This is a theoretical and interpretive mode that examines the appearance of race and racism across dominant cultural modes of expression. In adopting this approach, scholars attempt to understand how victims of systemic racism are affected by cultural perceptions of race and how they are able to represent themselves to counter prejudice. Closely connected to such fields as philosophy, history, sociology, and law, this approach to literature traces racism in America through the nation’s legacy of slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and recent events.