Anthropology

Essay Questions: The following are questions to encourage you to think about your assigned readings, films, and lectures. Your essays should reflect, insofar as possible, your own ideas, analyses, etc. You should rely on the works assigned in class. Do not forget to cite your sources in your preferred format (as long as it is consistent). Illustrate your answers with examples. Be comprehensive in your answers in both theoretical and ethnographic terms. I shall be looking for/at your ability to synthesize material, to be critical, and to be original.

1. Write an essay about the post-1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest. (12 P)
   A) Explain the manner in which these three minorities relate to each other.
   B) Explore the ways in which racial attitudes, racial relations, and racial stratification have or have not changed after the civil unrest of 1992.

Use the following chapters of my book, LA RISING: KOREAN RELATIONS WITH BLACKS AND LATINOS AFTER CIVIL UNREST:
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&d b=nlabk&AN=2227233
-Park, Kyeyoung. “Ch. 6: Changing the Business Plan.”
-Park, Kyeyoung. “Ch. 8: An Analysis of Latino-Korean Relations in the
Workplace”
-Park, Kyeyoung. “Ch. 9: The Racial Cartography of Post-Unrest LA.”

2. (8P) The merchant-customer relationship has been cited as a catalyst to conflicts such as the 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest and the boycotting of Korean-owned businesses.
   Use the chapter, “Ch. 5: Class Relations of Surveillance” (of my book LA Rising)
   A) Summarize the material.
   B) Detail your personal reaction (& subjective impression) to the work: what strikes you as noteworthy; how has it enhanced your understanding of the issues; what emotions did the work evoke in you?
3. (15P) Use the articles by Burton and Bornstein.
   On April 20, 2021, a Hennepin county jury found former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty on the charges of “murder in the second degree—

unintentional,” “murder in the third degree—depraved mind,” and “manslaughter in the second degree—culpable negligence” in the death of George Floyd. Chauvin murdered Floyd after a clerk at Cup Foods, a store in Minneapolis, called the police over Floyd’s alleged attempt to use a counterfeit bill. Some prominent public figures, including police union leadership, sought to cast Chauvin as a “bad apple.” Others saw Chauvin’s conviction as a conviction of the entire institution of policing in the United States.

A) Discuss how the history and contemporary significance of slave patrols, black codes, and the prison-industrial complex maintain legacies of white supremacy and policing communities of color, in particular African Americans, today.
B) Evaluate these two interpretations of the Chauvin conviction (one bad apple or a bad institution) in light of the Burton and Bornstein readings.

4. (10P) Please use episode 3 of the film, Race—The Power of an Illusion: The house we live in and relevant readings from class to address each of the following questions:
   A) What is whiteness?
   B) How did European “ethnics” become white?
   C) What changes made this possible?
   -How did federal housing policies institutionalize segregation and wealth disparities?
   D) Why do property values go down when a neighborhood changes from white to nonwhite?
   -Who plays a role in this?
5. (15P) The idea of race should be examined across the globe.
   Explain how race is understood in the Latin American and East Asian context. Compare racial situations/ ideas in two countries, one located in Latin America and a one in East Asia respectively.