Instructions for Daily Diaries

Do the following everyday for six days, starting  11-25-2005.  Turn in the diaries and your summery responses (as noted below) on 11-1-2005.

1. Write a short description of all the group related incidents that occurred to you or you observed during the day.  Group related incidents are those where social group membership effects the behaviors and comments of people.   These can be comments about a group or particular members of group (e.g., stereotypes, jokes, linguistic bias) or behaviors that people do or do not do because of another person's group membership (e.g., social distancing, staring, avoidance, exclusion).  Pay particular attention to the incidents that had to do with the social groups we are examining in this class (gender, race/ethnic groups, religious groups, heavy people, gay/lesbian/bisexual people). Indicate the group/groups involved. 

If you did not experience or observe anything, note that nothing happened of relevance that day.

2. Rate the extent to which you perceive the events to be indicative of prejudice or are discriminatory.

-2 definitely not at all indicative of prejudice or discriminatory

-1 probably not indicative of prejudice or discriminatory

0 uncertain

+1 probably prejudicial or discriminatory

+ 2 definitely prejudicial or discriminatory

For the events that you recorded as being uncertain, probably, or definitely prejudicial answer the following questions.

3. What group or groups were the targets of the incidents?

4. Would you classify the prejudice or discrimination as:

a) hostile/contemptuous

b) paternalistic

c) envy related

d) something else or unsure, explain

4. Record your emotional response to the event

5. Record your immediate and delayed response to the event, if any. Indicate why you choose the response you choice.

6.  On last day, summarize your experience by answer questions at end of this web page.  Turn in your diaries and typed responses to the summery questions.  (The diaries do not need to be typed.)  

Examples:

Event 1:

1.  Group:  Latino/a

I was talking to someone and they indicated that they did not want to go somewhere.  In their description of the place they said that the place had signs up in two different languages which was supposed to be the evidence that their was poorer quality service by the people running the place.

2.  + 2 probably prejudice against Latino/as

3. prejudice against Latino/as

4. contemptuous

5.  Frustrated.  I could see no way around convincing this person that there was something wrong about what they were saying.

6.  I did not say anything.  The person would have probably have been defensive and I saying something would have likely have made it worse.  The person was telling me this within the context of a description of some personal difficulties.  Confronting would have undermined social support for the other issues.  

Event 2:

Event 2:

1.  Group:  women and men.

A sign was posted by a girl in our neighborhood offering her service as a "mother's helper."  It seemed to imply that fathers wouldn't need help and perpetuated the idea that child care is women's responsibility.

2. +2 definitely prejudicial against women

+2 definitely not prejudicial against men.

3. prejudice against women and men.

4. Doesn’t seem to fit any of the three categories. Perhaps paternalistic toward women.

5.  Resentful

6. I did Nothing.   I wasn't sure what to do because it wasn't a face-to-face communication.  It also would likely be received as rude by most of the neighborhood.

On the last day Summarize your experience by answering the following questions.

Please type your responses. I’d expect about a paragraph or two for each question. Yielding about two typed pages.

1.  Give a general description of the events you observed.  

What group or groups were the targets of the experiences you observe?  Who were the perpetrators?  What did the perpetrators do?  (e.g., exclude people, physical threats, made prejudicial or stereotypical comments, harassment, implied prejudice by choice of words).

Did they tend to be of a particular type of prejudice/discrimination? If there were some that were hard to classify, is there any pattern to them?

2.  How did you decide whether the incidents you observed reflected prejudice?  

Were they negative comments about a group or about an individual based upon group membership? Were they comments that communicated stereotypes about a group?  Have you heard this person say similar things before?

3.  What was the range of emotional and behavioral responses you had to the event(s)? What affected the type of response(s) you had to the event(s).  Did you confront anyone?  Why or why not?  Where you satisfied in your responses or lack of responses? 

4. How did keeping track of these incidents affect you?

For instance, did it increase your awareness of prejudice toward other groups? Toward your own group? Did it make you more likely to label events as prejudiced? Did it make you depressed or angry? Were you more likely to respond to events that you might normally ignore or not notice. If you did not observe any prejudice, did this surprise you. Why do you think others did and you did not.

If you did not observe any event this week, please pick an event that you have observed in your past and answer the questions below. Please note in your response that you are describing a recalled event rather than an event that over the week.