RACE, TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION
Spring 2004

Premising the establishment of a racial contract (which erects a system of racial caste and attempts to structure a universal racial hegemony) as a fundamental component of the social contract of Western societies, this course focuses on South Africa and its Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Using the 1998 TRC Report, plus several film and video documentaries (including Bill Moyers’), the course is a comparative examination and analysis of the parallels, the convergence and divergence in the legal and political experience primarily in two multi-racial societies--South Africa and the United States. Modeled in part on the TRC experience of Chile, the South African TRC was established as a hearing and amnesty clearance center for crimes against humanity during the apartheid period in South Africa; the course also seeks to appraise the TRC approach as a model for dispute resolution in the future. Various original texts (including these reports, accounts and stories, films, tape recordings) will be used to scrutinize the theory of racial contract as illustrated by events in these two countries

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Professor James Bowen
Professor Fritz Umbach
John Jay College