Essay: Racism a Short History
George Fredrickson argues in the excerpt from his book Racism: A Short History that you read for last class that, “Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain is critical to the history of Western racism because its attitudes and practices served as a kind of segue between the religious intolerance of the Middle Ages and the naturalistic racism of the modern era.” Fredrickson demonstrates that the antipathy towards Jews transformed from one based on their beliefs to one based on their inherent “Jewishness” that was thought to be passed on by blood. Accordingly, this later vision represents the first emergence — if in prototypical form — of modern racism among Europeans.
In this paper of 400 – 600 words, answer the following question:
“How can the evidence contained in these two laws (spain_document_1, spain_document_2) be interpreted to illustrate the transformation Frederickson describes.”
That is, since these documents likely reflect the thinking of their writers, explain to your reader how by looking closely at the documents we can see that although there was antipathy towards Jews in both periods, that antipathy became a racist antipathy (rather than merely a xenophobic one) in the later period.
Some helpful pointers about your essay:
1) your essay will need to employ Fredrickson’s distinction between racism and xenophobia and explain how the first document reveals a xenophobic vision rather than a racist one, while the second document clearly demonstrate a shift to racism.
2) You will want to organize around your essay around a concise thesis statement that appears near the beginning of your paper. Underline your thesis (5 points off if you do not). Your thesis should be a concise expression of your argument and answer the “how” and “why’ question.
3) When using direct quotations, be sure to use method 3 or 4 for introducing quotations (-5% if you don’t) and also be sure to reduce your quotations to ten for fewer words. See here on how to reduce quotations.
4) Your essay will have to use textual evidence from the documents (spain_document_1, spain_document_2) in the form of direct quotations to support your various claims.
4) Be sure in those paragraphs where you make points from evidence to organize those paragraph in the familiar cl/ev/wa format and that you put a (CL) in front of your paragraph’s claim, an (EV) before the evidence, and a (WA) in front of the warrant. (Keep in mind (A) not all paragraphs should be in cl/ev/wa format–just those that make a point from evidence. Also keep in mind (B) that the cl/ev/wa format is for organizing individual paragraphs rather than for organizing whole papers. A strong paper will likely have a series of cl/ev/wa paragraphs as well as a number of paragraphs that are not in that format.)
5) Note that the essay does NOT ask you to use the documents to map out the changing restrictions upon Jews or the violence directed at them. Rather, you should take as your central task explaining how and why the documents reveal the changing nature of (and basis for) the antipathy towards Jews — and why this change occurred.
6) When crafting your paper, be sure to ask yourself, “How does the perception or definition of the difference between Jews and Christians assumed by the writers of this document correspond (or not correspond) to Fredrickson’s definition of racism?”
7) Remember, merely because an aspect of a law restricted Jews in some way doesn’t reveal whether that restriction was motivated by racism rather than xenophobia (or xenophobia rather than racism). So, for example, if the law had read “Jews can’t eat ice cream,” that wouldn’t tell us whether or not Christians thought of the differences between them and Jews was merely one of beliefs (which would indicate xenophobia) or of blood (which would reveal racism). Either racism or xenophobia could encourage a law against Jews. You will need to find evidence from the documents that reveals one motivation rather than the other. It’s there, I promise.
8 Some smaller things to pay attention to: (a) the documents represent two different time periods, (b) not everything in a document will be relevant to your paper; stay focused on proving your thesis rather than writing a summary of — or a book report on — the laws, (c) the assignment assumes the laws reflect the thinking of the people who wrote them.
9)) Be sure to contact Prof. Umbach if you have questions; better to get answer to your questions before your write the paper rather than after it has been graded. Fritz likes to answer questions and often has useful answers. That’s why they pay him the big bucks.
10) Finally, no outside research is necessary, desirable, or even permitted for this paper. DO NOT USE OUTSIDE SOURCES IN WRITING THIS PAPER
SAMPLE OUTLINE
- Introduction
a: historical background (why look at Iberia at all when discussing racism? Spend no more than 3 sentences on this topic — just enough to set up your reader to make sense of your argument)
b: Fredrickson’s argument and his definition of racism (keep any quotation in this paragraph to 3 words or less)
c: your thesis (document 1 does not reflect racism for reasons X and Y; but document 2 does reflect racism for reasons W and Z)
- document 1 reflects xenophobia rather than racism for reasons X and Y
- reason xclaim
evidence
warrant
b. reason y
claim
evidence
warrant
III. Changes A and B in Spain lead to racism against Jews, as reflected in document 2 racism for reasons W and Z
a. changes in Spain that lead to racism against Jews (briefly)
- reason w
claim
evidence
warrant
- reason Z
claim
evidence
warrant
IV Conclusion
END OF ASSIGNMENT
