I am...

not racist at all. But apparently, I am! I just took the IAT online which is basically an unconscious measure of your preference for european or african americans. My result was that I strongly preferred european americans. It takes about 8 minutes and is well worth it. Post your results and talk about how valid you think they are!

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/takeatest.html

Go to "Take a Demo Test" and choose RACE IAT.

the hipocrisy of dogead (?)

During a recent class discussion, someone brought up ethnic holidays at Colby. There have been several incidents in the past few years during which students have felt that their respective culture was not appropriately celebrated or revered during an ethnically themed celebration.

Although I believe that those claims are quite legitimate and deserve attention, I thought our class might turn its attention to the most recent "holiday": Colby's celebration of "Doghead".

For those of you who have been living under a rock, Doghead is Colby's celebration of St. Patrick's day. Students stay up all night Friday night, drinking and partying until they run (or stumble) to the steps of Miller to watch the sunrise on Saturday morning. Traditionally, students all go to breakfast at Dana intoxicated Saturday morning, go off campus Saturday afternoon, and continue their festivities through Saturday night.

Obviously, this agenda is generalized. Not every Colby student even participates in Doghead, and there are certainly a significant number of students who participate but do not consume alcohol. However, no one who wandered the halls of Dana/the Apartments last night or was present for the sunrise could deny that alcohol played an enormous role in the festivities. And although alcohol consumption is a normal part of a weekend at Colby, I dare say that alcohol consumption is higher than normal this weekend.

My question is the following: why is it okay to take this particular holiday (St. Patrick's day-- which is obviously linked to the Irish country and culture) and turn it into a themed drinking marathon with very limited accurate ties to Irish culture, if the whole school seems to freak out when the same thing is done to a minority culture? And, why isn't the administration all over this festitivity, when they claim to be making every effort to reduce the racial/ethnic stereotypes and prejudice? Granted, the administration does not officially sponsor Doghead, but it did not officially sponsor the majority of the parties that caused outrage in previous years.

Is it the in group/out group issue? Is it because St. Patrick's Day is a "white" holiday, and the majority of Colby students are white, it's okay to disgrace a national and religious holiday with drunken debauchery?

And although many of us might not think about it this way, when you consider it, Doghead really somwhat enforces stereotypes about the Irish. Colby students arguably drink more on Doghead than any other day of the year. And what is the stereotype about the Irish? That they're drunks.

I'm interested to hear the opinion of the class on this issue. What do you all think? Do you think likening Doghead to the previous parties is a fair comparison? And if so, why do you think this particular facet of this issue is so largely ignored when others are so incendiary?

Black Barbie Sold Cheaper Than White Barbie

After having written our papers on racism in contemporary media, I thought this news article would be of interest. Is Walmart being racist or rational?

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/black-barbie-sold-white-barbie-walmart-store/story?id=10045008

Phylogenic diversity map

Today, in my evolution and diversity class, my professor had a power point slide of this map, which represents the phylogenic diversity of mitochondrial DNA in humans. When this map came onto the screen I was astonished immediately.

Even though Africa is the origin of the tree and it has the most diversity, the pie chart on the image suggests that Africa has the least amount of diversity. The populations measured with more acuity represent the compelling interest of the person who is creating this map. Also, the color scheme chosen for the earlier categories, which are combined into three large groups, are represented by a gray scale while the rest of the phylogenic groups have colors of the rainbow. Even though this map is based on scientific measurements, the map seems to be depict certain races over others in a type of phylogenic hierarchy.

Heredity and Culture Reading

As I have not yet had the benefit of discussing this reading in class, my perception may not be as clear as it could be. However, I think that the main idea of the "Heredity and Culture" reading is as follows: one cannot attribute behaviors or tendencies of a group of people to their race or ethnicity without a historical and anthropological understanding of that group's circumstances. Avoiding these presumptions will help to prevent sweeping, unfounded generalizations based on race. Also, Alain Locke is calling for an academic implementation of the understanding of the difference between correlation and causality.

"Heredity and Culture" was published in 1924. My question is, HOW DID IT TAKE THIS LONG for these points to come to the forefront of academic thought? Calculus was discovered in the 1600s. Advancements in physics leading to the discovery of quantam mechanics were made in 1897. How could it have possibly taken us until 1924 to come to the conclusion that we cannot just attribute cultural characteristics to racial determination without any understanding of that group's history?

This past weekend I was at a birthday party for one of my good friends when a gangster rap song came on and the 'n' word blared from the speakers. Most of my friends are like me and don't like the use of the 'n' word in any context so I was sort of surprised. I decided to change the song. But then some slightly intoxicated guy, who I know but am not close friends with, got annoyed that I kept changing the songs he wanted to listen to and we ended up having an argument about the use of the 'n' word. I'm a pretty stubborn person and so I didn't just give up and let him play the song. Afterwards one of my friends came up to me and said that the whole discussion was awkward and unnecessary. What would you do in a situation like that? Do you just think that you should say something? Or do you actually act upon what you believe is right?

Bigotry in the Online Gaming Community.

I have a confession to make. I am a gamer. At around the ripe age of three I was indoctrinated into the mind numbing subculture of video gaming and I have remained there ever since.

Historically speaking video gaming (I will refer to it as "gaming" from now on) was a communal, corporeal, and all around a social practice that has since degenerated. Originally console gaming was only enjoyable in a face to face setting which often took place in public (arcades), and, as a result, tended to be highly social in nature. Although competitive, these environments were all around friendly social settings which often understood their occupants by the quality of each others abilities and not by outside social constructions.

With the advent of massive multiplayer online gaming (MMO for short), however, this community of corporeal gamers has since degenerated into solitary adolescents crouched in the dark before the buzz of a glowing screen shouting anonymously over a foam mic at strangers. Please don't get me wrong, I am one of them so to speak (I mean that I play video games not practice bigotry), but I must admit that most of the interactions that now take place amidst this subculture tend to the crude and racists.
It must be said that this phenomenon has arisen in large part due to a feeling of anonymity. Similar to the social psychology of group think, individuals in these online settings lack a feeling of responsibility or connection to their behavior. Much like the invisible man or Plato's "ring of gyges" story, the anonymity in the gaming community gives us a dark glimpse at our nature unopposed by our social inhibitions.

Below is an article which talks briefly on the subject, and although I do not want to go into great detail about the actual bigotry that can be found over the speakers of the modern mmo, I do want to point out that it is unclear how much of the racism is actually intended to target and/or subjugate members of a race. The brutishness of mmo dialog, after all, isn't limited to racism and this makes me suspect that racism is incorporated because of its stigma as being hyper antisocial in modern society. Please let me know what you think.

The following is a link to an article which deals with this topic: