Norviel's view of Differences

1. The author’s main idea in this reading is describing the numerous different classes in which people are placed or associated with. He talks about the way these classes came about, and how they are not “real” classes, but rather something that people have made up in order to make themselves look better than others, as well as distinguish them from others whom they do not want to be associated with.
2. The authors start off their piece by describing how people are associated with multiple social statuses. An example the author used for this is that “a person can be an office manager, a college graduate, and a cousin simultaneously”. Rosenblum and Travis then go on to talk about how there are master statuses that are used to “really” identify people, such as being male/female, gay/straight, white/black; these are said to be a person’s “personal identity” even though they are not the only ones who classify themselves under this identity. They describe the differences of essentialists (observers of something that is) and constructionists (creator of what something is). The authors then talk about naming, and how when a person claims a specific identity, they are also rejecting the possibility of others identifying them differently. When classifying ones’ self in a particular group, not all members of that group will use the same name to describe themselves, that is because most categories have multiple names so people chose the one that they want to be identified as. And just because a person uses one name to identify themselves does not mean that everyone will cooperate with this and use that name as well.

Individuals and groups are not the only ones who have created categories in which people are places, the government creates categories as well. Combining people into a group is called aggregating, while disaggregation involves the process of fragmenting its constituents according to their nation-origin.

Later the authors bring about the concept of dichotomizing, which is dividing something into only two different groups. People often think that there are two groups, which each person can belong to either one or the other, never both. An example of this in association to race is classifying people as either white or non-white. People who are of mixed race (ex. White and Black), are automatically identified as being African American rather than simply American. Dichotomizing is also used in sexual orientation (gay/straight), and sex (male/female). In this way, the authors describe how these different social classifications are brought about in a very similar way.

3. If people do not like being “classified” then why do they self classify themselves into different categories? Do homosexuals, females, and people of different ethnicity actually like being in a separate class of their opposites? How many people actually classify people who are different?
4. The writing was overall very informative but I felt that it was too long and drawn out. By the last quarter or more of the writing I was losing interest and caught myself zoning out. I did like the examples the authors used to show what they were talking about more effectively though.