Kristen A. Myers – författare

Studying racism is challenging. Most people avoid publicly expressing racialized comments in fear of being labeled racist. Much public talk is sugar coated and coded to distance the speaker from the racist message. This study captures behind the scenes commentary—racetalk—that degrades people due to race and ethnicity. Despite racial inroads made over the past several decades, the racetalk in this study evinces old fashioned racist ideas persisting in modern imaginations. These scripts say that African Americans are dangerous. Whites are superior. Latinos are dirty and disposable. Indians are sinister. Slavery is a trivial—if not nostalgic and amusing—historical anomaly that is better forgotten. Private racetalk keeps these old scripts hidden yet alive. Through racetalk, people imbue different racial and ethnic groups with oppositional statuses. Racetalk delineates boundaries between whiteness, blackness, and brownness. Racetalk is a tool used in policing these boundaries. Most people who cross racial/ethnic boundaries through alliances, friendships, and courtships are sanctioned. Nevertheless some people are able to cross more successfully than others. An analysis of the content of racetalk reveals the processes through which people negotiate racial/ethnic meanings and boundaries on a daily basis. In so doing, they often perpetuate the old racial regime but occasionally they challenge it.

There can be no doubt that feminism, and its influence on the academy, has wrought enormous changes on the social sciences in general and sociology in particular. This edited volume is an outgrowth of a discussion that began on the Sociologists for Women in Society Listserve, in which participants were asked to talk about key pieces in feminist scholarship that had particularly influenced their sociological thinking. Editors Kristen A. Myers, Cynthia D. Anderson, and Barbara J. Risman have chosen articles that fall into what they consider the intellectual genres that compose feminist sociology. This collection differs from others because the editors avoid organizing material by substantive specialty areas (i.e., family, race and ethnicity, criminology, or methods). Their vision instead sees sociology as an integrated discipline, where feminist contributions have systematically influenced the shape of the whole by similarly influencing the distinct parts. In addition to simply compiling a comprehensive list of important articles from the last two decades, the editors have invited major feminist scholars to comment and reflect on the articles in each section of the book. These reflections help provide the historical and social context in which feminist scholarship has taken place.

This book will be of obvious appeal to feminist scholars and gender sociologists. Yet, as feminist thought rightfully takes its place away from the margins and toward the center of the discipline, this book stands as a rich and useful resource for any contemporary theory course.