Tags: inequality, intersectionality, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, social construction, shadeism, skin tone, 06 to 10 mins 
Year: 2008
Length: 8:54
Access: CNN

Summary: This CNN video focuses on the differential treatment of African Americans based on the skin tone (i.e. comparing lighter and darker skinned African-Americas). It uses Dr. Michael Dyson (a successful, light skinned black male sociology professor) and his younger brother (an incarcerated, dark skinned black male) as a case study of two people raised in the same disadvantaged circumstances but end up with very different outcomes. The commentator asks how they end up in such different places? Both men emphasize that their lives were guided by individual choices but Michael insists that he was allowed and encouraged to make better choices and was given the vocabulary to express them. The differential treatment that Michael Dyson received because he was a "curly top, yellow Negro" was evident, and the video discusses the role of skin tone in shaping their paths through life. It can be used not only to initiate discussions of how race is socially constructed but how racial distinctions (and discrimination) exist within the Black community. See also this documentary on shadeism, and this documentary on the social construction of race.

Submitted By: Angela Johns and Brittany Goldsboro

Tags: bodies, disability, intersectionality, sports, masculinity, master status, stereotypes, subtitles/CC, 06 to 10 mins, 61+ mins
Year: 2005
Length: 85:00 (or first 10 min)
Access:  no online access (trailer here) 

Summary: This documentary explores the world of quad rugby (i.e., murderball), which is a full-contact sport for quadriplegics, who compete with wheelchair specially designed to take the hard knocks of the sport. The film follows the U.S. quad rugby team through their competition in the 2002 World Championships and the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens. Recently, I have used the first 10 minutes of the film in a class period on disability, where we are introduced to the people on the team, and also to the sport. Watching these men physically compete in a competitive sport (and manage the activities of their daily lives) is great for breaking stereotypes about people in wheelchairs. It would also be a good way to explore master statuses (like being in a wheelchair); this film is a nice starting point to discuss both masculinity and how people maintain complex and multi-faceted identities despite disability.

Submitted By: Molly Dingel

Tags: gender, intersectionality, knowledge, race/ethnicity, social mvmts/social change/resistance, feminism, identity politics, women of color, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2011
Length: 3:00
Access: YouTube

Summary: Here is a clip of Loretta Ross, co-founder and national coordinator of SisterSong-Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, commenting on the origins of the term "women of color". As Ross suggests, people often forget that the term "women of color" is not a biologically-based description but has a political and ideological history. Ross explains that the term stems from meetings in 1977 at the International Women's Year Conference (WYC) in Houston, Texas. In response to the growing awareness that the unique concerns and challenges of Black women were not being addressed in the women's movement more broadly, a group of Black women from Washington DC traveled to the conference to propose a Black women's agenda. At the conference, groups representing other minority women joined the Black Women's Agenda (BWA), and the new alliance adopted the more inclusive term "women of color". Thus Ross notes that the term is "a solidarity definition; a commitment to work in collaboration with other oppressed women of color." Ross recounts a history which emphasizes the need for women of color to come together as a distinct political community. She emphasizes a moment of affiliation for a political cause within the women's movement, but she is also implicitly discussing the importance of recognizing the varied and distinct, intersectional identities of women. After showing the clip, instructors might provocatively ask students to consider how they would respond to the usual attack leveled against identity politics, which would claim that the BWA splintered the women's movement and made it less effective.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

Tags: class, gender, intersectionality, race/ethnicity, achieved status, ascribed status, horizontal mobility, intergenerational mobility, intragenerational mobility, stratification, vertical mobility, subtitles/CC, 11 to 20 mins
Year: 1957
Length: 14:50
Access: YouTube

Summary: This sociology documentary from the 1950s demonstrates how long social class has been a concern of sociologists. The film follows the lives of three men from different social classes and explores concepts, such as horizontal mobility, vertical mobility, achieved status, and ascribed status. The obvious omissions of gender, race and other socially constructed categories that matter to analyses of inequality are glaring from a contemporary perspective. Following the film, students can be encouraged to discuss what difference it might make to critically examine how gender or racial inequality varies by social class. What would an intersectional analysis look like? Also, how is it that gender, for example, was completely overlooked in this sociological documentary? The film nonetheless illustrates how class works as an intergenerational phenomenon, as well as how class status can change depending on geography and place. This film's outdated look often proves entertaining for students and can become an ice-breaker for an otherwise reluctant class.

Submitted By: Daniel Williams

Tags: class, du bois, intersectionality, race/ethnicity, black middle class, double consciousness, the veil, subtitles/CC, 06 to 10 mins
Year: 2001
Length: 7:43
Access: No online access

Summary: This is another clip from People Like Us: Social Class in America (start 42:55; end 50:37).  It explores issues of race and class among the Black Middle Class.  It documents the tensions of upwardly mobile African Americans who want to achieve the celebrated (middle class) position of the American mainstream, but at the risk of losing their black culture and identity.  It is a good demonstration of Du Bois' concepts of the veil and double consciousness among a group that is aware of their own Black identity, but also aware of how mainstream White culture views them and the challenges they face as African Americans.

Submitted By: Paul Dean

Tags: gender, intersectionality, media, nationalism, rape, masculinity, femininity, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2009
Length: 2:15
Access: YouTube

Summary: This remix features conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage employing rape metaphors when discussing various political policies. A number of references in the remix rhetorically position women as the victims of rape and unscrupulous men as the rapists. Thus the clip can be used to underscore the way gendered violence is often keyed to a host of political issues in order to provoke the public or suggest a greater sense of urgency. Taking the analysis a step further, one can trace symbolic intersections between gender and nation, as when Rush Limbaugh suggests that his listeners are being "gang raped" by the Democrats. Here Limbaugh's listeners represent the nation and the Democratic Party becomes the assailant. In another example, Michael Savage remarks that "The Statue of Liberty is crying; she's been raped and disheveled...by illegal aliens...How about missing country and the rape of a nation." By suggesting the Statue of Liberty is a victim of rape and undocumented immigrants are the assailants, commentators are able to connect gender violence to nation, thereby shoring up the basis for their outrage. "This is no longer about the tragedy of an individual," the commentators seem to be saying, "it is instead an attack against the American community." The video can be useful to illustrate the way nation and gender are constitutive of each other and how these two dimensions often work together to give meaning and urgency to political issues.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

Tags: art/music, bodies, commodification, gender, inequality, intersectionality, media, race/ethnicity, sex/sexuality, social mvmts/social change/resistance, hip hop, masculinity, poetry, popular culture, sexism, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2002
Length: 3:16
Access: YouTube

Summary: Spoken word artist, Sarah Jones, performs at Def Poetry Jam. Remixing Gil Scott Heron's famous piece, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," Jones asserts "your revolution will not happen between these thighs," drawing attention to the assertions around power and privilege that are made in hip hop lyrics at the expense of women. Jones points to what the "real" revolutionary potential of hip hop might entail.

Submitted By: Valerie Chepp