microaggressions

“To Be White is to Be Racist”

by

The amount of white people who are too engulfed in their white privilege to see the prevalence of racism is frightening. Whether that racism is on a blatant, subtle, individualized or institutionalized level, it’s there, and people need to start realizing it so that we can work towards decreasing it. Just the other day I opened up Facebook to see that someone had posted a news article about a high school teacher in Norman, Oklahoma …

Read more

Institutional Racism on college campuses: I, too, am Harvard

by

  http://www.buzzfeed.com/alisonvingiano/21-black-harvard-students-share-their-experiences-through-a The article above was introduced to me recently by one of my friends. While I was going to write about something different this week, this article captured me. Entitled “I, too, am Harvard” you see a preview of a photo project from 21 students of color who attend Harvard university. Each is holding a black dry erase board which dons a common phrase that they often hear and has in some way effected …

Read more

Planet of the Apes or the Obamas?

by

Recently in the opinions section of a Belgian Newspaper, one article, said to have been submitted from Russian President Vladimir Putin, shows the Obamas depicted as apes. On the picture it says, “First Black President, starts selling weed.” I thought this was a really interesting thing to bring up because it related to the Eberhardt studies that we looked at in class relating Blacks to Apes. Many people make the implicit association of blacks to apes …

Read more

“Wholesome Families”

by

Earlier today, a friend of mine posted a link to a commercial made by Honey Maid that features several different families goofing around while sentimental music played in the background. What made this commercial stand out to so many people was the purposeful use of diverse types of families: there’s an interracial family, a family that features a tattooed, “punk rock” looking father, a single dad, and a gay couple. The marketing slogan for the …

Read more

Racism in aisle ’14

by

Since I have been in this class, it is amazing to me how many things I see on social media sites that relate to everything we are talking about in class.  This week I was browsing my Facebook news feed and I saw two posts, one after another, that completely shocked me.  A woman, that goes to Muhlenberg, had a post that explained a recent experience with racism. Her post stated: “So I went to …

Read more

Is Prejudice Inevitable?

by

After reading the Devine article I became increasingly curious with the idea of  how inevitable prejudice and racial stereotyping really is in today’s society. In Devine’s article she states “Inhibiting stereotype-congruent or prejudice-like responses and intentionally replacing them with nonprejudiced responses can be likened to be the breaking of a bad habit” (Devine, P.G. 1989). There are many people who are under the notion that we live in post racial society; but as we have …

Read more

Miley Cyrus and the West African Origins of Twerking

by

Sadly, yes. I did feel that including Miley Cyrus in the title and tag of this post would garner more attention. Here is one of several thoughtful pieces I’ve seen – not about misguided Miley’s image – but about how the dancers that surrounded her were used “as props.” It also provides a brief history of twerking – a dance I found awkward and mystifying in Miley’s performance.  We owe it to twerking to read …

Read more

Microaggressions and Being Assertive

by

As I was reading the blog posts regarding microaggressions, my mind quickly jumped to my Interpersonal Communications class and the book that we just read on being assertive. When learning about assertiveness, we learned that it is important in being assertive to stand up for yourself and say something to someone when they give you a certain look, or a microaggression. The book on assertiveness says that if someone gives you a look that you take to be a passive aggressive way to discount you or what you are saying or doing, you should say something along the lines of “I’m not sure what you mean by that look. What were you trying to say?” The book explains that everyone has a right to assert himself or herself and stand up for themselves when it is necessary. However, while reading the blogs I realized that being able to be assertive in many situations is a white privilege.

Read more