ibhurt Posted January 1, 2016 Report Share Posted January 1, 2016 hi so i'm having trouble coming up with a research question for my investigation because i want to investigate the dutch christmas tradition of zwarte piet because there's a lot of controversy about the racism behind it but I cant formulate a good question because i want it to be about history not about racism. so im thinking "to what extent is zwarte piet racist" is not going to work pls help thanks Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arrowhead Posted January 2, 2016 Report Share Posted January 2, 2016 Well, History EE RQs are best couched in terms of a debate rather than an examination or description. To ask, "Is X racist?" It's, at the end of it, a yes or no response followed by a 'because'. You have to ask yourself what your hypothesis is: Do you think this celebration/festival is racist? If yes, then play devil's advocate: Is it that it appears racist in a modern world, but it was not racist in times gone by? You need to research the custom first and really figure out what underpins it. Then you need to ask, well is the custom racist or does it emphasise racial divides that already exist? Or is all of this xenophobic as opposed to racist? Because there is a difference between the various concepts. You also need to ask yourself how you are choosing to define racism. A lot of people choose to say that something or someone is 'racist' if it expounds ideas or performs activities that discriminates against one or more races over another. But racism is often one race that is in a more powerful position in a society taking actions or behaving in a manner that discriminates against the people of another (often times minority) race in that society. How you choose to tackle that is up to you. Lastly, you need to remember to confine your RQ in a manner that is rooted in historical analysis, i.e., you need to (ideally) explain the causes that give rise to this allegedly racist custom or expand further on the effects of this custom and the manner in which it exudes a racist agenda and why certain people think that and why others don't. I hope some of that makes sense. Let me know if you would like to discuss this further. Cheers! Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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