Emotional Labor and the Stereotype of the "Angry Black Woman"

The reading for Wednesday begins with an examination of negative perceptions of Michelle Obama, and how the stereotype of the "angry Black woman" reinforces a lack of femininity and self-worth.

This is then extrapolated to experiences of Black women in the modern office workplace, and the role they have been forced into as a side effect of affirmative action policies. The authors discuss the need for a specific form of presentation, titled emotional labor, as a way in they must present specifically in a largely passive manner. The focus then is to appear as quiet and non-intrusive as possible, leaving them without any identity of their own and undermining the superficial push for diversity that many organizations are highly focused upon.

We watched the following video in class that brings together concepts of workplace stereotypes and inequalities in the context of media production.

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The "Achievement Gap"

For today's reading on the achievement gap and education debt, we will discuss the video below, as well as an article from the Everyday Feminism blog. The reading addresses that white women have benefited the most from affirmative action. Research confirms the argument that gender was a "blindspot" in the original design of affirmative action policies. Ch. 33, “From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools,” Gloria Ladson-Billings Ladson-Billings addresses the “achievement gap,” a catchphrase to describe the difference in academic performance between White, minority, and lower socio-economic status students. This gap has been found to be most significantly affected by race and ethnicity, with a brief review of some of the potential causes. Ladson-Billings suggests avoiding too much focus on the gap, because most of the solutions are short-term in nature, and instead to look at the longer standing “educational debt” akin...

#WhyIStayed and intersectional intimate partner violence narratives

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence compiles facts about the prevalence of DV in the United States, including these statistics . Gendered violence must be examined through a lens of intersectionality if we are to have more compassionate communication about victim/survivors, as well as abusers. We read Rosemary Clark 's 2016 essay from Feminist Media Studies about hashtag activism in the context of domestic violence. Below is a short news clip about one of the viral stories that ignited the #WhyIStayed online movement. Here or on the Scholar Discussion Board be prepared to discuss one of the following questions: 1. How is intimate partner violence an important issue for gender/race/class and feminist discussion? 2. What dominant discourses exist around DV? 3. How does hashtag activism invite intersectional feminist organizing? 4. What outcomes did #WhyIStayed lead to? Please note, this is not optional. All students are required to post a comment or...

Class Inequality

Although the first clip is more than a decade old, it offers historical background of media representations of the working class. This next clip is from 2018, helping us update the conversation. Meanwhile, this site provides an interactive map on redlining .

Communicating Gender, Race, and Class: 2020

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