Social Construction of RaceEthnicity and Sexuality

1
Social Construction of Race/Ethnicity and
Sexuality
2
Creating Systems of Organization

• 1) The creation of Race/Ethnicity and Sexuality
  are Historical Creations.
• What historical period created race?
• What historical period created sexuality?
• What material realities prompted such creations?

3
Evidence of its social creation

• Race/Ethnicity
• Lack of biological meaning
• One drop rule in US, Australia
• Genetic testing cannot determine race
• Different meanings culturally Brazil vs US
• Different meanings historically Irish, Jews

4
Evidence of its social creation

• Sexuality
• Changes in Definition
• Procreative sex versus erotic sex
• true women
• Research that shows continuum, yet we define
  sexuality categorically.
• Creation of the terms, heterosexual and
  homosexual.

5
Three Steps Towards Creating Oppression

• Homogenization and Categorization
• Essentialization De-contextualizing the social
  and cultural
• De-humanization

6
Heterosexuality and Race as Social Institutions

• Even though the above are social creations, they
  become systems of organizing society. How do we
  organize race and sexuality such that the norm
  has power/opportunity and the deviant are
  vilified?