities.

Paper Doctorate

District 9 and French New Wave Cinema: Style and Influence

A description and outline of a paper to be written on French New Wave cinema and how elements founded by this movement can be found in the 2009 film District 9. Among the French New Wave elements District 9 uses are a loose story line, improvised dialogue, documentary style filming, and social commentary.

Essay Doctorate

Prejudice, the Clark Doll Test, and Racial Self-Image

This paper offers a very personal experience of discrimination observed at a local store and an interpretation of its relevance to the Clark Doll test of the 1930s. The questions and conclusions of the study are offered as an analysis of African-American children's ideas about race, self-perception, and standards of what is beautiful and acceptable. Implications for the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown vs. the Board of Education are also presented.

Paper Undergraduate

Race, Soft Skills, and Black Employment Discrimination in the US

The United States is supposed to be based on the principle that all men are created equal. Men have fought and died in order to defend this idea, but even more than two hundred years after the founding of this nation,…

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