Links – 2009-04-24
Shashwati’s Blog – Manufacturing Outrage – Slumdog and Its Discontents (via DeafMuslim)
Piecing the story together, it seems that the tabloid entrapped the family by posing as an Arab couple (being Arab increases the pathology, get it?), and offered to adopt Rubina and pay $300,000 to the family. This exchange took place via a translator since Rubina’s father doesn’t actually speak English. Rubina’s parents are divorced and the relationship between her parents is far from cordial. The mother wants custody of her daughter, the papers say after the film came out, but it could be an ongoing conflict, we don’t know.
There are a couple of interesting things in this story, firstly everyone is outraged at the father for considering adoption. This is hardly unusual, poor people have often given up their kids up to foster care for a time (the example of filmmaker Stan Brakhage comes to mind, he was in an orphanage for a while), and in India, its not unusual for kids to grow up in places other than their parents house – I lived with my aunt for a while, and my brother grew up at my grandparents place. The ideal of the soccer mom based nuclear family is quite recent. Yes, I get it, the proposed exchange of money is what really bothers people and everyone is sickened by the avariciousness of the family. Now if most people look into their family histories, they’re sure to find that uncle who took everything the other siblings should have inherited a fair share of. Yes, its terrible that people are greedy and criminal, but its hardly the province of the poor. So I wish people would take their outrage to where it belongs – a grossly unjust world where some countries are far richer than they deserve to be, and some people have the luxury of taking the moral high ground without every having to interact with the poor.
Guanabee – Dallas Morning News
The problem is not that Woolley fails to use statistical date or examples beyond the existence of Spanish-language Wal-Marts in her rebuttal… it’s the fact that her column is a rebuttal, referring directly to Linda Chavez’s column:
If, as Linda Chavez seems to think, the intent of those who come to America illegally is simply to raise a family, send the kids to college and assimilate into American society, then where’s the problem? The problem is – that’s just simply not the case.
This doesn’t create a conversation or dialogue about the topic, nor does it seem fair that the Dallas Morning News’ editors chose which columnist would have the privilege of getting the “last word.” So was the purpose of running both articles to present opposing views on the lives of illegal immigrants… or simply to refute Linda Chavez’s points?
Comment is Free – Tamils Have Nowhere to Turn (via Anna)
The Tamils have suffered terribly both at the hands of the LTTE and successive Sinhala-dominated governments. Reconciliation with them will take a government that has greater reverence for secularism than the present one. Sri Lankans have become inured to the pervasive Sinhala-supremacist racism and religious bigotry that the present government has brought to Sri Lanka.
It is this racism and bigotry more than any passionate belief in the LTTE that has now pushed a desperate Tamil community towards the LTTE.
Indeed, it is an insult to the Tamil people that all they have to represent their cause for emancipation are the Tamil Tigers. A group that not only systematically eliminated the political leadership of the Sri Lankan Tamils but wiped out the entire moderate Sinhala leadership and prevented Tamils from voting in elections.
Siditty – The Fear of Minority Rule
Once a few years back, me and the husband were talking about race, and I was rallying against the white power structure as per usual, and he responded with, if blacks were ruling, they would do the same things whites do and did. I then proceeded to curse him out and get silent on him, thinking that is the most racist thing he has ever said to me. I still think it is. The assumption is if whites lose their power, minorities, blacks in particular set out the revenge on whites. Call this racist, but my mother once said that blacks could never get to the level of cruel that whites did to us in America. We could never treat them as livestock, we couldn’t rape them and then sell the offspring to someone else to further exploit, we couldn’t see them as less intelligent, ignorant, and “beneath us”. I think to an extent this is true.
Not the cruel part, but the fact that if a minority “rule” was ever to take place we simply couldn’t do that because of the existing history as it stands now. The white power structure is in place, and the stays in the minds of people. Even if the white majority were to go away, no one is going to question white people’s intelligence as a group because the level of intelligence is based upon the white power structure. Minorities use these very tests to determine our own intelligence. No one is going to equate them with being a cow, chicken, or donkey, because we know that to not be the case. Even with more minorities in the country, overwhelmingly white people have positions of power, be it political, corporate, and financial. Whites run it, they have the money, they have the power. They are at an advantage. Am I saying all white folks are rich and in power. No. What I do believe is that those in power, they continue to relate and put people in power who look like themselves, which means if they hold power now, they will continue to hold power.
Newsweek – Raising Katie (via anitra_larae)
As a black father and adopted white daughter, Mark Riding and Katie O’Dea-Smith are a sight at best surprising, and at worst so perplexing that people feel compelled to respond. Like the time at a Pocono Mountains flea market when Riding scolded Katie, attracting so many sharp glares that he and his wife, Terri, 37, and also African-American, thought “we might be lynched.” And the time when well-intentioned shoppers followed Mark and Katie out of the mall to make sure she wasn’t being kidnapped. Or when would-be heroes come up to Katie in the cereal aisle and ask, “Are you OK?”—even though Terri is standing right there.
Is it racism? The Ridings tend to think so, and it’s hard to blame them.
Editor & Publisher – Minority Journos: Lack of Diversity a Cause of Newspaper Industry’s Crisis (via Fatemeh)
“Years of progress were erased, and now newsrooms are moving in the opposite direction from the demographic composition of the communities they serve,” said Seattle Times reporter Sharon Chan, president of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA).
The leaders of associations representing black, Hispanic, Asian American and Native American journalists said they well understand that newspaper employment is shrinking. But they said they are alarmed about numbers showing minority newsroom employment falling faster — and that the idea of employing newsrooms that reflect the ethnic and racial diversity has been a principal victim of industry cutbacks.
LA Times – High School Exit Exam Hinders Female and Non White Students, Study Says (via Rob Schmidt)
California’s high school exit exam is keeping disproportionate numbers of girls and non-whites from graduating, even when they are just as capable as white boys, according to a study released Tuesday. It also found that the exam, which became a graduation requirement in 2007, has “had no positive effect on student achievement.”
The study by researchers at Stanford University and UC Davis concluded that girls and non-whites were probably failing the exit exam more often than expected because of what is known as “stereotype threat,” a theory in social psychology that holds, essentially, that negative stereotypes can be self-fulfilling. In this case, researcher Sean Reardon said, girls and students of color may be tripped up by the expectation that they cannot do as well as white boys.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
jaye wrote:
re: Slumdog and Its Discontents
The tabloid reporters were Caucasian people who actually PRETENDED to be Arab people?
Posted 24 Apr 2009 at 2:15 pm ¶
9jah wrote:
“The study by researchers at Stanford University and UC Davis concluded that girls and non-whites were probably failing the exit exam more often than expected because of what is known as “stereotype threat,” a theory in social psychology that holds, essentially, that negative stereotypes can be self-fulfilling. ”
“Stereotype threat” can’t possibly be accepted as a bar to achievement of women or minorities (besides I imagine it is not a purely racial/gender issue, i.e. fat, ugly, short people etc. – forgive my bluntness – have certain of the same anxieties). I acknowledge it is real and detrimental at various times, but more significant race issues in society leave no space for this discussion IMO (at least with respect to race).
On Katie O’ Dea – predictably, in an article about race, they made sure to have the black person confess to his own stereotyping/racism (see, if the shoe were on the other foot black people would do the same thing!) while attempting to couch some of the most oppressive and reprehensible, age-old white stereotyping in a positive light: “well intentioned” shoppers making sure kid was not being kidnapped and “would be” heroes checking on the girl in grocery shops.
Is there a point to be made given the pairing of Mark Riding and Katie is unusual and it was not impossible that he was not a kidnapper?
I say absolutely not: as a black person, I start out with a healthy, positive assumption about the next black person (or anyone) absent evidence to the contrary. And so, it would take me probably six seconds to observe and conclude that the man and woman are together, have other kids, are not being covert and presumably are interacting with some familiarity. Factor in appearance and the reasonable assumption that a black man wouldn’t try to walk slowly through a mall with a kidnapped white girl and I think anyone should rest easy.
Also, it is also not a harmless intrusion: beyond setting race relations back with each such encounter, some of these people have potentially added to the anxiety, emotional instability, racial confusion etc. of the child. Clearly those who intruded notwithstanding the above went forward based ONLY on the fact that Katie is white and her family black. That, I conclude is RACIST (not of the lynching kind but the you’re judging me solely on the color of my skin kind).
The article also talks about widely held views on race and describes them as what “Americans” think. Not quite. It is misleading to say “Americans” have been familiarized with the concept of white stewardship – “white” Americans have. This notion of the white perspective consuming the entire space of what “people” or “Americans” think or do recalls a parallel argument regarding America’s racial history when some white people say “EVERYBODY thought discrimination was ok.” Not quite
Posted 24 Apr 2009 at 3:27 pm ¶
Asada wrote:
Am I the only one who thinks Immigrants and assimilation is just ” diffrent face same old argument”…?
Posted 24 Apr 2009 at 10:11 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:
I’m a non-white transracial adoptive parent… I do get bored reading over and over again about white parents adopting children of color, so in that respect, I really enjoyed reading the adoption article and found some things there I could relate to. Not the stares — I don’t get them because people assume my son is my biological son — but feeling the pressure of the underlying question “why didn’t you adopt one of your own“? I think the article did a good job in exploring that.
What I didn’t like about the article is that it didn’t really talk enough about practices of intraracial adoption among black people. This is a complicated and interesting subject and it doesn’t get covered the way it should.
The black adoptive parents I know would not object to another black person adopting a white child that 1) was already in their extended family somehow due to friendship or blood 2) was first a foster child (like the girl in the story). However, they would have serious questions and concerns if the parent used another form of adoption, domestic or international, to adopt a white baby… because that would be perceived as “walking past” black children that already needed a home.
Race/ethnicity as a kind of greater family is a pretty important theme in adoption.
Posted 25 Apr 2009 at 8:00 am ¶
Abu Sinan wrote:
Reminds me of being at the mall the other day with my boys, wife and step daughter.
One of the boys, who looks very white, ran off and my step daughter, who is a dark complected Arab, went to get him.
He put up a fight so my step daughter had to pick him up. Several couples who were not aware of the situation saw a dark skinned woman fighting with a 2 year old, seemingly white child, and one man actually started to walk towards her until he saw her come to us.
It was clear that they thought this dark skinned teenager was taking the little white boy. It was funny to us at the time, but later got us thinking.
If people hold such nonsense preconceptions in a really diverse place such as the Metro DC area, what is it like outside of major divrse centers in the USA?
Posted 25 Apr 2009 at 11:43 pm ¶
Jadey (aka Carolyn) wrote:
@ 9jah: Yes, stereotype threat has been shown to potentially impact anyone who is aware of a negative ingroup stereotype in a relevant domain.
This article on the test also reminds me of the discredited fire-fighter promotion test discussed here a week or so ago in light of the surrounding legal controversy. It makes me wonder exactly how these tests are being validated, if they are at all. Given the expense and time-consuming nature of test validation, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the latter. And then somehow it’s shocking to administrators when their tests are found to be faulty.
That being said, stereotype threat does not really explain the test results referenced in this link — stereotype threat also depends on the amount of identification with the domain in question and the motivation to succeed/disconfirm the stereotype, so the high achieving students should have been just as (or more) negatively affected as the low-achieving students, but they weren’t. It may have still played a role, but inevitably these outcomes involve multicausality, and the usual effect size of stereotype threat is moderate, not strong.
While stereotype threat plays a role in performance on standardized tests and research is being done on the most efficient and effective way to neutralize it, it’s a shiny academic term that intellectualizes this issue and makes it remote, while also taking up a disproportionate amount of “explanatory space” for a relatively simple concept. In a news report, it’s not terribly helpful just to throw it out there as a meaningful explanation. It’s like reporting on a plane crash and saying that it was probably due to gravity.
I’m cool with it being mentioned, but it should have been confined to a sentence or two at the bottom and *not* treated as a full explanation (if that is indeed what the Stanford report found, then I am not amused; as I noted above, this does not fit the profile of stereotype threat). The real story of that article is the total unwillingness of some of those administrators to admit problems with their testing, and how wrong-headed education standards sacrifice PoC students under the guise of academic integrity.
Posted 26 Apr 2009 at 12:24 pm ¶
Sobia wrote:
From Shashwati’s blog this resonated the most with me:
“Finally, I am just outraged that a tabloid would go in and entrap this family to look as bad as possible, and even more outraged that they would do it to a poor, ill-educated family that does not have the means to fight back. But somehow the newspaper reports have glossed over that fact. I am even more sickened by all the well-meaning bleeding hearts who want to take away poor children away from their families.”
Very well said.
Posted 27 Apr 2009 at 1:21 am ¶
Alston wrote:
“But a well-meaning policy intended to ensure colorblindness appears to be backfiring. According to a study published last year by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, transracial parents are often ill equipped to raise children who are themselves unprepared for the world’s racial realities.”
To readers of this blog, the failure is not at all a surprise. It should be expected. At one level, I can understand why someone might want to be concerned with the abduction of a child. It has happened a few times with my white brother in law and his then-young obviously biracial daughter. On the other hand, does it really occur very often where someone that wanted to kidnap a strange child would do so in such a brazen manner? I get the good intentions, but it’s obviously based on race, and I have little tolerance for stupid behaviour based on things like race.
Clearly the public needs to be educated about the existence of so-called interracial families, especially with the realities of adoption and/or divorce and remarriage. If my own stepdaughter were of a different disposition, I myself would be dealing with similar situations more than I already do.
Posted 27 Apr 2009 at 2:08 pm ¶
Jasmine wrote:
I don’t understand why African-Americans would adopt a Caucasian child.
Posted 28 Apr 2009 at 2:17 pm ¶