Race and Ethnicity in Culture - Schaap & Berkers (2019) - Maybe it's skin color

4 important questions on Race and Ethnicity in Culture - Schaap & Berkers (2019) - Maybe it's skin color

The article Maybe it's ... Skin color (Schaap & Berkens, 2019), examines the degree to which race-ethnicity and gender are important when people classify rock artists.
The researchers focussed on implicit and explicit classifications. Can you explain the difference?

  • Implicit: when it is unconscious and unexpressed.
    • I.e., you classify on race but are not directly aware of it, or don't express it as a criterium.
  • Explicit: when it is conscious and discursive.
    • E.g., "non-white rockers are not in the canon, so they are inherently more rebellious."

The article Maybe it's ... Skin color (Schaap & Berkens, 2019), examines intersectionality of people's classification practices of rock artists.
What is intersectionality?

  • Intersectionality looks at how various social identities ( race, gender, class, sexuality, etc.) interact and overlap to create unique experiences of discrimination or privilege for individuals and groups.
    • I.e., it considers that discrimination/privilege cannot be fully understood by looking at a single category of social identity.
    • E.g., While two women might face gender-based discrimination, both women may have a wildly different experience of discrimination as one is black and the other is white.

The article Maybe it's ... Skin color (Schaap & Berkens, 2019), examines the degree to which race-ethnicity and gender are important when people classify rock artists.
Why did the researchers think "rock" was an interesting genre to focus on?

  • Because rock is an unmarked genre.
    • Although one race is dominantly present in the genre, it is not mentioned or even ignored.
    • Rock is white, but whiteness does not define rock (i.e., is not a criterium for what rock music is).
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The article Maybe it's ... Skin color (Schaap & Berkens, 2019), examines the degree to which race-ethnicity and gender are important when people classify rock artists.

Can you explain why we could see this as an example of how colour-blind ideology can promote indirect institutional racism?

  • Colour-blind ideology: Ideology that focusses on the sameness between racial and ethnic groups ('opportunity has no colour') and therefore avoids race-related remarks, and with that ignores the unequal social locations and distinctive histories of racial and ethnic groups.
  • Indirect institutional racism.
    • Because of the colour-blind ideology whiteness is unconsciously constructed as the default category (normal).
    • Because this is ignored, real structural inequality stats hided.
    • Cognitive structure: race is implicitly used to make sense of reality. Whiteness is default for rock, others are deviant.

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