privilege

Talking About Race: Performativity

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Norms prove to be incredibly strong motivating factors in dictating social interaction. Following norms is like following the rules, they give people a feeling that they’re acting acceptably. This lends especially helpful when one finds themselves in an ambiguous situation where they’re unsure of how to act. In white American culture three ground rules provide guidelines for normative social behavior. These three ground rules are the politeness protocol, the academic protocol, and the colorblind protocol …

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Lens of Awareness: Racism Outside of the Classroom

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Something that comes with education, of any kind, is the tendency to find ways to apply it and allow it to inform the way we now view the world. These new understandings and connections are the drive that makes us eternal students. What is complex, especially in the vital and often difficult path of education that unpacks and explains the functions of racism and oppression in a White Supremacist system, is allowing this to begin …

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Race, Terror and Mass Shootings

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White males do the majority of mass shootings, yet people tend to associate violence and crime with people of color and minority groups. When the Stoneman Douglass school shooting happened it was rare to see media outlets talk about the shooters history of violence against minorities and it took days to find out that the shooter was apart of a white supremacist group. If this were a person of color someone associated with the Muslim …

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Silence is a Luxury

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The idea of white privilege is a very controversial topic for many, primarily because many white individuals do not acknowledge their race and its meaning, are not aware of the advantages and benefits they receive because of their race, and do not see how their whiteness affects their perception of society. However, white privilege and society have a large intersection because, “when it comes to privilege, it doesn’t matter who we really are. What matters …

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“Ethnic” as “Other”

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There’s always a hair section at the supermarket: a section for hair — regular hair, normal hair, perhaps you would call it white women’s hair — and then a section dubbed “ethnic” for the other hair; it’s for the misunderstood hair, the hair that the simple “hair” section cannot provide shelf space for. The “ethnic” section is for black women’s hair. It is separate due to its other-ship. “Hair” and “Ethnic Hair” have been segregated, …

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Getting Away With It

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I have scrolled through my Facebook and found far too many videos’ that capture police brutality. There are very few times I have been able to go on my Facebook feed without coming across a video that captures racism in violent acts. After which I would leave and log off of my social media. Not only has there been an increase in media coverage of these events but  there has been an increase in occurrence …

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The Blurred Line Between Old-Fashioned and Modern Racism

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When we were first learning about the differences between old-fashioned, modern, and aversive racism, the definitions made sense to me. I saw that there were differences between the three, each different speeds at which we move down the moving sidewalk of privilege. But now I’m a little less certain about the differences between old-fashioned and modern racism. I agree that in practice they’re different, but I’m less sure that within the person harboring these prejudices, …

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They Say History Repeats Itself….

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It seems hard not to write a blog post reflecting on the events of this week. Donald Trump is officially our president elect, and there’s so much that could be said about it that I don’t even know where to begin. On Tuesday night, I refused to watch the live coverage with my roommates because for some reason I just had a horrible gut feeling about the results. I went to bed early, scared of …

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Stark Realizations

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With the presidential election coming up on Tuesday, the next four years of policy are being decided.  Looking back at the campaigns leading up to this point, the rhetoric surrounding race has been interesting.  Much of the things said about race have been problematic, but prior to this semester I would not have understood why.  This semester of classes, with contemporary racism and multicultural psychology has been very eye-opening for me.  Coming from a predominately …

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Whiteness as Social Capital

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Recently I was listening to an episode of the podcast About Race, a podcast where 3 hosts discuss current race issues in an open way. One of the hosts mentioned that black assimilation to white culture as a solution to race disparity is problematic.  They looked at a specific study that showed that black people who moved to white middle-class neighborhoods before they were twelve had a “compound interest of awesomeness” where they were more …

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Rich, Black Folk

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340 acres of freshly cut grass. 10,000 square foot mansion. Prep schools and carpool. Luxury cars on every street. Are you thinking the people that live in this community are rich? Do you think they’re white? So do I. However, rich, black people do exist and are even are part of the 1%. But, it’s a very lonely few. In 2013, to be considered part of the 1%, it requires a household net worth of …

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“To Be White is to Be Racist”

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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 …

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