"The Meaning of Difference"

“The Meaning of Difference” by Karen Rosenblum and Toni-Michelle Travis deals with how people are divided into categories of difference. There main points are that people are generally grouped into different master statuses. For example this could include but is not limited to race, sex, social class, sexual orientation, and ability/disability. (pg. 2) In the first section of the writing the authors conclude that differences in people can be looked at from two different perspectives, essentialism and constructionism. (pg. 2) The authors prove that there is more than one way to look at the categories that we place people into. They argue that most people use the essentialism perspective. This is a way of looking at differences and people and seeing that they are there for whatever reason and don’t develop for any particular reason. This is generally how most people think when looking at differences between people. However the authors of the book argue the other perspective, the constructionism perspective. The authors explain that the purpose of using the constructionism perspective is to discover why there are differences among people. The author informs the reader that by using the constructionist perspective they are able to “examine how we have arrived at our race, sex, sexual orientation, and social class categories”. The authors explain how difference can easily be shown through the naming of certain groups. For example we my call a dark skinned person Black, or we may call that same person an African American. Which is correct and how do we determine what places that person in that particular category. Is it based solely on their skin color or are their other attributes? The authors make the point that by naming this is another way of separating people into specific categories. In my mind the question becomes, are the authors trying to celebrate diversity or simple come up with an explanation for it? It seems to me that the authors are simply stating that there are different categories of people and they want to discover the science behind what makes people different. In my mind I believe that it is important to understand our differences and understand them. Yet it seems that in this day in age it is becoming more important to celebrate our differences rather than to study and try and understand them. I can be categorized as White, Female, Heterosexual, and Middle Class. I understand the fact that I am very different from an Asian male or a female Homosexual. I do not try and understand where these differences came from because I do not know. I believe that perhaps it is not as important to understand why we are different but how. It seems more important to me to see how we as categories of people are different from each other so that perhaps we can learn to experience differences in a positive light rather than a negative one. The authors, from the constructionist perspective make the point that they want to understand how we arrived at these differences that we categorize ourselves into. I believe that this important but personally I take the perspective of the essentialist. I believe that we are all different for whatever reason and should be considerate of that throughout our lives when dealing with all of the different people in the world around us.