Assignment

1. Reflective Statement (3-4 pages): This essay will reflect on the progress you have made as a writer and thinker in the class. Specifically, you will need to identify one or more critical concepts and ideas that have informed both your writing and thinking during the course of the semester. You will then need to briefly reflect on how you have marshaled a specific concept(s) or idea(s) in your essays, in your reflections and in your discussion of the issues we have considered. Lastly, discuss your favorite passage from Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye as it relates to the concept(s) you have identified. This critical section focusing on Morrison's novel needs to be about a third of your paper or 1-2 pages in length. Here are some possibilities for the central concept(s) that grounds your reflective statement:

a. Race as a social construction

b. Interdisciplinary approaches in African American Studies

c. Black Psychology

d. Invisible Politics

e. Afrocentricity

f. Chattel Slavery

g. Nathan Hare

h. San Francisco State University (site of first Black Studies Program)

i. Internalized Racism

j. Stereotype Threat

k. Double Consciousness

l. The Problem of Color Line

m. Plessy v. Ferguson

n. The Washington and Du Bois debate

o. Washingtonian Politics of Deference

p. The Atlanta Compromise.