Transcript Lecture Four: Doing Difference

March

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


th
8
Attendance
Return Paper #1
Hand in grading rubric and make sure exam
#1 is submitted to turnitim.com
Lectures Four: Doing Difference
Homework:

“Bluest Eye” Winter
Lecture Four
Doing Difference: Race,
Gender and Class

People
create
social
structure
through
their actions
and the
meaning
they give to
their actions
Social Construction
Of Race
Actions/Behavior
Based on those
Ideas
Unequal
Social Structure
Based on Race
Interpersonal Racism

Prejudice: negative beliefs, attitudes, and
feelings toward members of another social
group

Stereotyping: exaggerated and inaccurate
generalizations about members of a group

Discrimination: unfavorable treatment of
individuals because of their group
membership
Differences in Interpersonal Racism

Aware/blatant racism


Aware/covert racism


Hidden, believed superiority/hatred
Unaware/unintentional


Outright, believed superiority/hatred
Internalized/unrecognized superiority
Unaware/self-righteous

Focus on diversity w/out recognizing privilege
Internalized Racism

Internalized Racism: Conscious and
unconscious incorporation and acceptance
by racial/ethnic minorities of the negative
stereotypes and images from the dominant
culture, media, others, and ones community

Internalized racism is self-hatred; it affects ones
self identity and sense of self
Social categories of difference are:
Learned through the process of life-long
socialization and social interaction
1.

Indirectly through representations of social life,
such as the mass media

Directly through interaction with other people
such as in our family, work environments, and
with friends
“Doing” Difference: Race
Differences are accomplished through our
actions and behavior, they are NOT the
cause of those actions and behaviors
Difference
NOT
↓
Behavior
Behavior/Actions
…But
↓
Difference
The Looking Glass Self
Charles Cooley

Our sense of self develops from interaction
with others

Three Aspects of the ‘Looking Glass Self’
1.
2.
3.
We imagine how we appear to others
Imagine how we are judged by others
React to how we think others judge us
“Doing” Difference

Difference “is a situated accomplishment of
societal members, the local management of
conduct in relation to normative
conceptions of appropriate attitudes and
activities for particular [socially constructed]
categories.”

Gender, race, and class are more than roles
or individual attributes
Situated Accomplishment

Situated



Social setting
Social institutions
Accomplishment

holding our attitudes and actions accountable to
certain notions of gender, race, class
Local Management of Conduct

We manage our actions within a social
context and in relation to the specific context

Doing race is interactional and institutional in
character

Actions and attitudes are only given meaning
in a social setting
Normative Conceptions

Norms – right and wrong



Direct & indirect learning
Appropriate attitudes and activities
Accountability


Hold our actions and ideas accountable to
normative conceptions
Produces action and gives recognition to that
action
“Doing” Race in the Bluest Eye
Pick an example from the Bluest Eye and explain the
following:

How is the character(s) “doing race” ?

What is the social setting and who is in it?

What normative conceptions are their actions responding
to?

How do the normative conceptions and social setting
produce certain actions?
October




th
11
Attendance
Pop Quiz
Lectures Four: Doing Difference
Homework:

“Bluest Eye” Summer
“Doing” Difference

Difference “is a situated accomplishment of
societal members, the local management of
conduct in relation to normative
conceptions of appropriate attitudes and
activities for particular [socially constructed]
categories.”
Four Implications

Difference is accomplished through actions
(“doings”)

Ongoing accomplishment of race, gender,
class

Does not require categorical diversity

Same activity, different meanings
How do you “do” difference

Think of a time when you “did” difference –
race, class, gender, or sexuality

What was the social setting and who is in it?

What normative conceptions were your actions
responding to?

How did the normative conceptions and social setting
produce certain actions?
Interpersonal Racism

Prejudice: negative beliefs, attitudes, and
feelings toward members of another social
group

Stereotyping: exaggerated and inaccurate
generalizations about members of a group

Discrimination: unfavorable treatment of
individuals because of their group
membership
Differences in Interpersonal Racism

Aware/blatant racism


Aware/covert racism


Hidden, believed superiority/hatred
Unaware/unintentional


Outright, believed superiority/hatred
Internalized/unrecognized superiority
Unaware/self-righteous

Focus on diversity w/out recognizing privilege