This weekend, I went to Boston with my family. It was an extremely cold day, but I still loved exploring the city and the history it had to offer. There are a great number of street performers in this city, and we stopped for one of them-a group of men were performing a dance routine, and, at the end, they would flip over the hunched backs of four grown men standing next to each other. …
Dr. Jonathan Lassiter, a professor at Muhlenberg College, expresses in one of his works “Whiteness in the Psychological Imagination” how the psychological narratives of people of color is left out of most studies, but particularly in psychological research. He addresses how whiteness is so ingrained in society that even when one is asked to imagine a “person”, a white person is what first appears in their mind. He explains how white is synonymous for person …
Colorblindness is a way of talking, or more accurately, not talking about race. It is defined as “the avoidance of talking about race” (Apfelbaum et. al., 2008) and “an approach to managing diversity in which intergroup distinctions and considerations are deemphasized” (Apfelbaum et. al., 2010). Or in other words, it’s the melting pot myth, the idea that “we are all the same”, or that “we shouldn’t see color”. It manifests itself in classrooms when teachers …
When it comes to police officers who murder young Black or brown kids, the important piece here is that the children themselves were performing harmless acts – yet those acts were seemingly threatening to a police officer. When has there ever been a White child who was sought after by a police officer for just playing in a park? These kids are just kids. Just because of the color of their skin does not immediately …
Here with in the United States, there is growing demand for a societal change in how we currently conceptualize and value social labels. Social labels are seen as valuable because it allows us to easily identify, associate, and group people who share a social label. However the grouping of individuals based on their label into social groups like race and gender have been the justification for the perpetuation of systematic oppression for centuries. The oppression …
Racism has existed in the United States even before America was an independent nation. Over time much has changed about the United States but by the same token, so has racism. At first racism was openly expressed in the form of slavery, and later in the form of Jim Crow laws. Both of these forms of racism are considered to be old fashioned forms of racism. As time has gone by it has become more …
Psychology has a character flaw that it does want to acknowledge or do anything about. When it comes to psychology research, majority of the population does not include people of minority groups. Psychology is very aware of this issue due to most studies focusing on a particularly small population. Another thing is that due to the lack of diversity in these psychological studies, certain populations are technically not able to be looked at because statistically …
In class, we discussed the topic of slavery and how it is taught to young children. The discussion blew me away. I realized during this conversation that what I had learned growing up regarding slavery was glossed over. In the article read in class, which was included in the New York Times’ 1619 Project, I learned: “There is no consensus on the curriculum around slavery, no uniform recommendation to explain an institution that was debated …
This week I listened to a Politically Re-Active podcast entitled: Shaun King on Controversy, Color, and Kaepernick. Shaun King is a civil rights activist who mainly uses social media to discuss race relations. During the podcast, the hosts of the podcasts ask King about whether he thinks there is hope for improvement regarding police brutality in America. King tells them he is hopeful, but unfortunately racism in America is getting worse. King states how during …
Sadly, my main source of news these past few weeks has been Twitter. If you’ve played around with Twitter, you know that it is intended to grab audience attention with short statements and hashtags. After scrolling through my own feed, I’ve just begun to browse hashtags that are “trending”, meaning lots of people are using them in their own posts. Today, I was struck by one hashtag in specific- “PABPOTUS”. At first glance, I was …
We all have been exposed and influenced to the whitewashing of psychology, whether we’re a part of the professional academic discourse or not. Psychology theories and practices often times inform political policies to educational interventions that impact everyone in their daily lives. Here at Muhlenberg, psychology students learn about these theories and methods but we also are aware of the current field’s limitations. A significant flaw in the field is lack or representation of people …
College fraternities and sororities are, for the most part, notorious for possessing a multitude of negative stereotypes. When the general public pictures a Greek organization, they think of hazing, paid friends, and parties. In addition to these most common stereotypes of members of Greek life, people within these organizations aren’t known to be very accepting. As a member of a nationally recognized sorority, Phi Sigma Sigma, I recognize the work that my own chapter has …