November 2014: Whistling Vivaldi (Steele)

Post date: Dec 02, 2014 5:3:12 AM

Eight folks made their way to Mary Ann's on the rainy evening of November 19th to discuss Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (Issues of Our Time) by Claude M. Steele. Class years ranged from 1946-95. Race was white [there was no poll, so if anyone in attendance identifies otherwise, my apologies -JA]. Those who read the book seemed most to have enjoyed the anecdotal stories in the book and the history of how these types of studies came to be done. General comments included that it was fairly high-level, for a non-academic audience; rather repetitive; and that the studies mentioned all seemed done using surveys of college students, which inherently bias the results because they represent only people who are that age and have access to higher education. Not having read the book myself, I was disappointed that it seemed not to address how we as humans create and use stereotypes so that we could learn how to break them down, but that instead it was about the impact of stereotypes on people being tested, say. It primarily addressed race, I understand, with some examples or studies on women as well, such as the infamous idea that women can't do math.

As the current Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost at UC Berkeley, Steele seems to be applying on campus some of the ideas for how to overcome stereotypes, setting up mixed-race study groups, etc. based on studies that show black college students tend to study alone which is harder because... [read the book!]

Our discussion of race surely would have been more fired up if the Michael Brown/Darren Wilson Ferguson, MO ruling had been announced by then, but this was several days prior.

Racism is certainly going strong; let's see if we can talk about it, and act, and make social change!

2011 interview with Claude Steele on stereotype threat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvwvvbiwRkg