Author, acclaimed social psychologist Claude M. Steele to speak at fall convocation
Claude M. Steele was a young boy when he first realized how being black could define his identity and shape his world.
He was walking home with friends on the last day of school in Chicago when he discovered that black children weren’t allowed to swim in the pool in an adjoining white neighborhood, except on Wednesday afternoons.
The roller rink was also off-limits to African-Americans except on Thursday nights. And he couldn’t caddy at the local golf course because management didn’t hire black people for that work in the 1950s and ’60s.
With that harsh childhood memory, Steele, author, social psychologist and executive vice chancellor and provost at University of California, Berkeley introduces Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (Norton 2010), a book chosen as Case Western Reserve University’s 2015 common reading selection for first-year undergraduates.
Whistling Vivaldi provokes readers to examine how they identify each other and themselves.
“This book is about what my colleagues and I call ‘identity contingencies’—the things you have to deal with in a situation because you have a given social identity, because you are old, young, gay, a white male, a woman, black, Latino, politically conservative or liberal, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a cancer patient, and so on,” he writes.
Each year since 2002, the university’s common reading book serves as a basis for programs and discussions for first-year students from orientation through fall semester. Steele will discuss the book as the Elaine G. Hadden Distinguished Visiting Author/Common Reading Convocation Speaker during fall convocation, the official opening of the 2015-16 academic year, on Wednesday, Aug. 26, at 4:30 p.m. in Severance Hall. The event is open to the public, but reservations are recommended.
“Amid recent tragedies and injustices in our city and our nation, we have seen a groundswell of concern and activism among students, faculty and staff concerning issues of inclusivity, diversity, race and racism,” said Timothy Beal, the Florence Harkness Professor of Religion and chair of the common reading program. “Hoping to encourage such engagement, the selection committee worked with the president and other campus leaders to find a book that could help foster serious conversation and self-reflection about how to become a more inclusive community. We believe Whistling Vivaldi will do just that.”
The book’s title refers to a story Steele’s friend Brent Staples, an editorial writer for The New York Times, once described about when he was a young African-American graduate student in Chicago. Staples noticed that some white people appeared fearful as he approached while walking down the street. So he would whistle Vivaldi and other classical music, hoping that would defuse any negative stereotypes they may have about young black men and a predisposition to violence.
Steele shares new research and insights about the power of stereotypes, often illustrating them with compelling stories involving young adults and college students. The book addresses not only race and racism, but also stereotypes of gender, sexuality and ethnicity.
In addition to serving as executive vice chancellor and provost, Steele is a professor in the Department of Psychology and the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley. His groundbreaking research addresses some of the most pressing contemporary problems in American society, focusing on the psychological experience of the individual and, particularly, on the experience of threats to the self and the consequences of those threats.
In a PBS interview for the Frontline series, Steele explained his reference to the term “stereotype threat,” used to describe being in a situation where a negative stereotype could apply.
“It’s important to stress that everybody experiences stereotype threat in some way or another because we’re all members of one group or another that is negatively stereotyped in society,” he said. “…You could imagine a group of males talking to women, for example, about pay equity. The men might experience a sense of being threatened by the male stereotype, that they could be judged in terms of that stereotype or what they say could be interpreted that way. … It might cause them to avoid that kind of situation or maybe to make slips of the tongue that would be embarrassing in that situation. That’s an example of how it can affect, and does affect, everybody.”
Steele, who previously served as provost of Columbia University and as the I. James Quillen Dean for the School of Education at Stanford University, has been widely published.
Steele was educated at Hiram College and Ohio State University, where he earned a PhD in psychology in 1971. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is a member of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Board of Directors, and the Board of the Russell Sage Foundation.