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SOC230: Race and Ethnic Relations

Explore SOC230 Topics

Topics: 

  1. How are Hispanics changing the political landscape in the US? 
  2. What is the model minority stereotype, and how is it damaging to minorities? 
  3. Is there a CRISIS at the US border? 
  4. Debating a clear path to citizenship. 
  5. How do immigrants impact the US economy? 
  6. Discuss the history of immigration to the US. 
  7. Japanese internment after the start of WW II. 
  8. Why is the “Trail of Tears” significant? 
  9. Pros and cons of Critical Race Theory?  
  10. What should we do with monuments associated with racist aspects of our history? 
  11. The problem of mass incarceration in the United States. 
  12. History of the environmental racism movement. 
  13. How is slavery taught and how is this changing? 
  14. What is the antiracist movement in the US? 
  15. Highlight the diversity of hate crime legislation in the 50 states. 
  16. Highlight attacks on voting rights particularly as they pertain to or target minorities. 

Search Strategies:

  • Use Boolean Operators to connect search terms or keywords: AND, OR, NOT
  • Use quotation marks for exact phrases
  • Use database limiters to refine searches: full-text, peer-reviewed journals, published date, publication type, etc.

You need to complete a capstone project on a topic relating to race and ethnic relations. Where do you start? Let's explore a topic from the list on the left: Pros and Cons of Critical Race Theory.

A good place to begin your research is to gather background information in CQ Researcher (see link below). A search for "critical race theory" reveals a report "Teaching About Racism". From this report we can learn more about this topic and gather keywords for future searches. Also, note the "Pro/Con" section on the left-hand side navigation. 

Now let's gather additional resources. An excellent source for sociology-related scholarly research articles is the Sociology Database in NCLIVE (see link below). 

Once you click search, you have a list of search results. From there you can further limit your searches on the left-hand side of the search page. A good way to to list the most current articles is to limit your search results by publication date. Now it's time to go through the search results to find the best articles for your topic.