1 PSYC499SeniorCapstoneTheImpactoftheSocial.docx

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PSYC 499: Senior Capstone
The Impact of the Social on the Individual
Class Syllabus
Spring/2020
Class Cycle: Monday - Sunday
Instructor: Tara West
Contact Information: [email protected]
Office Hours: Mondays, 2pm – 3pm (or by
appointment)
NOTE: When emailing, please include your name
and class in the subject line
Course Materials:
• Lesko, W.A. (2012). Readings in social
psychology: General, classic, and contemporary
selections (8th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson. ISBN:
978-0-205-17967. (Required)
• American Psychological Association (2019).
Concise Rules of APA Style(7th ed.).
Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
ISBN: 978-1433832178.

(Recommended)
Type of Course: Required
Fieldof Study: Psychology
Credits: 3 credits, undergraduate
Pre-requisites:
Completion of all required courses (Level 2
and Level 3) and permission.
Course Description:
All students will complete a senior research project
under the direction of a faculty mentor,
with a
topicwithin the trackin which the student has
completedat least threecourses. This capstone
project will buildupon work done in previous courses,
allowing students to apply methods of
scholarly and/or action research to specific
psychological issues. Projects may be completedin
small research groups or individually.
Course Summary:
This capstone project will buildupon work completedin
previous courses, allowing students to
apply methods of scholarly and/or action
research to the field of Social Psychology,
specifically the
impact of the social world on individuals.
Course Goals:
The objectives for this course include: gaining a

theoretical knowledge base about the
interplay
between individuals and their environments, gaining
first-hand experience with the many steps
involved with research, the interpretation of research,
and the presentation of research, using APA
formatting. Likewise, you will increase your familiarity
with reading (and finding) primary sources.
Although only a few of you may pursue careers as
researchers, all of you are consumers of
research.
As such, a major goal for this course is to
develop your capacity to critically thinkabout,
evaluate,
and critique the scientific evidence that is often
presented in journal articles, newspapers,
magazines, and on television.
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Learning Objectives/ Outcomes:
o Students should be able to:
• Conduct a review of research in a specific
area of Psychology.
• Understand the strengths and weaknesses of
scientific research.
• Interpretand generalizeappropriately from research results.
• Evaluatethe appropriateness of conclusions derived
from psychological research.
• Use the concepts, language, and major theories of

the discipline to account for
psychological phenomena in the context of social
psychology.
• Use reasoning to recognize, develop, defend,
and criticize arguments.
• Articulate how psychological principles can be used to
explain social issues.
• Tolerate ambiguity and realize that psychological
explanations are oftencomplex and
tentative.
• Read and accuratelysummarize the general
scientific literature of a chosen topicrelated to
the course theme.
• Demonstrate effective writing skills in various
formats and for various purposes (e.g.,
informing, defending, explaining, persuading,
arguing, teaching).
Program Learning Outcomes
• Demonstrate familiarity with the major concepts,
theoretical perspectives, empirical
findings and historical trends in psychology.
• Understand and apply basicresearch methods in
psychology, including research design,
data analysis, and interpretation.
• Respect and use critical and creative thinking,
skeptical inquiry, and, when possible, the
scientific approach to solve problems related to
behavior and mental processes.

• Understand and apply psychological principles to
personal, social and organizational issues.
• Weigh evidence, tolerate ambiguity, act ethically,
and reflect othervalues that are the
underpinnings of psychology as a discipline.
• Demonstrate information competence and the ability
to use computersand other
technology for many purposes.
• Communicate effectively in a variety of
formats.
• Recognize, understand and respect the complexity
of sociocultural and international
diversity.
• Develop insight into their own and others' behavior
and mental processes and apply
effective strategies for self-management and self-
improvement.
• Emerge from the major with realistic ideasabout
how to implement their psychological
knowledge, skills and values in occupational
pursuits in a variety of settings.
FinalGrading (Total = 160 pts.):
Ø Discussions: 8 @ 10 = 80 pts.
Ø Senior Capstone Project Assignments: 80 pts.
§ Project Idea = 10 pts.
§ Outline & Reference List = 20 pts.
§ First Draft = 20 pts.

§ Final Drafts = 30 pts.
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Grading Chart of the SPS Psychology Department:
Letter Grade Ranges % GPA
A 93 – 100 4
A- 90 - 92.9 3.7
B+ 87 - 89.9 3.3
B 83 - 86.9 3
B- 80 - 82.9 2.7
C+ 77 - 79.9 2.3
C 73 - 76.9 2
C- 70 - 72.9 1.7
D 60 - 69.9 1
F < 60 0

ASSIGNMENTS
Discussions:
During the first eightweeks of the course, you
will be reading select articles from the
assigned text,
Readings in Social Psychology. Through class
discussions, you will wrestle with concepts and
issues that
you encounter in the assigned readings and increase
your own, and your classmates’, understanding
of the interplay between individuals and their
environments.
Each week, you will be asked to post a
reaction to a question (or questions), posed
by me, about the
readings that weekand to comment on one another’s
reactions. Your initial reaction (your “original
entry/post”) should be between 300-500 words
and must contain your own original thoughts.
Specific guidelinesfor the Discussions can be found
in the Discussion Board Instructions/Criteria
area
of the “Getting Started” section course site.
Please note that you must utilize ALL resources
for that
week, and you must cite each of the individual
sources, specifically (not simply the book).
You’ll also be commenting on four otherstudents’
original entries. Yourresponses to one another’s
original entries will be in the form of comments or
questions that demonstrate original thinking and
move the conversation forward. Each comment
should be at least a few sentences long (100 –

200
words). Briefresponses or responses that are not
substantive (meaning that they do not move
the
conversation forward) will not be awarded points.
Unless otherwise noted, your reaction to the reading
(original entry) is due each weekby Due Date
1, usually Thursday (11:59p.m. EST)unless
otherwise noted, and your comments on the other
students’ original entries are due each weekby Due
Date 2, usually Sunday (11:59p.m. EST)
unless otherwise noted. Please remember to respond
to others’ comments/questions for your
original entry. Do NOT wait until late in the weekto
post your reactions, and make sure you
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participate at least threetimes per week. It is
ideal to post responses to others’ original posts
no later than Saturday evening and all otherresponses
(such as others' responses to your
post)by Sunday afternoon/evening.
Yourgrade for each Discussion will be assessed
based on timeliness (all deadlines are met),
the
extent to which you followed the directions
detailed in the Discussion Board Criteria,
and the quality
of the poststhemselves (e.g., thoughtfully and
respectfully engaged in the conversation; showed

independent and critical thinking).
Also, please post early; adding your comments to
others' posts(or answering their questions for
you), right before the DB closes, is akin to
throwing your two centsinto a conversation at
the very
end. These are discussion boards, hence, they
are meant to be a back and forth exchange of
ideas. If
you post at the very end of the week, or all on
one day, you will not receive full points for
the
discussion board, despite how greatthe post
content. Likewise, if you do not post an original
post on time,you also will not get credit for
responding to others' posts.
Senior Capstone Project Assignments:
The culmination of your work throughout the
semester will be a FinalProject. Your project
will be a
20-minute (maximum) audio-visual presentation (18
minutes minimum). Project Guidelines will
be provided by Week 6. The exact topic, or
focus, of your presentation will be determined
through
consultation with me, beginning in Week 7, and
will be inspired by your readings and discussions
of
the text, and any readings that you complete
independently (e.g., scholarly research articles
referenced in the text or discovered through
independent searches).

To make the project more manageable and to
give you the opportunity to learnfrom your
classmates, you’ll be completing your final project
in stepsover the course of Weeks 8-14.
Priorto
submitting your FinalProject, you will be drafting
and submitting 1) your project idea; 2) an
outline of your project with a reference list and 3)
a first draft of the project. For each piece of
the
project, you will provide feedback to two other
students (the points for your assignment include
points for providing that feedback). The grade
for each of your drafts will be based on
the level of
development appropriate to the stageof the project.
ADDITIONAL COURSE INFORMATION
Late FinalProject Assignments:
Ø All Project assignments/drafts (and feedback on
otherstudents’ drafts) are due by
11:59pm EST on the due date stated in the
syllabus. Please plan ahead as thereare no
extensions or exceptions made, even in the
case of computer problems/glitches. Therefore,
you should not wait until the last minute to upload
your assignments.

Ø The policy of strictdue datesapplies to all
pieces of the project because otherstudents
are
counting on your timely submissions in order to
do their parts (review your drafts, provide
feedback, and receive your feedback in time to make
use of it).
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Ø Should you have ANYtrouble with the upload links or
DB posting of your assignments, you
should immediately email me a copy of the
assignment and screenshot of the issue,
and then
reach out to tech support (Blackboard help).
Oncethe issuehas been solved, you will
upload/post the assignment (the version that was
emailed to me, unless you are still within
the grace period [see below], in which case
you can upload any version you like) to the
appropriate place.
Ø Assignments turned in late (after the grace
period has expired), will be assessed a 20%
penalty (point deduction) and therewill also an
additional 10% pointdeduction for every
day thereafter (includingweekends). I will assess
your pointtotal and then subtract the
penalty. Therefore, it’s VERY important to turn in

assignments on time.
Late Discussion Boards:
Ø There are no points given to late Discussion
Board posts. Additionally, in order to
receive any points for that week’s discussion,
the original post must be made on time.
The reason that I cannot give credit for late
submissions to Discussions is that these
assignments are meant to provide an experience
similar to “brick-and-mortar” class
discussions, where students interact with and learn
from each other. In order for students to
have the back-and-forth discussion that can be such a
valuable learning tool, thereneeds to
be a defined period of time in which the
conversation takesplace. That way, everyone can
participate together. It is my hope and belief
that you will find the Discussions to be both
educational and enjoyable!
24-Hour Grace Period for Discussions and Project
Drafts/Feedback
There will be a 24-hour grace period for all assignments (i.e.,
discussion posts, drafts of the project) to
account for last-minute personal emergencies and technical
difficulties. That is, if the deadline is
Thursday at 11:59 pm, your assignment will not be considered
late if it is posted by Friday at 11:59 pm. If
it is posted on Saturday at 12:00 am, it will be considered late
and will not be graded (will earn zero
points or a point reduction, depending on the nature of the

assignment). PLEASE NOTE: If you choose
to treat the end of the grace period as the new deadline, you will
be doing so at your own risk. That is,
even an emergency-related hospitalization or Blackboard outage
that occurs during the grace period (after
the posted due date has passed) will not be accommodated.
Therefore, I HIGHLY recommend that you
use the grace period only as a last resort.
Communication:
I will respond to questions emailed or posted to
the “Q & A” section of the discussion
board within
24 hours (but please allow up to 48 hours
for questions emailed/posted over the weekend
or holidays). You can expect grades for all
assignments (except your FinalProject grade) to
be
posted within one weekof the due date for the
assignment. Please plan accordingly.
I will be posting announcements in the
Announcements section of the course site
approximately
2-3 times a week, and I may sometimes
email the announcements to the email address
associated
with your Blackboard account, but it is up to
students to check BB regularly (at least 3-4
times
per week). I may also email you individually.
Please check the announcements section of the

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course site and your email account on a regular
basisso that you don’t miss any important
communications.
Tips & Other Etiquette:
In addition to all of the tangible products, this
process should also help you develop self-insight,
learnto creatively deal with hurdles to a project,
manage your time,synthesize and gather
information, and clearly communicate what you do/do
not know about your topic. All of
theseare
valuable skills, no matter where you end up
working. Now, it's a rigorous course, so
here's the fair
warning part:
• Read beforehand. Come to the discussions
having read the assigned reading(s) and really
give thought to the prompt for that week’s
discussion. When reading, add
comments/questions to the margins; engage with the
material. (Note: Sometimes that
means reading it more than once.)
• You may feel overwhelmed at points. Plan
ahead. You will be especially challenged if
you
typically procrastinate or only put in 1-2 hours a
weekfor a class. You have been given
several deadlines (see the Course Schedule section) to
help keep your work on track.

• Gethelp early. If you are unsure of where
we are, confused about the class or an
assignment, let me know right away(please post to
the Q&A DB forum so others can benefit
from the response).I’m here to help in any way that I
can! You may also want to reach out to
your advisor for help or suggestions.
• Send professional emails that include: a
greeting/opening, your name, course, the
issue/question, and a closing.
Incomplete Grading Policy:
Incomplete grades are to be issued only in
the case of absence from classes due to
unexpected and
unavoidable circumstances such as severe illness,
accident or death in the immediate family
(verified through documentation), which have made
it impossible for the student to complete all
course requirements as scheduled. The student
must have been in good standing the entire
semester. A grade of incomplete is not to be
issued for unsatisfactory work, failure to
submit work
through negligence or for simply not taking
the final exam. Please see the SPS Bulletin
for further
details.
Academic Integrity:
Academic dishonesty is unacceptable and will not be

tolerated. Cheating, forgery, plagiarism and
collusion in dishonest acts undermine the educational
mission of the City University of New York
and the students' personal and intellectual growth.
Please see:
https://sps.cuny.edu/about/policies/academic-and-student-
policies/academic-integrity
In short, areasof academic dishonesty include:
Ø Cheating: Using or attempting to use
unauthorized material, information or study
aids.
Ø Plagiarism: (Re) presenting the writings, words, or
ideasof another as one’s own, or
copying material from a resource without proper
acknowledgement. Using the idea or work
of another is permissible only when the original
author is identified. Paraphrasing and
summarizing, as well as direct quoting (which
requires quotation marks; in most cases,
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omitting quotation marks around a direct quote
constitutes plagiarism), require
citations to the original source. Plagiarism may be
intentional or unintentional. Lack of
dishonest intent does not absolve a student of
responsibility for plagiarism.

• Plagiarism is somethingI take very seriously. I do
check for plagiarism
and verify the validity of sources. As such,
you should use only reputable
sources and cite properly.
• If you plagiarize, even a small section of an
assignment, you will receive
zero points for that assignment. I will also report
the incident to Student
Services, which handles theseissues.
• Papers will be submitted to services that verify
whether the paper has been
plagiarized (i.e. SafeAssign).
Ø Sabotage: Willfully damaging or impeding the
academic work of another person.
Ø Fabrication/falsification: Altering or inventing any
information or data.
Ø Aiding and abetting: Helping or attempting to
help another commit an act of academic
dishonesty.
The above list was for your convenience only;for
more on academic dishonesty, please see
https://sps.cuny.edu/about/policies/academic-and-student-

policies/academic-integrity.
ACCESSIBILITY ANDACCOMMODATIONS: The CUNY
School of Professional Studies is firmly
committed to making higher education accessible to
students with disabilities by removing
architectural barriers and providing programs and support
services necessary for them to benefit
from the instruction and resources of the University.
Early planning is essential for many of
the
resources and accommodations provided. Please see:
https://sps.cuny.edu/student-services/disability-services
ONLINE ETIQUETTE ANDANTI-HARASSMENT
POLICY: The University strictly prohibits the
use
of University online resources or facilities,
including Blackboard, for the purpose of
harassment of
any individual or for the posting of any material
that is scandalous, libelous, offensive or
otherwise
against the University’s policies. Please see:
http://catalog.sps.cuny.edu/content.php?catoid=2&navoid=205
STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES: If you need
any additional help, please visit Student Support
Services: http://sps.cuny.edu/student-services

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COURSE SCHEDULE
NOTE: Please note that videos are not noted in
the ‘Readings’ section and the Course
Schedule does not
have a ‘Video’ section, but you are expected to
view any videos located in the weekly folders.
Week Dates Topic(s) Readings Assignments Due Date
1*
Due Date
2**
1 1/27 – 2/2 Introduction
to Social
Psychology
Course Syllabus
Chapter 1 Overview
Articles 1,2,3
DB 1
Attestation DB

1/30 2/2
2 2/3 – 2/9 Social
Perception
Chapter 2 Overview
Articles 4,5,6
DB 2 2/6 2/9
3*** 2/10 – 2/16
(short week)
Attitudes &
Beliefs
Chapter 4 Overview
Articles 9,10,11,12
DB 3 2/13 2/16
4*** 2/18 – 2/23
(short week)
Bias,
Prejudice, and
Discrimination
Articles 7,16,17,18
Chapter 6 Overview

DB 4 2/20 2/23
5 2/24 – 3/1 Attraction &
Relationships
Articles 20,21,23,24
DB 5 2/27 3/1
6 3/2 – 3/8 Social
Influence
Chapter 9 Overview
Articles
25,26,27,34,36
DB 6
Read through the
Capstone Project
Guidelines and
thinkabout
potential project
ideas.
Schedule call w/
me for Week 7
3/5 3/8
7 3/9 – 3/15 Prosocial
Behavior &

Aggression
Articles 29,30,31,33
DB 7
Phone call w/me
Begin Thinking
About Project
Idea
3/12 3/15
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8 3/16 – 3/22 Applied Social
Psychology
Project Idea
Articles 39,40,42,45 DB 8
Project Idea DB
(Submitted &
Feedback)
Schedule call w/
me for Week 9
3/19 3/22

9 3/23 – 3/29 Independent
Research -
Outline &
References
List
Independent
Research
Work on Outline
& Reference List
Phone call w/me
-- --
10 3/30 – 4/7
(long week)
Independent
Research -
Outline &
References
List
(Continued)
Independent
Research
Outline &
Reference List DB
(Submitted &
Feedback)

4/2 4/5
11 4/17 – 4/26
(long week)
Independent
Research -
First Draft
Independent
Research
Work on First
Draft
-- --
Research –
First Draft
(Continued)
Independent
Research
First Draft DB
(Submitted &
Feedback)
4/30 5/3
Research –
FinalProject

Independent
Research
Work on Final
Project
-- --
14 5/11 – 5/22
Finals Week
(long week)
Independent
Research –
FinalProject
(Continued)
Independent
Research
FinalDraft DB
(Submitted)
5/20
(WED)
Submit
Final Project
5/22
(FRI)

Last day to
submit
project for
credit (10%
reduction)
* Unless otherwise noted, Due Date 1 will fall on a Thursday.
Your Discussion “Original
Entries,” your Outline, Project Idea, and First Draft will all be
due on Due Date 1 of the applicable week.
** Unless otherwise noted, Due Date 2 will fall on a Sunday.
Your Discussion
Comments/Questions, and your feedback on your classmates’
Project Ideas, Outlines and First Drafts will
all be due on Due Date 2 of the applicable week.
*** Because Weeks 3 and 4 are short weeks, only two (instead
of four) comments/questions in response
to your classmates’ original entries are expected (although more
are welcome!).
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POLICY ON LATE SUBMISSIONS
As discussed above, all discussion posts must be submitted by
the applicable due date to receive credit,

and the original entry must be submitted on time for any posts
in the discussion to earn credit.
Assignments related to the Final Project can earn partial credit
if late. If deadlines are not strictly
enforced, it is unfair to the students who relied on them when
making decisions about how to manage
their time. However, there are possible accommodations for
documented serious illnesses and
emergencies, as follows:
What if I have a serious illness (requiring hospitalization) or
emergency (e.g., death or serious illness
of immediate family member)? If you experience a serious
illness or emergency that prevents you from
submitting an assignment by the due date, and have
documentation of such, please email me about your
situation as soon as possible. We will together determine
whether or not an accommodation can be made
for you for that short-term occasion. You must make the request
prior to the official due date (not the
end of the grace period); at least 24 hours is recommended. All
requests must include 1) documentation
(a hospital admission statement [omitting details in terms of the
reason for the admission, to protect your
privacy] is fine; if you do not currently have access to the
documentation, please provide an indication of
when the documentation can be expected), and 2) an indication
of when you anticipate being able to
complete the assignment (that is, how long of an extension are
you requesting?). Requests made after the
due date will not be considered unless the documented
illness/emergency prevented you from making the
request earlier.
What if I have an undocumented, or non-serious, illness or

emergency, or another reason for missing a
deadline, such as a technical difficulty1? Unfortunately, to be
fair to all students in the course, I cannot
make accommodations for missed deadlines without supporting
documentation of a serious illness or
emergency. As a general good practice, I encourage you to
begin your work early in the week, and to post
each assignment well before the deadline; this way, last-minute
difficulties will not cause you to lose any
points. To address the occasional illness or emergency without
documentation, I offer grace periods and
extra credit opportunities to all students (see above).
1 Please note: a computer breakdown or internet malfunction,
even if it is documented, is not an
emergency. I will be able to make accommodations for any
system-wide outages that occur prior to the
official deadline (confirmed by the I.T. folks), of course.
282 • THE EYES ON THE PRIZE CIVIL RIGHTS READER
to the platform with Stokely, he yelled to the crowd, “What do
you want?”
“BLACK POWER!”
“What do you want?”

“BLACK POWER!!”
“What do you want?”
“BLACK POWER!! BLACK POWER!!! BLACK POWER!!!!”
Everything that happened afterward was a response to that
moment. More than anything, it assured that the Meredith
March
Against Fear would go down in history as one of the major
turning
points in the black liberation struggle.
From SNCC’s point of view, the march was a huge success.
Despite
the bitter controversy precipitated by Stokely’s introduction of
Black Power, we enjoyed several important accomplishments:
thousands of voters were registered along the route; Stokely
emerged as a national leader; the Mississippi movement
acquired
new inspiration, and major interest was generated in
independent,
black political organizations.
7. “What We Want”
Stokely Carmichael
Stokely Carmichael had been elected chairman of SNCC in May
1966.
These are excerpts from his essay “What We Want” in the New
York
Review of Books (September 22, 1966).
One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to
now there has been no national organization which could speak
to the grooving militancy of young black people in the urban
ghetto. There has been only ą ęiyil^ rights movement, whose
tone
of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites. It served

as
a sort of buffer zone between them and angry young blacks.
None
of its so-called leaders could go into a rioting community and
be
listened to. In a sense, I blame ourselves—together with the
mass
media—for what has happened in Watts, Harlem, Chicago,
Cleve-
THE TIME HAS COME • 2 83
land, Omaha. Each time the people in those cities saw Martin
Luther King get slapped, they became angry; when they saw
four
little black girls bombed to death, they were angrier; and when
nothing happened, they were steaming. We had nothing to offer
that they could see, except to go out and be beaten again. We
helped to build their frustration.
Ań organization which claims to be working for the needs of a
community—as SNCC does—must work to provide that commu-
nity with a position of strength from which to make its voice
heard. This is the significance of black power beyond the
slogan.
Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach
the fears of white America to their questions about it. We
should
begin with the basic fact that black Americans have two
problems;
they are poor and they are black. All other problems arise from
this two-sided reality: lack of education, the so-called apathy of
black men. Any program to end racism must address itself to

that
double reality.
The concept Of “black power” is not a recent or isolated
phenom-
enon: It has grown out of the ferment of agitation and activity
by
different people and organizations in many black communities i
over the years. Our last year of work in Alabama added anew
concrete possibility. In Lowndes County, for example, black
power ¡
will mean that if a Negro is elected sheriff, he can end police >
brutality. If a black man is elected tax assessor, he can collect
and
channel funds for the building of better roads and schools
serving j
black people—thus advancing the move from political power
into ;
thé economic arena. In such areas as Lowndes, where black mén
;
have a majority, they will attempt to use it to exercise control.
This is what they seek: control. Where Negroes lack a majority,
black power means proper representation and sharing of control.
It means the creation of power bases from which black people
can work to change statewide or nationwide patterns of
oppression
through pressure from strength—instead of weakness.
Politically,
black power means what it has always meant to SNCC: the
coming-
together of black people to elect representatives and to force
those

representatives to speak to their needs. It does not mean merely
putting
black faces into office. A man or woman who is black and from
the slums cannot be automatically expected to speak to the
needs
of black people. Most of the black politicians we see around the
country today are not what SNCC means by black power. The
power must be that of a community, and emanate from there.
Ultimately, the economic foundations of this country must be
shaken if black people are to control their lives. The colonies of
the United States—and this includes the black ghettoes within
its
borders, north and south—must be liberated. For a century, this
nation has been like an octopus of exploitation, its tentacles
stretching from Mississippi and Harlem to South America, the
Middle East, southern Africa, and Vietnam; the form of exploi-
tation varies from area to area but the essential result has been
the same—a powerful few have been maintained and enriched at
the expense of the poor and voiceless colored masses. This
pattern
must be broken. As its grip loosens here and there around the
world, the hopes of black Americans become more realistic. For
racism to die, a totally different America must be born.
White America will not face the problem of color, the reality of
it. The well-intended say: “We’re all human, everybody is really
decent, we must forget color.” But color cannot be “forgotten”
until its weight is recognized and dealt with. White America
will
not acknowledge that the ways in which this country sees itself
are contradicted by being black—and always have been.
Whereas
most of the people who settled this country came here for
freedom

or for economic opportunity, blacks were brought here to be
slaves. When the Lowndes County Freedom Organization chose
the black panther as its symbol, it was christened by the press
“the
Black Panther Party”—but the-AJabiWa Democratic Party,
whose
symbol is a rooster, has never been called the White Cock Party.
No one ever talked about “white power” because power in this
country is white. All this adds up to more than merely
identifying
a, group phenomenon by some catchy name or adjective. The
furor over that black panther reveals the problems that white
THE TIME HAS COME • 285
America has with color and sex; the furor over “black power”
reveals how deep racism runs and the great fear which is
attached
to it.
I have said that most liberal whites react to “black power” with
the question, What about me?, rather than saying: Tell me what
you want me to do and I’ll see if I can do it. There are answers
to the right question. One of the most disturbing things about
almost all white supporters of the movement has been that they ;
are afraid to go into their own communities—which is where the
racism exists—and work to get rid of it. They want to run from
Berkeley to tell us what to do in Mississippi; let them look
instead
at Berkeley. They admonish blacks to be nonviolent; let them
preach nonviolence in the white community. They come to teach
me Negro history; let them go to the suburbs and open up
freedom schools for whites. Let them work to stop America’s
racist

foreign policy; let them press this government to cease
supporting
the economy of South Africa. /
There is a vital job to be done among poor whites. We hope to
see, eventually, , a coalition between poor blacks and poor
whites.
That is the only coalition which seems acceptable to us, and we
see sućh a coalition as the major internal instrument of change
in :
■ American society. SNCC has tried several times to organize
poor
whites; we are trying again now, with an initial training
program
; in Tennessee. It is purely academic today to talk about
bringing ■
poor blacks and whites together, but the job of creating a poor-
J
white power bloc must be attempted. The main responsibility
for ¡
it falls upon whites. i
But our vision is not merely of a society in which all black men
'
have enough to buy the good things of life. When we urge that J
I black money go into black pockets, we mean the communal
pocket,
f We want to see money go back into the community and used to
r benefit it. We want to see the cooperative concept applied in
business and banking. We want to see black ghetto residents
/ demand that an exploiting store keeper sell them, at minimal
cost,

.ƒ a building or a shop that they will own and improve
cooperatively;
4
they can back their demand with a rent strike, or a boycott, and
a community so unified behind them that no one else will move
into the building or buy at the store. The society we seek to
build
among black people, then, is not a capitalist one. It is a society
in
which the spirit of community and humanistic love prevail
8. “Black Power: A Voice Within”
Ruth Turner Perot
Ruth Turner Perot was special assistant to the national director
of CORE
when she wrote the 1967 essay “Black Power: A Voice Within”
from
which this excerpt is taken.
. . Black power to CORE means the organization of the black
community into a tight and disciplined group, for six purposes:
1. Growth of political power.
2. Building economic power.
3: Improvement of self-image.
4. Development of Negro leadership.
5. Demanding federal law enforcement.
6. Mobilization of Negro consumer power.
Let me give some examples of how CORE programs the

concept:
• In Baltimore, MFU, an independent union organized by
CORE, raised wages of nearly 100 members, workers regular
labor unions did not want to organize, from 35$i to $1.50.
• Baltimore, CORE’s 1966 Target City, also demonstrated black
power ill .the November elections. As a result of intensive
mobilizing and organizing:..^ jQ,QRE and other groups, Ne-
groes switched 35 to 1 to vote for Republican [Spiro] Agnew
over “Home is your castle” [George P.] Mahoney. Mahoney
was defeated. We were so effective, in fact, that the Ku Klux
Klan has chosen Baltimore as [its] Target City.
• CORE ran eight Negro candidates for school board elections
Betty Friedan, “The Problem That Has No Name,” 1963.
Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, from which
this
excerpt is taken, changed the lives of many American women by
bringing their restlessness and unhappiness to public attention. I
t
is widely seen as one of the major contributors to the
development of second wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s.
The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds
of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of
dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of
the
twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife strug

gled
with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matc
hed
slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her childr
en,
chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband a
t
night‐‐she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question‐‐
”Is this
all?”
For over fifteen years there was no word of this yearning in the
millions of words written about women, for women, in all the
columns, books and articles by experts telling women their role
was
to seek fulfillment as wives and mothers. Over and over women
heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that t
hey
could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femini
nity.
Experts told them how to catch a man and keep him, how to
breastfeed children and handle their toilet training, how to cope
with
sibling rivalry and adolescent rebellion; how to buy a dishwashe
r,
bake bread, cook gourmet snails, and build a swimming pool wit
h
their own hands; how to dress, look, and act more feminine and
make
marriage more exciting; how to keep their husbands from dying
young and their sons from growing into delinquents. They were
taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who
wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents. They learned that
truly
feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political

rights—the independence and the opportunities that the old‐
fashioned feminists fought for. …
By the end of the nineteen‐fifties, the average marriage age of
women in America dropped to 20, and was still dropping, into t
he
teens. Fourteen million girls were engaged by 17. The proportio
n of
women attending college in comparison with men dropped from
47
per cent in 1920 to 35 per cent in 1958. A century earlier, wome
n had
fought for higher education; now girls went to college to get a
husband. By the mid‐fifties, 60 per cent dropped out of college t
o
marry, or because they were afraid too much education would b
e a
marriage bar. Colleges built dormitories for “married students,”
but
the students were almost always the husbands.
Then American girls began getting married in high school. And
the women’s magazines, deploring the unhappy statistics about t
hese
young marriages, urged that courses on marriage, and marriage
counselors, be installed in the high schools. Girls started going
steady
at twelve and thirteen, in junior high. Manufacturers put out
brassieres with false bosoms of foam rubber for little girls of te
n. And
on advertisement for a child’s dress, sizes 3‐6x, in the New Yor
k
Times in the fall of 1960, said: “She Too Can Join the Man‐Tra
p Set.”
By the end of the fifties, the United States birthrate was overtak

ing
India’s. …
In a New York hospital, a woman had a nervous breakdown
when she found she could not breastfeed her baby. In other hosp
itals,
women dying of cancer refused a drug which research had prove
d
might save their lives: its side effects were said to be unfeminin
e. “If I
have only one life, let me live it as a blonde,” a larger‐than‐life‐
sized
picture of a pretty, vacuous woman proclaimed from newspaper,
magazine, and drugstore ads. And across America, three out of e
very
ten women dyed their hair blonde. They ate a chalk called Metre
cal,
instead of food, to shrink to the size of the thin young models.
Department‐store buyers reported that American women, since 1
939,
had become three and four sizes smaller. “Women are out to fit
the
clothes, instead of vice‐versa,” one buyer said. …
The suburban housewife—
she was the dream image of the young
American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over t
he
world. The American housewife—
freed by science and labor‐saving
appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth and the
illnesses of her grandmother. She was healthy, beautiful, educat
ed,
concerned only about her husband, her children, her home. She
had

found true feminine fulfillment. As a housewife and mother, she
was
respected as a full and equal partner to man in his world. She w
as free
to choose automobiles, clothes, appliances, supermarkets; she h
ad
everything that women ever dreamed of.
In the fifteen years after World War II, this mystique of feminin
e
fulfillment became the cherished and self‐perpetuating core of
contemporary American culture. … For over fifteen years, the w
ords
written for women, and the words women used when they talked
to
each other, while their husbands sat on the other side of the roo
m and
talked shop or politics or septic tanks, were about problems wit
h their
children, or how to keep their husbands happy, or improve their
children’s school, or cook chicken or make slipcovers. Nobody
argued
whether women were inferior or superior to men; they were sim
ply
different. Words like “emancipation” and “career” sounded stra
nge
and embarrassing; no one had used them for years. …
If a woman had a problem in the 1950’s and 1960’s, she knew th
at
something must be wrong with her marriage, or with herself. Ot
her
women were satisfied with their lives, she thought. What kind o

f a
woman was she if she did not feel this mysterious fulfillment w
axing
the kitchen floor? She was so ashamed to admit her dissatisfacti
on
that she never knew how many other women shared it. If she tri
ed to
tell her husband, he didn’t understand what she was talking abo
ut.
She did not really understand it herself.
For over fifteen years women in America found it harder to talk
about the problem than about sex. Even the psychoanalysts had
no
name for it. When a woman went to a psychiatrist for help, as m
any
women did, she would say, “I’m so ashamed,” or “I must be
hopelessly neurotic.” “I don’t know what’s wrong with women
today,” a suburban psychiatrist said uneasily. “I only know
something is wrong because most of my patients happen to be
women. And their problem isn’t sexual.” Most women with this
problem did not go to see a psychoanalyst, however. “There’s n
othing
wrong really,” they kept telling themselves, “There isn’t any
problem.”
But on an April morning in 1959, I heard a mother of four, havi
ng
coffee with four other mothers in a suburban development fiftee
n
miles from New York, say in a tone of quiet desperation, “the
problem.” And the others knew, without words, that she was not
talking about a problem with her husband, or her children, or he
r

home. Suddenly they realized they all shared the same problem,
the
problem that has no name. They began, hesitantly, to talk about
it.
Later, after they had picked up their children at nursery school a
nd
taken them home to nap, two of the women cried, in sheer relief
, just
to know they were not alone. …
Just what was this problem that has no name? What were the
words women used when they tried to express it? Sometimes a
woman would say “I feel empty somehow . . . incomplete.” Or s
he
would say, “I feel as if I don’t exist.” Sometimes she blotted out
the
feeling with a tranquilizer. Sometimes she thought the problem
was
with her husband or her children, or that what she really needed
was
to redecorate her house, or move to a better neighborhood, or ha
ve an
affair, or another baby. Sometimes, she went to a doctor with
symptoms she could hardly describe: “A tired feeling. . . I get s
o
angry with the children it scares me . . . I feel like crying witho
ut any
reason.” A Cleveland doctor called it “the housewife’s syndrom
e.” …
It is easy to see the concrete details that trap the suburban
housewife, the continual demands on her time. But the chains th
at
bind her in her trap are chains in her own mind and spirit. They
are
chains made up of mistaken ideas and misinterpreted facts, of

incomplete truths and unreal choices. They are not easily seen a
nd not
easily shaken off.
How can any woman see the whole truth within the bounds of
her own life? How can she believe that voice inside herself, whe
n it
denies the conventional, accepted truths by which she has been
living? And yet the women I have talked to, who are finally list
ening
to that inner voice, seem in some incredible way to be groping
through to a truth that has defied the experts. …
I began to see in a strange new light the American return to earl
y
marriage and the large families that are causing the population
explosion; the recent movement to natural childbirth and
breastfeeding; suburban conformity, and the new neuroses, char
acter
pathologies and sexual problems being reported by the doctors.
I
began to see new dimensions to old problems that have long bee
n
taken for granted among women: menstrual difficulties, sexual
frigidity, promiscuity, pregnancy fears, childbirth depression, th
e
high incidence of emotional breakdown and suicide among wom
en in
their twenties and thirties, the menopause crises, the so‐called
passivity and immaturity of American men, the discrepancy bet
ween
women’s tested intellectual abilities in childhood and their adult

achievement, the changing incidence of adult sexual orgasm in
American women, and persistent problems in psychotherapy and
in
women’s education.
If I am right, the problem that has no name stirring in the minds
of so many American women today is not a matter of loss of
femininity or too much education, or the demands of domesticit
y. It is
far more important than anyone recognizes. It is the key to these
other
new and old problems which have been torturing women and the
ir
husbands and children, and puzzling their doctors and educators
for
years. It may well be the key to our future as a nation and a cult
ure.
We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: “I
want
something more than my husband and my children and my home
.”

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