Week 2 Community History Workshop: Two Voices, Three Levels

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned to tell an attitude from an action, one person's act from an organization's rule, and both from unequal outcomes that build up over time. You also learned that racialization attaches a racial meaning to something that was not classified that way before. In this workshop you hear those concepts in two voices from the course's oral-history archive. One narrator remembers her family's move north in the 1940s; the other remembers resettling as a refugee in the early 1980s. You read each account the way the field reads any record, name the concept each moment shows, compare the two, and then check a chatbot's reading of the same excerpts and correct it by hand. The histories behind these excerpts come later in the course; this week you practice naming what the narrators lived.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: What does each of two illustrative oral-history excerpts say, leave out, and show about prejudice, discrimination, structural inequality, and racialization, and what does setting them side by side reveal?

Workshop data: Two illustrative oral-history excerpts from the course archive (E2 and E5)

Source: Two illustrative excerpts from the course's running community oral-history archive, an unnamed public library's collection constructed for this course; narrators are identified by role and decade only, and no excerpt is a real person's words.

• Rows: 2 excerpts; the scaffold breaks them into 5 moments (3 from E2 and 2 from E5)
• E2: a woman whose family moved north in the Great Migration in the 1940s, interviewed in the 1990s
• E5: a woman who resettled as a refugee in the early 1980s, interviewed in the 2010s

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• A notebook or any free note-taking app for reading a record and for oral-history notes (identified by role and decade, never by name); a free spreadsheet for the lending table's rates and gaps and for any year-stamped figure; any free timeline tool, or a hand-drawn timeline, for the law-and-case timeline; and one approved chatbot used as a sparring partner whose claims about real people, laws, and dates the student checks against an issuing-body or primary source before trusting them
• A notebook or any free note-taking app
• One approved chatbot

Ways of working

• read-the-record
• oral-history
• compare-and-connect

Procedure

1. Read excerpt E2 and excerpt E5 in Part 2 aloud or slowly twice. Copy both into your notes with each narrator's role and decade, never a name. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: Your notes hold both excerpts, each labelled illustrative with its role and decade.
2. Fill in the first table in Part 4: for each excerpt, write what it says, who made it, whom it affected, and what it leaves out. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: Each excerpt has four short entries, one for each reading question.
3. Fill in the second table: for each of the five moments, choose prejudice, individual discrimination, institutional discrimination, structural inequality, or racialization, and write a one-sentence reason that uses the definition from Chapter 2. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: All five moments carry a concept and a reason; where you hesitated between two concepts, your reason says why you chose one.
4. Write your comparison in the third table: set the bank moment beside the moment when people ask again where the narrator is from, and write one plain sentence naming what the comparison shows. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: One completed comparison row and one plain sentence.
5. Do the critique moment in Part 6: paste the prompt into one approved chatbot, then check every claim it makes against the excerpts and Chapter 2 and correct at least two slips by hand. If you choose the equivalent route instead, mark up the printed flawed analysis. Tool: One approved chatbot. Check: A short critique report quoting the chatbot or the flawed analysis and correcting at least two errors.
6. Answer the five analysis questions in Part 5, including the reflection option you choose, and assemble your submission. Check: Five written answers and three completed tables.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if you cannot open a note-taking app or print the tables.

Copy the three tables by hand onto paper or into any text file, read the two excerpts from this page, and complete every table, every analysis question, and the critique step in the same order. Submit a photo or scan of the paper, or the text file, for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

Part 4 — The Scaffold

Read each excerpt the way the field reads any record before you name a concept.

Student scaffold table 1

Excerpt	What it says	Who made it	Whom it affected	What it leaves out
E2 (illustrative): a woman whose family moved north in the 1940s, interviewed in the 1990s
E5 (illustrative): a woman who resettled as a refugee in the early 1980s, interviewed in the 2010s

Name the concept each moment shows, so your reading uses the week's exact words.

Student scaffold table 2

Moment	Concept	Reason from the definition
E2: the train car set aside for Black passengers until the family was out of the South
E2: neighborhoods where the bank would not lend to us
E2: my mother said it was different, not finished
E5: at school they sat me in the back with a dictionary
E5: when I name this town as where I am from, they ask again

Set one moment from each voice side by side to see what a comparison adds.

Student scaffold table 3

Moment from E2	Moment from E5	How unequal treatment happens in each	One plain sentence
The bank would not lend in some neighborhoods	People ask again where she is from

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. For each excerpt, what does it say, who made it, whom did it affect, and what does it leave out? Point to the excerpt's own words.
2. Which concept does each of the five moments show, and why? Where a moment could fit two concepts, name both and say which you chose and why.
3. Compare the bank moment in E2 with the moment in E5 when people ask again where the narrator is from. One comes from a rule, the other from an assumption about who belongs; say what the comparison shows in one plain sentence.
4. What can an oral-history excerpt not prove on its own, and what kind of dated record would you check before trusting its dates or details? Remember that both excerpts are illustrative.
5. Choose one reflection: (a) what did your own background help you notice in these excerpts, and what might it have led you to miss? or (b) which moment was hardest to sort, and what would you want to know about it before deciding?

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my completed workshop tables above. Here are two illustrative oral-history excerpts from a course archive; they are not real people's words. Excerpt E2, from a woman whose family moved north in the Great Migration in the 1940s, interviewed in the 1990s: "We left in 1943. My father went first, to work in a shipyard, and sent for us that spring. On the train we had to sit in the car set aside for Black passengers until we were out of the South. In the new city nobody told us where to sit, but there were neighborhoods where the bank would not lend to us. My mother said it was different, not finished." Excerpt E5, from a woman who resettled as a refugee in the early 1980s, interviewed in the 2010s: "We waited two years in a camp before a church group here sponsored us. I was fourteen. At school they sat me in the back with a dictionary. One teacher stayed after class to help me with English, and by my last year I was translating for my parents at the doctor and the bank. When people ask where I am from and I name this town, they ask again." Please do four things. First, for each excerpt say what it says, who made it, whom it affected, and what it leaves out. Second, sort each of these five moments as prejudice, individual discrimination, institutional discrimination, structural inequality, or racialization, with a reason: the train car, the bank, the mother's words 'different, not finished', being seated in the back at school, and being asked again where she is from. Third, compare the bank moment with the 'they ask again' moment in one sentence. Fourth, say what these excerpts cannot prove.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often write that E2 and E5 show 'what Black families' or 'what refugees' went through, as if one narrator spoke for a whole group.
• Chatbots often praise the E5 narrator as proof that her group 'works hard and succeeds', a stereotype presented as a fact about a group.
• Chatbots often add a figure, a quotation, or a named law to the excerpts, such as a number of families who moved or a bank's name.
• When asked how the archive covers other groups, chatbots often describe Native peoples only as part of the past.
• Chatbots often say the bank 'may have had good business reasons' for not lending in some neighborhoods, framing a documented injustice as a debate.
• Chatbots often end with a verdict on a current policy question, such as what lending or refugee policy should be today.
• Chatbots often misdate E2 (saying the family moved in the 1960s) or say E5 came under a law from a different year.
• Chatbots sometimes swap in an outdated group term from older documents without comment when they paraphrase the train passage.
• Chatbots often say people asked E5 'what race she is' when the question was where she is from, mixing race, ethnicity, and nationality.
• Chatbots often explain that people kept asking because a census race box shows a person's biological origin.
• Chatbots often write a 'neutral' summary that says the narrator 'felt' excluded while describing the bank's refusal as a fact about risk, quietly siding with the lender.

Write 3-5 sentences naming what the chatbot got right and at least two places where it slipped into one of the failures above, quoting its words and correcting each by hand against the excerpts and Chapter 2.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. This route assesses the same objectives, Objective 1 (explain what ethnic studies is and how it works: its origins in the 1968-1969 student strikes, the questions it asks, its interdisciplinary methods, its four core fields and the comparisons among them, and the role of positionality in reading evidence) and Objective 2 (define and distinguish the course's core concepts: race, ethnicity, and nationality; racialization and racial formation; ethnocentrism; prejudice, individual and institutional discrimination, and structural inequality; and intersectionality as distinct from adding identities together), takes comparable effort of about the same 90 minutes, uses the same rubric, and earns the same credit. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis of the two excerpts, printed here in full: "These excerpts show what all Black families and all refugee families went through. The second narrator proves that her people are hard-working and always succeed in school. According to a 1950 federal report, 2 million families were refused loans that year. Native peoples, of course, no longer play a part in stories like these. The bank probably had sound business reasons, so both sides have a point. Today's lending laws are clearly fair now, so this problem is settled. The first family moved north in the 1960s. The train car was for colored passengers. People kept asking the second narrator what race she was, because her census race shows where she is biologically from. In short, the narrator felt shut out, while the bank was making a reasonable judgment about risk." Mark every error you find, name the failure it shows, and correct it by hand against the excerpts and Chapter 2; find at least two. Submit the marked-up analysis with your corrections in place of the chatbot report and share link.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• The three completed tables from Part 4
• Written answers to all five analysis questions
• The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis

Deliverable:

A short Community History Workshop report on two illustrative oral-history excerpts: three completed tables (each excerpt read for what it says, who made it, whom it affected, and what it leaves out; five moments sorted by concept with reasons; and one comparison ending in a plain sentence), written answers to five analysis questions, and a critique of a chatbot's reading of the same excerpts, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis. Choose how you show it: written answers, a recorded explanation with a transcript, or labelled tables with short notes; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Reading each excerpt as a record	Both excerpts are read for what they say, who made them, whom they affected, and what they leave out, pointing to the excerpts' own words.	One excerpt is read fully, or both are read but one or two of the four questions are missing.	No reading of either excerpt, or the reading invents details the excerpts do not contain.
Naming the concept in each moment	All five moments carry a concept with a reason that uses the course definition, and any two-concept moment names both and explains the choice.	Three or four moments carry a concept with a reason, or reasons do not use the definitions.	Fewer than three moments carry a concept with a reason.
The comparison across two voices	The comparison sets the rule-based bank refusal beside the assumption in the repeated question and ends in one plain sentence naming what the comparison shows.	Both moments are described, but the difference between a rule and an assumption is not drawn, or there is no closing sentence.	No comparison is made.
Caught-and-corrected AI slip, on either route	The chatbot critique report, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis, quotes at least two errors and corrects each by hand against the excerpts and Chapter 2; either route earns this band equally.	One error is quoted and corrected on either route, or errors are named without a correction.	No critique on either route, or chatbot output is pasted without checking it.
Limits and positionality	The answer names what an oral history cannot prove and a dated record to check, and the chosen reflection option is answered honestly with a specific example.	Either the limit or the reflection is present, but not both.	Neither the limit nor the reflection is present.

Quality Gate

• Every quotation from an excerpt is copied exactly from this page, and both excerpts are labelled illustrative with role and decade, never a name.
• Every concept label uses the course's exact definition, and every reason names the evidence in the excerpt.
• No statistic, law, date, quotation, or source is invented anywhere in the submission.
• The comparison ends in one plain sentence naming what it shows.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors by hand.
• No current policy question is argued, and no living politician is named.