SECTION I: Constructing Categories of Difference Key Concepts Aggregate Centrism Constructionism Dichotomize Differential undercount Disaggregate Essential Identity

Essentialism Ethnic Group, Ethnicity Gender Heterosexism Master Status Objectification Other Panethnic Race Sex Status Stigma

Learning Objectives:
1. Establish a clear framework for analyzing, interpreting, and critically evaluating the readings. 2. Learn the theoretical bases from which to examine difference. 3. Examine how we arrive at our race, sex and gender, sexual orientation, and social class categories.

Framework Essay I: Key Points

The value of the constructionist approach is that one begins to understand that the process of creating differences and similarities about such categories is remarkably significant. The Essentialist Orientations and Constructionist Orientations Essentialism The perspective that reality exists independent of our perception of it, that we perceive the meaning of the world rather than construct the meaning. From a purely essentialist perspective: Knowledge is regarded as objective and independent of mind. Categories of race, sex, sexual orientation, and social class point up significant, empirically verifiable differences between people. Racial categories exist apart from any social processes; they are objective categories of real differences between people. A modified essentialist perspective argues that while an independent, objective reality exists, it is subject to interpretation. Constructionism The perspective that reality cannot be separated from the way that a culture makes sense of it, that meaning is constructed through -- for example social, political, legal, religious and scientific practices. From a constructionist perspective: Differences between people are created through social processes. Difference is created rather than intrinsic to a phenomenon.

Social processes (political, legal, economic, scientific, and religious institutions) create differences; determine that some differences are more important than others; and assign particular meanings to those differences. The way a society defines difference among its members tells us more about the society than about the people who are being classified.

Few of us have grown up as constructionists; most people are unlikely to be exclusively essentialist or constructionist. Both perspectives are evident in social movements; and those movements sometimes shift from one perspective to another over time. Essentialists are likely to view categories of people as essentially different in some important way; constructionists are likely to regard these differences as socially created and arbitrary. Though the expansiveness of constructionist approaches would be appealing in more tolerant eras, either approach can be used to justify discrimination. Naming Differences are constructed first by naming categories of people. Constructionists pay special attention to the ways and the circumstances under which people name themselves and others , as well as to those occasions when people are grouped together or separated out. Asserting a change of name involves, to some extent, the claim of a new identity. Asserting a name can create conflict on both a personal and societal level. On both the personal and societal levels, naming can involve the claim of a particular identity and the rejection of others ability to impose a name. Since naming may involve a redefinition of self, an assertion of power, a proclamation of pride and a rejection of others ability to impose an identity, social change movements often claim new names, while opponents may express opposition by continuing to use the old name. Changes in names (such as Negro to black to African-American, or homosexual to gay) were first promoted by activists to demonstrate their resistance to oppression and stigma and demonstrate their commitment to a new order. Certain groups can reclaim a name in an attempt to transform what could be identified as an epithet into a symbol of pride (e.g., acceptance of the use of the name queer as a demonstration of pride and resistance for the gay community). Public renaming includes gender movements as well. The use of the term woman as a replacement for girl rejects the connotations of youth, powerlessness.

Creating Categories of People While people or groups may assert names for themselves, governments have the power to create categories and classifications of people. The recent history of the United States Census provides evidence of this process. Every census since the first, issued in 1790, has included a question about race. The 1970 census began the practice of allowing the head of the household to identify the race of household members. Thus, the decision based on the appearance of the family began treating race as primarily a matter of self-identification. In 1970 the census also posed the first questions regarding ethnicity. As a way of correcting for the differential undercount of the Hispanic population, individuals were asked whether they were of Hispanic or non-Hispanic ancestry. A differential undercount means that more people are undercounted in one category than another. Because census data affect the distribution of billions of dollars of federal aid, undercounting has a significant impact upon low-income residents of inner cities. The Constitution requires a count of all the people in the United States, not just those who are citizens or legal residents. Census data has always been critical to the functioning of American government: The appointment of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and the distribution of federal funding to states and localities are based on census data. By the 1970s information on race was needed to document and eliminate discrimination. Such data, the newly formed U.S. Commission on Civil Rights argued, was necessary to monitor civil rights enforcement in regard to the Voting Rights Act, equal access in housing, education and employment, and racial disparities in health, birth and death rates. A remarkable bipartisan consensus supported these initiatives.

To improve the collection of race data, in the 1970s the Commission on Civil Rights reviewed the race categorization practices of federal agencies and concluded that while the designations do not refer strictly to race, color, national or ethnic origin, the categories were nonetheless what the general public understood to be minority groups. Minority group status did not derive from a specific race or ethnicity per se but, in a legal sense, from the treatment of race and ethnicity to confer a privileged, disadvantaged, or equitable status and to gauge representation and underrepresentation. The aim of data collection was to pinpoint the extent of discrimination, not to identify all population categories. In 1977, on the recommendation of the Civil Rights Commission, the Office of Management and Budget issued Statistical Directive No. 15, which established standard categories and definitions for all federal agencies including the Bureau of the Census. Directive No. 15 defined four racial and one ethnic category: American Indian or Alaskan Native; Asian or Pacific Islander; Negro or Black; White; and Hispanic. The racial and ethnic diversity of the United States is more complex now than it was in the 1970s. The most notable changes in the 2000 census was its recognition that a person may identify her/himself as being a member of more than one racial group. As in previous censuses, undercounting remains an important fiscal and political issue, given the disproportionate undercounting of people of color. Since the 1990 census, the form has provided unmarried partner as a possible answer to the question about how people are related to one another. Still, gay couples may well be the most undercounted. Overall, however, the Census Bureau contends that the net national undercount for the 2000 census was smaller than it had been in 1990 (down to 0.06 percent from 1.6 percent). Despite the fact that many find census counting objectionable and perceive it to be essentialist, this data (as this brief history demonstrates) nevertheless generates policies that provide benefits and protections and help to eliminate discriminatory practices; and census categories have been based on constructionist premises. Reliable racial statistics help courts and agencies detect institutional bias to enforce anti-discrimination statutes and, ultimately, provide a measure of our societys progress in regard to racial discrimination and inequality.

Aggregating and Disaggregating Federal identification policies aggregated or combined various national-origin groups into four categories: Hispanics; Native Americans; Blacks; and Asian or Pacific Islanders. (For example, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and others from Central and South America were all labeled as Hispanic.) The groups that are now lumped together have historically regarded one another as different; and thus the aggregate category is likely to disaggregate or fragment into its constituent national-origin elements. Data from the 2000 census reveals that the number of respondents identifying as Other/Spanish/Hispanic/Latino has doubled from 5 to 10 million since the 1990 census. Other/Spanish/Hispanic/Latino is now the fastest growing group in the category. The category of Asian-American is based primarily on geography rather than any cultural, racial, linguistic, or religious commonality. Collective classifications such as Latino or Asian-American were not simply the result of federal classifications. Student activists inspired by the Black Power and civil rights movements first proposed the terms. Panethnicity is the development of bridging organizations and solidarities among subgroups of ethnic collectivities that are often seen as homogenous by outsiders. Asian-American, Hispanic and Latino are examples of panethnic terms or classifications that span national-origin identities. College students coined the identifier Asian American, for example, in response to the similarity of [their] experiences and treatment (Yen Le Espiritu). Panethnicity is a useful concept, however, competition and historic antagonisms make such alliances unstable. The terms Native-American and African-American are also aggregate classifications, but in these cases they are a result of conquest and enslavement. Conquest made Indians out of a heterogeneity of tribes and nations that had been distinctive on linguistic, religious and economic grounds. Relocation and slavery forged a single people from culturally diverse groups; it produced an oppositional racial consciousness or unity in opposition. Even categories such as gay and straight, male and female, poor and middle class are aggregations that presume a commonality by virtue of shared master status; however, alliances between gays and lesbians depend on specific circumstances and issues.

Since difference has historically been created as difference from, it is important to determine from whose perspective difference is determined, and to ask, Who has the power to define difference? Every perspective on the social order springs from a particular vantage point or social location. White culture has historically been the unspoken norm; it is a category that is powerful enough to define others while itself remaining invisible or unnamed. To some extent, regardless of ones sex, race, or sexual orientation, most Americans base their perspectives on an andro-, Euro-, and heterocentric point of view, since these are the guiding assumptions of American culture.

Dichotomizing Many factors contribute to the construction of aggregate categories of people. Often, these aggregates are created as dichotomies, mutually exclusive and in opposition to each other. In contemporary American culture, we tend to treat master status categories such as race, sex, class, and sexual orientation as if they could be broken down into two exclusive and opposed groups.

Dichotomizing Race Dichotomizing race is clearly illustrated in the one-drop rule, as discussed by F. James Davis (Reading 1). Strongly supported by both blacks and whites, American social practices reflect the informal rule that a person with any traceable African heritage is classified as black, while in other cultures people of mixed racial ancestry might be classified as biracial or multiracial. Although various distinctions are made historically and regionally (e.g., between Anglos and Latinos or Asian-Americans and whites), the most encompassing and historic American dichotomization is between whites and nonwhites. Despite the increasing number of people who are bi- and mixed race and the census introduction of the multiple checkoff for race, American social practices apparently remain governed by the rule. In the 2000 census, only 5 percent of African-Americans identified themselves as being of multiple races. This compares to the 14 percent and 40 percent of American Indian respondents who classified themselves as being of more than one race. Considering the census, one must look to those 18 or younger for a sign that the one-drop rule is losing hold. Among the 2.2 million Hispanics who reported more than one race, for example, 43 percent were under 18 (Jones and Smith). The popularity of bi- and multi-racial celebrities and the emergence of of ethnically ambiguous advertising (as discussed by Ruth la Ferla) bodes well for the unraveling of the one-drop rule. Although the black/white dichotomy has been abiding and rigidly enforced, different geographical regions and historical periods have also produced their own two-part distinctions. For example, in the Southwest the divide has been between Anglos and Latinos; whereas in parts of the West Coast it is between Asian-Americans and whites. Each of these variations, however, is an instance of Americas more encompassing and historic dichotomization of whites and nonwhites. Perhaps the most dramatic instance of this dichotomization is the Irish, who were initially treated as non-white but eventually lobbied successfully for their inclusion in American culture based upon their white status. While three racial categorieswhite, Negro, and Indianwere identified throughout the 19th century, as Omi and Winant point out, all were located within the white/non-white dichotomy. The dichotomized racial categories of American/non-American effectively mean white/non-white. Historically American has meant white; as novelist Toni Morrison observes, Deep within the word American is its association with race. Since being American is often synonymous with being white, those who are non-white are often not seen as real Americans.

Race and Ethnicity Ethnic groups are categories of people who are distinctive on the basis of national origin or heritage, language, customs or cultural practices. Racial categories encompass different ethnic groups. Race is the concept that people can be classified into groups based on skin color, hair texture, and shape of head, nose, eyes, lips, and body. The term race was first used in the Romance languages of Europe in the Middle Ages to refer to breeding stock.

In the 16th century, the Spanish first used "race" to refer to New World peoples; and was later adopted by the English, again in reference to the people of the New World. By the late 18th century, the term race was elevated as one of the major symbol and mode of human group differentiation employed extensively for non-European groups and even those in Europe who varied in some way from the subjective norm (Smedley). Though elevated to the level of science, the concept of race continued to reflect its origins in animal breeding. Just as the selective breeding of animals entailed the ranking of stock by some criteria, scholarly use of the concept of race involved the ranking of humans. Differences in phenotypes were developed into an elaborate hierarchy of merit and potential for civilization. The idea of race emerged among all European colonial powers, although their conceptions of it varied; however, only the British in colonizing North America and South Africa constructed a system of rigid, exclusive racial categories and a social order based on race. In the early 20th century, anthropologists looked to physical features such as height, stature and head shape to distinguish the races, only to learn that these are effected by environment and nutrition and that genetics cannot be correlated with conventional racial classifications. They discovered that even efforts to reach a consensus about how many races exist are problematic. The no-race theory is now widely accepted in physical anthropology and human genetics.

Thus, the primary significance of race is as a social concept. Expecting that it will tell us something significant about a person, we organize social policy, law, and the distribution of wealth, power and prestige around it. From an essentialist perspective, race is assumed to exist independently of our expectation of it. From the constructionist perspective, race exists because we have created it as a meaningful category of difference among people. Dichotomizing Sexual Orientation Not unlike the process of dichotomizing race into white/non-white, the construction of sexual orientation is divided into gay or straight with the assumption that all people will fit easily into one category or the other. While the term bisexual has become increasingly common, the assumption that individuals are either gay or straight remains culturally dominant. Scientists continue to seek biological differences between gay and straight people just as they have looked for such differences among the races. Because sexuality encompasses physical, social and emotional attraction, as well as fantasies, self-identity and actual sexual behavior over a lifetime, determining ones sexual orientation may involve emphasizing one of these features over another. Based upon his survey of American sexual practices, Alfred Kinsey suggested that instead of thinking about homosexuals and heterosexuals as if these were two distinct categories of people, we should recognize that sexual behavior exists along a continuum from those who are exclusively heterosexual to those who are exclusively gay. The conclusion that there is no necessary correspondence between identity and sexual behavior was underscored in a1994 survey in which only 2.8 percent of the men and 1.4 percent of the women identified themselves as gay, but an additional 7.3 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively, reported a same-sex experience or attraction. Like the construction of race, sexual orientation can function as an essential identity and be assigned to an individual irrespective of her or his actual behavior. Because no behavior can ever conclusively prove that one is not gay, this label is an extremely effective mechanism of social control.

In conclusion, several parallels exist between race and sexual orientation classifications. In addition to assuming there are limited possibilities in which to fit individuals, they suggest that individuals will fit easily into one or another. We treat both race and sexual orientation categories as encompassing populations that are internally homogenous and profoundly dissimilar; this presumption has prompted a wide-ranging search for the biological distinctiveness of these categories. Different races and sexual orientations are judged superior and inferior to one another; and members of each category historically have been granted unequal legal and social rights. Finally, we assume that sexual orientation, like skin color, tells us something meaningful about a person. Dichotomizing Class Social class is not a central category of cultural discourse in the United States. As Michael Zweig notes, social class operates in ways quite similar to race and sex in that American culture provides interpretations of what differences in income, wealth or employment might mean.

As in the case of other master status categories, social class is often dichotomized into the categories of poor and middle class. Since 1970 the distribution of wealth and income among Americans has become increasingly unequal (Wiefek). Americans construct this poor/middle class distinction as if it reflected an individuals merit as a person, and explain success or failure in terms of individual merit rather than economic or social forces. In other words, social class standing is taken to reveal ones core wortha strikingly essentialist formulation. Many talk about social class as if it were the result of personal values and attitudes, and that lack of effort by the poor was the principle reason for poverty.

Dichotomizing Sex Dichotomization of sex requires a necessary distinction between sex and gender. Sex refers to females and males and reflects chromosomal, hormonal, anatomical and physiological differences. Gender describes the socially constructed roles associated with each sex. Gender is learned and is a culturally and historically specific acting out of masculinity and femininity. Like sexual orientation, sex refers to a complex set of attributes (listed above) that may sometimes be inconsistent with one another or with an individuals sense of her/his own identity. Just as with race and sexual orientation, people are assigned to the categories of female or male irrespective of inconsistent or ambiguous evidence. In order to achieve consistency between the physical and psychological, some people are propelled into sex change surgery as they seek to produce a body consistent with their self-identity; others are will pursue psychotherapy to find an identity consistent with their bodies.

The Social Construction of Disability Ability and disability, two master statuses, are also social constructions in much the same way as race, sexual orientation, sex, and social class. Rather than treating disability as a defect within an individual, an approach that has emerged in the disability rights movement is that disability can be understood as the result of disabling environments; and the categories of disability are themselves socially constructed. While both abled and disabled individuals participate in the social construction of disability, the process is not equal. Cultural concepts such as dependence and independencewhich bear heavily on judgments about what constitutes a disabilityare most often imposed on disabled people by those not so identified. The master statuses of able-bodied and disabled create the misconception that the nature of ability is fixed. Both physically and conceptually, we create disability.

Constructing the Other Aggregation assumes that that those who share a master status are alike in essential ways, and ignores the multiple and conflicting statuses an individual inevitably occupies. Dichotomization promotes the image of the mythical Other and yields a vision of them as profoundly different and ultimately results in stigmatizing those who are less powerful. Constructing Others as Profoundly Different The expectation that Others are profoundly different is seen clearly in the significance attached to sex differences. Biological differences between males and females are assumed to reflect an extensive range of non-biological differences in behavior, perception, and personality. These differences are used to argue for different legal, social and economic roles and rights. However, few significant differences in behavior, personality or even physical ability have been found between men and women. Indeed, there are more differences within each sex than between the sexes. The same expectation that the Other differs in personality and behavior emerges in race, class and sexual orientation classifications.

Sanctioning Those Who Associate with the Other

There are also penalties for those who associate with the Other. Those who do so are also in danger of being labeled a member of that category. For example, men who appear feminine receive strong public criticism and humiliation. Family members often shun those who marry outside their race or who identify as gay. Members of racial and ethnic groups often maintain distance from one another to avoid criticism that might be leveled by members of their own and other groups. Othering thus becomes a remarkably effective social control mechanism because all parties continue to enforce them.

Stigma The term stigma comes from Ancient Greece, where it meant a bodily sign designed to expose something unusual and bad about the moral status of an individual. In the extreme, those depicted as Other may be said to be stigmatized. The core assumption behind stigma is that internal merit is revealed through external features. Judgments of worth based on membership in certain categories have a self-fulfilling potential. Stigma involves objectification as well as devaluation. Objectification means treating people as objects, as members of a category rather than possessing individual characteristics. The depersonalized nature of a category (homosexual, black, women) assumes that no other noteworthy status or identity exists for such an individual.

Examples of Stigmatized Master Statuses: Women and the Poor Women are subject to both objectification and devaluation; as a result, they are discredited and stigmatized. Objectification occurs when members of a category are thought of as interchangeable or indistinguishable from one another; e.g., Lets get the womens point of view on this. Some members of stigmatized categories objectify themselves in the same ways that they are objectified by others. Thus women may evaluate their self-worth in terms of physical appearance. While physical appearance is also valued for men, it rarely takes precedence over other qualities. Rather, men are more likely to be objectified in terms of wealth and power. Research has consistently documented that traits associated with being female in America are generally devalued, while traits associated with being male are more valued in the culture as a whole. Characteristics associated with women are inconsistent with core American values. While America values achievement, individualism, and actionall male attributeswomen are expected to subordinate their personal interests to the family and to be passive and patient. In other words, women are asked to become the kind of people that [our] culture does not value. Many of the same stigmas ascribed to women also apply to the poor. Though it is similarly devalued and objectified, the category of poor is a much more obviously shameful status than being female. Like women, those who are poor are not expected to display attributes valued in the culture as a whole.

Stereotypes About Those in Stigmatized Master Statuses Common stereotypes about those in stigmatized master statuses: They are presumed to lack the values the culture holds dear. They are likely to be seen as a problem; this depiction is, ironically, often accompanied by the trivialization of those problems. They are stereotyped as lacking self control, and as being lustful, immoral and carriers of disease. They are marked as having too much or too little intelligence, and in either case, as tending to deception or criminality. They are often depicted as simultaneously childlike and savagely brutal. Possibly because people in stigmatized categories are portrayed as deviant, it appears that those who commit crimes against them are unlikely to be punished. For example, most murders in the U.S. are interracial (i.e. the alleged perpetrator and the victim share the same race), yet of the 845 prisoners executed between 17 January 1977 and 10 April 2003, 53 percent were whites convicted of killing whites, and 10 percent were blacks convicted of killing blacks. The conclusion could, therefore, be reached that stigmatized minority victims are less valued than white victims.

Individuals in stigmatized master statuses are represented as not only physically distinctive but also the antithesis of the cultures desired behaviors and attributes. Such characterizations serve to dismiss claims of discrimination and unfair treatment, affirming that those in stigmatized categories deserve such treatment and that they are responsible for their own plights.

Concluding on a more hopeful note, the characteristics attributed to stigmatized groups are similar across a variety of master statuses. As a result, there is the relief of impersonality because the stigmatized characteristics are not tied to the actual characteristics of any particular group. Second, people who are stigmatized often form alliances with those who are not stigmatized to successfully lobby against these attributions.