Transcript Identity development

Identity development
Race, Class and Gender
Racial identity formation

As we learned on Monday, racial
identity is not biological, and is not fixed
or given, but develops over our
lifetimes.
Racial identity formation

Some sociologists think of racial identity
as a kind of performance. This is not to
say it’s fake, or not deeply felt, but that
we do race through our everyday
actions. This might include eating
certain kinds of foods, preferring
particular music or clothing, affiliating
with various subcultures, etc.
Racial identity formation

Some sociologists think of racial identity
as a kind of performance. This is not to
say it’s fake, or not deeply felt, but that
we “do” race through our everyday
actions. This might include eating
certain kinds of foods, preferring
particular music or clothing, affiliating
with various subcultures, etc.
Racial identity formation

There are various ways to perform any
particular racial identity, and we as a society,
and as different subgroups within a society,
often police individuals’ racial performances.
Thus, middle class Latina girls who are good
students, as we saw in today’s readings, are
accused of acting white, and work to counter
that accusation through their dress and
choice of friends.
Racial identity formation
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Watch this clip from Bay Area slam poet Aya
de Leon. What is she saying about the
process of racial identity formation? How is
her interpretation more flexible, and how does
it offer more possibilities, than the idea that
race is biological and fixed?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlXSmK9tTC0
Racial identity formation
Now remember, just because race isn’t fixed,
doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Others look at our
bodies and make assumptions about our
racial identity, and often the consequences of
these assumptions greatly affect our life
chances.
Racial identity formation
Think, for example, of a black family applying for a loan.
Remember the NY Times article we read Monday
that said black and Latino families were more likely to
be given sub-prime loans than white families with
similar incomes. While that family’s process of racial
identity is fluid, it is the loan officer’s perception of
their racial identity that helps to determine the kind of
loan they will be offered.
Racial identity formation
Similarly, a person of middle-eastern descent may
perform their racial identity through their everyday
dress, behaviors, etc.
But when they are singled out for extra security at the
airport, they are having race done to them. In this
situation, race is imposed from outside the individual.
Racial identity formation
Indeed, experiences with racism are one way that racial
identities are formed. Sometimes we conform to the
stereotypes that others hold of us. Other times, we
develop and perform identities that are directly
opposed to these stereotypes. But either way, the
perceptions others hold of our racial backgrounds
guide our process of racial identity formation.
Racial identity formation
This is often very different for whites versus non-whites.
In our society, whites are the dominant group. Even
when whites are not the majority, they hold a
disproportionate amount of political and economic
power.
Racial identity formation
Moreover, white is considered the norm in US society,
and other races are generally seen as different from
the norm. For this reason, people of color in positions
of power are often asked to describe the ways their
background has affected them in ways that whites
are not. We can see this in the questions being asked
of Sonia Sotomayor. John Roberts, on the other
hand, was never asked about his ethnic background,
or how it would affect his work as a judge.
Racial identity formation
Moreover, white is considered the norm in US society,
and other races are generally seen as different from
the norm. For this reason, people of color in positions
of power are often asked to describe the ways their
background has affected them in ways that whites
are not. We can see this in the questions being asked
of Sonia Sotomayor. John Roberts, on the other
hand, was never asked about his ethnic background,
or how it would affect his work as a judge.
Racial identity formation
Indeed, because whites are the norm, they are often
referred to by labels which are not racial markers. For
an example, check out this clip from the Daily Show’s
election coverage.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=
184114&title=The-Best-F - @king-News-Team-Ever--Small-Town-Values
Racial identity formation
Do you agree that “small town values” functions as a
code for white?
Here is a list of what some bloggers believe are ways
the media indicates whites without using language to
indicate race. By doing so, these terms further imply
that white is normal while non-white is other.
http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2008/09/usevirtually-innumerable-array-of.html
Racial identity formation
How might our society’s view of whiteness as the norm,
rather than a distinct racial identity, shape white
people’s processes of racial identity formation?
How does this play into Water’s idea that white
ethnicities are optional while those of people of color
are not?
Sex and gender
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Like racial identity, sociologists see
gender identity as something flexible
that develops over time.
Sex and gender
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In this way, gender is different from sex.
Sex refers to biology. We’re born with
male, female or ambiguous parts (and
please note that as many as 1/1500
babies are born ambiguous). Gender
refers to the norms and behaviors that
we learn to associate with those parts.
Sex and gender
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Like race, gender is done to us from the
moment of our birth. Here, however, it is
more obvious. Female babies are
treated quite differently than male
babies, associated with different colors,
spoken to differently, etc. Common
children’s stories reinforce stereotypical
gender roles of active boys and passive
girls.
Sex and gender
As we get older, images of gender, and
the behaviors and norms expected of
us, are everywhere. The clip from Still
Killing Me Softly that we watched last
week talks about media images of girls.
Here’s an example focused on boys:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exz
MPT4nGI
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The sex-gender system
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The sex-gender system is a set of
assumptions held by US society that your sex
must match your gender, which must match
your sexuality.
 Those who are biologically female are
expected to identify as girls and women, and
to desire boys and men.
 Those who are biologically male are expected
to identify as boys and men, and to desire
girls and women.
The sex-gender system
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The sex-gender system is contested by a variety of
people. Gays, lesbians and bisexuals dispute the
notion that your gender predicts who you desire.
Transgendered people--males who identify as
women or females identifying as men--dispute the
notion that your sex must match your gender.
And intersex and gender-queer people, who identify
as neither male nor female, men nor women, dispute
the idea that there are only two sexes and two
genders.
Gender as performance
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Like race, we can see gender as a
performance. We perform our genders
in different ways at different times.
Sometimes we conform to gender
norms, and other times, we contest
them. In doing so, each of us does
gender in our own ways.
Gender as performance
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Some ways of contesting dominant gender
performances are more accepted than others.
It’s generally considered ok for a female
athlete to perform toughness on the field, but
women who perform toughness in other
aspects of their lives often invoke negative
reactions. Professional women, for example,
must perform gender very delicately as they
aim to be perceived as competent but not
pushy. This is particularly true for black and
Latina women, who are even more likely to
be labeled as confrontational if they contest
dominant notions of femininity.
Gender as performance
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This song by folk singer Dar Williams
discusses gender as a performance.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zIB3piK0
wE&feature=related
 What do you think of Williams’ assertion that
she was a boy? What does it tell us about
gender identity?
Gender as performance
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As children, we are often censured for acting in ways
others find inappropriate to our gender. Boys are told
not to cry and girls are often encouraged to play with
dolls.
More seriously, gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgendered individuals often face serious
harassment by their families, schools and
communities. Gay teens are four times more likely to
commit suicide than heterosexual teens. And cases
of transgender murder, such as that depicted in the
film Boys Don’t Cry, are both common and horrifying.
Gender as performance
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So like race, we “do” gender thorough our everyday
performances, but gender is also done to us as
particular performances are encouraged or censored
by our families, communities and the media.
Class as performance
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Not surprisingly, we also perform our
class identities. This works somewhat
differently from our race and gender
performances. While most of us identify
with one or more races, and with one or
more gender, very few of us identify
meaningfully with a class. Indeed 92%
of people in the US identify as middle
class.
Class as performance
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And yet, as we see in the reading by Julie
Bettie, the ways we identify with various
subcultures often embody a class identity.
Rockers, smokers and Cholo/as were code
for working class identities, while prep
indicated a more affluent identity. Think about
the various cliques in your high school or
college scene. Do they embody class
identities?
Class as performance
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Also unlike race and gender, we are
dissuaded from developing class identities.
The ideal of the American dream--that
anyone who works hard enough can become
rich--suggests that class identities are
unimportant.
 How might Marx regard our society’s
insistence that class doesn’t matter?
Intersectionality
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Intersectionality is a theory that says that
systems of hierarchy are mutually
constructed. Gender, race, class and nation
are understood through one another. Its
critical of assumed universalities of what
men or women, blacks or Asians feel
because those gloss over many differences.
Intersectionality
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So for example, while largely white, middle class
feminists argued for the right of women to enter
the workplace, low-income women, many of
whom were women of color, were already a part
of it.
Intersectionality
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One of my favorite books that uses this theory is
written by a collective of black feminists and its
called All the Women are White, All the Blacks are
Men, but Some of Us are Brave. It’s responding to
white feminists’ assumptions that womens issues
are all the same without accounting for race, and
men black civil rights activists’ assumptions that
all racial issues and identities were the same
regardless of gender.
Intersectionality
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In this clip, Tyra Banks discusses how
standards of womens’ beauty that take white
women as the norm can affect women of
color:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8C5Zn
QA08c&feature=related
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How does this clip demonstrate the
intersection of race, class and gender with
regard to these womens’ identities?
Intersectionality

In this clip, Tyra Banks discusses how
standards of women’s beauty that take white
women as the norm can affect women of
color:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8C5Zn
QA08c&feature=related

How does this clip demonstrate the
intersection of race, class and gender with
regard to these womens’ identities?
Intersectionality
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Sociologists think about oppressions and privileges
as occurring in a matrix of domination. When an
individual is privileged as white, male and middle
class, the privileges compound one another. When
one is female, working class, and a person of color,
the same happens with the variety of ways she can
experience oppression. Each of us has a position in
the matrix of domination that reflects the various
privileges and oppressions we are likely to
experience.