Mr. 历史老师戈登:
在詹姆斯敦八年级的历史课上. 戈登提出了这样一个问题:“以种族划分人是人类的本性吗?" The unit began with a discussion of a New York Times map of New York City's population, 这表明今天的社区存在严重的种族隔离. Some students theorized that people generally prefer to live with people who share their culture, while other students thought that perhaps the segregation was 不 done by choice. 我们检查了双方的证据, including psychological studies about racial preferences and learning about policies in the 20th century that led to residential segregation, 例如重新排列.
然后我们回到过去,把同样的问题应用到詹姆斯敦殖民地. 通过对这一时期第一手资料和第二手资料的分析, 学生得出结论,非洲人, 欧洲, 和印第安人一开始确实相处得很好. 然而, wealthy English landowners began to fear that servants and enslaved people would rise up against them. 在回应, 他们通过法律将工人分开, 比如禁止异族通婚, which over time created social taboos that pit people of different races against one a不her.
在本单元结束前, students began reflecting on their own experiences in racially integrated and segregated settings. They wondered how their own lives had been impacted by the laws and policies we examined, 以及是什么力量塑造了他们对种族的看法.
以下是八年级学生Tatiana Breslernewbb电子平台这个话题的一篇文章的摘录:
"Sometimes laws and rules can be implanted into our heads at a young age and it can make us feel as if these laws and rules are moral and the right thing to believe. And in the past rules have been made to separate different races and some still affect us today. In 1691, a law was passed by the General Assembly of Virginia to make it illegal for whites to marry people of other races. 法案上说:“从现在起生效, 如果任何英国人或其他自由的白人与黑人通婚, 黄褐色的, 或印度男人或女人”. 这项法律使得与其他种族通婚似乎是错误的, 但这项法律的制定也表明,其他种族也在相互通婚, because why would the government make a law about something that is 不 happening? This shows that people in charge segregated other races making citizens and fellow generations to come think something is wrong."