COST-2606EL Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Coldplay, Cultural Appropriation, Class Discrimination
14 Dec 2016
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Week 5:
Body Project: Research Essay
Value: 25%
Due: March 23 (submit to Dropbox by 11.59pm)
Length: 5 pages + references
Full explanation posted on Dropbox under the Content tab
Race and Media Representation
"This year's Black History Month reflects on the present as much as the past"
"After La Loche, using our grief for good"
"Cole and McCormack battle over carding controversy"
Race and Pop Culture
"Mattel Introduces new body types for Barbie"
Elle Canada's March Cover Features Three Canadian Women of Colour"
"Coldplay and Beyonce video sparks cultural appropriation debate"
Concepts and Theories
Prejudice
A negative attitude toward a person or group, based on preconceived judgement or
determination
Prejudices are created using our own (or our group's) standards as "right" or "normal"
Discrimination
The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the
grounds of identity
"ISMS"
A way of describing any attitude, action or institutional structure which subordinates (oppresses)
a person or group because of their target group - race (racism), gender (Sexism), economic
status (classism), older age (ageism), youth (adultism), religion (i.e. Anti-Semitism), sexual
orientation (heterosexism/homophobia), language/immigrant status (xenophobia), etc.
Oppression is a broad system of interconnected forces and barriers which:
Organize people into privileged groups and groups which are deprived, exploited, marginalized
Restrains and contains members of the oppressed group by systematically locking or penalizing
their choices and actions
The forces and barriers are: laws, implicit rules of conduct, social norms, bodily norms, linguistic
habits, terrorism, social pressure, ideologies, religious values, etc.
Intersectionality
More specifically, intersectional analyses suggest that biological, social, and cultural categories
such as gender, race, class, ability, sexual orientation, and other axes of identity interact and
intersect on multiple and often simultaneous levels
These intersections lead to how we experience social privilege and systemic inequality
Ball of yarn analogy
Race
Like gender, race is largely a product of oppressive social constructions
"Race is a social, economic, and political system of division and inequality" (DeMello 101)
Typical or stereotypical inherited physical racial traits are no different from other inherited
physical traits - such as height or eye colour - and they are far more difficult to distinguish with
precision
Racialization
As the concept of 'race' is a social construction, it "is best understood in terms of social and
political processes of racialization, or race-making" (Baum 2006)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
