750-1000 word response

SOC 3004 Online

Summer 2023

Dr. Wimberley

Major Essay 4:

Institutionalized Discrimination (Units 4, 5)

60 points

Please read this whole document carefully before beginning! Since we do not meet face to face, these instructions must be detailed. Reread them as you write your essay to be sure you are following them correctly. All this takes extra time, but remember: you don't spend any time going to class in this course.

Consider this document to be the instructions for how to make an "A" on this essay – because that's exactly what it is. This essay is very structured; don't consider this document as a mere suggestion on how to write your essay.

This essay is based primarily on Units 4 and 5, but can also draw on other parts of the course.

Background Stuff

Submission Procedure (same as Major Essays 1, 2, and 3, except due date and essay number):

Submit this essay by Fri June 30, 8:00pm, as follows:

1. Use MS Word for the single document you submit.

2. When you complete your essay, login to the Canvas course site, click ASSIGNMENTS in the menu bar at left, and click the link for Major Essay 4.

3. Uploading your document should be very straightforward from here. The file name must end in .doc or .docx. Don’t forget to save your document on your computer before you submit it to Canvas!

4. Be sure you’ve completed the process and that Canvas confirmed it received your document.

5. Keep digital copies of your essay (including a backup copy on some device other than your computer, such as a cloud service or flash drive) until the term is over and you've received your final grade in good order. Documents sometimes get lost in the sending/receiving process, and every term, at least one student loses all their files or their computer dies. It will eventually happen to you too, if not during college then afterward….

Required Essay Format (same as Major Essays 1, 2, and 3 except the heading):

1. Font: Use a Times-family 12-point font: Times New Roman, Times Roman, or Times.

2. Heading: At the top of the first page (in the body of the document, not in an MS Word "header"), type this heading:

a. Your name

b. Your VT email address

c. The date you finished writing the assignment

d. “Major Essay 4”

3. Single-space (or, if you want to get fancier, use “multiple” spacing at “1.15” in Format / Paragraph –the same book-like spacing used in this document).

4. Indent the first line of each paragraph. You may either add a blank line after each paragraph, or not, as you prefer.

I require you to follow the above procedures before I'll accept your assignments.

Composition Standards (same as Major Essays 1, 2, and 3): I expect that your major essays will all be spellchecked, proofread, and carefully composed by the standards of formal written English.

Late Submissions (same as Major Essays 1, 2, and 3): I will accept essays late without penalty only under the exceptional and legitimate circumstances described in the syllabus. Otherwise, a late essay will be penalized 10 percent of the maximum score for each class day (weekday, non-holiday) late.

Essays with these characteristics get higher scores (same as Major Essays 1, 2, and 3):

1. directly and fully addresses the instructions

2. convinces me that you have carefully read and really understand the lecture, reading, and/or audiovisual material I've instructed you to draw on

a. this requires you to use terminology and language from these materials, not your own everyday language

b. it also requires you to make explicit, properly cited references to these materials and to integrate them smoothly into your argument – not just tossing them in with a brief mention or sticking them at the end as if they were an afterthought

c. and finally, it also requires you to use those materials correctly – in ways that show you understand the author’s or filmmaker’s or my purpose and meanings

3. cites specific evidence or examples instead of being vague

4. quotes from readings or other sources only minimally, relying more on good paraphrasing (but always using quotation marks and other appropriate ways to identify direct quotes)

5. is well-composed (e.g., good organization and "flow," spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, word choices) and succinct

6. is creative – that is, it’s insightfully original (however, creativity doesn’t substitute for any of the characteristics above – i.e., it doesn’t substitute for following instructions)

Purpose of this assignment: To help you better understand the structural (or “institutional”) character of inequality, specifically by examining institutionalized discrimination.

Your Assignment

Carefully reread and study the two lectures on institutionalized discrimination: Unit 4, Lecture 2, and Unit 5, Lecture 2 (at FILES / 2. LECTURES or through their respective unit modules). You will write your essay on institutionalized gender discrimination by reacting critically to the following:

Phyllis Schlafly, “Facts and Fallacies about Paycheck Fairness.” Schlafly had a long history as an extreme conservative public figure and commentator, being active in politics for over 60 years and nationally famous for the great majority of that time, before she died in 2016. She focused her efforts especially on defending traditional gender roles and family structures, and on attacking feminism, abortion rights, and gay rights. Please read the beginning of the Wikipedia article about her and skim the rest for more details ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Schlafly). You might want to look up other background information to better understand Schlafly’s op-ed, if you’re not sure that you follow it fully. A note about the “77 cents” statistic she refers to: this is how many cents a full-time, year-round-employed woman earned in the U.S. in 2012 for every dollar that a full-time, year-round-employed man earned, as determined by the U.S. Census Bureau. Another note, about the claim in her final paragraph that men’s wages have stagnated: I can confirm that this claim is essentially correct, and the Gilbert textbook and perhaps other readings in this course cover this as well.

This essay is from 2014, which I think will have the advantage of making it a bit easier to analyze it in a more detached way, somewhat apart from the political turmoil we currently live in – albeit on issues quite pertinent to the present moment. Schlafly was a major figure helping to establish the “religious right” that has a dominant role in US conservatism today, including efforts to shift the Supreme Court’s membership in ways that resulted last year in overturning abortion rights.

Schlafly’s essay is an “op-ed.” An op-ed is an opinion piece in a newspaper and similar publications, a “column,” authored by someone not on the publication’s editorial board. In a printed newspaper, there typically is a page with editorials authored by the paper’s editorial board. Op-eds have traditionally appeared on the page opposite of a physical newspaper’s editorial page – thus “op-ed.” Many U.S. newspapers carried this writer’s op-eds. Online daily newspapers continue including just such pieces, that are in their print editions (I routinely read the Washington Post, New York Times, and other online papers, and I see these op-eds constantly, labeled “Opinion”).

Please review the “Essay 2 Lecture” in Essay 2’s instructions (and the related Unit 1 lecture material). These points still apply in this essay, as they did in Essay 3:

· the concept of “quality of life”

· NOT referring to an individual as having “an inequality” or “diversity”

· NOT using a “reverse discrimination” argument, either explicitly or implicitly (one of the recent lectures explained in more detail why “reverse discrimination” is a very problematic idea), and AVOIDING statements like “I’m not racist, but...”

What You’re to Write

Write your essay to consist of the following 4 parts:

1. In paragraph 1 – a single paragraph – briefly summarize a point or set of related points from Schlafly’s column (not the entire column or entire argument – just a selection from it) that you are going to critique in your assignment. Use direct quotes very sparingly.

2. In paragraph 2, briefly summarize points about institutionalized discrimination from Unit 4, Lecture 2, and/or Unit 5, Lecture 2 that provide a basis for critiquing Schlafly’s point in the previous paragraph. You may also draw briefly from your readings and/or other lectures for this course (any unit); if you do, cite them explicitly, including page numbers for readings.

3. Here is the core of your essay: In one or more subsequent paragraphs, write your critique of Schlafly’s points (in #1 above) from the standpoint of institutionalized discrimination principles (in #2 above), specifically focusing on institutionalized gender discrimination. Directly compare institutional discrimination principles from lecture and specific arguments from your selected readings and video (short quotes tend to help here) to the point(s) you selected from Schlafly; as part of these comparisons, apply and distinguish the concepts of intended and unintended institutional discrimination. Also continue to draw directly from Unit 4, Lecture 2 and/or Unit 5, Lecture 2 in this part of your essay. If you wish, you may briefly refer to relevant current events in your critique; in that case, use a reliable news source and cite its URL parenthetically.

4. In one brief final paragraph, sum up your essay.

The best answers to #3 take a form similar to “Schlafly said …. However, [particular reading or lecture or video] shows that….” That is, directly compare specific elements from the op-ed to specific elements from the course materials and clearly describe how the course materials defy the op-ed’s positions. Don’t imply what the difference is. Be explicit.

Here’s the list of materials you must incorporate, explicitly citing them:

A. Lectures: Unit 4, Lecture 2, and/or Unit 5, Lecture 2, well-developed, as noted above.

B. Sernau (posted on Canvas), either Chapter 5 or 6: Material from any part of Sernau Chapter 6 (the chapter on gender and sexual inequality), or possibly instead from Chapter 5 (on racial-ethnic inequality) if it’s helpful and pertinent, other than specific points I covered in lectures. This reference to the chapter should be well-developed. While it’s okay to also cover any points from Sernau that I included in the two lectures on institutionalized discrimination, those points won’t serve to meet this requirement.

C. Gilbert textbook: At least 1 specific point from at least 1 chapter in the Gilbert textbook. This link should be well-developed. As an alternative to a Gilbert chapter, you may use the other chapter from Sernau.

D. Selections posted on Canvas: A well-developed discussion of specific points from at least 2 readings posted on Canvas, other than Sernau. At least 1 of them must be a reading from Unit 4 or 5, listed here for your convenience:

· Dewan, “Has ‘Caucasian’ Lost Its Meaning?”

· Coates, “Letter to My Son”

· Peek, “Encountering Intolerance”

· Sue, “The Manifestation of Racial, Gender, and Sexual-Orientation Microaggressions”

· McGhee, "Racism Drained the Pool"

· Hayes, “How America Became a Colonial Power in Its Own Cities”

· Amott and Matthaei, "Race, Class, Gender, and Women's Work"

· Tannehill, “Trans 101”

· Lorber, "Believing Is Seeing: Biology as Ideology"

· Collins, "Prisons for Our Bodies, Closets for Our Minds"

E. Videos: Material from 1 of these assigned videos (probably the latter):

· “13th”

· “The Codes of Gender”

Some of the above readings and videos probably will fit your essay better than others; choose accordingly.

Clarification of key terms above:

· well-developed: more than what one can normally accomplish in one sentence, meaningfully using specific information from the reading

· explicit: citing the source as shown below, including readings’ page numbers

· specific: citing specific points or examples in the source rather than making vague, general references to it

Source citation style: Cite material (references to ideas, or paraphrases or quotes) from your readings parenthetically in the text of your answer according to this model, including the specific page number(s) you are referring to:

(author's last name(s), p. x)

Here are two examples:

· ... I have to work to pay my own tuition and fees, which have gotten a lot more expensive since my parents attended college. But as Gilbert explains, changes in the U.S. occupational structure mean that the service jobs a student like me can get today pay much less than similar jobs available to my parents when they were in college (Gilbert, p. 53). I’m getting pinched both ways – higher expenses and lower pay.

· ... thus they had viewed my brother's participation positively, but viewed my interest negatively and with suspicion (de Beauvoir, p. 57) – confirming my "otherness."

To cite a video, simply use its title parenthetically.

No list of references is required.

Length: 750-1000 words. I won't read past the 1000th word (not counting your name and such). Use MS Word's "word count" feature to check the length of your document as you write.

Thank you for working through all these long long essay instructions this term!

6/23/23

End of assignment

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