Discovering Race in a "Post-Racial" World: Teaching Race through Primetime Television

In: Teaching sociology: TS, Band 43, Heft 1, S. 39-45

Abstract

Teaching students about race remains a challenging task for instructors, made even more difficult in the context of a growing "post-racial" discourse. Given this challenge, it is important for instructors to find engaging ways to help students understand the continuing significance of race and racial/ethnic inequality. In this article, we detail an exercise that asks students to analyze representations of race/ethnicity on network television for one week as a way of illustrating white dominance, white privilege, and racial inequality. As evidence of the exercise's effectiveness, we include student reports that demonstrate how students discover the persistence of these issues by conducting their own analysis of primetime television.