There's an exercise that I have used a number of times, both in race &
ethnicity courses and in introductory courses, which deals with
stereotypes. I have never tried it at the very beginning of the
semester, since I do think it relies a little bit on having a
comfortable and trusting classroom environment. But if a lot of your
students already know each other from pervious coursework, it might
work well.
Basically, you divide up the entire blackboard into four racial or
ethnic groups, and divide each group into male and female categories.
Then you ask students to call out--with your back to them--whatever
positive AND negative stereotypes then can think of for each group.
This is what my diagram on the board looks like when I do it (of course
with more white space); different groups might be more salient where
you teach:
Black
Asian
Men Women Men
Women
White
Arab
Men Women Men
Women
It is really good for sort of "clearing the air"--everyone can get all
of this off of their chest, and you can tell them to mention any
stereotypes that they've ever heard, not just ones they beleive (which
takes the pressure off of them for being able to be open). Everyone
laugh a lot, and you can usually say something interesting about the
hypermasculinization of blacks, the feminization of Asians, and the
assumption that Arab men are terrorists while Arab women are opppressed
from the results. Lately I've been getting a lot of discussion of ditzy
shopaholics for white women. If you didn't want to use it on the first
day, it also works well to start a section on race and gender.
What I have done on the first day is asked students to think about what
race, ethnicity, culture, etc. mean to them as terms. Despite what your
collegues have done in other classes, you'll find a lot still cling to
notions of race as culture or as biology. It's good to get that out
there in the open so it is easier to recast.
--Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur
New York University
Queens College, CUNY
