P2 Info – Question from Student

A student wrote, in the comments to the assignment:

I am trying to decide on which assignment I want to do. I think that the race and ethnicity one seems interesting but im not really sure on the information that was given to us what you are really looking for in this assignment. Could you give me any ideas?Thanks!

Multicultural Crayons
Image by nathangibbs via Flickr

My response:

I can’t tell from your question exactly what information will help you best, but I’ll share some things that have helped students who stopped by during office hours.

They seemed to be struggling with the fact that, whether it’s social class or race/ethnicity, the topics are big.  How could you choose just 5 photos to illustrate the concepts? How could you do a good job of linking them to the textbook?  Using some structure can be helpful.

• For each of the social classes, the source of income is mentioned. You could pick five of those sources of income and locate a photo of a person engaged in that activity.  (The textbook mentioned at least these sources of income: inherited, business ownership, salaried professional work, mid-level manager or highly skilled blue-collar work, less skilled blue-collar or “pink collar” work, low-paid service jobs, welfare. )
• Alternatively, you could pick one social class and use 5 photos to illustrate different dimensions of that social class. For instance, the upper-middle class section lists professions in which people work, mentions that the line between work and leisure are blurred, the great likelihood of a two-career family (ie, two high-paying jobs), marriage at a later age than average and delaying having children (what would the parents look like with their first baby?), to be involved in leisure pursuits, to be involved in political and civic affairs, to value education for their children.
• A similar approach works with race/ethnicity.  You might select some aspect of social or family life that is mentioned within 5 of the ethnic or racial groups (e.g., family structure – who is in the family home? or gender roles) and find 5 photos that illustrate the way that aspect is played out across the groups.
• Alternatively, you could read the text carefully to locate a feature of families of each ethnicity or race that stand out in the data (for instance, the importance of grandmothers is discussed for black families on p. 192, while the idea of the hard-working “model minority” is discussed regarding Asian Americans). Being careful to avoid sterotyping language, you could show and write about why this is an aspect that is more typical of that group.
• A third approach would be to choose one ethnicity or racial group and find five characteristics that are described in the charts or text, and use photos to illustrate those five characteristics.

I hope these examples help you.

DO remember that you need to document the source of each of your photos on the final slide.