{"id":59848,"date":"2013-12-09T08:00:21","date_gmt":"2013-12-09T13:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=59848"},"modified":"2014-06-09T20:47:54","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T01:47:54","slug":"what-names-are-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/12\/09\/what-names-are-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"What Names are Normal? Shifting the Center of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/12\/12.png\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/12\/12-500x118.png\" alt=\"1\" width=\"500\" height=\"118\" \/><\/a>Sociologists observe that cultures are centered around some people and \u00a0not others such that members of some groups just seem like <em>people<\/em> and others are perceived as deviations from that presumed norm.<\/p>\n<p>Names are part of how we divide the world into the normals and the deviants. \u00a0Illustrating this, the sketch comedy duo Key and Peele are super creative in this 3 minute skit. \u00a0They reverse the white-teacher-goes-into-the-inner-city trope and put a non-white teacher into a suburban school. \u00a0As he calls roll, the skit center HIS reality instead of that of the white, middle class kids. \u00a0He pronounces their names like stereotypically black names, confusing the heck out of the kids, and never considering the possibility that the names he&#8217;s familiar with isn&#8217;t how all names really are.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not a <em>safe<\/em> skit &#8212; it potentially reinforces the conflation of non-white and urban and the stereotypes of inner city students and the names low-income black parents give their kids &#8212; but it does a great job of playing with what life might be like if we shifted the center of the world.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><object width=\"560\" height=\"315\" classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/Dd7FixvoKBw?version=3&amp;hl=en_US\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sociologists observe that cultures are centered around some people and \u00a0not others such that members of some groups just seem like people and others are perceived as deviations from that presumed norm. Names are part of how we divide the world into the normals and the deviants. \u00a0Illustrating this, the sketch comedy duo Key and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":60019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,23384,34,778,868,285,1760,1757,341],"class_list":["post-59848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-education","tag-intersectionality","tag-power","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-ruralurban"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/12\/21.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59848"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62918,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59848\/revisions\/62918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}