Some of the most enduring and violent conflicts in America center on Race. The goal of this course is to explore, discuss, and better understand the relationship between perceptions of racial identity, attributions of racial difference, and politics, broadly defined. We focus on the recent and persistent debates about racism, identity, right, representation, citizenship, conflict, and coalitions. A repeated theme of this course is the question whether racial order and inequality are essential to, or an exception from, the liberal democracy in the U. S. This is a lecture course with intensive readings, written assignments, and in-class discussion.
This course falls under the American Politics subfield.
James Taylor
Associate Professor
James Lance Taylor received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. His dissertation was on contemporary Black politics and political involvement as reflected in the Million Man March, in which he personally participated, and about which he's recently published two articles. Most recently, Professor Taylor contributed a chapter to Barbara McGraw and Jo Renee Formicola's Taking Religious Pluralism Seriously (Baylor, 2005). He has also written a chapter for the book, Religious Leaders and Faith-Based Politics (2002), and contributed an essay to the 2002 Report on Violence in San Francisco, published by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, and focused in particular on the causes and impact of violence on communities of color.
Professor Taylor was selected as "Teaching Assistant of the Year" in 1993 while at USC, and taught for five years at Pepperdine University, where he was selected to interview Atallah Shabazz, the daughter of the Black Nationalist leader Malcolm X, on the occasion of Spike Lee's 1992 release of the film Malcom X.
Professor Taylor has served as a Task Force member for the "Slavery Disclosure Ordinance," sponsored by San Francisco County and City Supervisor Sophie Maxwell. During the summer of 2006, he led a group of USF students to several cities in post-apartheid South Africa, as they studied political development, issues related to poverty, HIV/AIDS, race and culture, and their impacts on "street" children.
Professor Taylor teaches in the areas of American Politics, Black Politics, Political Leadership, and Race & Ethnic Politics. He's currently revising his dissertation for publication.