Over break I went to my roommate Alex’s house for the week. One night, Alex and I were watching TV and stumbled upon MTV’s show, The Real World Road Rules Challenge. About five minutes in, we witnessed two cast mates attempting to “poke fun” at their friends’ interracial relationship by using black face, which they did by covering their faces with nutella. While the two of us stared at each other in disbelief, her mom asked us why that was inappropriate, “black people make fun of white people all the time and no one points the finger at them.”
False advertising?
While shopping this week, I happened to spot this little number at H&M. I immediately thought, “wow! How cool!!” Considering that H&M is a major corporation which caters to all men and women, I didn’t think that they would ever sell merchandise that could potentially be political or controversial, or at least about a topic that makes people uncomfortable. I imagined people wearing these shirts in public, spreading ideas of love and equality, and beauty among all people. I guess that sounds a little good to be true. I thought about it a little more, even hesitated to try it on. Is this aversive racism? What do you think? I thought that maybe it was promoting colorblindness, however it says “different colors all beautiful” not “different colors all equal“. Because I do agree that people of different colors can be and are all beautiful, but it feels like the shirt is sending a greater message, like equality, probably because of the “say no to racism” part. As we learned, just “saying no to racism” isn’t that simple, since racism is so heavily embedded in our society and structural systems. So is wearing a phrase so simplistic only further hiding the problem? Like, “Cool! If I wear this then everyone will know I’m not a racist!!” This only leads to further denial that you are, in fact, are racist because of society.
Patrotism or Racism?
If there was ever a time in which a headline encompassed the entire meaning of contemporary racism, this past weekend was it. In Texas, two teams played a basketball game; Alamo Heights and their rival, Edison High School. After Alamo won and was presented with a trophy some student spectators began to chant, “USA! USA! USA!”. Why you ask? Alamo Heights High School is predominantly white and Edison High School is predominantly Hispanic.
College denies diversity?
In this blog post I want to bring up something that actually discovered earlier today. A friend of mine transferred from Muhlenberg to Smith College, an all girls college in Massachusetts a couple years ago. When speaking with her today, she told me about a Smith alum, Anne Spurzem, who posted a letter about how adding diversity to Smith College is virtually ruining it. Here are two links that discuss (and present) the letter to the editor:
Black Student Association Dance
This past weekend I attended the Black Student Association Dance with a friend who graduated last year. The dance was a lot of fun with great people, but I couldn’t help to notice that it was not as big as I had expected it to be. The music was great, the people were fun, and everyone appeared to be having a good time. Why did this event not receive as much attention compared to Greek socials?
Can Implicit Attitudes Change?
After completing the IAT last week, I began to really think about the meaning of the test itself and whether the test is a reliable measure of someone’s unconscious thoughts. This thought became even more prevalent after reading the article by Blair (2002) and also the article by Karpinski and Hilton (2001). The articles seem to support the fact that implicit attitudes may be influenced and/or changed by environmental factors and outside forces. I have always perceived the IAT as a direct measure of the implicit biases that live in our unconscious thoughts and feelings. While I have never been convinced that implicit attitudes shape behavior, I always believed that the test itself measures the thoughts that someone has beneath the surface of explicit and conscious understanding. Blair’s article, however, shows that there are many factors that may influence the attitudes of someone and that the context of a situation is a determinant in implicit attitudes. Reading the article by Blair (2002) allowed for a new understanding of how are implicit behaviors are shaped.