9.27.16+and+9.28.16

Discuss and unpack vocabulary for talking about race:

Race Race is a social construct, meaning that there is no scientific basis for the idea of race. Scientists actually cannot define the broad racial categories we often relate to attributes such as skin color, facial features, hair color and texture, and other physical aspects of human beings. Yet despite the scientific repudiation of race as a category, we still describe and classify others according to how we perceive them racially. Hence, although our physical differences may be biologically insignificant, race profoundly affects people’s lives and life chances.

Racism It is very important to learn the difference between five different aspects of racism: prejudice, discrimination, internalized oppression, White privilege, and institutionalized oppression.

Prejudice is the generalized judgments, attitudes, thoughts and feelings we make or have about others without sufficient evidence to substantiate the opinions

Internalized oppression is when we unconsciously believe stereotypes about a group to which we belong. Just because someone is a person of color does not mean that she or he is exempt from breathing the “air” of White superiority that circulates in the culture.Internalized oppression, like prejudice, can be combated through reflection and education.

Discrimination involves actions based on prejudice. Discrimination can deny opportunity or stop people from being seen and treated as individuals. An employer choosing a particular candidate, a new parent choosing a pre­school, or teenager choosing with whom to talk at a party each might discriminate based on race.

White privilege is the system of advantages that Whites get just by being White. For example, as a White person—particularly as a middle class female White— I am not likely to be followed around in a store by a security guard. White students often assume that they do not have a race or ethnicity; the freedom to ignore their race is also a White privilege.

Institutionalized Oppression is the systematic and systemic discrimination against people perceived to be in a certain group. If over and over again in society people of that race are given fewer educational resources and less experienced teachers, denied access to certain jobs or decent health care, made to pay higher interest rates when they buy a car or a house, or are discriminated against in the laws of the land, it is institutionalized oppression.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">Acknowledge that it can be difficult to face the ways we have learned to be racist or to realize how racist the world is. Guilt and anger are important markers. They alert us to the need to find new ways to respond to our own racism and internalized oppression so that we can help others do the same.

WU: Public Places/Persona When you are in public, how do you generally act or present yourself? What elements of society/environment affect you? Do you change in different public places? If so, which ones and why? If you are uncomfortable or feel unsafe in public, what do you do?

Read and annotate: "Black Men in Public Space"

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_LH_lcoOnNLTz3X8H14l6ZJBkXZ3j1cB2l25Ayb52tA/edit?usp=sharing

HW: Using the annotation guide on the top of the essay, read and annotate this essay so that you'll be ready to discuss next class.