jena.verlin

Listening with Intent

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I read a quote recently that stated, “most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply”. I think that this mindset and outlook on conversation is incredibly pertinent to any discussion about race, and quite frankly any discussion about any topic. My generation has grown up in a world where we get immediate gratification and responses from instantaneous media and technology, and the art of listening has fallen to the wayside. We …

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A Social Experiment on Crime and Color

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This week, I was browsing Buzzfeed instead of doing homework (as per usual), and I stumbled across an article/video about a “social experiment” done by two men: one black, one white. They parked their car on a public street and proceeded to fake break into the car and watch what happened. The white prankster tried for 30 minutes to break into the car, horn blaring, and nothing happened. A cop car even drove by and didn’t do anything. However, when …

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On Being a Black Olympian

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The Washington Post came out with a tongue-and-cheek article this past week on the complete and utter lack of racial diversity at the Olympics. The article tells the story of a black Olympic intern who was greeted in Sochi by a group of police officers who wanted to take their picture with him based on a fascination with seeing a black person in the flesh. Something else I learned from this article was that the first black Olympian to win …

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Life Lessons in Youth Media

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It is always interesting to me to see how psychological theories play out in real life, as well as in the media. I am curious as to whether these occurances are purely mapping an academic concept onto a convenient pop culture item or whether the creators of the content are intentionally trying to teach lessons in an attempt to build a more tolerant future. One such example came to mind, an episode of The Fairly Oddparents, a cartoon that I …

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