Today is a LIVE class day! We will be meeting in our Virtual Classroom on Blackboard. See you there!

 

 

 

“Critical accounts of whiteness are a vital and necessary corrective to a sociology of race that myopically explored colour-based racisms [anti-Black racism] with little attempt to reflect upon constructions of whiteness”. In understanding the mutually constitutive aspect of whiteness and the racial “other”, CWS “subverts the idea of whiteness as a universal norm.”

Nayak, 2007 (p. 739)

Today’s class will study the field of Critical Whiteness Studies, which is underpinned by the following:

• That whiteness is a social construction, “a modern invention, [that] has changed over time and place” (Nayak, 2007, p. 739).
• That whiteness is a social norm that is tied to a myriad social, political, and cultural advantages–an index of unacknowledged privileges.

Required Material

Today we are going to have a class discussion about the following:

• Robyn Maynard, Policing Black Lives
  • First part of Chapter 2 (pages 50-57)
    • This first part of Chapter 2 helps students to grasp multiculturalism in Canada
  • First part of Chapter 8 (pages 208-218)
• Your Learning Activity reflections from last Thursday (Week 1 – Day 2)

In-Class Discussion Questions

• Do you think the process of racialization continues to exist today?
• How have you witnessed the concept of “Blackness” change in your lifetime?
• What do you think are the benefits and consequences of thinking of race as a binary of white and Black?
• Why is the understanding of one’s culture important? (This includes but is not limited to family culture and societal cultures at large)

Check Your Learning

References

Nayak, A. (2007). Critical whiteness studies. Sociology Compass, 1(2):737-755.