Discussion
- List some of your personal, social, and cultural identities. Are there any that relate? If so, how? For your cultural identities, which ones are dominant and which ones are nondominant? What would a person who looked at this list be able to tell about you?
- Describe a situation in which someone ascribed an identity to you that didn’t match with your avowed identities. Why do you think the person ascribed the identity to you? Were there any stereotypes involved?
- Getting integrated: Review the section that explains why difference matters. Discuss the ways in which difference may influence how you communicate in each of the following contexts: academic, professional, and personal.
- Do you ever have difficulty discussing different cultural identities due to terminology? If so, what are your uncertainties? What did you learn in this chapter that can help you overcome them?
- What comes to mind when you hear the word feminist? How did you come to have the ideas you have about feminism?
- How do you see sexuality connect to identity in the media? Why do you think the media portrays sexuality and identity the way it does?
- How do you describe your ethnicity? Do you include your family’s country of origin? Do you consider yourself multiethnic? How does your ethnicity compare to that of the people you spend most of your time with?
- How do redlining and racial steering contribute to institutionalized racism?
- Give an example of stereotyping that you see in everyday life. Explain what would need to happen for this to be eliminated.
- What is the worst example of culture of prejudice you can think of? What are your reasons for thinking it is the worst?
- Do you believe immigration laws should foster an approach of pluralism, assimilation, or amalgamation? Which perspective do you think is most supported by current U.S. immigration policies?
- Which intergroup relation do you think is the most beneficial to the subordinate group? To society as a whole? Why?
- In your opinion, which group had the easiest time coming to this country? Which group had the hardest time? Why?
- Which group has made the most socioeconomic gains? Why do you think that group has had more success than others?
Homework
Choose a case study (Griffiths, et al, 2020) below and write a 500 word reflection:
Option One:
The sports world abounds with team names like the Indians, the Warriors, the Braves, and even the Savages and Redskins. These names arise from historically prejudiced views of Native Americans as fierce, brave, and strong savages: attributes that would be beneficial to a sports team, but are not necessarily beneficial to people in the United States who should be seen as more than just fierce savages. Since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) has been campaigning against the use of such mascots, asserting that the “warrior savage myth . . . reinforces the racist view that Indians are uncivilized and uneducated and it has been used to justify policies of forced assimilation and destruction of Indian culture” (National Congress of American Indians, 2005). The campaign has met with only limited success. While some teams have changed their names, hundreds of professional, college, and K–12 school teams still have names derived from this stereotype. Another group, American Indian Cultural Support (2005), is especially concerned with the use of such names at K–12 schools, influencing children when they should be gaining a fuller and more realistic understanding of Native Americans than such stereotypes supply. What do you think about such names? Should they be allowed or banned? What argument would a symbolic interactionist make on this topic?
Option Two:
As both legal and illegal immigrants, and with high population numbers, Mexican Americans are often the target of stereotyping, racism, and discrimination. A harsh example of this is in Arizona, where a stringent immigration law—known as SB 1070 (for Senate Bill 1070)—has caused a nationwide controversy. The law requires that during a lawful stop, detention, or arrest, Arizona police officers must establish the immigration status of anyone they suspect may be here illegally. The law makes it a crime for individuals to fail to have documents confirming their legal status, and it gives police officers the right to detain people they suspect may be in the country illegally.
To many, the most troublesome aspect of this law is the latitude it affords police officers in terms of whose citizenship they may question. Having “reasonable suspicion that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States” is reason enough to demand immigration papers (State of Arizona, 2010). Critics say this law will encourage racial profiling (the illegal practice of law enforcement using race as a basis for suspecting someone of a crime), making it hazardous to be caught “Driving While Brown,” a takeoff on the legal term Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) or the slang reference of “Driving While Black.” Driving While Brown refers to the likelihood of getting pulled over just for being non-White.
SB 1070 has been the subject of many lawsuits, from parties as diverse as Arizona police officers, the American Civil Liberties Union, and even the federal government, which is suing on the basis of Arizona contradicting federal immigration laws (American Civil Liberties Union, 2011). The future of SB 1070 is uncertain, but many other states have tried or are trying to pass similar measures. Do you think such measures are appropriate?
References
Griffiths, H., Keirns, N., Strayer, E., Cody-Rydzewski, S., Scaramuzzo, G., Sadler, T., Vyain, S., Bry, J., Jones, F., & Rice University. (2015, April 24). Introduction to race and ethnicity. In Introduction to sociology (2nd ed.). OpenStax. Retrieved February 13, 2020, from https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-2e/pages/11-introduction-to-race-and-ethnicity (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License)
Questions 1 – 3: https://cod.pressbooks.pub/communication/chapter/8-1-foundations-of-culture-and-identity/
Questions 4 – 6: https://cod.pressbooks.pub/communication/chapter/8-2-exploring-specific-cultural-identities/
Questions 7 – 14: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-2e/pages/11-1-racial-ethnic-and-minority-groups
