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Race, Class, and Gender in. the United States. 5th ed. Paula Rothenberg, ed. New York: Worth Publishers. 2001. 674 pages. $43.00.
Race, class, and gender are some of the hardest issues to teach and negotiate in the sociological classroom. Evidence of this difficulty is revealed by the frequency in which Teaching Sociology itself publishes articles on new and more effective ways to teach about race, class, and gender inequality. Rothenberg has made a significant contribution to help ease this challenge. She edited an excellent collection of articles on race, class, and gender inequality designed to help instructors teach this notorious triad more effectively. This book, which is best suited for high school or lower division undergraduate courses, has a broad appeal and may be used in Sociology, Women's Studies, or other social science disciplines. In a little over 600 pages, the articles cover a wide array of topics including the social construction of gender, white privilege, poverty statistics, racial profiling, and homophobia in schools, to name a few. For students who find any particular topics or themes interesting, Rothenberg provides a list of suggested readings at the end of each section.
Rothenberg organized this collection of over 100 essays into eight parts. Instead of dividing her chapters by ethnic group or system of oppression, she refreshingly divides them in a more conceptually sophisticated manner. First, she introduces articles that explain how race, gender, sexual orientation, and the underclass are social constructions. They are done particularly well by Sandra Lipsitz Bem, Ruth Hubbard, and Jonathan Ned Katz. The social construction of gender is explained more effectively than the social construction of race in this section. Part Two of the collection provides a series of essays that are more theoretically informed than most of the other sections. As a result, they push readers to start thinking more sociologically and more abstractly. Sethi's article on racism in language is a powerful description of how race is structured in discourse. Hurtado's article,...