Unstratifying Stratification: Teaching Race, Gender, and Class

Abstract

University faculties recently have been discussing inclusiveness and cultural diversity in the curriculum. This conversation is necessitated by a student body diverse in age, experiences, social class and ethnicity; the typical student is no longer a young white man. Although the idea of inclusiveness has generated much debate, many faculty members support efforts to reach all students. Unfortunately, good intentions can result in platitudes but little else. There is no road map for intrepid instructors to chart a new course (figuratively or literally). Sociologists are fortunate. In specific undergraduate courses such as sex roles or race and ethnicity, we have a head start on answering questions about how differences come to be interpreted as deficiencies. But again, and unfortunately, the examples and the scholarship from those courses may not appear elsewhere in the curriculum. Scholars and teachers in sociology suggest increasingly that race, class, and gender can transform and invigorate the regular curriculum (Cf. Andersen 1988; Gotsch-Thomson 1990). In this note I tell what happened when I tried to make explicit race/class/gender connections in an undergraduate seminar on stratification. This is not a formal case study, but I can and will speculate on what we all learned.