Is It Racist? Is It Sexist?

Auteur

Jessi Streib is Associate Professor of Sociology at Duke University. She is the author, most recently, of The Accidental Equalizer, (2023). Her work has been featured or reviewed in The Atlantic, NPR, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and LA Review of Books, among others. She was awarded the William Julius Wilson Early Career Award by the American Sociological Association. Betsy Leondar-Wright, PhD, has been a community organizer, a diversity workshop facilitator, and a sociology professor teaching critical race theory and economic inequality. She is co-author of The Color of Wealth (2006), among other publications.

Texte du rabat

Is it Racist? Is it Sexist? Two questions that seem simple on their face, but which invite a host of tangled responses. In this book, Jessi Streib and Betsy Leondar-Wright offer a new way of understanding how inequalities persist by focusing on the individual judgment calls that lead to us to decide what's racist, what's sexist, and what's not.

It's not news that racism and sexism often seem like optical illusions--with some people sure they see them and others sure they're not there--but the lines that most consistently divide our decisions might surprise you. Indeed, white people's views of what's racist and sexist are increasingly up for grabs. As the largest racial group in the country and the group that occupies the most and the highest positions of power, what they decide is racist and sexist helps determine the contours of inequality.

By asking white people - Southerners and Northerners, Republicans and Democrats, working-class and professional-middle-class, men and women - to decide whether specific interactions and institutions are racist, sexist, or not, Streib and Leondar-Wright take us on a journey through the decision-making processes of white people in America. By presenting them with a variety of scenarios, they are able to distinguish the responses as being characteristic of different patterns of reasoning. They produce a framework for understanding this that invites us all to engage with each other in a new way, even on questions that might divide us.

Is it Racist? Is it Sexist? will leave you questioning how you decide whether a joke, a hiring decision, or a policy change is or isn't racist or sexist, and will give you new tools for making more accurate and impactful judgment calls.

Contenu

1. WHITE PEOPLE'S JUDGMENTS
2. THE ACQUITTERS:"Every Case Has to Be Taken Individually
   3 . THE CONVICTORS : "If You're Aware of It . . . You Find It Anywhere"
3. MOTIVATED ACQUITTERS:"Politics, Media . . . Are Just Always Trying to Force an Agenda
4. MOTIVATED CONVICTORS:"I Can't Think of Any Examples, but I Feel Like It Happens All the Time
5. MODERATE ACQUITTERS:"I Don't Even Like Grouping People into Groups
6. MODERATE CONVICTORS:"I've Seen It Firsthand
7. A BETTER METHOD FOR MAKING JUDGMENT CALLS
   Appendix A: What We Did, Why, and How
   Appendix B: Interview Guide
   Acknowledgments
   Notes
   References
   Index