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Thanks Rob! “Consciously and publicly, Richards is probably not a racist. But unconsciously and privately, he is. So am I. So are you…You’d have to be insane to publicly utter racist remarks in today’s society … or temporarily insane…”
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Thanks HighJive! “Mandarin Chinese, the official language of the People’s Republic of China and the most common of numerous Chinese dialects, is suddenly hot in American schools. With China poised to become the world’s leading economy sometime this centur
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Thanks Tariq! “Rocky Road” explores the problems and prejudices one interracial couple experiences from their families and society in a modern dramedy. Told from the perspective of an educated black woman, “Rocky Road” digs into the tough family issues mo
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Thanks Rob! “The Muslim veil, or niqab, has come under question in the last few weeks from Cabinet ministers, judges and even Prime Minister Tony Blair, who described it as “a mark of separation.” Increasingly, Patel and others find themselves under physi
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“While many liberals anxiously await the announcement that Illinois senator Barack Obama will make a bid for the presidency in 2008, some Latinos are up in arms over Obama’s support of the proposed fence on the U.S. Mexico border”
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Andrew/Animelee wrote:
I hate those tests.
They always start you off associating white with left, and black with right. Then after two rounds of that, they make you associate good with left, and bad with right.
Then they keep it the same — left white/good, right bad/dark.
Because of that set up always being the same, most people get “you prefer light people to dark people”.
One night I keep practicing the patterns of that test, and later that night, I finally got a different response — “you strongly prefer the company of black people to white people”.
Ah geez.
Complete and utter bullshit. King of the Hill had an episode about this test, and it was just pure awesome. Peggy got “prefers the company of black people” and Hank got “prefers the company of white people”. And both of them were like “WTF do I press?” during the test. Very accurate.
Posted 27 Nov 2006 at 7:08 am ¶
Lyonside wrote:
Andrew:
Thanks for pointing out the right-hand/left-hand bias in a lot of these online tests. Bottom line - as usual, any standardized test reflects the POV/biases of the researchers divising the test.
I’ve seen another one where they do change them up - it’s the one that varies images with positive/negative words and asks you to select either good or bad, and the right/left dichotomy keeps changing.
Posted 27 Nov 2006 at 10:15 am ¶
Marsha wrote:
I think the L.A. Times article touched up on something that I prefer to call “polite racism”. I think by now most people know better than to say the “n” word or to overtly discriminate. However, I think that the problem is that most white people think you have to be a member of the KKK or something in order to be a racist. (Thus, some people might think that Richards might not *really* be racist.) In their minds, that’s what a “real racist” is. They don’t stop and check themselves that what they think might be racist. Thus, certain comments in their mind might not really be racist or stereotypes at all because they think you have to be an extremist to be a racist.
Posted 27 Nov 2006 at 2:54 pm ¶
Donovon wrote:
Those tests are only Partially bullshit.
I study cognitive Psychology at the University of Toronto, and I can definately say, after reading the Post article, that it is true, that we form implicit in-group biases, and that our culture has learned to deny those biases, but not actually change them.
People see two worlds, the TV world- where everyone is supposed to get along, and their real world- where the black people live in one poor area , the white people another area, they take different buses, talk differently, maybe listen to different music. So, since people believe in the values our culture tells us to believe in, we all think we are not racist. But then a moment comes when we respond to something with a racist implication, “The blacks live over there.” or my favorite “I am not attracted to black guys”, and then we go, “how can i say that? I am not racist?” We can say that because our culture teaches us one thing, yet our actual experience tells us something else.
This is the essence of cognitive dissonance.
Also, it is the presumption of anti-racist education. Sort of. If you accept that we live, by default , in a racist culture, and we are all, therefore racist, then we can see how race really plays out in our daily experiences, instead of what we “think” we believe about ourselves.
Now, unfortunately, the article is more of a cop out. It says, “well, we are all racist according to this study, so we really can’t do much about it.” And that is total bullshit. This study proves one thing, that we are all racist because our experiences in our life have shaped us to be so ( for the vast majority of us), but we are unconsious of it because our culture teaches us that we should not be. How you chose to deal with this information- by working to shape your behavior to match your attitude, or by giving up because you don’t want to even try, THAT is up to you.
Incidentally, this is one of the steps of how people come to deal with stereotypes. There is stereotype as true (”Black people stink”), then incorporating new information but not changing the stereotype (”Black people stink, but John my boss doesn’t stink”), then there is creating a subgroup within the stereotype(”Black people stink, but bosses who are black don’t stink”), and finally, there is changing of the stereotype (”Maybe black people dont’ stink after all.”)
America is on step number 2 of that. To put it in an example that relates directly to this dicussion:
sterotype “I hate black people.”
new info “”I hate em, but a few odd people don’t”
new group “I hate em, but educated people don’t, or I hate em, but people who are nice don’t”
change “I don’t hate black people”
Now, of course, this only means that the stereotype changes, it does NOT mean the end of creating stereotypes. You can go from “I hate black people” to a postive stereotype like, “I love all black people. Black people are cool.”, But at least it creates a space for improving our attitudes about race. Which I feel, EVERYONE needs to take a more historical analysis of instead of a personal “attitudinal” approach to.
Posted 27 Nov 2006 at 4:58 pm ¶
mr guy wrote:
Nice explanation Donovon.I agree.
Posted 28 Nov 2006 at 8:15 am ¶
Minter wrote:
It depends what definition of racism you use. In its most obvious form, racism is the belief that your race is superior to others, and what follows is different attitudes towards these other races based on this belief, including discrimination and abuse.
Then there’s ignorance, which can naturally lead to racism by judging people based on stereotypes. They may not necessarily feel their race is better than another, but preconceptions based either from past experiences, media or social observations will give them a discriminatory attitude towards particular races.
When it boils down to it, it still qualifies as racism, since it is discrimination through race - but both types are coming from two very different paths, the second being more willing to change their mindset once they meet a person of a certain race that breaks those stereotypes.
Posted 28 Nov 2006 at 12:37 pm ¶
S wrote:
Rocky Road?
“If You liked ‘Something New’…”
PLEASE. I could barley stand that movie. That chick was stuck up from the start till almost the end of the movie. Took one of our most prevalent stereotypes (we have bad attitudes) and smeared it all throughout the movie. Then she complained about racism the whole time (which the movie did NOT show much racism beyond her silly client).
I’d watch Rocky Road if someone else rented it, if it pops up on YouTube or pops up somewhere else for FREE.
Posted 29 Nov 2006 at 8:45 pm ¶