Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Of course, the other day might have gone better if I had already read this:

Guidelines for Discussion of Racial Conflict and the Language of Hate, Bias, and Discrimination (website from the University of Michigan)

for example,

Spontaneous Discussions: Dealing with the Unanticipated


Ah well.


Now in the course of this discussion we got off on an annoying and possibly predictable tangent where white working class people were being castigated as somehow "worse" and "more racist," than, I don't know, "us." That's bullshit. They aren't more racist; they are differently racist. We all express racism in class-specific cultural ways. On thinking about this further I really want to go back and poke at this next session and particularly unpack the notion that conflict avoidance and restraint and not talking openly about certain subjects is not a universal guideline but actually a very class-specific form of social interaction. But I don't have any good stuff to go off of in my office and can't find any quick-and-easy links using teh googel. Anybody got me a fast fix? I should really be grading papers instead of obsessively planning class.

2 comments:

Dr. Crazy said...

The easiest and most comprehensive thing about class online I think is the NYT series from a couple of years ago on class. I think you just need to type in "new york times class" to get to it. I know that's not scholarly, but it is accessible and wide-ranging, and you could totally bring in an article or two from it for students to read - or direct them to the series itself - and they would find it accessible.

Susan said...

I last worked with this stuff some time ago, but Joanna Kadi, _Thinking Class_ is terrific; there are also excellent essays in Janet Zande's Working Class Women in the Academy. There are a bunch of websites -- Association of Working Class Academics, Class Matters, among others -- that might have some stuff.