Getting Real About Inequality

Book excerpt: Getting Real About Inequality is a contributed reader for undergraduate courses in Race/Class/Gender, Social Inequality, or the Social Construction of Difference and Inequality. It gives instructors in these courses a set of materials to help them moderate civil, productive, and social science-based discussions with their students about social statuses and identities. Like the book it is modeled after, Getting Real About Race, it is organized around myths and stereotypes that students might already believe or be familiar with through the media or popular culture. A panel of expert contributors were enlisted to write short, accessible essays address the same questions (What is the myth or stereotype under investigation? How do we know that the myth or stereotype is widespread? What does the empirical data tell us?) and provide the same pedagogical features (a summary of the research data, discussion questions, suggestions for further study, suggested activities and assignments). All of pieces in the book employ an intersectional perspective, to help students see the nuanced mechanisms of power and inequality that are often lost in everyday discourse.