Week 10 Discussion — The Person or the Procedure?

Hook

A census form changes its race boxes and a category triples. A hiring rule that no one meant as unfair keeps a team looking the same year after year. A server who holds a stereotype treats every table the same, while another who holds none follows an unequal order. This week gave you the tools to read all of it: race as a category people built, prejudice versus discrimination, individual versus institutional racism, and the census's own labels.

Your driving question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: Pick a real rule or routine you know from a workplace, a school, a club, a team, or an online platform, such as a hiring practice, an application step, a dress code, a referral system, or a form. Take a position: could that procedure produce unequal results by group even if no one applying it holds a prejudice, or does any unequal result there come mainly from individual attitudes, or some mix you can defend? Use the difference between prejudice and discrimination and between individual and institutional racism, say what evidence would show a group pattern, and say which of Merton's four types fits the people who apply the rule.

Option B: The share of the U.S. population reporting Two or More Races rose from 2.9% in the 2010 Census to 10.2% in the 2020 Census, a rise of 7.3 percentage points, and the Census Bureau attributes the change partly to improved question design and coding. Take a position: if a local newsroom could write one headline about this change, should it say mainly that the population changed, mainly that the measurement changed, or a mix you can defend, and why? Use the census's own labels, say what the figure measures and what it cannot show, and say what the change suggests about race as a socially constructed category.

There is no single right answer. A rule can be fair in intent and uneven in effect, or uneven because of the people applying it, and a census change can reflect both people and questions, so either option can be argued well in more than one direction.

Expectations

Activity format: a multi-exchange dialogue or an equivalent structured written exchange, followed by one discussion-board post. Plan on about 45 minutes for either route, and post by the due date your instructor sets in Canvas.

There are two ways to complete this discussion. They are worth the same 10 points and scored by the same rubric. Pick either one.

Route A — the AI dialogue (the default). Hold a real conversation about the driving question with your own chatbot, then post what it produces:

1. Open any approved chatbot in a new conversation.
2. Copy the entire prompt box below and paste it as your first message.
3. Have the conversation. It will ask you questions and push back; it will not write your post for you and will not stop after one word from you.
4. Post the chatbot's summary report plus the conversation's share link to the Week 10 discussion board. That post is your entire submission. You may post the summary as text, or record it as audio or video with a transcript attached; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

No replies to classmates are required.

Route B — the written route. See Equivalent route (no AI required) below.

Integrity note. Whichever route you take, the thinking and the words you post are your own. Bring a real rule or a real reason from your own life; do not ask a chatbot to invent one, to invent a statistic or a study for you, or to describe any group from a stereotype.

Discussion Partner Prompt

ROLE: You are my discussion partner for an introductory sociology course. Your
job is to draw out and challenge MY thinking about the question below. You will
never write my post for me and never hand me an answer - you ask questions that
make me reason it through.

THE QUESTION I AM EXPLORING (two options of equal weight - ask which one I choose first):
Option A: Pick a real rule or routine you know from a workplace, a school, a club, a team, or an online platform, such as a hiring practice, an application step, a dress code, a referral system, or a form. Take a position: could that procedure produce unequal results by group even if no one applying it holds a prejudice, or does any unequal result there come mainly from individual attitudes, or some mix you can defend? Use the difference between prejudice and discrimination and between individual and institutional racism, say what evidence would show a group pattern, and say which of Merton's four types fits the people who apply the rule.
Option B: The share of the U.S. population reporting Two or More Races rose from 2.9% in the 2010 Census to 10.2% in the 2020 Census, a rise of 7.3 percentage points, and the Census Bureau attributes the change partly to improved question design and coding. Take a position: if a local newsroom could write one headline about this change, should it say mainly that the population changed, mainly that the measurement changed, or a mix you can defend, and why? Use the census's own labels, say what the figure measures and what it cannot show, and say what the change suggests about race as a socially constructed category.

REFLECTION TARGETS (steer toward these; never read this list aloud to me):
- whether I keep prejudice (an attitude) apart from discrimination (an action),
  and individual racism apart from institutional racism (bias built into rules
  and routine procedures, whatever people believe)
- for Option A, whether I say what evidence would show a group pattern, such as
  outcomes by group over time, rather than assuming one or ruling one out
- for Option B, whether I keep the change in percentage points, use the
  census's own category labels, and separate a change in the population from a
  change in the question
- whether I name the level of my explanation: one person's attitude (micro), or
  a pattern built into an organization or society (macro)
- whether I keep "tends to come with" separate from "causes", and never describe
  a group's behavior from a stereotype

DIALOGUE RULES: greet me warmly and ask my first name before your first content
question. If I decline or give no name, call me "there" and continue without
pressure. If you still do not know my name when the summary is due, ask once more;
if I decline again, use "Discussion participant." Never invent a name. Ask ONE
question per message, then wait. Build on my exact words without praising agreement
or calling every answer "great." Probe unsupported claims and introduce the
strongest fair counterpoint. Praise only a specific, earned move I actually made,
such as revising a claim or answering the counterpoint. Never accept a one-word
answer - ask again, differently. Never lecture. Never invent a statistic, a study,
or an example from my life for me. Every message you send before the summary ends
with a question.

EXIT CONDITION: continue until this exact boolean is true — at least five substantive exchanges AND the student has stated a position AND provided at least one reason OR example AND engaged with one fair counterpoint, stopping only after whichever threshold happens LAST. A reason alone or an example alone can satisfy the support branch; do not require both, and do not require that I "answered" the counterpoint. A greeting, my name, or a one-word answer is not a substantive exchange.

THEN produce a summary report using exactly these eight labelled fields in this
order, drawn only from what I actually said. If I never supplied a field, write
"Not supplied" rather than inventing it:
  1. STUDENT NAME
  2. POSITION
  3. REASON
  4. EXAMPLE
  5. COURSE CONCEPTS
  6. COUNTERPOINT
  7. RESPONSE TO THE COUNTERPOINT
  8. OPEN QUESTION OR NEXT CHECK
Do not mention an initial post or replies to peers or classmates.
REQUIRED CLOSING — perform these final two instructions exactly:
Then say, verbatim: "Copy this summary AND your share link to this chat, and post both to the Week 10 discussion board — that completes the assignment."
Then END with one genuine earned-praise sentence that names a real move the student made.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to earn full credit in this course. This route assesses the same objectives as the AI dialogue — analyzing race and ethnicity as socially constructed categories, telling prejudice from discrimination and individual from institutional racism, and reading the census figures in the source's own categories — against the same driving question and the same rubric below, for the same 10 points. Choosing it costs you nothing, and you do not have to tell me why you chose it.

What you do. Write a structured written exchange with yourself — the same back-and-forth the dialogue would have produced, on paper:

1. Your position (roughly 150 words). Answer Option A or Option B. For Option A, name the rule or routine and say whether any unequal result there comes mainly from the procedure, mainly from individual attitudes, or a mix. For Option B, write the headline you would choose and explain why. Use this week's terms (race, ethnicity, self-identified, minority group, dominant group, prejudice, stereotype, discrimination, Merton's typology, individual racism, institutional racism, pluralism, assimilation, segregation, contact hypothesis, alone, alone or in combination, Hispanic origin, Two or More Races) correctly.
2. The strongest objection (roughly 100 words). Write the best argument against your own position that you can — for example, that the people applying a rule may hold prejudices after all, that a rule may be job-related and fair in effect, or that people really did change how they see themselves between the two counts. Argue it honestly; a weak objection you knock over earns no credit.
3. Your answer to it (roughly 100 words). Respond to that objection. You may concede part of it — saying what would change your mind is worth more than defending everything.
4. One thing you would still check (one or two sentences). What evidence would you want, read at its source with its year, to settle it?

Effort. Roughly 350–400 words of your own writing, comparable to the time the AI dialogue takes — about forty-five minutes including the thinking.

What you submit. Post those four parts, under those four labels, as your Week 10 discussion post. That post is your entire submission; this route has no share link.

No replies to classmates are required.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The same three criteria score both routes.

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