While what would have been Trayvon Martin’s birthday recently passed, a similar trial was finished in court – the trial of the murder of Jordan Davis. On November 23, 2012, Michael Dunn pulled into a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida. He saw a red SUV full of black teenagers playing loud music and walked up to them to complain. He thought he saw a gun being taken out, so he shot at the teenagers, killing …
In an article by Adams et al, entitled “Beyond Prejudice: Toward a Sociocultural Psychology of Racism” Adams discusses many misconceptions people have about racism in today’s American society. One point made stated that racism is a product of abnormal personalities. Most people would swear up and down that they do not have a racist bone in their body, because being called racist is a fear of many. The term “abnormal” infers that racist is not …
Many Americans have been following the Jacksonville, Florida case of Michael Dunn and Jordan Davis for the past few weeks. Dunn, a middle aged white man, fired ten shots into an SUV occupied with black teenage boys because of his frustration with their refusal to turn down the loud music they were playing. One of the boys, 17-year old Jordan Davis, was hit by three of those shots, and killed. Yes, you read that synopsis …
While on another blog (tumblr.com) I read a post by blogger whitepeoplesaidwhat that really interested me. It reads as follows: “My culture brings all the Whites to the yard. And they’re like, “I’m taking what’s yours, Damn right, it’s mine and not yours! Want it back now? K fine but we’ll have to charge” There are many things I like about it. I like that it is blatantly saying that White people have knowingly taken …
The Washington Post came out with a tongue-and-cheek article this past week on the complete and utter lack of racial diversity at the Olympics. The article tells the story of a black Olympic intern who was greeted in Sochi by a group of police officers who wanted to take their picture with him based on a fascination with seeing a black person in the flesh. Something else I learned from this article was that the …
Recently, I remembered a video I watched last semester in my Developmental: Inclusion/ Exclusion class. This video was from ABC’s What Would You Do; this video includes both a white and black actor who are stealing a bike from the park. Both boys have multiple different forms of equipment to remove the bike from the locked bike rack, both boys are wearing the same type of clothing. The only difference about these two teenage boys …
I recently watched a video from the What Would You Do? reality show about a black woman harassing a white woman because she is dating a black man. (You can watch the video here) The scenes were filmed in Denny Moe’s barber shop in Harlem. The black woman (Rachael the barber), white woman (Kristen the girlfriend), and black man (Gabriel the boyfriend) are all actors and the premise of the show is to see how …
For our contemporary racism class, we read an essay by social psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt. The essay summarized her and her colleagues’ work on the cognitive associations we make about Black people and crime. For me, the findings were like a knife in the gut: we have unconscious prejudices that we often aren’t aware of, that can have dire consequences. In one study, participants were either unconsciously primed to think about crime or received no …
After reading the articles that were assigned this week I found myself becoming increasingly mad. I know it is our second amendment right to bare arms, and that it is the person behind the gun that has ill intent not the inanimate object itself. I still tend to find myself in utter disbelief at the sheer ignorance of certain individuals in this country, and their definition of “self defense” against people of color. Certain laws …
After discussing the Trayvon Martin tragedy in class this week, I felt very emotional and downright angry at how the case developed and was handled. How is it possible that George Zimmerman was able to kill an unarmed teenager and walk away a free man? While I do feel that many factors led to a jury finding Zimmerman not guilty, one detail of the case has stood out to me – the Stand Your Ground …
After reading the Eberhardt article, I was left thinking about how her studies can be seen in the media. There are plenty of TV shows, movies, and books about the criminal justice system, and I started thinking about how her findings show up in these media outlets. The first thing I thought of was an episode of Law and Order Special Victims Unit, where a rich white celebrity shoots and kills and unarmed black teen. …
It is always interesting to me to see how psychological theories play out in real life, as well as in the media. I am curious as to whether these occurances are purely mapping an academic concept onto a convenient pop culture item or whether the creators of the content are intentionally trying to teach lessons in an attempt to build a more tolerant future. One such example came to mind, an episode of The Fairly …