Recognizing context in criticism of Little Women

An opinion piece by Kaitlyn Greenidge published in the Sunday New York Times offers an example of taking an intersectional lens on a popular narrative, Little Women. If you peruse the article, I hope you'll notice connections to ideas we discussed in class Friday, particularly the importance of context and representation in our narratives and how we talk about race and racial critiques.

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What do stereotypes of immigrant criminalization and mass incarceration communicate about race/gender/class?

42. “The Myth of Immigrant Criminality and the Paradox of Assimilation,” Rubén G. Rumbaut and Walter Ewing Although some of you may not have access to the book, the information in that short reading is available from the American Immigration Council . In a post-9/11 climate of fear and ignorance, assumptions have flourished that immigration and criminality are associated. However, systematic evidence shows that crime is not caused or even aggravated by immigrants to the United States, regardless of their legal status. Crime rates in the nation have declined even at the same time that immigration rates have increased. Among all ethnic groups in the United States, immigrants have lower incarceration rates than those who are native-born. For all ethnic groups, incarceration rates are highest among high school dropouts, yet immigrants who are high school dropouts have lower incarceration rates than other high school dropouts. Although immigrants’ risk of incarceration increases the l...

Controlling Images of Asian and Asian American Women

For today's reading on the "controlling images" and racialized femininities of Asian American Women, you watched a video (included below) to get a historical understanding of early media images. In class we watched the following video for a more modern perspective. To bring the conversation into a current context, an article about "the Asian mean girl" might be productive.

Controlling Images of Latinos and Native Americans

The two readings assigned for Wednesday's discussion extended earlier conversations about controlling images and media representations. Read the summaries and click on the links to read/skim and/or view the supplemental materials for your comments. Please note, this is not optional. All students are required to post a comment or a question for each post. From Ch. 46: In life history interviews with Latino men, Vasquez-Tokos and Norton-Smith found two recurrent themes: gangs and sports. Most respondents had not been involved in either gangs or sports, but they felt forcibly constrained by these controlling images , which had limited their educational opportunities, access to jobs, and sense of self-expression. Whereas prejudice involves negative emotions and stereotypes, controlling images are systemic and cultural instruments of power. They are not individual ideas, but rather ideological collective representations that offer “strategies of action” that bri...

Communicating Gender, Race, and Class: 2020

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