Essay: The Merits of Affirmative Action.

For my final paper I looked at the merits of affirmative action. I argued that affirmative action is still a relevant and effective means through which to address persisting racial stereotypes and economic discrepancies if implemented correctly. In my essay I rebutted the most common and strongest criticisms of affirmative action and sought to demonstrate its continuing usefulness as a potential policy.

Research Paper

In my research paper, I examined the idea of affirmative action in higher education, how it's been implemented, and the arguments for and against it-- especially interesting in terms of how the Supreme Court has supported it or refuted it at the University of Michigan in 2003.

I concluded that an examination of the ideas behind the implementation of affirmative action in higher education and an assessment of how it affects society leads one to the conclusion that overall, affirmative action’s effect on society has and will continue to be positive because it minimizes the disparities in equality between white society and socially constructed racial minorities.

I also thought that though the importance of considering the practical ways to fix racial inequalities in higher education should not be diminished, the support for affirmative action in higher education that holds the most gravity is the simple idea that it is morally right, because minority students in present day America on the whole generally begin their education on a lower level and receive a lower quality education than white students, which leads to fewer economic and intellectual opportunities in life. The only way to reform this problem as quickly as possible is with the direct intervention of the group in charge: privileged white society.

Immigration & Race

For my research paper, I worked to analyze how the perception of immigrants and the formation of immigration policy have racial implications. In an effort to address the issue, I began with a discussion on how the United States of America was built on immigration and transitioned to current debates about the problem of immigration.

Throughout my paper I discussed the following things:
- language used to address immigration issues --> implications of "alien" and "illegal" opposed to undocumented.
- history of immigration laws: quota systems that initially favored Northern Europeans and eventually progressed to favor Western Hemisphere migrants--> immigration preference
- current policy changes and implications:
1) "English Only" proposals, forcing assimilation
2) the "Secure Fence Act" which is the fence built between the US and Mexico-- why so scared of immigrants from the south?
3) Arizona's new immigration law-- which condones racial profiling and allows great room for interpretation and abuse by law enforcements, also making hispanics that identify as American feel less American.

After close analysis of immigration issues, I concluded that residents of the United States must work to recognize (and overcome) their fear of changing demographics. Additionally, government policies must work to understand why people migrate in an effort to better address the issue. With better education and the deconstruction of stigma and stereotypes, better relationships will develop amongst the immigrants and those born in the United States.

Research Paper

I examined how Dave Chappelle and Richard Pryor have changed comedy and society with their racially charged humor. Through careful examination of a documentary on Pryor and an episode of Inside the Actors Studio I was able to understand where each comedian stood on the topic, and why they did so. In the Richard Pryor documentary, many black comedians give their input about the topic of the use of the N word and of bringing race into comedy in such a blatant way. Both Pryor and Chappelle traveled to Africa, and both came back changed. Both decided to stop using this word, but the damage has already been done. Although Pryor said to stop using it, it was becoming engrained in the black community as a way of self identifying, and in the case of Chappelle the word had started to become too common for his liking. Both comedians employed a white voice, which Pryor was again the first to do. In the episode of Inside the Actors Studio Dave is asked about this voice and he responds saying that all black people are bi-lingual. When I heard this I thought I had hit pay dirt, the interview already had provided me with some information that could be useful but this hit so close to what we have discussed in class that I felt there was no way I could not incorporate it into the paper. In the closing bit of the interview Chappelle is asked about crossing the line, and he gives a somewhat profound response that is rooted in the fact that people don't realize some of the privelege that they have and feels that it is so institutionalized that people often forget about the problem. It has been a very interesting thing to research and examine because these two men were very much alike and act as the same vehicle to different generations.

My Conclusion

The main goal of this research paper was to expose the eugenic undertone of modern media. By valuing the whiter skin of popular figures, allowing degenerative influences in minority culture to proliferate, and representing sex as a segregated practice, the media helped to maintain racial segregation and inhibit miscegenation. These were shown to be eugenic principles through the twentieth century in the US. If the social influences of popular culture push for the reproduction of two lighter skinned, morally laudable individuals it was for the proliferation of these genes and character qualities into future generations.
The problem with eugenic movements was that in theory they would benefit a population by creating healthier citizens. However, when it built hierarchies of superior and inferior groups, labeling the minorities in the US as less intelligent and “undesirable,” it became a racist tool to maintain an assumed white supremacy. In relation to the media’s main goal of making money and believing they were representing images in specific ways and situations that would produce the most income, they showed a visual representation of society. The message was that an implicit eugenic tone symbolizes the continued racist sentiments of the white American consumer. The solution to the problem did not rest solely on the shoulders of the people in control of the media, but on the American public, as well. Until a change in attitudes towards body image, minority culture, and sex occur, racism will continue to disseminate throughout the public sphere of America.

Witness to Racism: What would you do?

I came across this very interesting news piece on how a bystander would act if they witnessed racism in America. It relates to the example Professor Moore brought up of standing in line and hearing racially charged comments. What would you do, really?

http://abcnews.go.com/WhatWouldYouDo/story?id=6551048&page=1

My Research

There is a contemporary debate over the utility and/or harm racial recognition has caused, polarized by the eliminativism on one end and conservatism on the other. Eliminativism considers racial categorization to be mistaken and oppressive and thus calls for the abandonment of it altogether. Conservatism feels that racial identities are beneficial and must be preserved, yet reformed. Both positions look for a change in the way we perceive race. The motivation behind my research paper is an intuition that Americans have a preset qualitative belief on race that lurks in one’s subconscious. If this is so, such an implicit bias poses problems for reforming modern racial categorization in either direction (eliminativism or conservatism). How do you autonomously overcome something you are not even aware of?

My intuition is empirically grounded in the implicit association test (IAT), a psych study revealing that our opinions on race elude our consciousness and are not necessarily available to introspection. In my research paper, I plan to use this empirical platform to embark on a discussion regarding the pitfalls of eliminativism and/or conservatism (I might just choose one to focus on) as well as the potential solution to reforming our ideas on race (once establishing that our current ideas are diseased and undesirable). In my pragmatic prescription to the diagnosis, I foresee the possibility of appealing to concepts developed by W.E.B De-Bois, specifically on his ideas for self-empowerment of the suppressed races.

Interesting article on Belgium considering that there be a ban put on burqas.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/04/21/belgium.burqa.ban/index.html

If passed those caught can be fined or even imprisoned for 1-7 days.

Even though it has to do with religion I believe that it is still relevant to our class because of the overlap with race, considering that the majority of Muslims are non-white while Belgium's population is predominately Causcasian. On a related note, this is not the first issue with European governments targeting Muslims. In Switzerland they passed a ban on building minarets, the tall towers next to mosques, back in November.

Skin bleaching

My topic is 'Becoming White', and am talking about the practice of skin bleaching by using chemicals. This is a practice done by 'people of color' in order to become lighter because light is perceived as more beautiful, more acceptable. I am looking into the deeper reasons as to why this pratice is being carried out, so for instance why is lighter skin, perceived as more beautiful and acceptable? is there perhaps any thing to do with the psychology of the people practicing skin bleaching that could give clues as to the reasons why? what about white priviledge? slavery? and all of this in the context of 2010.

This topic is of interest to me because, we live in 2010, you would think people by now accept the fact that beauty and notions of what is acceptable are really relative, there is no absolute, but reality shows the contrast, as individuals, we tend to not like the way we look, whatever we look like, we are constantly altering it somehow, and some people will willingly go just a bit extreme at it.

My Topic: Du Bois & HBCUs

I've always been interested in the "Philosophers in Focus" style of learning philosophy. And when we got to Du Bois in "The Idea of Race," I knew I had found my philosopher. His pragmatic yet unquestioning understanding of racial problems was so unlike the philosophers we read before. The issue of African Americans in higher education had always interested me, so I wrote a paper applying the educational philosophy of W.E.B. Du Bois to HBCUs today.

Using his writings, the writings of his critics, and research on modern HBCUs, I came to a two-sided conclusion. Du Bois' primary priority was successful education, not dictating the race of the students in the classroom. Ultimately, there are some HBCUs that provide rich educational experiences and offer the added bonus of a built-in racially supportive and diverse environment. On the other hand, there are other HBCUs that are simply academically inadequate. I argue that Du Bois would call for the closing of subpar HBCUs at more attention to the place where education begins to fail, in primary school.

My Topic

My paper addresses racially oriented prison gangs. The current situation with overcrowding and increased gang violence in penitentiaries across the United States have many corrections officials, politicians and members of the public desperately searching for a solution. In an attempt to try and control this epidemic officials have tried several measures including: segregating prisoners, isolating them, integrating them, transferring known gang leaders out of state and counseling.

My thesis will be: Although none of these methods yield a conclusive solution, mandating the integration of all prisoners is the only plausible resolution.

Do you think its weird that on April 12 of this year, nothing was done to remember the incident that occurred last year? Has the college administration done anything to promote acceptance and tolerance amongst staff and faculty? I am creating a race relations program that will hopefully be in full effect next fall. I'm working in conjunction with CVC, CCOR, Goldfarb and hopefully CCAK. So if you have any ideas that you would like to see incorporated in the program let me know! I want to increase people's awareness of race and diversity. I would love if my fellow CCOR facilitators could lead discussions in the coffee house and amongst CAs, Coot Leaders and CCAK mentors to make sure that they have the proper vocabulary to discuss race if it ever comes up. I want those involved in the program to go into the Waterville community and work with local residents and school children in discussions about their experiences with race. There is a lot I would like to accomplish so if you guys have any thought let me know!

My research paper is on white privilege, more specifically on the the emotion of white guilt and whether this feeling effects the white population's support of programs like affirmative action. I decided to interview students and faculty of all ethnic backgrounds to help with my research.

My paper topic

I've already wrote about what my topic is but I'll give a bit more detail. Using the essay that we read "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack: White Privilege", I am using points about white privilege specifically about the education system. I am interested to see what is taught in American high school history today about black people and then talk about why it is important for black history to be taught more in schools. I've already asked about what you all thought about this topic. Another question I could ask is where you are from and what you learned about American history in high school? Was is designed to teach about the white founding fathers or did you also learn about the black people contributed to making America what it is today?

A Surge of Black Republicans

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/us/politics/05blacks.html?hp

This is an article from the New York Times about black republicans running to be house representatives. I think it is interesting that the article focuses on black republicans because African Americans more commonly vote democratic. The article states that those running feel empowered by Obama’s election and have gained confidence even though they are across party lines. It seems to me that the republicans are realizing the importance in gaining voters of various races in order to compete. One of the republicans running stated that last year he could not gain state support even though he had raised a significant amount of money. This statement makes me wonder, is it absolutely essential to have party and state support in order to win elections? Could this be a partial explanation for the prevailing white majority in government? These queries lead me to question the influence in society that those in power possess.

race as an obsession

I was just scrolling through CNN when I came across this story of a lacrosse girl found dead--thought to be murdered by a lacrosse boy. While the story is a tragedy and the report leaves out any discussion on race, the comments on the story are about race. Granted the story provides the picture of the victim and the suspect, I am fascinated by peoples inability to see the story for what is being told and the desire to start a discussion on race into it.

The debate is about whether or not justice will be served or if the suspect will be found innocent simply because he is white.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/05/03/virginia.student.killed/index.html?hpt=C2

Natural vs. Aquired color

In recent discussion on skin tone, I have been forced to consider a very confusing reality about the meaning of skin tone. Aside from the simply asking the question, I don't know how to address this.

Why is has it been considered less desirable to be born really dark but yet everyone works on their tan to get dark?

I have been thinking about conversations on skin whitening cream and the idea of not having kids darker than yourself-- but why does it matter?

There seems to be a fine line on when being "dark" becomes an object of qualification/classification. There is the white/"pink", there is olive-skin, light skinned dark, and dark-- and several colors in between. There is also a clear distinction between one who has acquired color and one who was born with color.

When I look through a magazine and see all the ideal models, very few are the pastey pure white that is associated with the "ideal" race. Is physically being white actually beautiful? or is just socially identifying as white that brings this idea of superiority/beauty? If this is about social classification, this would imply that the more important part is the shared history rather than the physical classification...

Another Behavioral Study: Power of Circumstance

On the topic of psychological studies regarding the influence of external environments and the malleability of character traits, I would like to share another interesting study that I once came across.

The aim of the study was to question what makes us help others, when do we express our "Good Samaritan" qualities? The study shows that we behave in a caring manner only when circumstances allow us to, questioning whether personality is influential or not on our actions. I am certainly intrigued with these types of experiments, challenging our assumptions on autonomy. I probably am most interested because it is a serious problem that we need to overcome, or shall I say, would arguably want to overcome due to its severe implications.

Read about the experiment here:

http://www.experiment-resources.com/helping-behavior.html

Free Will, Moral Luck, and Responsibility

We began to scrape the surface today on a deeper debate regarding how moral and circumstantial luck challenge the philosophy of free will and thus moral responsibility. I thought it would be useful and informative then for us to take a look at how to render consistent the two seemingly opposed concepts. Here is an excerpt form the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

"A basic compatibilist strategy is to argue that agents can have control over their actions in the sense required for freedom and/or responsibility even if they do not control the causal determinants of those actions. For example, if one acts with the ability to act in accordance with good reasons (Wolf 1990) or if one acts with “guidance control” which consists in part of acting on a reasons-responsive mechanism for which one has taken responsibility, (Fischer and Ravizza 1998), one can be responsible for one's actions. The key move here is to distinguish between different kinds of factors over which one has no control. If one's actions are caused by factors that one does not control and that prevent one from having or exercizing certain capacities, then one is not responsible. However, if one's actions are caused by factors that one does not control, but that do allow one to have and exercize the relevant capacities, then one can be “in control” of one's actions in the relevant sense, and so responsible for one's actions.

Interestingly, compatibilists are often silent on the question of resultant and circumstantial moral luck, although these forms of luck might represent an underutilized resource for them. For if it turns out that the luck — or lack of control — delivered by determinism is but one source of luck among others, then determinism does not embody a unique obstacle to free will and responsibility, at least when it comes to control. This is to expand the application of a widely used compatibilist strategy to show that when it comes to causal luck, compatibilists are not alone.

For within the free will debate, compatibilists are not alone in accepting the existence of certain types of luck. Many libertarians assume that our actions are caused by prior events (not themselves in our control) in accordance with probabilistic laws of nature (see, for example, Kane 1996, 1999, Nozick 1981). Given this view, it is natural to conclude that if determinism is false, there is at least one kind of luck in what sort of person one decides to be and so in what actions one performs. That is, there is luck in the sense that there is no explanation as to why a person chose to be one way rather than another. At the same time, Kane, for example, denies that there must be luck in the sense that one's choices are flukes or accidents if determinism is false. In Kane's view, what is important is to be free from luck of the second kind. For even if one's action is not determined, it can still be the case that the causes of one's action are one's own efforts and intention. And if one's action is caused by one's own efforts and intentions, then one's action is not lucky in the sense of being a fluke or accident. But while this shows that one's actions can be free of luck of an important kind, it still leaves unaddressed luck of a third kind, namely the kind at issue in the moral luck debate: the dependence of agents' choices on factors beyond their control. And it appears that on the libertarian view in question, our choices are indeed subject to luck of this sort. (See Pereboom (2002) for a discussion of the similar burdens shared by compatibilists and this sort of libertarian.) Only the agent-causal libertarians discussed above offer an account that aims specifically at eliminating a type of moral luck."

Enjoy.

Just wanted to post an article on humane prisons in Norway that I found very relevant with regards to our discussion last Wednesday. Some statistics in the article state that "Within two years of their release, 20% of Norway's prisoners end up back in jail. In the U.K. and the U.S., the figure hovers between 50% and 60%." Evidently one has to factor in that Norway has a much lower level of criminality compared to the UK and US, but still I think that the example of Norwegian prisons could support the position of an massive overhaul of the prison system in other countries.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1986002,00.html#ixzz0mnjMsFCY

Another Reference to "The Problem of Speaking for Others"

As I was reading an article about the newest happenings in the health care/abortion saga, I came across a quote from Representative Janet Long from Florida. She said "stand down if you don't have ovaries" (see article here).

In our class discussion, we compared the idea that only members of a certain race should be able to make decisions about what is best for that race to the issue of governing bodies (which are composed of men) making decisions about abortion (an issue that mostly concerns women). It seems that this Representative, Janet Long, feels strongly about women making decisions for women. But would she also say that whites, Latinos, Asians, etc. should "stand down" and let African Americans make legislative decisions for themselves? And then should everyone in turn "stand down" and let those who identify as Asians make decisions their own legislative decisions? It seems that this process would result in a farce of a political system. It seems that our political system is founded on the basis that members of different groups collectively make a decision based on what is best for the whole. If we allow self-interest to not only dominate but effectively legislate (not that that issue isn't already present given the enormous white majority), it seems that our budget deficit would be even scarier than it is now, but that our Congressional body would have even lower approval ratings.