Racism, Gender and Stereotyping
November 4th, 2009 by SocProf and tagged Collective Behavior, Gender, Racism, Social Discrimination, Sociology, Stereotypes, Symbolic Violence, Teaching Sociology
Via Sociological Images, this VERY interesting video (note the gender differences in reaction… it would have been interesting to see the reactions if it had been a black man shopping instead of a woman):
It would also have been nice to have some statistics deconstruction: if you target only a specific segment of the population (blacks), then yes, they will show up disproportionately in statistics. If you consider another population to be “safe” (based on stereotypes) and therefore subject them to less scrutiny or no scrutiny at all, then they will be grossly underrepresented in the statistics. Then you can turn around and use the “objective” statistics as support for your prejudice. Neat trick. Works every time.
Good on the ladies for standing up, and shame on the white dude not just for his lack of assistance, but also his reinforcement of the stereotype (”she played the black card”, and then once confronted with his behavior “I felt bad for her”).
And let’s not forget the overall structural effect of these things: the structural exclusion of minorities of all sorts of spheres of social life based on such stereotypes. This is not just a matter of one or two dumb salespeople. They are just channels through which structural mechanisms trickle sown into people’s lives. “Black people are more likely to… (insert one’s preferred undesirable or deviant behavior)” is the way to major social disadvantages for them whether we are discussing medical procedures (such as transplants) or mortgage lending and real estate, or just ordinary shopping behavior.
Posted in Collective Behavior, Gender, Prejudice, Racism, Social Discrimination, Sociology, Symbolic Violence, Teaching Sociology | No Comments »
