An advanced seminar on Race and Ethnicity in the United States. Past and present discrimination will be examined in relation to the current social conditions of minority groups living in the United States. A sociological approach to the topic begins with the assumption that race and ethnicity are socially and politically constructed phenomena. Race/ethnic categories within the United States have varied significantly across time and place. Sociology connects the concepts of race and ethnicity to social structures of inequality, power, and stratification. Scholarship on race and ethnicity is central to American sociology. We will empirically and theoretically explore: 1) the social, political and historical conditions under which segregation, racial hierarchies and racial conflict emerge, and 2) the institutions through which racial boundaries and hierarchies are produced and reproduced in the United States.