Month: February 2014

Aversive Racism In The Schools

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As part of my research in the Education department, I am presenting on a panel about race and education. The goal of the panel is to illustrate the different school districts in the area and the relationship between the prominent race in each school, the average socioeconomic status of students, and overall “success” of the school according to the state. The idea is to start a conversation about why the schools that are predominately African American students are schools that …

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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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Racism in the Opposition of Affordable Housing

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This week, a friend approached me with a news article from her hometown that she knew I’d be interested in. Upon reading it, I found that the ties to our class material could not be ignored. Chappaqua, New York is a wealthy town in Westchester county. Its citizens include former president Bill Clinton, along with many others who have large yearly incomes. The town, however, like most of Westchester county, is predominantly white. The lack of diversity in Chappaqua and …

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Missed opportunity

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Our discussion this past week, regarding the Lipstiz and Adams article, made me think about different moment s in our history, where if the proper steps had been taken, the fight against oppression for minorities could be much better off. The Federal Housing Act of 1934 is a good example of a chance that was squandered to aid in this uphill battle.  This act, as described by Lipsitz, put the credit of the federal government behind private lenders to help …

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Is Prejudice Inevitable?

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After reading the Devine article I became increasingly curious with the idea of  how inevitable prejudice and racial stereotyping really is in today’s society. In Devine’s article she states “Inhibiting stereotype-congruent or prejudice-like responses and intentionally replacing them with nonprejudiced responses can be likened to be the breaking of a bad habit” (Devine, P.G. 1989). There are many people who are under the notion that we live in post racial society; but as we have talked about in class there …

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Jordan Davis – Law and Implicit Prejudice

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While what would have been Trayvon Martin’s birthday recently passed, a similar trial was finished in court – the trial of the murder of Jordan Davis. On November 23, 2012, Michael Dunn pulled into a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida. He saw a red SUV full of black teenagers playing loud music and walked up to them to complain. He thought he saw a gun being taken out, so he shot at the teenagers, killing Jordan Davis. Recently, Dunn was …

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Racism is the Norm, It is Everywhere

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In an article by Adams et al, entitled “Beyond Prejudice: Toward a Sociocultural Psychology of Racism” Adams discusses many misconceptions people have about racism in today’s American society.  One point made stated that racism is a product of abnormal personalities.  Most people would swear up and down that they do not have a racist bone in their body, because being called racist is a fear of many.  The term “abnormal” infers that racist is not only strange and pathological, but …

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