American Studies
One theme that could unify the wide variety of readings in this course would be the paradox of Equality vs. Hierarchy in American history and society, which is closely related to Inclusion and Exclusion. Black observers, activists and critics of American society like Martin Luther King, Langston Hughes, Cornell West and James Baldwin understood these themes particularly well. From the colonial period to the present, this country has always had a racial caste system, which all of its founders understood perfectly well. John Winthrop may have envisioned a Puritan Commonwealth that would be a model for the world, but this society also had slavery, genocidal wars against Native Americans, as well as harsh treatment for white religious dissenters and the lower classes in general. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were all large slave owners after all, and had to look no further than their own plantations to see that black slaves were at the bottom of this system, marginalized, excluded and lacking even basic citizenship rights. Native Americans, who were either exterminated or confined to reservations as the U.S. expanded to the west, were in a similar situation.
In the colonial period and early republic, few political and economic leaders seriously challenged this racial hierarchy, apart from reformers and abolitionists. Benjamin Franklin freed his slaves and started the first school for free blacks, but he was the exception. Jefferson assumed that free blacks would never have equal citizenship...
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