Welcome to the red line:
Within Washington DC the most famous and well traveled public transportation is the DC Metro. In early November I hopped on the red line and traveled from the Tenlytown/AU Metro stop through the Silver Springs Metro stop. I jumped on the train around five o’clock in the evening just as rush hour was about to begin hoping to catch the major crowd entering around Dupont Circle, and The Metro Center stops. Sitting in the back of the train I noticed specific actions that people took when looking for a seat or the way they acted, specifically geared towards race. While looking for a seat the older women of most races entered the train and found a seat that was empty of any race/gender while the men usually sought out women of the same race. This choosing of seating was very interesting because the majority of those who were entering the metro did not show any real dress difference, all were in business or business casual attire, other then the three teenagers that were sitting in the back right corner. So is it normal for one to seek out the area based on the race (or sex) of the other individuals? In this case it was.
What?
This blog is part of a larger project of our anthropology class. While others pay particular attention to public communication, sex and sexuality, and body language, our focus here is the performance of race. We look at the many ways in which people or things become of an ethnic background. This can include how a person references, whether through physical attributes, speech patterns, or surroundings, another ethnicity. It can include the ways in which a person makes their own ethnicity apparent (or render them invisible). Even within one ethnic diaspora, we meticulously capture the events in which they separate themselves through even narrower ethnic classifications. Every entry displays a reenactment of a racialized characteristic in the context of American life -- and a profound sense of the meaning of culture.
Why?
We participate in the mass observation movement because we believe that it has much to contribute to the field of anthropology. We capture the "thick description" described by Geertz without the consequences of our participation. In each moment, we are able to catch power structures, cultural flows, functions, structures, an individual's or community's relationship to its environment, human agency, symbols and symbolic meaning, the difference differences make, and/or how history is played out in one simple incident.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
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1 comment:
this "experiment" seems to say more about difference between men and women than it does about seeking out one's own race. because how can you conclude that your study suggests that "it is normal for one to seek out the area based on the race" of the other individuals if the tendency is only demonstrated in the men?
if i had to draw any conclusions at all from this, i'd say that it suggests that the men were seeking out women of the same race because most people are more attracted to people of their own race and men tend to seek out people to whom they are sexually attracted, even in circumsntances that do not appear to be sexually charged.
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