Any Soc Profs Out There (paging ODub)
thesolelife
369 Posts
I just got this gig teaching Sociology- Race, Ethnicity and Inequality.I've been researching textbooks and I'm wondering which textbooks are good/effective/worthwhile???Also, what about videos??? Thanks educators...
Comments
Off the bat though: I'd look at Omi/Winant's "Racial Formation" as a basic primer on racial construction in American politics.
Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro's "White Wealth/Black Wealth" is great when it comes to exploring the relationship between race and class inequality. William Julius Wilson's "The Truly Disadvantaged" is definitely on the older end but it's influential and worth talking about even if you don't agree with his conclusions.
I haven't read it yet but I hear "Black on the Block" by Mary Patillo is pretty solid and it's very recent.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/205649.ctl
And definitely check out George Lipsitz's "The Possessive Investment in Whiteness" to help smash on any students who will go for the "but I'm not prejudiced!" gambit.
Video-wise: I'd recommend Vol 3 of "Race: Power of an Illusion." It covers a lot of ground in just one hour. Spike Lee's Katrina series is good for a more contemporary look at things.
How many students you have?
You should assign one or two readings on race and immigration, especially given current events. I GUARANTEE some fascinating conversations will arise (maybe a few fist fights). If you want to go with something polemical, try Pat Buchanan's tirades against Latino immigration.
I'd also try to work in some readings about racism between communities beyond White and Black. There's some very interesting stuff being said around Black/Asian, Latino/Black, etc. relations that I think are vitally important to think about given how our society is changing, demographically.
The Dean wants me to give her a book I might use...I also looked into a reader but I don't have that much time.
Maybe I'll give her a textbook I like and use articles as I go.
also check 'The Hidden Cost of Being African-American' by Shapiro as well...some strong argumetns on how the racial wealth gap perpetuates racial inequality and how the advantages that result from this inequality are transmitted from generation to generation
Not in the way I think Solelife needs it too.
When I was at uni, most sociology subjects had readers produced for courses using a number of different books. But yeah, as above, I'd say there isn't really a single comprehensive text you can assign.
Major
Yeah, seriously. I have a lot of students from the OC and to hear them tell it, learning Spanish has now become mandatory if you want to get a job in Southern California.
It's not the economics of the situation that they have a problem with; I think most of them feel like they're "strangers" in their neighborhoods as the demographics shift. Of course, this comes with an unsaid - and I'd say, unaware - presumption that Whiteness is normative.
Here are some other joints you might want to add on:
Articles/Books:
Blalock, H. M. (1956). Economic discrimination and Negro increase. American Sociological Review, 21, 584-588.
Burr, J. A., Potter, L. B., Galle, O. R., & Fossett, M. A. (1992). Migration and metropolitan opportunity structures: A demographic response to racial inequality. Social Science Research, 21, 380-405.
Charles, C. Z. (2001). Processes of racial residential segregation: In A. O???Connor, C. Tilly, & L. D. Bobo (Eds.), Urban inequality: Evidence from four cities (pp. 217-271). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Dovidio, J. F., Gaertner, S. L., Kawakami, K., & Hodson, G. (2002). Why can???t we just get along? Interpersonal biases and interracial distrust. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 8, 88-102.
Dovidio, J. F., Kawakami, K., & Gaertner, S. L. (2002). Implicit and explicit prejudice and interracial interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 62-68.
Emerson, M. O., Yancey, G., & Chai, K. J. (2001). Does race matter in residential segregation? Exploring the preferences of White Americans. American Sociological Review, 66, 922-935.
Farley, R., & Frey, W. H. (1994). Changes in the segregation of Whites from Blacks during the 1980s: Small steps toward a more integrated society. American Sociological Review, 59, 23-45.
Feagin, J. R. (1991). The continuing significance of race: Antiblack discrimination in public places. American Sociological Review, 56, 101-116.
Fossett, M. A., & Kiecolt, K. J. (1989). The relative size of minority populations and White racial attitudes. Social Science Quarterly, 70, 820-833.
Gordon, M. (1964). Assimilation in American life. New York: Oxford University Press.
Green, D. P., Strolovitch, D. Z., & Wong, J. S. (1998). Defended neighborhoods, integration, and racially motivated crime. American Journal of Sociology, 104, 372-403.
Holzer, H. J., &, Ihlanfeldt, K. R. (1996, May/June). Spatial factors and the employment of Blacks at the firm level. New England Economic Review, 65-82.
Hwang, S. S., & Murdock, S. H. (1998). Racial attraction or racial avoidance in American suburbs. Social Forces, 77, 541-566.
Kirschenman, J., & Neckerman, K. M. (1991). ???We???d love to hire them, but??????: The meaning of race for employers. In C. Jencks & P. E. Peterson (Eds.), The urban underclass (pp. 203-232). Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
Lau, R. R. (1989). Individual and contextual influences on group identification. Social Psychology Quarterly, 52, 220-231.
Logan, J. R., Alba, R. D., & Leung, S. Y. (1996). Minority access to White suburbs: A multiregional comparison. Social Forces, 74, 851-881.
Logan, J. R., Alba, R. D., & Zhang, W. (2002). Immigrant enclaves and ethnic communities in New York and Los Angeles. American Sociological Review, 67, 299-322.
Massey, D. S., & Denton, N. A. (1989). Hypersegregation in U.S. metropolitan areas: Black and Hispanic segregation along five dimensions. Demography, 26, 373-391.
Massey, D. S., & Denton, N. (1993). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Reskin, B. F., McBrier, D. B., & Kmec, J. A. (1999). The determinants and consequences of workplace sex and race composition. Annual Review of Sociology, 25, 335-361.
Stoll, M. A., Holzer, H. J., & Ihlanfeldt, K. R. (2000). Within cities and suburbs: Racial residential concentration and the spatial distribution of employment opportunities across sub-metropolitan areas. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 19, 207-231.
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (2nd ed., pp. 7-24). Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall.
Taylor, M. C. (1998). How White attitudes vary with the racial composition of local populations: Numbers count. American Sociological Review, 63, 512-535.
Video:
-"Color of Fear."
-???Struggles in Steel: A Story of African-American Steelworkers???
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
I never learned that in any economics course that I ever took. Most non-Chicago-schooled economists would argue that immigration is good for the economy in the long run, as it encourages specialization and production of high value-added goods and services.
Not to mention cheap service-oriented labor for the middle class (dry cleaners, child care, housekeeping, etc.).
The only convincing economic argument I've seen is that the influx of low-wage immigrant labor fucks with the (already) low wages of domestic/native workers but even then, if you're working minimum wage, competing with immigrant labor is just the least of your problems and banning immigrants wouldn't do much to improve your own conditions.
I'm not saying it's taught in econ courses, but rather that many of the students in the classes believe it, because a lot of students take economics because they want to learn how to make money, not because they take interest in the economy as a whole.
Buy low. Sell high.
Voila!
Can you recommend a good reader? I don't want to use a text if I can help it...
Until I'm on campus again, I don't have any titles at the ready.
black picket fences by mary pattillo mccoy is also a good one. these are paperbacks not textbooks though...
No, you'll look like you're trying too hard. Keep the material on your terms while allowing student choice. If they want to pursue a hip-hop angle, let them do that on their own time. In my experience, just because students like particular things doesn't mean they want to get super-analytical with them.
I think showing "Hoop Dreams" would be a worthwhile thing to do. That movie is a good discussion starter, at the very least.
By all means, please continue to add if youz think of anything.
Oh, I started off with the textbook by Martin N. Marger: Race and Ethnic Relations: American and Global
Perspectives.
It's just a primer and I'm def. gonna use other articles, videos, etc. as well.
^^^^^Definitely begin every sentence with "Yo"--ignore the boy Mad Drama Teacher with his talk of "trying too hard".
I think that's a must read.
Also:
This applies a lot of Massey's ideas on segregation to the East Bay/Alameda County/Oakland and surrounding suburbs
http://www.amazon.com/American-Babylon-S...00687312&sr=1-1
Good book on how the various European immigrant groups became "white" in America when at first they were rejected, and then goes up to more contemporary times.
http://www.amazon.com/Whiteness-Differen...00686994&sr=8-2
And like O recommended, you should look into some material on Black-Latino conflict, etc. as well.
Here's a newspaper article from a while back that I use in my H.S. class, "A New California; A growing Latino presence in Compton shows signs of reshaping culture, politics," Zachary Coile, San Francisco Examiner, from Feb. 13, don't have the year, think its 1999
also:
"Black vs. Browns" by Jack Miles, from the book Californai Dream: Myths of the Golden Land
O can probably hook you up with some much more contemporary and academic pieces on the topic.
http://www.amazon.com/Nueva-California-L...00687991&sr=1-1
There's a great chapter in this book about how poverty was racialized in America after WWII.
At first the government focused upon poor whites for govt programs, and then after the race riots of the 1960s blacks becamse the focus, and then by the 1980s they went from trying to help blacks with programs to blaming them for being poor, and then Latinos got thrown in with blacks, even though Mexican-Americans at least do not have the same kinds of social behaviors like single parent mothers, high welfare, etc. although they have the highest drop out rates in CA. That's because most of them go to work rathern than school.
I use that chapter in my government class.
...would love to...I think I'd have admin on my ass I think (no homo)..gotta hit'em gently at first then, hit'em with the power jawns...