Sophia Morrison

Lev Vygotsky, a leader of this approach from early in the twentieth century, pointed out that children in all communities are cultural participants, living in a particular community at a specific time in history. Vygotsky (1987) argued that rather than trying to “reveal the eternal child,” the goal is to discover “the historical child.”

Likewise, sexual orientation is another form of social stratification. This is perhaps most poignantly illustrated by continuing discrimination and hate crimes that are directed toward gays and lesbians. Also, homophobic political rhetoric in the ongoing debate on same-sex marriage echoes discriminatory attitudes that fueled the antimiscegenation

To learn from and about communities other than our own, we need to go beyond the ethnocentric assumptions from which we each begin. Often, the first and most difficult step is to recognize that our original views are generally a function of our own cultural experience, rather than the only right or possible way.

Understanding across cultural groups requires adopting

Racial categories are arbitrary and contingent on the goals and theories of the classifier (Marger, 2015).

“Whiteness is an historical, cultural, social, and political category” created in part by the fact that “Whiteness is so often invisible to White people but not invisible to people of color” (p. 12).

If the preponderance of the scientific evidence supports the recognition of gender/sex diversity beyond only two kinds, and the inclusion of gender identity in discussions of sex, why would someone argue otherwise? As a social psychologist, I believe the answer is quite simple: prejudice.