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 formation and construction of race and social and economic inequality as emerging from the project of colonialism. The midterm is split into two essays and 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. Questions: 1.) Throughout the course we have discussed the production of racial difference as emerging out of contact and colonialism. Harris argues that racial difference is constructed through law and capital and Zinn argues that history is ideologically constructed to obscure or deny racial violence and dispossession. Explain how Black and Native people are produced as racial subjects out of the colonial encounter between them and Europeans. In other words, how do land/labor, laws, and ideologies come together to produce these two racial subjects? (2 pages) 2.) Keeping your insights from the first essay in mind, the second essays asks how are Chicana/o people formed as racial subjects? Provide a historical account of how acts of legal and extra-legal violence were obscured or justified through racial ideologies and American colonial and capitalist ambitions. Provide and analyze 3 specific examples from across the other readings. (3 pages)
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