I read a quote recently that stated, “most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply”. I think that this mindset and outlook on conversation is incredibly pertinent to any discussion about race, and quite frankly any discussion about any topic. My generation has grown up in a world where we get immediate gratification and responses from instantaneous media and technology, and the art of listening has …
Ever since starting this class I consistently think back to the movie Crash. I first saw Crash when I was a senior in high school and instantly it became one of my favorite movies. This movie is filled with racial stereotyping and prejudice. Not only does this movie display examples of the racism among black and white people, but also the racism among Latinos, Koreans, Iranians, the rich and poor, and so many more. What …
Some of you may have heard about, or even watched, the ESPN special on “The N-Word” that was shown on Outside the Lines. The hour long special invited influential African American athletes to discuss the word and its meaning, as well as younger student athletes. Bob Ley stated that the purpose of the special was to: “have an honest conversation about this word, which is on the third rail of American society.” He added: “We’re going …
“If the US media were a person, he’d be an old white guy.” That’s a line from the beginning of an article on the website Mother Jones called “Hollywood’s White Dude Problem”. In summation, the article lists a bunch of charts that exemplify the ways in which women and people of color get discounted from high profile media exploits. Some notable stats include that only 6.6% of the top-grossing films made between 2007 and 2012 …
I enjoy watching football every once in a while, especially when my favorite team – the Giants – is not sucking. Even though they weren’t playing the Super Bowl this year, I watched a little bit of the game and saw when the Seahawks won. I missed the very short interview that Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman had with Erin Andrews (a Fox News sports reporter), though, which was also apparently very news-worthy. Although the clip …
Something about our last conversation in contemporary racism was bothering me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I knew it had something to do with how we had discussed the low prejudice versus high prejudice participants in Hodson, et al (2002). We discussed how “high prejudiced” participants from a sample of college students really represents the “low prejudiced” end of the general American population. We discussed that this is due to college students …
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 …
As part of my research in the Education department, I am presenting on a panel about race and education. The goal of the panel is to illustrate the different school districts in the area and the relationship between the prominent race in each school, the average socioeconomic status of students, and overall “success” of the school according to the state. The idea is to start a conversation about why the schools that are predominately African …
This week, I was browsing Buzzfeed instead of doing homework (as per usual), and I stumbled across an article/video about a “social experiment” done by two men: one black, one white. They parked their car on a public street and proceeded to fake break into the car and watch what happened. The white prankster tried for 30 minutes to break into the car, horn blaring, and nothing happened. A cop car even drove by and …
This week, a friend approached me with a news article from her hometown that she knew I’d be interested in. Upon reading it, I found that the ties to our class material could not be ignored. Chappaqua, New York is a wealthy town in Westchester county. Its citizens include former president Bill Clinton, along with many others who have large yearly incomes. The town, however, like most of Westchester county, is predominantly white. The lack …
Our discussion this past week, regarding the Lipstiz and Adams article, made me think about different moment s in our history, where if the proper steps had been taken, the fight against oppression for minorities could be much better off. The Federal Housing Act of 1934 is a good example of a chance that was squandered to aid in this uphill battle. This act, as described by Lipsitz, put the credit of the federal government …
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 …