Böcker av Jessi Streib

How can the judgment calls we make in everyday life create or help eradicate social inequality? Is It Racist? Is It Sexist? Two questions that seem simple on their face, but which invite a host of tangled responses. In this book, Jessi Streib and Betsy Leondar-Wright offer a new way of understanding how inequalities persist by focusing on the individual judgment calls that lead us to decide what's racist, what's sexist, and what's not. Racism and sexism often seem like optical illusions--with some people sure they see them and others sure they're not there--but the lines that most consistently divide our decisions might surprise you. Indeed, white people's views of what's racist and sexist are increasingly up for grabs. As the largest racial group in the country and the group that occupies the most and the highest positions of power, what they decide is racist and sexist helps determine the contours of inequality. By asking white people--Southerners and Northerners, Republicans and Democrats, working-class and professional-middle-class, men and women--to decide whether specific interactions and institutions are racist, sexist, or not, Streib and Leondar-Wright take us on a journey through the decision-making processes of white people in America. By presenting them with a variety of scenarios, the authors are able to distinguish the responses as being characteristic of different patterns of reasoning. They produce a framework for understanding these patterns that invites us all to engage with each other in a new way, even on topics that might divide us. Is It Racist? Is It Sexist? will leave you questioning how you decide whether a joke, a hiring decision, or a policy change is or isn't racist or sexist, and will give you new tools for making more accurate and productive judgment calls.

"Though equality is one of the most dearly cherished and proudly proclaimed ideals of our nation, you don't have to look far to see that we not only fall short of it, inequality often grows from one generation to the next. But what if I were to tell you that an egalitarian system has been hiding in plain sight? In this project, Duke sociologist Jessi Streib puts forward a new and bold conclusion: a college degree is the greatest economic equalizer because graduates enter a job market in which success is based on luck. Streib shows that among students who meet a low bar of employability-in particular business majors at a non-elite public university-people from different class backgrounds receive equal pay because luck determines who earns how much. So how do employers for these middle-class jobs manage to short-circuit our unequal system? They do it above all through a strategic use of ignorance: the sector and jobs Streib studied offer very little information to applicants. For instance, some employers pay significantly better than others, but job applicants have no way of knowing which ones offer higher salaries. What's more, evaluation criteria for jobs are not advertised and are incredibly variable. While some hiring managers prefer bubbly, chatty candidates, some prefer candidates who are circumspect and serious. Even seemingly objective criteria didn't get candidates ahead: Streib found that mid-tier employers focused on who could do the job, not on who completed the most internships or where they developed their skills. Even class background seemed to have little influence over a candidate's likelihood of getting a job-hiring managers didn't care whether a candidate's leisure activities were expensive or free. The advantages that applicants access once they're hired extend beyond their salaries: they receive equal access to mentoring and professional growth opportunities, and these advantages carry through into subsequent jobs. Streib's deep dive into the luckocracy uncovers its many faults and advantages, all while suggesting how we can create better and fairer opportunities for everyone"--