Rachel Dolezal recently visited a daytime talkshow called The Real, where she answered the hosts’ questions about her racial identity and her views on the definitions of whiteness and blackness.
Take this Racism Test…
Click here for Test and Article
Until we better understand how to actually reduce innate bias, the best we can do is try to ensure our prejudices affect our decisions as little as possible, Greenwald says. For instance, he says, “blind auditions for musicians can work really well.” And taking the names off resumes can help ensure that hiring managers don’t choose candidates based on gender or race.
“Until our culture changes to the point where we don’t have these negative ideas about certain groups,” Greenwald says, “it may be that our implicit biases are probably here to stay.”
Take this test to see how racist or homophobic you might be. This article addresses the ways in which some of us are more racist then we might think. By uncovering these biases, scientists have looked for ways to minimize our biases as a means to help end or aid in the end of racism. So far tackling the problem while we are sleeping seems to be the most helpful.
VIDEO: QI – Where are 1% Of Americans?
QI (Quite Interesting) is a British comedy panel game show hosted by Stephen Fry, which brings together four comedians a week to share anecdotes and trivia.
In this clip, Fry asks the panelists “Where are 1% Of Americans?”, which kicks off a conversation about mass incarceration, bringing to light unsettling details and statistics on racial disparity in the criminal justice system and the three-strikes law.
“No society in history has imprisoned more of its citizens”
While it’s illegal to import good made by forced labor or prisoners, American prisons produce “100% military helmets, bulletproof vests… and other items of uniform … 93% of domestically produced paints… 36% of home appliances”. It could be said that America “reinvented the slave trade”; these prisoners are paid way below minimum wage, allowing the country to compete with factories in third world countries.
“5% of the world’s population is American, 25% of people in jail worldwide are American.”
Though QI is a comedy show and this particular conversation ends in a laugh, it doesn’t detract from the gravity of the pervasive existence of racial discrimination and the business side of the American criminal justice system.
Affirmative Action: Is It Still Necessary?
In a 2003 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to uphold affirmative action and said it expected that in 25 years, “the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.” Here’s a conversation between Boyce Watkins, assistant professor at Syracuse University, and Linda Chavez, chair of Center for Equal Opportunity, about the 2013 SCOTUS case revisiting University of Texas, that (at the time) could ban affirmative action in higher education once and for all.
11 Types Of Racists
If there’s one thing to know about racism, it’s that racism (and race) is incredibly complex. Many people think racism means one group of people hates another group of people. However, racism manifests in all kinds of subtle and insidious ways. It operates on both a micro and macro level. For this reason, it’s so hard to talk about racism, or even recognize it when it’s going on.
So sorry, just because you’re not burning crosses on some black person’s lawn doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not part of the problem. It’s important that we recognize the different ways racism exists in the world, because being aware is the first step in fixing the problem. The fact of the matter is, there’s no one specific kind of racism or racist. There are many types of racists, and they come in all forms, from the blatant to to the inconspicuous. Below is a list of just a few of the different kinds….
Click here to read more.
VIDEO: How Racist Are You? with Jane Elliott
“For this Channel 4 documentary Jane Elliott, a controversial former schoolteacher from Ohio, is recreating the shocking exercise she used forty years ago to teach her nine year-old pupils about prejudice.
Elliott is asking thirty adult British volunteers – men and women of different ages and backgrounds – to experience inequality based on their eye color to show how susceptible we can all be to bigotry, and what it feels like to be on the other side of arbitrary discrimination.
Does Elliott’s exercise still have something to teach us four decades on and in a different country? Presented by Krishnan Guru-Murthy, the exercise is observed throughout by two expert psychologists, Prof Dominic Abrams and Dr Funké Baffour, who will be unpicking the behavior on display.”
Video: How racist are you?
Questions:
What do you think about this social experiment?
Are we all more racist than we realize or would like to admit?
Race and Racial Identity Are Social Constructs
NYTimes Op-Ed by Angela Onwuachi- Willig, University of Iowa College of Law Professor: Click here.
New Zealand All Blacks
The All Blacks are New Zealand’s national rugby team and the most successful international rugby side of all-time. With a winning percentage of 76.4 over 526 Tests (1903-2014) they are noted as one of the most prolific teams across any sport. It’s interesting to see this wholly positive association with the color black. Also, the team just won the World Cup of Rugby today!
Click here to read more about the team.
Click here to see their fearsome Haka.
What We Mean When We Say ‘Race Is a Social Construct’
“In a world where Kevin Garnett, Harold Ford, and Halle Berry all check “black” on the census, even the argument that racial labels refer to natural differences in physical traits doesn’t hold up.”
Solving the School Discipline Gap
Joseph C. Phillip frames the debate in terms of students’ family life and single vs. two parent homes, rather than bigotry in school disciplinarians. He thinks that focusing only on race-talk on this issue will lead to unsatisfactory solutions that institutionalize the idea that there is something inherently different culturally that leads to black children misbehaving.
“A 2006 study claims Seattle school teachers discipline black students more than their white peers. How about a solution that doesn’t involve pulling the ‘race card?’ […] We can either march forward under the illusion that a discipline gap exists because teachers are a bunch of racists, suspending black children more than white for no other reason than the color of their skin. Or, we can finally realize that a breakdown in the traditional family structure, and an embrace of the destructive social behavior and attitudes that have accompanied it, is playing the devil with our children.”
Click here to read/listen to more.
Questions:
Do you agree of disagree with Phillip’s interpretation of this issue?
Do you think that solutions should be focused on race or family life? Another related factor? A mix of these?