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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What Do You Stand For When You “Stand Your Ground”?

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Many Americans have been following the Jacksonville, Florida case of Michael Dunn and Jordan Davis for the past few weeks. Dunn, a middle aged white man, fired ten shots into an SUV occupied with black teenage boys because of his frustration with their refusal to turn down the loud music they were playing. One of the boys, 17-year old Jordan Davis, was hit by three of those shots, and killed. Yes, you read that synopsis correctly. Frustration is enough grounds …

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Cultural Appropriation or Racism

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While on another blog (tumblr.com) I read a post by blogger whitepeoplesaidwhat that really interested me. It reads as follows: “My culture brings all the Whites to the yard. And they’re like, “I’m taking what’s yours, Damn right, it’s mine and not yours! Want it back now? K fine but we’ll have to charge” There are many things I like about it. I like that it is blatantly saying that White people have knowingly taken minority cultures (our essences in …

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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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Racism Takes Center Stage

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Recently, I remembered a video I watched last semester in my Developmental: Inclusion/ Exclusion class. This video was from ABC’s What Would You Do; this video includes both a white and black actor who are stealing a bike from the park. Both boys have multiple different forms of equipment to remove the bike from the locked bike rack, both boys are wearing the same type of clothing. The only difference about these two teenage boys is the fact that one …

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What Would You Do?

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I recently watched a video from the What Would You Do? reality show about a black woman harassing a white woman because she is dating a black man.  (You can watch the video here)  The scenes were filmed in Denny Moe’s barber shop in Harlem.  The black woman (Rachael the barber), white woman (Kristen the girlfriend), and black man (Gabriel the boyfriend) are all actors and the premise of the show is to see how unsuspecting people will react to …

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Jordan Davis and Michael Dunn

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For our contemporary racism class, we read an essay by social psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt. The essay summarized her and her colleagues’ work on the cognitive associations we make about Black people and crime. For me, the findings were like a knife in the gut: we have unconscious prejudices that we often aren’t aware of, that can have dire consequences. In one study, participants were either unconsciously primed to think about crime or received no such prime. Then, two faces, …

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