In response to the recent critiques about racial representation in the Oscars, The NY Times recently put together a graphic showing the "Faces of American Power". The times include powerful people in entertainment, but also looked at leaders in other fields such as business, politics, and sports.
The result is a powerful representation of just how white our power structure is. You may even want to point out colorism--those leaders who are included as minorities are often very light-skinned. (Think Marco Rubio or Cory Booker). And finally, wile it wasn't the focus on the analysis, this visual can also show your students just how white and MALE the power structure is.
I often display charts showing how many CEOs or Senators are white, but I think for some students, images work better than numbers can to illustrate the depth and breadth of the issue. I hope you can use this to help students see the concept of white privilege and power. Here's the link:
A student recently sent this video to me because it reminded him of our class. In the video, a woman talks about an experience at the grocery store and the role that privilege played.
I liked the video because I find that personal stories and experiences can really help students see the social positions of others, thus unlocking their sociological imagination.
In past years, I have used the Privilege Walk activity to demonstrate the concept of advantages. I grew disenchanted with the activity for a few reasons. The first was that many students had done the activity and thus knew what to expect. The second was that I felt like the underprivileged students weren't surprised to be at the back, but I could sense the emotional toll that standing there was taking on some of them. I'm all for generating a healthy level of discomfort but I felt like I was somehow using the underprivileged students' situation to create discomfort for the privileged., which wasn't the purpose. In addition, in a series of tiny rooms that I was assigned to, this exercise was not possible. I still think the "Walk" works well in some situations, but I was able to find an alternative that accomplished the goals and generated discussions. That alternative was actually produced by Buzzfeed!so the students tend to like it.
This quiz asks students to answer 100 questions and generates a privilege score. It's not scientific but it is fairly comprehensive with respect to class, gender, race, sexuality, disability, religion, etc. Instead of doing this in class, I assign the quiz as homework. I ask students to take a screen shot of their results and to write a paragraph about what they think influenced their score the most. They turn these in at the beginning of class. I ask them to discuss in small groups and while they do this, I record all of the answers on a spreadsheet (anonymously), put them in order, and show the class the range of scores. From here I launch into the discussion just as I would when the privilege walk ended and people were lined up across the room. In the quiz version, you actually don't know who scored what - you just know the range of scores in the room. The underprivileged students know where they fell on the scale, but at least they don't have to stand and be gawked at by the high scorers.
It also may be helpful to pair this exercise with this video in class. This video shows other people doing the privilege walk so can be useful in the overall discussion without doing the exercise in class.
PS - One thing I still need to work on here. The high scorers wind up reporting feel "blessed". It's almost if the result is "Wow! I really dodged a bullet" or "I'm lucky" rather than "Wow. Stratification is real and it has given me a leg up and so we should investigate why that is happening ". I realize part of this is where they are in life, how often they have received these messages but still....
In this video, writer and comedian Akilah Hughes uses the metaphor of pizza to explain intersectionality. In brief, it goes something like this: in a world made for Burgers, Cheese Pizza is trying to argue that it deserves the same rights as Burgers. In that struggle, what is a Pizza with toppings other than cheese supposed to do?
It's not a perfect metaphor, but I think it's a way to help students start thinking about intersectionality.
I recently attended a dissertation defense on the articulation of race in comedy sketches (shout-out to Jennifer Kim: check out her work "The Merits of a Fool: Contending with Race and Racism through Sketch Comedy from the 1960's to the 2000's"). In one of the sketches, comedian Aamer Rahman uses humor to critique the notion of "reverse racism." This video may be a way of tackling the idea in the classroom.
Many people condemned the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France, but why do Muslims often feel like they have to announce their condemnation with greater fervor than other ethnic and racial groups do? In fact, why does it seem like there is pressure for individuals to explain the actions of people who look like them? And why doesn't that apply to whites in the US?
Let this funny Daily Show video be a good start to this conversation in your classroom.
