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The central concern of this course is to better understand the formation and development of Chicana/o and Mexican origin people historically, socially, politically, and economically. We have begun to understand the relationship between the production of race and social and economic inequality as emerging from the project of colonialism. The midterm therefore asks that you engage the readings through the method by which we are learning about Chicana/os and other people of color: the historical interaction between Capital, Law, & Ideology.
PART ONE:
Provide a detailed C-L-I chart (form can be found here Download form can be found here) in which you specifically name the relevant forms of Capital (economic goods/conditions/resources), Law (legislation, policy, enforcement, etc.), and Ideology (ideas/language/images) that were used to create racial subjects from the colonial encounters (1492) up until the turn of the twentieth century (1900). All readings may be used for this assignment to identify four forms of Capital, four mechanisms of Law, and four examples of Ideological discourses. The chart should therefore have at least 12 examples.
Your task is to identify how historical forms of capital, law, and ideology interact and relate and how those forces came together to create various racial subject during a time period. You should be providing the historically linked interactions between Capital, Law, and Ideology that produced a Native, Black, White, and Chicano subject. Each complete row should contain connected forms of C-L-I per racial subject. Each complete box should contain one full citation per racial subject for that category consisting of: 1.) Author & Page # 2.) Full Quotation 3.) Sentence elaborating on its importance.
For example: Harris, pg. 1734, “A key decision defending the right of conquest was Johnson’s and Graham’s Lessee vs McIntosh” This law providing a legal defense of conquest and colonization, which meant force could be used to uphold taking land from Native people.
Midterm CLI (Flow) Chart.png
PART TWO:
Complete a minimum 5-paragraph essay with an introduction and conclusion, this means an introduction and at least 3 body paragraphs and a concluding paragraph. Your introduction should have a clear thesis statement, and your conclusion should reinforce that thesis statement after you present your evidence in your body paragraphs. The paper should be between 4-6 pages (excluding a works cited/bibliography). The papers will be double-spaced, 12-point font, Times New Roman, normal margins. You must also use a minimum of three quotations properly cited from different course readings. Use spell check and edit for grammar as they will count in the grading of your paper.
The midterm prompt is: How are Chicana/o people produced as a racial subject in the lead up to and aftermath of the Mexican-American War? How did the colonial histories of the lands that become the U.S. & Mexico and the racialization of Black and Native peoples lay the foundations for this process?
Provide a historically informed account of how acts of war, racializing violence and exploitation were obscured or justified through racial ideologies, legal structures, and colonial/capitalist ambitions. How did the interaction between these three forces (Capital, Law, Ideology) evolve with the colonial project (that originally made Afro-diasporic and Amer-indigenous peoples) to make a Chicana/o subject in the nineteenth century?
Remember not to over-rely on quotations, but explain things in your own words. Use the authors to ‘evidence’ your argument, but you should be the one making explicit connections across and between the readings/lectures/sections, etc. to make an argument that attempts to grasp the ways that all histories of racialization are connected yet distinct.