This week’s class discussions were based mainly on the concept of white privilege. Although I understood the idea of white privilege before, the ways that we talked about it in class really opened my eyes to a lot of things I’ve never noticed. Every day, I benefit from white privilege in a number of ways. For example, I walk into each of my classes and am surrounded by people who not only look like me, …
In class we talked about how White people often times do not mention if a person they are talking about is Black, or will whisper the word Black and show discomfort if referencing a Black person. Over the weekend I witnessed this happen. My friend from home came to visit school. She was talking to somebody who shared mutual friends with her, and I heard her say “do you know Aaron, he’s uh you know …
I just heard that Annie is being remade and was very excited to watch the new trailer. Although I think Annie is not the best or most interesting musical, it has a happy ending and the songs are easy to sing along to. However, I was even more excited to see that Quvenzhané Wallis is playing the part of Annie! She is an extraordinarily talented actress, especially at such a young age. After a quick search …
Recently the Oscars took place. From John Travolta’s hair and speech mishaps to the anticipation and sort of letdown of Leo not winning another golden statue, it was exceptionally entertaining. But, arguably the most entertaining thing about the Oscars this year was the host Ellen DeGeneres. She started and ended the show like a true champ and even though she did things like break twitter with one picture and order pizza for cinema’s most elite, …
This morning, I had my coffee with my parents as we watched the morning news. When you watch the news with a critical eye, race, sex, and sexual orientation have a tendency to pop out. Racism, sexism, and heterosexism touched almost every news story, either within the content itself or by a comment the reporter makes. I could do a detailed analysis of just one story, but I think the sheer volume of things that …
Recently I came across a Humans of New York post about an elderly black man who talked about how far the issue of racism has come and how proud he is at the change. I tended to think that the older generation were the ones who still saw racism in places where the younger generation might look for another reason. Which has brought me back to the question which generation see racism most prominently? Is …
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 …