Description of Assignments:

This assignment requires you to demonstrate your ability to use your understanding of the psychological bases of race and racism to analyze a "real-life" example of how the concept of race or racism impacts individuals or groups of people. Below are details of what you should address in each section of your paper.

Pick a real-life example of how either the concept of race or racism effected the interaction between either individuals or groups, perceived as being members of different races and then use your understanding of race and racism to analyze your example. Your example can be of an event you observed or you experienced as either the person who reacted to someone based upon his or her race or as the person who someone treated differently because of your race. Begin this section by providing a detailed description of your example. You should describe the setting where the example occurred, a description of the people present (race, gender, and social class, the reason why the people were present, what happened, who initiated the interaction and how the person who was responded to (based upon their race) responded. Make sure you include your analysis of your example a discussion of the following questions/issue in your response to this section.

1. Why do you believe race was a factor in this experience?

2. What psychological or social factors do you think contributed to or caused the person in your example to use race as the bases for how they responded to or treated the person to who was from a different race?

3. What do you think both the person who reacted to someone, based upon how they perceived the race of another person and the person who was treated differently because of how their race is perceived by others can do to reduce or prevent such events from occurring in the future?

Keep in mind that there are no correct answers to these questions. What you want to do is demonstrate your ability to apply your understanding of race and the psychological or social factors that cause race to be an issue to understanding why race continues to cause and/or contribute to social problems.