Teaching Race as a Social Construction: Two Interactive Class Exercises |
Teaching Race as a Social Construction: Two Interactive Class Exercises
Teaching Sociology
Volume 37, Number 4 (October 2009)
Pages 369-378
Nikki Khanna, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Vermont
Cherise A. Harris, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Connecticut College
This paper offers two interactive exercises to teach students about race as a social construction. In the first exercise, “What’s My Race?”, we ask students to sort various celebrities and historical figures into racial categories, giving them the opportunity to see the difficulty of the task first-hand. More importantly, through the process of sorting individuals into various categories, they are introduced to flaws within the current racial classification scheme in the U.S. In the second exercise, “Black or White?”, students are asked to classify photographs of legendary celebrities and historical figures as either black or white. This exercise is used to introduce the concept of the one drop rule; the majority of individuals in the exercise appear racially ambiguous or white, yet all were historically classified as “black” based on the one drop rule. Both exercises, when used together, are designed to visually illustrate to students the ambiguity and arbitrariness of American racial classifications.
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Tags: Cherise A. Harris, Cherise Harris, Nikki Khanna, Nikki Khanna Sherwin, Teaching Sociology