Week 15 — Together, Not the Same: Coalitions, Apologies, and One Law Across Groups — Traditional alternative (no AI)

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

Assignment 14 of the term — place three coalitions and three laws on the timeline, trace one amendment across groups, choose the right method for a question, and explain it to someone who has it wrong.

This week you met three cross-group coalitions (the Third World Liberation Front, the Delano grape strike, and Indians of All Tribes), community-engaged and public scholarship, three laws of apology, payment, and return (1988, 1990, and 1993), and the 14th Amendment traced across groups. In this assignment you work four short problems on the timeline, interpret each one, choose a method for a synthesis question, and explain the week's ideas to someone who has them wrong. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Community History Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles. It builds on Week 1's student strikes, Week 10's Delano grape strike, Week 11's redress, and Week 12's apology to Native Hawaiians, and it is the last assignment of the course.

The task

The law-and-case timeline is the course's list of dated laws, cases, orders, and events, each year taken from the issuing body's own page. The course's running archive is an illustrative, unnamed public library's collection built for this course; its excerpts are identified by role and decade and are not real people's words. Its E7 excerpt comes from a retired teacher whose parents were incarcerated in the 1940s, interviewed in the 1990s. The parents were teenagers when the order came in 1942, and both were born in this country; the family lost the lease on the farm; after the 1988 law, each parent received a letter of apology from the government and the payment.

A relative at a family dinner says, "Ethnic studies only blames people, and each group's story has nothing to do with the others. And that 1993 apology to Native Hawaiians must have paid them, the way the 1988 law paid Japanese Americans." Your job is to answer the way an ethnic studies reader would, starting from a few plain dates on the timeline.

Work these four problems, showing your arithmetic:

1. On the law-and-case timeline, the Delano grape strike began in 1965, and the San Francisco State strike began in 1968. How many years apart are the two strikes?
2. On the law-and-case timeline, Executive Order 9066 came in 1942, and the Civil Liberties Act came in 1988. How many years apart are the order and the law?
3. On the law-and-case timeline, the Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown in 1893, and Congress apologized to Native Hawaiians in 1993. How many years apart are the overthrow and the apology?
4. On the law-and-case timeline, the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, and the Supreme Court decided Hernandez v. Texas in 1954. How many years apart are the amendment and the case?

Beside each count, add one brief interpretation:

• Problem 1: explain a cross-group coalition and solidarity using the Delano grape strike, naming who began it and who voted to join, and explain how the San Francisco State strikers' demand for four departments within one College of Ethnic Studies kept each group's own field.
• Problem 2: define redress and say what the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 did, an apology and 20,000 dollars to each surviving person, and read the archive's E7 excerpt (illustrative) for what it says and what it leaves out.
• Problem 3: define a formal apology and say what the 1993 joint resolution does and does not do, including that it says it settles no claims, and compare it with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, which requires return through consultation and contains no apology.
• Problem 4 (the synthesis): trace the 14th Amendment across at least two groups, giving each case's year (for example United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) and Hernandez v. Texas (1954)). Then choose which of two course methods best answers your relative's claim that each group's story is separate: tracing one law across groups, or reading one archive excerpt beside its law. Say why you chose it and why the other method fits that claim less well.

Explain it to a non-expert

Your relative has three things wrong. Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains that ethnic studies studies how categories and inequalities were made and how people answered, not whom to blame; that groups' stories connect, naming one coalition such as the Delano grape strike or the Third World Liberation Front; and that the 1993 apology paid nothing and says it settles no claims, unlike the 1988 law's apology and payment. Name one limit, such as that a comparison across groups does not make their histories the same. If your relative raises a current redress or reparations proposal, say that people disagree and give each side's strongest case without choosing one. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good message is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a friend who sees two neighborhood groups co-host a street festival and decides the groups have merged. Model message: "They shared one festival, one stage, and one goal, but each group still has its own name, its own members, and its own reasons for coming. Working together is not the same as becoming one group. One fair caveat: a single event cannot show how long the partnership will last."

Use that pattern for your relative, with your own wording and evidence.

Your reflection. After you check your draft, write two or three sentences on one of these, your choice: (a) which unit of the course, looking back, helped you most to answer your relative, and why; or (b) which word or phrase in your first draft you replaced, and what the new wording gets right.

What comes next. The cumulative final exam comes in Week 16. Its study guide, practice exam, and exam-prep tutorial sit in the Week 16 exam bundle. The synthesis move you practice in Problem 4, choosing a method and tracing one law across groups, is the same move those materials ask you to make with every unit of the course.

Deliverables

Submit a single report containing:

• the four counts, each with the years and the arithmetic shown, and the brief interpretation the task names for that problem;
• your method choice for Problem 4, with why the other method fits your relative's claim less well;
• your message to your relative, separating the field from blame, naming a coalition, and explaining that the 1993 apology paid nothing and settles no claims, with one limit;
• your reflection, on the option you chose; and
• a one-line restatement of the years you used, so your counts can be checked.

Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.

Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled timeline sketch with a short explanation. 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.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the counts, the interpretations, the method choice, and the writing yourself, without a chatbot or other AI tool. You may use a calculator or a spreadsheet for the arithmetic. Describe E7 only as the course describes it, name people only by role, state documented history plainly, present any current redress or reparations proposal only as a debate with each side's strongest case, and do not borrow a quotation or a detail about any real person from another source without citing it. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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