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MCAT
Course: MCAT > Unit 14
Lesson 1: Social inequality- Social inequality questions
- Overview of social inequality
- Upward and downward mobility, meritocracy
- Intergenerational and intragenerational mobility social mobility
- Absolute and relative poverty
- Social reproduction
- Social exclusion (segregation and social isolation)
- Environmental justice
- Residential segregation
- Global inequality
- Prejudice and discrimination based on race, ethnicity, power, social class, and prestige
- Health and healthcare disparities in the US
- Intersectionality
- Class consciousness and false consciousness
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Intersectionality
Created by Arshya Vahabzadeh.
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- It seems to me that most people who engage in discrimination would not get past their first, or primary, discriminatory reaction. So, in this case, that this person is female or that she is African-American. What studies suggest that her also being a Buddhist would engender a discriminatory response equal to the first two? Or, to be more blunt, will it really matter to someone who is discriminating against black females, that she is also a Buddhist?(5 votes)
- @K E V I N I am a professor who teaches intersectionality in my work on digital media. I think we too often don't know how to question our questions. Is there any faulty thinking in how I am perceiving even my question. The relevance of what the person discriminating sees or not is not the point of the theory. What is relevant is inquiring perhaps through interviewing of the person suffering the discrimination what their experience is and how it works in their lives AND studying the social or structural forces (immaterial and often intangible) of what race and gender and buddhist practices means within its social context. There can be a tendency to treat these issues like physical objects. But this is about mental maps of reality and symbolic interactions that are often implicit as implicit bias. This might help you get what I mean better. Harvard's implicit bias test. Anyone can test themselves here. It's what we don't cognitively get that is at stake here. It has impacts on life chances for many people not just jobs. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html(21 votes)
- Is this not simply basic, qualitative multivariate analysis applied to potential discrimination? If so, why is Intersectionality considered it's own, unique, revolutionary concept?(8 votes)
- Does intersectionality apply to benefits as well as discrimination? If so, how would these compounding benefits contribute to the rich getting richer?(3 votes)
- Intersectionality reminds me of a linear model with a non-zero interaction term. Have any social scientists quantified intersectionality in this way?(2 votes)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] There are
many different types of discrimination, including things like discrimination based on sex, gender, culture, race and other factors. We can often consider
these things in isolation. But what happens when someone
experiences multiple forms of discrimination at the same time? What happens when we have overlapping areas of discrimination? One of the things that can happen is that we can have
individuals in our society that have characteristics that can result in them facing discrimination
in multiple different areas. For example, we can have a female who is of African American origin, and who, for example,
practices Buddhist teachings, and in a particular
society within our country that may cause her to
be discriminated against in three different areas. So, if we were to draw her
circles of discrimination, what would her overlap look like? She may have one overlap
based on her sexual gender. She may have one overlap based on her racial or
cultural identification, and she may have another circle based on her religious ideas. Right in the center, we have
this level of extreme overlap. Right at the intersection. Now, why is it important to
consider this intersection of these three different areas? It's important because
at this intersection is multiple different categories of potential discrimination
or oppression may compound an interplay in this one individual, and really significantly put her at a disadvantage within society. In order to understand the level of disadvantage that she has, we really need to understand
all three of these factors. The theory of intersectionality
really states just that. It really focuses on the point in which these multiple different areas of potential discrimination
overlap with one another, and exist along side one another. We really need to understand when all of these things coexist, because if we don't consider
all of them at the same time, we really don't get to fully
understand the situation. So, in this individual, if we just consider the fact that she likes Buddhist teachings, in a culture or society that
really doesn't appreciate that, and we miss the fact that the society also doesn't
appreciate the fact that she's female, or discriminates against
African Americans. We may not fully understand the level of discrimination that she faces. And the same situation would result if we only considered the fact that she was female in the sexist society, or that she was African
American in a racist society. So, this theory of
intersectionality really asks us to consider all of the different
levels of discrimination. While the theory was originally
coined in 1989 by Crenshaw as a feminist theory to explain
the oppression of women, it has since really expanded out. People of then really use
it to explain oppression and discrimination found
in all parts of society.