“Teaching About Inequality: Student Resistance, Paralysis, and Rage”

Three classroom climates in courses focusing on inequality are identified, those of resistance, paralysis, and rage. In resistant classes, students deny the importance of class, gender, race, and other lines of stratification or fail to see their structural sources. In paralyzed classes, students are so overwhelmed by the pervasiveness of inequality that they become debilitated and depressed; social structures are reified, giving them a false aura of inevitability. In enraged classes, the existence of stratification sparks so much anger that students lash out in an unfocused manner that is often blind to the complexities of stratified societies. In this article, I offer suggestions for responding to each of these three classroom climates.