Tags: inequality, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, rural/urban, affirmative action, housing discrimination, institutional discrimination, racial steering, racism, redlining, stratification, subtitles/CC, 06 to 10 mins
Length: 6:05; 3:27
Year: 2003; 2010
Access: YouTube (clip 1; clip 2)

Summary: Institutional discrimination occurs where the practices and policies of an institution systematically benefit one group at the expense of another. The concept relies on the insight that individuals act and make decisions within an institutional context, and that even where explicit racism is difficult to identify, the rules, norms, and common sense associated with institutions may lead individuals—even well-meaning ones—to systematically deny opportunities and equal rights to minorities. When trying to explain the topic of institutional racism, it is useful to recall the history of redlining in the United States, which refers to the practice of appraising real estate differently based on the racial makeup of the communities within which the real estate sits. The first clip above comes from the documentary, Race: The Power of an Illusion, and features a concise explanation of the practice. Sociologist Melvin Oliver explains that "those communities that were all white, suburban, and far away from minority areas, they received the highest rating (from federal investigators of the National Appraisal System), and that was the color green. Those communities that were all minority, or in the process of changing, they got the lowest rating and the color red. They were redlined." Redlining is a form of institutional discrimination because the institutional mechanism of differentially valuing property based on race actually patterns the way individuals act. In other words, whites come to perceive a financial interest in keeping people of color out of predominantly white neighborhoods, and with the reasonable assumption that white neighbors may not be welcoming, people of color may avoid looking for homes in white neighborhoods from the very start. In yet another example of the way institutions pattern discriminatory behavior, real estate agents have been observed steering African American couples from white neighborhoods, as is dramatized in the second clip posted above. Thus to a naïve observer who imagines discrimination and racism to simply be a matter of individual grievances and irrational choices, it may appear that people have simply chosen to live among others of the same race, but in fact, this self-segregating behavior is the result of an institutional context. (Note that this is the second post on The Sociological Cinema that features a clip from Race: The Power of an Illusion).

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

Tags: economic sociology, inequality, methodology/statistics, organizations/occupations/work, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, affirmative action, field experiment, hiring, institutional discrimination, labor market, racism, stratification, 00 to 05 mins
Length: 3:40
Year: 2010
Access: no free online access (but currently available on netflix); YouTube preview

Summary: In this clip from Freakonomics (start 13:50; end 17:30), economist Sendhil Mullainathan discusses his (and co-author Marianne Bertrand's) 2004 field experiment that examined racial discrimination in the labor market (article here). They sent out 5,000 resumes to real job ads. Everything in the job ads were the same except that half of the names had traditionally African-American names (e.g. “Lakisha Washington” or “Jamal Jones”) and half had typical white names (e.g. “Emily Walsh” or “Greg Baker”). As they illustrate, people with African-American-sounding names have to send out 50% more resumes to get the same number of callbacks as people with white-sounding names. In the video, everyday people also discuss how others make assumptions about a person's race based on their name. This is important to understanding how racial stratification is reproduced through the labor market, and explains part of the racial gap in income. This study is further supported by Devah Pager's (2003) classic audit study, where she documented similar effects of racial discrimination through in-person applications. These studies also highlight the importance of affirmative action policies in attempting to level the playing field (although Bertrand and Mullainathan's study showed federal contractors did not favor applicants with African-American sounding names). The video can also be used in a methods class to illustrate field experiments. Note that this is the second post on The Sociological Cinema, which draws from the film Freakonomics.

Submitted By: Paul Dean

Tags:  art/music, gender, intersectionality, race/ethnicity, sex/sexuality, androcentrism, female masculinity, gender performance, masculinity, schemas, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2010
Length: 3:21
Access: YouTube

Summary:  [Trigger warning: there is explicit language used in this clip.] This is the official music video for  English pop singer and songwriter Jessie J's debut single "Do it Like a Dude" (2010). I use this video to discuss gender schemas, or cognitive processes by which individuals become gendered in society. I begin by asking students to identify, according to the video and society at large, the different characteristics that compose "doing it like a dude." Students might mention such things as wearing certain attire, making certain movements or gestures, drinking beer, smoking cigars, having money, being aggressive, or having heterosexual penetrative sex. Students can be encouraged to think how our ideas about these behaviors serve to gender individuals. The video is also a useful catalyst for a discussion about intersectionality and the multiplicities of masculinities (and femininities). For example, instructors might ask students to identify characteristic associated with racialized constructions of gender (e.g., Black masculinity, Latino masculinity, white masculinity, etc...), and how different constructions of masculinity are similar and/or different from one another. Further, the juxtaposition between the lyrics and the styling of Jessie J is also a useful illustration of capitalism and marketing. While singing about performing masculinity, Jessie J performs a sexualized femininity, and students are often quick to connect this with the drive to sell albums. Finally, the video can be used to discuss issues related to androcentrism—can we imagine a male artist trying to "do it like a woman?"

Submitted By: Michelle Sandhoff

Tags: class, economic sociology, inequality, intersectionality, race/ethnicity, great recession, wealth, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2011
Length: 2:33
Access: YouTube 

Summary: This CBS news report shows dramatic wealth inequalities across race, and how the inequalities have increased dramatically during the Great Recession. Like Oliver and Shapiro's classic book, Black Wealth/White Wealth, the report documents that in 1995, the median white household had a net worth 7 times larger than black and Hispanic households. Citing Census data analyzed by the Pew Center, the video shows that in 2010 white households ($113,000) now have 18 times the net worth of Hispanics ($6,325) and 20 times the net worth of African-Americans ($5,677). It notes that part of this growing difference is that the net worth of most racial minorities is found in their homes, while whites are more likely to also own financial assets. The news team argues that this asset allocation explains why white wealth has rebounded significantly from its recent losses and increased the wealth divide. While this is true, they largely miss other important factors. For example, Melvin Oliver's 2008 report found that African-Americans were the subject of systematic predatory lending during the housing bubble that led to the Great Recession. He noted that "minorities were steered away from safe, conventional loans by brokers who received incentives for jacking up the interest rate" and that their mortgages had "high hidden costs, exploding adjustable rates, and prepayment penalties to preclude refinancing." This not only lead to a drop in the value of minority wealth, but actually stripped much of their assets as borrowers who defaulted on their loans. The video closes by saying "experts say it could be a decade before the wealth gap closes," although they do not cite any experts that say this. Viewers may question the optimism of this prediction and reflect on why it is likely to take much more than a decade for something like wealth (which is passed down from one generation to another) to be more equitably distributed across race. The video is a great accompaniment to the readings linked to above, and perhaps even this comedic video from Chris Rock on race and the differences between being rich and wealthy.

Submitted By: Paul Dean

Tags: inequality, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, racism, white privilege, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2011
Length: 3:48
Access: YouTube

Summary: For a lot of people, the notion of a white privilege is  a difficult one to grasp. As sociologist Peggy McIntosh argues in "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," white privilege is akin to an invisible package of unearned assets that whites can count on cashing in each day. As just one example, McIntosh notes that she "can go shopping alone most of the time," well assured she "will not be followed or harassed." Despite plenty of empirical evidence attesting to the existence of white privilege, many people—white people, in particular—are unable to recognize it in their daily lives. This invisibility appears to be by design, and indeed, unearned privileges are powerful and persistent precisely because whites are socialized not to see them. Yet failing to acknowledge unearned privilege is failing to acknowledge the existence of institutionalized racism, and what is not acknowledged stands little chance of being fixed. In the above clip, author and educator Joy DeGruy recounts a story about a time she went shopping with her sister-in-law, who happens to be light-skinned and often "passes" as a white woman. While enduring a blatant instance of discrimination from a suspicious store clerk, DeGruy recalls that her sister-in-law stepped forward and confronted the clerk. In other words, she went further than simply recognizing her own white privilege, and in this case, she used it to call out an act of discrimination and highlight the injustice for onlookers. Note that this clip might work well with a number of other clips on The Sociological Cinema, which similarly take up the concept of white privilege (here, here, and here).

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

Tags: children/youth, psychology/social psychology, race/ethnicity, ideal beauty, internalized racism, representation, self-esteem, self-image, social experiment, socialization, 06 to 10 mins 
Year: 2005
Length: 7:15
Access: YouTube

Summary:  In this youth-directed short documentary film produced by Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, director Kiri Davis interviews other young African American women to gain insight about their experiences with race, racism, and beauty standards, particularly as they relate to skin color, hair, and facial features. Davis also re-conducts Dr. Kenneth Clark's famous “doll test” from the 1940s, which was used in the historic desegregation case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) to show the psychological effects of segregation on black children. Davis's recreation of this experiment shows that, sadly, despite being conducted 60 years later, the results of the experiment are strikingly similar to the original. That is, 15 of the 21 black children in Davis's experiment are shown to prefer the white doll, often describing the white doll as "nice" and the black doll as "bad." A Girl Like Me can be used to teach numerous concepts, including various theories related to the self (e.g., self-image, self-esteem), internalized racism, and socialization. Click here for another clip on The Sociological Cinema that re-creates a version of this doll experiment in order to illustrate children's racial bias.

Submitted By: Valerie Chepp

Tags: crime/law/deviance, discourse/language, inequality, intersectionality, knowledge, lgbtq, marriage/family, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, sex/sexuality, social mvmts/social change/resistance, theory, civil unions, collective action frames, marriage equality, same-sex marriage, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2011
Length: 4:24
Access: YouTube

Summary: In Part I we explored the concept of a collective action frame in the context of the vote on North Carolina's Amendment One, which defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Reverend Dr. William J. Barber argues in this clip that the amendment passed because the wrong frame dominated the public understanding of the issue. In Part II we want to further interrogate Barber's own frame, which posits that the amendment writes discrimination into the state constitution. We think Barber’s argument draws on key insights from intersectionality theory in sociology. In short, this theory draws attention to the relationships among multiple dimensions of social inequality (e.g., race, sexuality, gender, etc.) and insists that the formation of any subject happens at the intersections of these dimensions. Similarly, systems of domination, such as racism and heterosexism, work through this invisible, intersectional scaffolding. Echoing an insight from Kimberlé Crenshaw's path breaking article on the theory, the failure of antiracism to interrogate heterosexism means that antiracist activists are doomed to reproduce the subordination of racial minorities in the LGBTQ community. Indeed, this is what might very well have happened in North Carolina. In the lead up to the vote on Amendment One, it is now clear that there was a coordinated strategy from a political group calling itself the National Organization for Marriage. The group aimed to drive a wedge between members of LGBTQ and Black communities (here and here). Recently unsealed memos from the group state clearly that “The strategic goal of the project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks” and another memo noted the group's aspirations to make the exclusion of gay people from marriage “a key badge of Latino identity.” Barber's frame, then, grasps the way racial and sexual identities were strategically pitted against each other in the vote on Amendment One, but his frame also grasps that violations of equal protection under the law for members of the LGBTQ community in this instance, leaves the door open for violations against racial minorities in the next. As illustrated in this moving speech, intersectionality theory, not only describes how political power relies on manipulating social constructed racial and sexual identities, but also how political resistance must take these constructs into account when formulating effective collective action frames.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

Tags: children/youth, class, education, inequality, race/ethnicity, subtitles/CC, 21 to 60 mins
Year: 2010
Length: 26:54
Access: ERASE Racism 

Summary: ERASE Racism’s documentary, A Tale of Two Schools: Race and Education on Long Island, follows David and Owen, two African American teenagers during their senior year of high school. Even though the students have a lot in common, they go to very different schools. This documentary does a great job of concisely spotlighting the differences and the results of structural educational disparities. Through this film, students will see how race and class are large determining factors in how public schools are funded and what that means for the students who attend those schools. This video would pair well with a Jonathan Kozol reading or "Why Segregation Matters" by Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee. Check out ERASE Racism's website for additional resources related to the film. Note: the available subtitles are in Spanish.

Submitted By: Kendra Barber

Tags: bodies, children/youth, inequality, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, implicit bias, interracial friendship, 06 to 10 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 9:28
Access: CNN

Summary: This Anderson Cooper clip examines children's views on race and interracial friendships. It shows how researchers viewed children (6-year olds and 13-year olds) ambiguous pictures of children with different colored skin, and asked them about what was happening in the pictures, if the children were friends, and if their parents would want them to be friends. It showed that both sets of children had clear understandings about race and that, at least the 13-year olds, had clearly experienced racist views from their families and their friends' families. Among the 6-year olds, young white children were more negative about interactions between children of different races and were far more likely to think black and white children would not be friends. The researcher discusses these experiences as part of an implicit bias, in which people are placed into stereotypes categories based on previous interactions and messages. See also this video of an experimental study showing children's racial bias, this video showing why racial diversity matters in forming view on race, and this video on the children's views on interracial friendships (all from Anderson Cooper).

Submitted By: Paul Dean