1. How does Steele define stereotype threat and its importance for all of us? What specific conclusions does he draw from his research and that of others on stereotype threat and stereotypes more broadly?

2. What specific functions does the lengthy quotation from an essay by Brent Staples (paragraph 12) play in Steele’s argument? Why could Steele simply not paraphrase or summarize Staples’s discussion? What value is there for Steele in using a first-person example here? In using an example from someone else, rather than using another example of his own? If Steele had been writing an essay of five hundred words, how might he have used this quotation or information from it? Why? (See Chapter 20 for a discussion of using sources.)

3. As noted in the headnote, if Steele were writing only for social psychologists, his primary support would come from quantitative evidence based on experiments. Here, however, Steele uses many sorts of evidence. What kinds of evidence does he use to support his claims? (See Chapter 18 for information on what counts as evidence in different contexts.) How effective are they and why? (For example, is any of his evidence particularly memorable? What makes it so?)

4. Steele also uses definitions in very interesting and effective ways. Explain how Steele goes about defining the following abstract notions: encounter (paragraph 1), condition of life (paragraph 2), contingency (paragraph 6), threat in the air (paragraph 9), and intersubjectivity (paragraph 10). (We’ve listed the first occurrence of each term; you may need to track a term’s recurrence throughout the piece to understand how Steele works to define it. You may want to consult Chapter 9 on arguments of definition to get a clear picture of how writers can go about offering definitions.) How does each of these definitions contribute to the effectiveness of Steele’s selection?

5. Even though Steele is writing for a general audience, he is adamant that he is writing as a social scientist, and one of the major arguments of the selection is the importance of scientific ways of creating knowledge. In this regard, he sees himself as constructing an argument based on facts. Study the selection from this perspective, paying special attention to his discussions of qualifications to our society’s creed (paragraph 7, how psychologists develop hypotheses and then refine them by doing additional experiments (paragraph 22 and following), and the value of science (paragraph 35). Write an argument of fact based on Steele’s understanding of the value of science, specifically how and why science is necessary if we are to understand what it means to be human. (Chapter 8 discusses arguments of fact in detail.)

6. The selections in this chapter focus on how society stereotypes you in ways you may not even have been aware of. This chapter adds an additional notion — stereotype threat — to our discussion. Write an essay in which you apply this notion to your own life or that of someone you know well. The essay could take any of several forms; for example, it could be primarily factual, definitional, evaluative, or causal in nature, or it might make a proposal. (Chapters 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 treat these categories of arguments.)