SOCI 006C. First-Year Seminar:The Working Class and the Politics of Whiteness (W)

Who are the “white working class” in the United States? How do they live, what do they believe, and why? Or, is there even such a thing as “the” white working class? How did this racialized category come to evoke images of both “everyday Americans” in some circles, and (at least in some others) the Trump supporters who staged an attempted coup in January 2021?
This course is dedicated to both sets of questions. First, we will look at the actual lives, beliefs, and political behavior of people who could be categorized as white and poor or working class. Then we will take up the question of the ways this category is deployed in our political discourse, for what purposes, and by whom. In the course of reading and writing about these issues, we will develop our understanding of class, race, inequality and politics in the United States.
Social science.
Writing course.
1 credit.
Eligible for PEAC
Catalog chapter: Sociology and Anthropology
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/sociology-anthropology

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