SOCIOLOGY

NORAH VINCENT, author, February 13, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Did you read “Black Like Me”, and if so, did you read it before you wrote your book (“Self-Made Man”)? Did the book have any impact on your thoughts?
VINCENT: I did read “Black Like Me” before I started the project. I enjoyed it and was moved by it, but I also felt that it had only limited bearing on what I was attempting to do. Griffin didn’t have to work very hard to experience the start differences between the way Blacks and Whites were treated. He was, after all, doing it in the Deep South during segregation. All he had to do was ride the bus to feel the difference. He couldn’t even eat in the same restaurants.
Seeing the differences was easier in that respect, whereas for me I found that I had to work harder to get at the meat of the experience to discover the differences. If you just walk down the street as a man or a woman in this day and age the differences in how you are treated aren’t nearly so stark. You have to do a lot more interpreting of subtle differences. That’s part of why I chose to join a bowling league and a men’s group. I needed settings with characters and scenarios built in, and ways of contextualizing my experiences so as to draw meaningful conclusions from them.
CZIKOWSKY: As a man, were you primarily accepted as a heterosexual man, or did your feminine features make many believe you were homosexual? If so, what did you learn about being thought of as a homosexual man?
VINCENT: Many people did think Ned was gay, and that was very difficult, more difficult really than being perceived as a lesbian. Gay men threaten masculinity and men far more than gay women threaten femininity and women. I think in part this has to do with the differences between male and female sexuality, but in part it has to do with the culture’s remaining emphasis on the importance of the traditional male role. Gay men threaten that role to such an extent that men are always on the look out for it, as if they were defending the very pillars of our culture, which in a way I suppose they are.

WILLIAM CORSARO, Indiana University Sociology Professor, JuNE 26, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: It is interesting how just a century ago the idea of playgrounds with a radical concept. What are the current thoughts on playgrounds?
CORSARO: Most playgrounds are great for physical activity and the development of motor skills. Also kids love being up high looking down at adults and playgrounds offer many opportunities for this. Playgrounds are also great places for parents and children to play together (especially younger kids). However, most playgrounds offer few opportunities for spontaneous play. Some have tunnels to hide out of hills to climb. But we need to think of new features of this type.

MEBRAHTU GRMAI, The Root writer, and WAARET YOSEPH. The Root Editorial Assistant, July 23, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: I have surveys where the Millennial generation is indeed the most colorblind, and also the generation that does not recognize as many differences between men and women,. It seems this generation is more accepting of immigrants. It does not mean that racism is totally dead. Do you think these surveys are correct in that this is the most colorblind generation so far?
GRMAL: You’re right, racism is not dead. It’s just not openly accepted. Now racism has mutated into a shrouded, covert bandit.
I’m sure almost everyone has realized that by now. Unfortunately, we have to be weary of this, and watch out for new forms of discrimination on account of race, whether it be denied entry into venues because of a certain “standard”, or being carefully watched or even followed in Macy’s.
Fortunately, though people (on every part of the spectrum, mind you) still have to watch out for discrimination, as a whole I believe overall acceptance of other people’s color or creed is going up, mostly due to different people slowly intermixing. It’s a start. But now the main issue is moving from race to class, with racial overtones.
Not as racist? Most certainly.
Colorblind? Not a chance.
YOSEPH: I am so reluctant to embrace the word “colorblind” because it, by definition, denotes some absurd idea of not seeing color. By simply interacting in society we see color because society has drawn the lines up and down and all around us. Millennials did not magically appear and raise themselves in some race-free world. We grew up in a world where concept of race already existed and, just as generations before us, we are inundated by them.
The cool and complicated thing about our generation is that inter-mixing is occurring more than ever. So, I can get down with the idea that we are, perhaps, more accepting of America’s multiculturalism because that, too, is an aspect (a big aspect) of the environment we grew up in. But multiculturalism has caused more issues to spring up, as well. We don’t have clear cut lines of Black or White and we don’t deal with racism in an overt sense.
Now, it would be nice to say that because of the increase in inter-racial relationships and immigration that Gen-Y’ers are all happy-go-lucky and carefree about race. We aren’t though. It’s just a whole new ball game and the races are loaded.