American Cultural Studies Lesson Plan

What is being White?

Subject/Grade level: American Cultural Studies. Grades 10, 11 and 12

Unit topic (if applicable): Anglo/Whiteness
Lesson goals: Students will critically examine the development of whiteness in the United States and how that
development created racial differences. Students will also examine their own attitudes about race and whiteness.
Lesson title or topic: What does it mean to be ‘White?’
Estimated length of lesson: 90 minutes

TEKS Standards: WGS.7D, WGS.16B, WGS.16C, WGS.17C, WGS.17D, WGS.18C, WGS.21A, WGS.22C, WGS.23B, US.25,
US.26. TEKS include history and geography standards involving culture and cultural difference.

Learning Objective(s): Students will:

1. Examine some ways ‘white’ people think about race and racial identity
2. Students will examine their own attitudes and beliefs about whiteness.
3. Examine how whiteness developed in the United States.
4. Students will examine court cases which further expanded the differences between whites and other races
and established who would be considered white.

Academic Language: Students will have knowledge of about race, stereotypes, discrimination from other classes prior to
this lesson. The idea of whiteness will be new to the students. Essential vocabulary includes; stereotype, race, whiteness.

Grouping: Lecture, discussion will be done with whole class. In-class assignment, assessment will be completed
individually.

Materials: Online warmup activity. Interactive PowerPoint lecture. In-class assignment online including video and
assessment/reflection questions.

Resources: Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice by Paul Kivel; The Invention of the White
Race by Theodore Allen; U.S. Supreme Court cases. Technology tools needed are; PowerPoint presentation, projector,
student issued laptops, online notebook, online assignment which includes online video.

Instructional Procedures (including differentiation and targeted support)

o Warm-up activity inquiring about initial ideas of what it means to be white.

o Interactive lecture involving discussion and history of whiteness in America.
o In-class assignment includes video interviews of white millennials in Dallas discussing their whiteness and race.
Students will use lecture discussion points and video to answer assessment/reflection questions.

Accommodations/Modifications/Enrichment:

Differentiation
- Differentiation achieved through use of PowerPoint and discussion to introduce subject of whiteness
and racial identity. In-class assignment includes video interviews which will explain and aid in understanding
ideas.

English Language Learners

- Learning: use prior knowledge from previous lessons about race and ethnicity to understand meanings
in English
- Listening: Learn new language, expressions, and basic academic vocabulary heard during lecture,
discussion, interactions and video assignment.
- Speaking: Speak using grade level content vocabulary in context to discussion of race, whiteness and
stereotypes.
- Reading: Use visuals and context included in PowerPoint, with support from peers to read grade-
appropriate content, develop vocabulary, and background knowledge needed to comprehend challenging
language introduced during lecture and discussion.
- Writing: Written in-class assignment requires using newly acquired basic vocabulary and understanding
of content to answer assessment/reflection questions.