My first American history lesson started with the Crash Course series on YouTube in the summer of 2017, about two months before I came to the States. My “teacher” was a white woman from Texas whose name I failed to remember, who seemed nice and honestly was the spitting image of white Americans in media products I had consumed. She taught me everything from “checks and balances,” “electoral college,” and the Constitution to using “bathroom” …
What is a stereotype? Social psychology defines a stereotype as “any thought widely adopted about specific types of individuals or certain ways of behaving intended to represent the entire group of those individuals or behaviors as a whole.” Stereotypes are generalizations made about people and the groups in which those people belong to based on their appearances and behaviors. Do you know of any stereotypes made about you? Your skin color? Your religion? Your ethnicity? …
In 2015, racist posts were made targeting black students on several campuses, including ours, on the anonymous app Yik-Yak. The Huffington Post wrote an article shortly after asking 3 Presidents of private liberal arts colleges to speak about what they’ve learned from recent student activism around race. President John Williams was one of those three Presidents. President Williams represents the Muhlenberg campus in everything he does, something that inherently comes with the title of “President.” …
One of my favorite topics that we’ve covered in this course thus far is the creation of counter-spaces. I am intrigued by this concept because I have created these spaces for myself at Muhlenberg without knowing that it had a name attached to it. What is more, it intrigued me to know that counter-spaces are something students of color across the country are constantly creating for themselves. I think my interest lies in the naming …
In recent years, the number of multiracial students as increased drastically. Since the year 2000, the number of people who identify as mixed-race has grown by 35 percent, according the Census Bureau (Saulny, 2011). However, on many college campuses, it seems as though their existence is quite unknown. There are multicultural affinity groups for those identify as Black, Asian, and Latina. It has been shown in research that a fairly common theme to pop-up for …
We’re pleased to feature this special guest post authored by Muhlenberg College (and Contemporary Racism) alum, Brittany Smith (’17). Brittany is at Columbia University pursuing an MPH focusing on health promotion and children’s health equity. A few weeks ago, I went dancing at a few bars with some college friends who were visiting. I also encountered one of the most fragile and aggressive examples of masculinity I’ve ever seen. (And, as a woman who dates …