identity

The Privilege Wheel

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For Wednesday’s class, we spent a good amount of time discussing the myth of the social identity, and the privilege wheel exercise raised some questions for me. For one, do certain aspects of one’s social identity have more power over the other? How much importance is placed on these aspects?

I personally believe that social identities are situational. To say that social identities are situational, I mean to say that when we are met with discrimination that threatens to diminish the standing of certain aspects of our identity, such as race, gender, sexuality, and religion more importance is placed on these identities. A change in environment, discrimination against those of our in group may heighten the importance of seemingly minor aspects of our social identity. For example, I do not define myself by my sexual orientation, particularly because the environment I live in is fairly liberal and accepting. I do not feel that I face discrimination everyday because of my sexual orientation. However, the homophobic backlash against the gay community brought on by the current Republican GOP election makes me place more importance on my sexual orientation. As the Republican candidates portray the gay community as immoral, sexually charged deviants and threaten to strip the community away of basic human rights, my identity as a gay male becomes more salient. Even though I don’t define myself by my sexuality, when faced with discrimination or threats against my basic civil rights and liberties, my sexual orientation becomes more important.

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Are positive stereotypes detrimental?

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Recently, I watched Chelsea Lately during a episode of my insomnia. The host, Chelsea Handler, poked fun at one of the guest cohosts that she would go him to fix electronics over the Jewish cohost, because he is Asian. The prodded cohost began ranting about stereotypes, specifically how it’s not O.K. to generalize and assume that every Asian is good at computers. When he was told to relax, and that it’s positive, he responded that it wasn’t a positive stereotype.

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Black Student Association Dance

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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?

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Can Implicit Attitudes Change?

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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.

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The Impact of “Positive” Stereotyping on White Social Identity Motivation

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As you watch this video, notice that every player featured in this top ten dunks of all time video is black.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOViQaWZ69E

(Now, before I make anymore statements I have to disclaim that this is in no way, shape, or form, anything close to a “reverse racism” blog.) In fact, according to the 2005 census, the National Basketball Association and the National Football League, the professional representations of the two more athletically focused of the “big three” American sports (the third being baseball), were made up of 76% black players and 67% black players respectively.

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Group Identity and Assimilation

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During a discussion about social identity theory, someone asked how race functioned as an identity. Social belief structure is defined by Hogg as, “people’s beliefs about the nature of intergroup relations and their assessment of the validity and effectiveness of different strategies to achieve or maintain positive intergroup distinctiveness,” meaning there is an emphasis on maintaining a group identity that is distinct from other groups, creating a clear “us” “them” dynamic. The five components of social identity theory—group’s social status, stability, legitimacy, permeability, and achievability—are all crucial in maintaining the structures of race and racism.

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Seeing Race and Feeling Shame: The rest of the story

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In their online publication, “Seeing Race and Seeming Racist? Whites Go out of Their Way to Avoid Talking About Race,” the American Psychological Association (I mysteriously could not find an exact author) posits that, in attempt to avoid drawing negative feelings toward themselves, white people often avoid talking about race, even when it is clearly relevant to the situation. In their attempts to be culturally sensitive, however, people who avoid talking about race are often, as a result of their avoidance, perceived negatively.

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