Rosenblum and Travis: "The Meaning of Difference"

In the article “The Meaning of Difference” by Rosenblum and Travis they address important issues. In the second paragraph they say “Nonetheless, similar processes are at work when we ‘see’ differences of color, gender, class and sexual orientation”. Basically they are saying that the only difference between me and the next person is what we see. They continue to break it down throughout the article and I think that is their main point, we can only be considered different because of what people observe, not because of what we actually are, human. On page 17 of the article Rosenblum and Travis state that American means white and anyone who is not white are presumed as immigrants “recent arrivals” and told to go back where ever they may have come from. It is really sad to say that we do, do that. When I was in grade school we would have foreign exchange students come to our school for a year and instead of welcoming him or her I would witness some peoples disgust whenever they walked by them. This isn’t welcoming someone, it is prejudice. To their skin color, their accent, their heritage and background and how they may look. Also in the article Rosenblum and Travis talk about what constructs our society, things like race, sex, gender, social class and sexual orientation and how it is important because it binds people together and puts them into groups. Rosenblum and Travis continue talking about different types of people and the way they are portrayed. There are Essentialist and Constructionist orientations which essentialists are people that believe we are what we are and so we are observed as the way we are. And the Constructionists who believe in master status and that we chose to be what we are. Also talked about in the article is how the Census creates categories of people. I found this to be interesting because I didn’t know that the Census did that, I thought that we were added as a whole. We also dichotomize, which is splitting something into two parts and than classifying them. When Rosenblum and Travis say that dichotomizing is splitting things into two groups, couldn’t it be more than two? There are defiantly more than two religions or countries we all could have come from. I was interested to read closer to the end of the article how we can dichotomize ability and disability. Farther down in the paragraph the authors talk about how disability can be treated not as a defect within the individual but that disability is created by environments that lack physical design and social support that make life worth living. I don’t know about that. So pretty much what is being said is that disability is different than what we think it to be? Disabilities in any case are sad and misfortunate but that doesn’t mean that life is not worth living, or the person feels that life is not worth living. I like Rosenblum and Travis because although I had to read the article twice, it is detailed and breaks down American society. I also liked that we got a worksheet to do if we needed help or to help us understand better. Some of their ideas I find to be very logical and make good sense, while others I had a little bit of a hard time understanding.