Unarmed and Shot.

How Implicit Bias can lead to Explicit Racism and Death

Tampa Bay Newspaper Report
Implicit Bias and it's consequences.

Why cops shoot?


White Privilege

White Privilege is real and measurable.


Macklemore Songs about White Privilege, Black Live Matters and being white at a Black Lives Matter rally, the hypocrisy/responsibility of white rappers, success in hip-hop without having to go through the struggle of the foundations of hip-hop, Is he just Elvis?, and other important topics revolving around race and identity in America

Macklemore-White Privilege

Macklemore-White Privilege II

Panel discussion with Macklemore/Ryan Lewis and others about the song....optional


Race Post.  You must discuss about the social construction of race (Here is a great recap that articulates the myth of race as genetics and why it is a social construction http://www.vox.com/2015/1/13/7536655/race-myth-debunked ),
ingroups/outgroups in concerns with race, explicit and implicit racism as well as white privilege. 

Apply it to your own experiences, you might want to think about: assumptions you have had about race (esp. biological), experiences you have had with other races and/or racism, and how privilege affects you (negatively or positively). 
You MUST include evidence of watching/reading: White Like Me (Tim Wise documentary), Tampa Bay Newspaper reports, Yes, You Can Measure White Privilege article, and reflect on the Macklemore songs.

White Like Me-Tim Wise

Tim Wise is a sociologist and anti-racist educator who has spent his career writing about race and speaking out against racial injustices.  His latest video is called White Like Me.  You can watch it here on media cast.

Wise's video reinforces much of what we have done already this unit:

Explicit Racism is still an issue in the US despite having elected a black man to President.

White privilege has helped many whites while blacks have not received the same privileges such as mortgages, jobs, and loans.

Implicit racism subtly and subconsciously creates discrimination and racialized attitudes such as when whites receive government assistance it is simply helping them reach the American dream, but when blacks receive similar assistance they are considered leeches of society.  Whites never have to think about their race so race is not a big deal to them, but minorities constantly are aware of their race and how it affects their treatment.

Our goal is not to create white guilt but rather to make everyone mindful of the effects of racism on society and on individuals.  In becoming more mindful, hopefully we become more understanding and appreciative of each other as humans having a unique experience.

Racism

Even though race does not exist biologically, it does exist as a social construction. This means that people believe in it and act on it even though it is not real.  One of the ways the construction of race has shaped people is called explicit racism, or directly and consciously believing that one's own "racial" group is superior to others. Another way that Americans have been shaped by "race" is prejudice and discrimination.  Prejudice is having a predetermined attitude about a group of people usually based on a stereotype.  Discrimination is an action or behavior that results in unequal treatment of individuals because of his or her perceived "race." However, over the last few years, the  United States has elected its first black/ mixed-race President, there are more black actors and actresses on network television, and the cultural norm is that it’s wrong to be racist, SO 

(Please jot down a response to this)

 Is racism still relevant? Should we still be concerned about racism or have we moved past racism?  




Checkout these recent events in our country:
Here is a post about racist tweets from the 2013 Miss America pageant.  

Here is a post  about a 2013 racist incident in an unlikely place.

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education has an ongoing list of racist incidents.

A college student from Queens got more than he bargained for when he splurged on a $350 designer belt at Barneys — when a clerk had him cuffed apparently thinking the black teen couldn’t afford the pricey purchase, even though he had paid for it, a new lawsuit alleges.
“His only crime was being a young black man,” his attorney, Michael Palillo, told The Post.



During the Healthcare debate in 2009, Representative David Scott of Georgia had a 4foot swastika painted over his office sign.


The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies hate groups in America. This link will show you a map of all the hate groups in the United States.   Is this surprising?  Is this concerning?


This article from the Mail Online, A British online newspaper: 

And with Mr Obama reportedly receiving more death threats than any other American president - 400 per cent more than those against his predecessor George Bush, according to a new book...A black U.S. Congressman had a swastika painted over his office sign after he yelled at allegedly racist protesters at a Southern town hall meeting, it emerged today.

In 2012, Joel Ward, a black NHL player scored the winning goal in the NHL playoffs and he became the target of racial slurs.

 Fraternities and sororities hold racial-themed parties that display very directly the racialized stereotypes that persist in the United States. Does this surprise you?  How would you feel/react to a party like this when you go to college?

 Jeremy Lin is an example of the racial stereotypes in sports and how stereotypes can be more or less permissible for different groups within a society. Here is a post explaining that dynamic from the society pages.  Here is a clip of the skitfrom the daily beast.  Have you seen or heard any explicit racism in your own life?

Race is a Social Construct

I asked students to classify these balls into different categories. Two things happen:
1)Some students pick a trait such as size or color to classify the balls or, 2)Students classify the balls based on the sport of each such as basketball, soccer, etc...
This is a metaphor for race and how we classify people. 1)First, we choose to use traits such as skin color to classify them, but the divisions between these traits are arbitrary divisions. If you lined up all of the people (or balls) in the world according to a trait, the divisions would be less obvious. It would look more like a spectrum that changes gradually blending into one another.  Here is a post from soc images that displays the spectrum of human colors.

So why all the fuss about skin color? Nina Jablonski explains the significance of skin color in her Ted Talk here: The article Skin Deep by Nina Jablonski and Chaplin from Scientific American explains the science behind skin color and how around the world, skin color would look more like a spectrum than distinct groups.2)Second, when we categorize the balls into sports or people into races we are constructing a social category that only exists because we say it should. Ask students to define what a basketball is.  The only true definition is "any ball that society says is a basketball."  The same is true for race. Whatever the society says is a distinct race, is a distinct race in their eyes.   Race, like sports, are social constructions.  Here is more about skin color.
What's the point? Click here to see why there is no way of biologically separating people into "races." Race doesn't exist in any scientific sense. This is a difficult concept because I think that race is a biological hegemony in America - that is, it is so accepted that we never question it. For more info you can checkout the April 22, 2005 episode of Odyssey, a radio program that used to air on Chicago Public Radio. This episode about the genetics of race and if you listen carefully to the caller segment, you can hear a very interesting high school sociology teacher commenting. [Listen the program here (the good part is after 35:26)]

Here is an explanation about how genetic diversity spread out over time and how that led to varying populations of diversity but not distinct groups. 


Jefferson Fish also explains how race doesn't make sense in the article title Mixed Blood from Psychology Today, 1995.


What are some assumptions you have had about race? Have you learned erroneous information regarding race? Why is this not a part of curriculum in American schools especially in light of the profound impact the idea of race has had on this country?

Social Class Post

Sorry kids,  I got hit by a nasty virus Saturday night and spent all day Sunday in various degrees of sickness.  I was too sick to get on my plane ride home Sunday.  Im flying in Monday morning but I doubt I will be in class.

Your assignment for the today is to do the social class blog.

Go to the previous Monopoly post and read through it.  Reflect on how the game played out for your group.  WATCH the TEDtalk at the end of the post that describes a study on how people play the game.   Did your experience replicate the study?  How so? Why do you think that happens?



For this unit,  we looked at all of the components of social class that shape an individual's possibilities and problems.  Some things to consider for this post are: How do the following characteristics affect Social Class: Wealth, Education, Income, Power/Prestige, and Location (lecture notes)? Do you see how social class is played out at SHS? Where do you see class conflicts in the community? How do you see social class playing a role in your own life? How has your family's mobility been? Are you growing up in the same social class as your parents? How about from your grandparents? Where do you see your future in terms of social class?
How are you affected by it? How might someone in poverty be affected by it?   You must include your reflections and thoughts on the following sources: SPENT the game, People Like Us documentary discussion questions, Coin Flipping activity, the Ted Talk about Monopoly and the Monopoly Activity.  Due Monday April 3.

Sociolopoly: Class System in America

Monopobility

Yesterday we played monopoly with rules that more closely affect the real rules of the US class system. Players started with different amounts of income and different amounts of property; the upper-upper class started with the most, and the working class the least. They rolled the dice to see what class they were. I told them them not worry about who "wins" the game, instead just try moving up to the next level of class. Playing monopoly according to the rules of the U.S.'s class structure should have some revealing insight about the state of mobility within the U.S.'s class structure.
From the Brookings Institute:

Recent studies suggest that there is less economic mobility in the United States than has long been presumed. The last thirty years has seen a considerable drop-off in median household income growth compared to earlier generations. And, by some measurements, we are actually a less mobile society than many other nations, including Canada, France, Germany and most Scandinavian countries. This challenges the notion of America as the land of opportunity.

And from the New Yorker,
“Social mobility is low and has been for at least thirty or forty years.” This is most obvious when you look at the prospects of the poor. Seventy per cent of people born into the bottom quintile of income distribution never make it into the middle class, and fewer than ten per cent get into the top quintile. Forty per cent are still poor as adults....The middle class isn’t all that mobile, either: only twenty per cent of people born into the middle quintile ever make it into the top one. 

Mobility in America tends to be within the middle classes (from working class to uppermiddle class). The wealthy class tends to stay wealthy and the impoverished class tends to stay in poverty, especially in comparison to other most developed nations.

When someone changes social class within their lifetime, this is called intragenerational mobility.

1. Was anyone from your group able to change classes?  If so, who?  What class?  If not, then who was the closest to moving up or down?

2.  Does your groups' mobility reflect the findings above from the Brookings Institute?

Social class mobility might also be  intergenerational mobility or structural mobility.   Intergenerational mobility means that the children of one group will have a different class than their parents.  This is much more common than intragenerational mobility.  My own family's history reflect this as well.  How has your family's mobility been? Are you growing up in the same social class as your parents? How about from your grandparents? Where do you see your future in terms of social class?
 Structural mobility is when the structure of society changes in such a way that a group is moved up or down.  For example, many people in the 1950s and 60s were able to finish high school and go right to work in a factory.  When those jobs moved overseas, many of those people were thrust downward.

3.  Tell the group about your family's intergenerational mobility.  Did they go up or down or stay the same?

4.  Using the monopoly game yesterday, what are some ways that we could exemplify intergenerational mobility and structural mobility as part of the game?


A second way that we can look at this simulation is in how players react.  Below is a TED talk about how people react to playing the game.  Think about how that reaction might show up in everyday life.