https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-class-divided/
After you have watched this video, I would like for you to write a two-page paper (not counting the name and title page). In this paper I would like for you to: 1) Define and explain the terms Dominant Group and Minority Group; b) explain what it means when sociologists say that Race and Ethnic Inequality are Socially Constructed, and c) explain what Dominant Group and Minority Group is being Socially Constructed in the video experiment.
2) Define and contrast the terms Prejudice and Discrimination. Then provide specific examples from the video where each is created both formally (by the rules and regulations of the class) and informally (voluntarily and personally) among these research subjects. Pay particular attention to the order in which this happens. The formal rules of the class are the start of this process. Everything else, the research subjects add themselves even though they are not required to do so, and all of them said at the start of the video that it is not right to treat people differently.
3) What Individual and Social-level consequences resulted from the Social Construction of Inequality within this society of students? In other words, how did this experiment impact individual kids in both the Dominant and Minority groups, and how did this experiment impact the class as a whole?
4) What is the underlying sociological lesson we can take away from this video about the causes of Categoric Inequality? To be clear, THE LESSON IS NOT THAT ALL THE KIDS WILL NEVER BE RACIST OR PREDUJICED, OR THAT THEY LEARNED A VALUABLE LESSON IN WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST. If the answer was this simple the whole problem of Racial Inequality would have gone away a long time ago. These kids and nearly everyone in our society thinks “that everyone should all get along and be treated fairly”. The lesson we are trying to figure out here is more problematic and complicated. The lesson we are trying to figure out is, how and why groups of people end up creating and maintaining societies which have Racial Inequality? As an adult sociology researcher watching this experiment, what does the Conflict Perspective, and specifically the Dominant Group experience have to tell us about the causes of group-level social inequality?
