content analysis

Yesterday, a friend sent me a link to a very funny blog called Stuff White People Like. Then, this morning, on under the apt title, “whiteness studies,” Jeremy Freese of scatterplot linked to soaring reviews of a gallon of milk on Amazon.com. All this thinking about white people made me consider an issue of ethics and pedagogy related to race.

At my institution, we have a much beloved instructor who teaches a somewhat “edgy” courses about race. He’s fond of blowing apart racial myths and exploring racial inequities in manner that students can easily relate to. He manages to push our largely white and conservative pool of students and still get the best teaching evaluations bar none. He’s cool; he gets it. Virtually every minority student at the institution takes his courses. He’s white, but much like Bill Clinton, he’s completely accepted by minority students.

Recently, he offered a new course exploring white culture restricted to only white students. He was able to get away with that stipulation by only admitting white students who had taken his race class and keeping it under the radar, not letting senior faculty, the chair, or any university officials know about it. Upon learning about this, two opposing thoughts occurred to me: a) how dare he impose a race restriction that return us to segregated classes?, and b) my God, just imagine how productive that class could be, if it gave white students a chance to honestly explore race.

To address point b first, the course covered the history of racism among whites, stereotypes of whites (and their functions), and tried to develop ways to have more equitable and honest multi-racial interactions. By all accounts, students left the course with a far more nuanced notion of race, greater sensitivity to non-whites, and a few became radicalized on the issue of race.

At the same time, to do this under the radar without approval from the department, the institution, or the community seems unethical. Moreover, regardless of whether the community would have consented, the entire notion of barring non-white students is unjust. And that’s to say nothing of how white was even defined for the purposes of admission to the class.

While there is much to be concerned with in this particular example, it does raise the broader question of how we can teach race to white students (and really get through to them!) without them feeling fearful of saying the wrong thing? How can we teach it in a context where white students quietly nod and jot down whatever the instructor says?

Clearly, not all institutions are the same. Some faculty maybe lucky enough to teach at a school rich with Lefty undergrads all too willing to approach race critically. But, perhaps, that situation makes it even more difficult to really challenge students’ thinking.

I’d be interested to hear my reader(s) comments. What do you think?

[DISCLAIMER: The following post in no way discourages the practice of social theory. In fact, we need more of it and it needs to be better. I teach social theory courses and much of my work is entirely theoretical. The following is strictly about the relationship between theory and empirical work.]

I’ll get right to the point here: sometimes social problems don’t need a theoretical framework. Sometimes it’s okay to simply conduct program/policy evaluation research and it need not require a discussion of an academic theoretical school of thought. And it should be published in sociology journals.

While sociology has a rich tradition of theorists, we also have a history of drawing social reformers and journalists into our ranks. These scholars were far more concerned with developing explanations for and solutions to contemporary social problems. The idea that an esoteric academic theory would have to be affixed to a straightforward study of inequality, for example, to legitimize it as sociology was non-existent. Today, we have an obsession with attaching theory to everything (although that almost always means mid-range theory). The term particularly in vogue is “sociological puzzle” — whatever that means.

To use a concrete example, I believe the question, “what were the consequences of the 1996 welfare reform for families and children?” is plainly sociological. It requires neither an explanation of why it is sociology nor does it need to be embedded in a larger theoretical discussion of the power of states. And yet, those very comments were recently directed at the paper of a student I know. Now, of course, it is essential to acknowledge prior research, but it need not be immensely theoretical stuff.

I suspect that some of these issues result from ongoing problem of calling empirical claims theory of the mid-range. Additionally, many journals oriented toward social problems seem to have an insecurity about being under-theorized. But those are different discussions.

I have never been as hyped as many Communications scholars or bloggers about the democratic possibilities of The Internet. Like Cass Sunstein, I tend to think that The Internet encourages segmentation and therefore reduces the chance of “unanticipated encounters” and “common experiences.” Moreover, it seems that the primary model for blogs to have a big impact is to bring underreported stories to the attention of the mainstream press, thus further legitimatizing corporate media’s influence.

Nonetheless, I’ve watched recently as the so-called “socio-blogosphere” has grown substantially (see: Contexts Crawler). Even though it seems every second assistant professor has a blog these days, I’m somewhat concerned that too many of them serve as public diaries or discussions of trivial things (like frustrations with certain stats packages), rather than discussions of ideas. The gold standard for making a blog substantive and meaningful, while still personal has to be Chris Uggen, whose regular discussion of big social issues, frequent graphing, and lucid insights into the National Basketball Association are unbeatable. While I recognize that my above smack talk will compel me to live up to higher goals (if anybody reads this), I’m going to try my best and not let my commodity fetishism for the latest Mac take over.