If someone were to describe you, what are the first things they would say? How would someone describe me: a white, blonde, young woman. See, that wasn’t too hard to describe myself with the acknowledgement of my race. Now if I can use race to describe myself, then why is it so hard to acknowledge another person’s race when describing them? I ask this question with the knowledge that for most of my life, race …
Watching a roleplay with my classmates, I couldn’t help but notice my peers’ difficulty in describing the interaction occurring on screen. The roleplay was a business scene, wherein an employee and HR representative were discussing the employee’s career advancement opportunities. We were given a very brief introduction to the scenario, and nobody seemed sure what was happening in the beginning, so when we were asked for analysis of the interaction students struggled to identify who …
In the performance world of theater, television, and film, casting without regard to actors’ race or the race of the characters they’ll be portraying is known as “colorblind casting.” It’s a common practice now on Broadway, with Filipina Lea Salonga portraying white French character of Éponine in ?Les Misérables? and Puerto Rican Lin-Manuel Miranda portraying the white founding father Alexander Hamilton, among many other people of color being cast to portray traditionally white roles. The …
I have been thinking a lot about the ideas of prejudice and the denial of racism that were presented in the article ?Beyond Prejudice: Toward a Sociocultural Psychology of Racism and Oppression by Glenn Adams, Monica Biernat, Nyla R. Branscombe, and others?. W?ithin this article, they suggested models that account for the denial of racism, which they identified as being the “restriction of the range of phenomena to which the concepts of racism and oppression …
This weekend, I went to Boston with my family. It was an extremely cold day, but I still loved exploring the city and the history it had to offer. There are a great number of street performers in this city, and we stopped for one of them-a group of men were performing a dance routine, and, at the end, they would flip over the hunched backs of four grown men standing next to each other. …
Colorblindness is a way of talking, or more accurately, not talking about race. It is defined as “the avoidance of talking about race” (Apfelbaum et. al., 2008) and “an approach to managing diversity in which intergroup distinctions and considerations are deemphasized” (Apfelbaum et. al., 2010). Or in other words, it’s the melting pot myth, the idea that “we are all the same”, or that “we shouldn’t see color”. It manifests itself in classrooms when teachers …
We all have been exposed and influenced to the whitewashing of psychology, whether we’re a part of the professional academic discourse or not. Psychology theories and practices often times inform political policies to educational interventions that impact everyone in their daily lives. Here at Muhlenberg, psychology students learn about these theories and methods but we also are aware of the current field’s limitations. A significant flaw in the field is lack or representation of people …
For too long have white people ignored the discussion of race and actively avoided responsibility to end racism. No, not all white people, but the undeniable majority have clearly taken this path as it is 2019 and America’s culture is still overtly racist, and our systems remain institutionally racist. While I do believe we live in a morally unjust world, I personally think the majority of white people do not intend to be so hateful …
Early last week, on April 12th, two Black men were arrested inside a Philadelphia Starbucks. The store manager had called the cops, saying there was a disturbance, that these men were refusing to leave the premises, and that she was scared. In response to the call, a group of police officers came inside the establishment, did not ask the two men any questions about their presence in the Starbucks, and immediately handcuffed them and walked …
It is very easy, I’ve found, to look out and look around and see behaviors and interactions that are silently swept into the cyclical system that White supremacy has made out of our country. It is valuable as it is easy to analyze and self-educate in response to these observations. A habit equally if not more valuable to the resistance to oppressive systems, however, is the ability to look inward to analyze and learn from …
Derald Wing Sue (2005) describes the masternarrative as white talk that “depicts historical and cultural themes of racial progress, of a fair and just society, of equal access and opportunity, of meritocracy, and of colorblindness.” This idea of reality, often held by well intending white people, is one that denies the harmful effects, both past and present, of racism and, thus, helps to perpetuate it. The perpetuation of racism and prejudice can be depicted in …
The fact that racism is a big problem will most likely not come as a surprise to many people. Yet, there are people who are just now seeing racism as a “big problem” in the United States. According to a Pew research center poll, 58% now see racism as a big problem in the United States. What about the other 42%? These are the people who either think racism is somewhat a problem, small problem, …