Week 7 Discussion — Rulings, Riders, and the Bank's Map — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

A court can change what the law says. A community can change what happens on the bus. A lending rule can keep sorting families long after it is outlawed. This week you read Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Montgomery bus boycott, the civil rights laws of 1964 and 1965, redlining through the illustrative lending table, and the line between de jure and de facto segregation.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: In Brown v. Board of Education (1954) the Supreme Court held unanimously that "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," but in Brown II (1955) it told the states to desegregate "with all deliberate speed," which set no deadline and met considerable resistance. The Montgomery bus boycott, by contrast, was an organized refusal by Black residents to ride segregated buses for 381 days, and it ended after the Supreme Court upheld a ruling that bus segregation violated the 14th Amendment. Which did more to take apart de jure segregation in these cases: the court rulings, or the people who organized, or could neither have worked without the other? Use Brown, Brown II, the civil rights movement, and de jure segregation, and give the other view its strongest case.

Option B: In the illustrative lending table, every lender follows the same rating, and D-rated applicants are approved 10 percent of the time against 90 percent in A-rated neighborhoods, a gap of 80 percentage points. E2 (illustrative), a woman whose family moved north in the Great Migration in the 1940s, says there "were neighborhoods where the bank would not lend to us," and her mother called the new city "different, not finished." The Fair Housing Act of 1968 made discrimination in the sale, rental, or financing of housing unlawful. Did the 1968 law finish what E2's mother called unfinished? Use redlining, institutional discrimination or structural inequality, and de facto segregation, say what a law can and cannot change, and give the other view its strongest case.

There is no single right answer. A ruling and a movement do different work, and a law can stop a practice without undoing what it built; pick the option you care about, and show us your reasoning.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Working on your own: this version of the discussion is written entirely from your own reasoning, in your own words.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, say whether the court rulings or the people who organized did more to take apart de jure segregation, or why neither could work alone; for Option B, say whether the Fair Housing Act of 1968 finished what E2's mother called unfinished, and what a law can and cannot change.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (the civil rights movement, de jure segregation, de facto segregation, redlining, institutional discrimination, structural inequality) correctly.
• Give your judgment, with a reason, and give the other view its strongest case.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: point out what a classmate's reading leaves out, offer the strongest case for the view they did not take, or name a dated event from this week that supports or complicates their reading. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option B and say the 1968 law did not finish it. The law made lending discrimination unlawful, but the table's rule had already left D-rated neighborhoods with far fewer approved loans for decades, and S1 shows that lower home values and thinner school budgets carry forward. That is structural inequality, and a law that stops a practice does not undo it. The other side has a point: without the 1968 law the practice would have kept going. I would still look for records of home values in one once-redlined area before and after 1968.

Notice how it separates what the law made unlawful from what was already built, keeps the history plain, gives the other side its due, and says what it would still check. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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