For this weeks reading that I chose to summarized “The Social Construction of Difference.” I chose it because I can identify with the reading. Author Johnson discusses Americas social construct of gender, race, class, and sexuality. One interesting point that struck out to me that was made by the late James Baldwin an African American novelist assertion that there is no such thing as whiteness. “No one is white before he/she came to America he wrote. It took generations and a vast amount of coercion, before this became white country.” Baldwin Which brings me to another point being made a woman in Africa considers herself African and has never experienced white racism. That is until she comes to the United States. Where privilege, skin color and race is socially constructed. Because she has dark skin she isn’t seen as African in the United states she is black. I identify with that as someone who is brown people assume I am just black. Johnson further goes on to discusses the mechanisms of privilege and difference and what that looks like. Why is the word privilege such a loaded word for white people. People get upset when it is pointed out that they have privileges that other groups don’t get. He also discuss the varying ways privilege shows up daily. Some people do benefit from white privileges. For example a straight black woman can talk freely about her life her husband and marriage. This is a form of heterosexual privilege someone who is LGBTQ can not talk freely about their relationships like someone who is heterosexual it can put them in danger. I am brown but I have heterosexual privilege.
Sources: 1) Adams, Maurianne, et al., editors. Readings for Diversity and Social Justice. 3 edition, Routledge, 2013.
Wikipedia Summary Avoiding Plagiarism
In your doing research and writing an essay for school one must be very careful to not plagiarized someone else’s work. Plagiarism can get you banned from Wikipedia if you are not careful. Plagiarism can show up in many ways. One of them is where you copy text and don’t credit the author. Another form of plagiarism which is something I found surprising. Copying text word for word and citing it is still consider plagiarism. But what I found out is that in academia the rules are not as strict with Wikipedia. Also don’t close paraphrase even when it is cited. If you are going to paraphrase use your words and ideas. When you find information on Wikipedia you should put it in your own words. When in doubt always cite.
Cited sources: Zúñiga text according to Wikipedia guidelines for avoiding plagiarism (Links to an external site.).
