The Continuing Significance of History: An Active-Learning Simulation to Teach About the Origins of Racial Inequality

Vanessa Stouta, Kelsy Kretschmerb & Christopher Stoutb*a Trinity College, Dublinb Southern Illinois University, CarbondaleVanessa Stout is a PhD Candidate at Trinity College, Dublin. Her research interests includes African and African American migration in Europe and the United States, urban sociology, and ethnic studies. Previously, she studied African American History at University of California, Riverside. She has published on African American spaces in Los Angeles and working projects include the effects of develop education at primary levels in Ireland affects children’s attitudes towards third-world countries through the Trocaire 2012 Lenten campaign and Nigerian migration to Dublin and Los Angeles. She is currently teaching Introduction to Race and Ethnicity at Trinity College, Dublin and is coeditor of BAOBAB Anti-Racism Network Public Journal.Kelsy Kretschmer is an assistant professor of Sociology at Oregon State University. Her research focuses on organizations, social boundaries, social movements, and gender inequality. She is currently working on a book examining the National Organization for Women and the organizations it has spun off. Her work has appeared in social science journals, including Sociological Forum, Sociological Perspectives, American Behavioral Scientist, and Contexts.Christopher Stout is an Assistant Professor as Oregon State University (starting fall of 2015). His research interests include racial and ethnic politics, gender and politics, political behavior, representation, and Congress. He is the author of the book Bringing Race Back In: Black Politicians, Deracialization, and Voting Behavior in the Age of Obama (University of Virginia Press). He is also the author of several articles that have appeared in journals such as Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Behavior, Journal of Black Studies, and Social Science Quarterly.CONTACT Christopher Stout stoutch@oregonstate.edu Oregon State University, 307 Gilkey Hall, 122 SW Waldo Place, Corvallis, OR 97331.Kelsey Kretschmer and Christopher Stout are now at Oregon State University.ABSTRACTWe propose that instructors utilize a variation of the game Monopoly, Ships and Shoes, to teach students how legacies of discrimination affect current racial inequality. To accomplish this goal, Ships and Shoes uses a multistage exercise in which students are arbitrarily assigned different game pieces, receive unequal compensation and are subject to different rules based on those assignments. In the second half of the exercise, we end the original unequal policies and make nominal improvements to the situation of the disadvantaged game pieces. The activity approximates the experiences of racial minorities and whites in the United States during two time periods: before and after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which ended legal segregation. Through our review of qualitative and quantitative data from an introductory social science course, we find that participants of Ships and Shoes better understand how historic discriminatory policies influence modern-day racial inequality.