Topic 10. Intersectionality: Race, Class, and Gender

This week’s agenda

We will focus on intersectionality of race, class, and gender and discuss we use intersectionality to analyze the white beauty standard and Atlanta shooting. You will read interesting newspaper and journal articles and watch some short documentaries. Focus on how we use theoretical terms, such as intersectionality, whiteness, and globalization, in order to analyze the white beauty standard and Atlanta shootings.

Required Reading

• These are reading materials for intersectionality in general.

Textbook-like reading

• Intersectionality, Subcultures and Sociology, Grinnell College.
  • What is Intersectionality?
  • Media

Journal & Media

• Smith, Sharon. 2013. “Black feminism and intersectionality.” International Socialist Review 91(11): 1-16.
• Garcia-Rojas, Claudia . 2019. “Intersectionality Is a Hot Topic — and So Is the Term’s Misuse.” Truthout, October 17, 2019
• Coaston, Jane. 2019. “The intersectionality wars.” Vox May 28, 2019

Study Guide

Click Here

White Beauty

Reading materials

• • Cooper, Helene. 2016. “Where Beauty Means Bleached Skin” The New York Times, November 26, 2016
  • Donnella, Leah. 2019. “Is Beauty In The Eyes Of The Colonizer?” NPR
  • Apuke, Oberiri Destiny . 2018. “Why Do Women Bleach? Understanding the Rationale behind Skin Bleaching and the Influence of Media in Promoting Skin Bleaching: A Narrative Review” Global Media Journal  16(30).

Videos: Skin Bleaching & Whitening

• Watch various cases about skin bleaching in Ghana and India
  • Video 1: Meet The Ghanaian Women Who Are Fighting Skin Bleaching
  • Video 2: Why India’s Fair Skin Business Is Booming

• Video 3: Why the market for skin whitening is growing

 

Videos 3: Plastic surgery (Warning: There are some graphic pictures.)

• • • China’s Tortured Beauties: Make Me Look Western

• • • Plastic Surgery: The Cost of Beauty | 101 East:

Possible Discussion Questions

• • After watching all the videos and reading two articles, discuss the following questions.
    • We explored some cases of white beauty standards in India, China, South Korea, and Ghana.
      • Why are “white” beauty standards problematic and what white beauty standard teaches us? Use a term, whiteness, in order to discuss this question.
      • Do you find any common background information that these countries share? Why has white beauty standard become a norm in these countries?

Atlanta Shootings and Intersectionality

Model Minority Myth

• Reading
  • Wang, Theodore Hsien, and Frank Wu. 1996. “Beyond the model minority myth: Why Asian Americans support affirmative action.” Guild Prac. 53: 35.
  • Frank H. Wu, “The Model Minority: Asian American ‘Success’ as a Race Relations
    Failure,” from Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White (New York: Basic
    Books, 2002): 39-77

• Videos
  • Model minority myth: Why Do We Call Asian Americans The Model Minority? (Required)

• Adam Ruins Everything – How America Created the “Model Minority” Myth | truTV

• A For Average, B For Bad: Behind The Model Minority Myth | NBC Asian America

Hypersexualizing Asian Women

• Reading
  • Kim, Minjeong, and Angie Y. Chung. 2005. “Consuming orientalism: Images of Asian/American women in multicultural advertising.” Qualitative Sociology 28(1): 67-91.
  • “A Sociologist’s View On The Hyper-Sexualization Of Asian Women In American Society,” NPR, March 19, 2021
  • Roby, India. 2021. “Hollywood Played a Role in Hypersexualizing Asian Women.” Teen Vogue, March 24, 2021
• Video
  • Sociologist on America’s history of hypersexualizing Asian women, CBS News.

• • How movies and TV shows dehumanize and hypersexualize Asian Americans | GMA

• The History of Asian Representation in Film

• Yellowface is a bad look, Hollywood

Atlanta Shootings

• Reading
  • Cho, John. 2020. “Coronavirus reminds Asian Americans like me that our belonging is conditional” LA Times, April 22, 2020.
  • Nam, Eric. 2021. “If You’re Surprised by the Anti-Asian Violence in Atlanta, You Haven’t Been Listening. It’s Time to Hear Our Voices.” Time, March 19. 2021.
  • Rondilla, Joanne, Ayu L.Saraswati. 2021. “Asian Women Have Bad Days, Too” Visible Magazine, APRIL 1, 2021
  • Lenthang, Marlene . 2021. Atlanta shooting and the legacy of misogyny and racism against Asian women . ABC News, March 21, 2021 (Watch the video, too!)
  • Namkung, Victoria. 2021. “The model minority myth says all Asians are successful. Why that’s dangerous.” NBC News, March 20. 2021
  • Lee-An, Jiyoung and Xiaobei Chen.2021. “The model minority myth hides the racist and sexist violence experienced by Asian women.” The Conversation.

•  Videos
  • Stop Asian Hate: Connie Wun on Atlanta Spa Killings, Gender Violence & Spike in Anti-Asian Attacks

• • Atlanta Shootings Kill 6 Asian Women Amid Peak In Hate Crimes Targeting Asian Americans

• • Weekend Update: Bowen Yang on the Rise of Anti-Asian Hate Crimes – SNL

• • Why We Should’ve Seen the Atlanta Shootings Coming | The Daily Social Distancing Show

 

Obesity, Race, and Class

Fast food, Fat profits: Obesity in America | Fault Lines

“Generation XXL”

The Weight of the Nation: Poverty and Obesity