2012 Update

Hello everyone!!  Thought I’d write a few lines to reflect back on where I’ve been and where I’m headed next.  After much soul searching and a lot of help from friends and professionals alike, I can say I have a better sense of direction today.  I haven’t had much time to blog because since the beginning of 2010 I embarked in the process of obtaining a master’s degree in mental health.  So it’s hasn’t been the case that I haven’t been writing at all, just writing for a particular audience and purpose.  Had I not gone through the process of going to therapy myself, my graduation coming up next week would not have been remotely possible.  At the time of my last post I was in an extremely complicated crossroad in my life, struggling with my core values, figuring out what to do with my relationships.  As many people do, my reason for wanting to continue my education was more than monetary, but to try to understand myself better as well as human behavior in general.  Wow, I can honestly say that I’ve done a lot of growing since my last post.

Spiritually, I have a better sense of who I am and how I’m connected to the world.  I do not believe in religion.  I am definitely an agnostic, but I do consider myself to have a sound sense of spirituality.  I’m not in the business of converting anyone to follow me, or calling people of any faith ignorant or stupid.  If it works for you, more power to you.  I simply have no desire to engage in religiosity or to be converted myself.  What I do believe is that as humans we do have a connection to each other and the entire planet, all living things.  Greed, power, and the need for control and influence seem to fuels religion.  Religion corrupts the spirit, and in my opinion, divides us more as a people.  Coexistence is not taught by any major religion, there must only be one right path to take.  So that’s why I don’t subscribe to religion, it works for me.  This world has been here way before religion was ever invented.  I don't believe for a second that right path for all of humanity can be simplified into one closed ended answer.

Not being religious does not diminish my sense of purpose at all.  In fact, I feel better oriented as to how I want to live the rest of my personal and professional life than ever.  I do enjoy helping others process their own emotions, problems, and challenges.  I’ve always been fascinated with human behavior and the human condition and I’m finally at a place where I can really make a difference.  If help one individual gain clarity in their life, I’ve done what I’m supposed to do as a person.  I still have lots of baggage, who doesn’t?  The difference is I’m aware of it now, so that I can better separate myself from it when I have to help someone else.

Politically I’m as liberal as I’ve always been, going crazy over so much nonsense I see on TV and listen on the radio.  As an African American with Hispanic ethnicity, who can also identify with the Asian culture, my worldview and awareness of unfairness, racism, discrimination, social warfare, religious warfare, gender warfare, corporate welfare, and the business of war is even more acute.  I still get upset about being marginalized, about insidious attempts by certain interest groups to continue demonizing the poor, the oppressed, and those who don’t fit into their neat little social construct.  Oh yes, I’m still Jay, just a tad bit older, with a few whites coming out of my beard now, but still passionate about knowledge and freedom from being boxed into a category.  When I see how good this country can be, and the fight that is going on as we speak to resist change to keep people ignorant and afraid of different, my stomach turns. 

I don’t give up my position as quickly I used to.  I like to talk to others; it’s the only way I can see where someone is coming from.  So I wait, I let the person speak, I encourage conversation, I contribute to the discussion, but I hold my opinion until I’ve challenged the other person’s own views with questions and scenarios.  I’m aware that not everybody is going to like me or what I have to say.  So before I say something I’m going to make sure I have sound reasoning and even proof of what I’m saying to an extent.  This is the best way for someone else to know where my head is, what my convictions are, and what I want for my brothers and sisters.  I have a facebook account too which I use to stay connected with my daughters and some friends.  I’m glad I didn’t invest in facebook, I don’t have that kind of money anyway.  I’m digressing though, I do share my feelings on facebook as well, but it’s such a different animal all together.  I can post song that I like, or talk about what I had for lunch, share a picture, root for my baseball team, I would get instant feedback on any of those things.  I can say something completely stupid and would get someone to like my post.  The second I talk about voting rights, women’s rights, discrimination, war, hate, racism, colorism, genocide, or anything I feel the need to vent out about, I get very little feedback if any.  That’s the kind of mindless bullshit going on with facebook.  People are afraid to take a position on anything of substance, and it’s real a shame that so many people just don’t care, they feel annoyed about talking about things not related to real housewives, or dancing with the stars, or whatever bullshit TV show is out there.  I do value good entertainment, but come on people; we have to wake up if we don’t want others to run over us.  This is such a critical time in our country, and most people are sleeping through this fucking corporate takeover.  We could be doing things in this country that would benefit every single individual in the nation.  Instead we are letting corporate politicians undermine every attempt to bring equality, spreading lies through fear mongering with racial under tones at that.  Anyway, I just wanted to say I’m still alive, better than ever, and still me, forging my own revolution!!

SERENDIPITY

            Hi there, I’ve been away for several weeks.  A lot has happened since my last post.  For starters, I made significant strides in getting my life back on the right track career wise, and at home to some extent.  On my last post I talked about what was eating me, things that were really driving me to destructive and dysfunctional behaviors.  It’s taken me some time to process what I’ve learned about myself, accept it, and learn how things from my past have contributed on how I perceive things, how I deal with relationships, the things I’m attracted to, but more importantly, the reason such things attract me.  Understanding more about the darkness I’ve come out of has really helped me curve my behavior and stop myself from falling into the same mistakes I’ve committed in the past.

Over the past month I’ve discovered how truly dysfunctional my thought process has really been.  Partly because of chapters of my past I chose not to deal with because of the pain felt in dealing with situations I was never prepared to deal with as a child.   What happened in my past is not important to say at this point, but for most of my life I carried an enormous weight for things I was not responsible for, things that in turn made me identify more with pain.  I identified with pain in such a way, that I could relate to those in pain more so than with those who for the most part had normal lives. Not that understanding another person’s plight is a bad thing, but there’s something terribly wrong with running towards danger, dysfunction, and drama, confusing the sense of despair, desperation, and pain, with uninterested and unconditional love.  I took me a while to realize I was holding on to unnecessary feelings out of my own insecurities.  I suddenly realized that most of my significant relationships shared common factors such as pain, victimization, and the need to be rescued.  Here again, we are all human, and we’ve all experience pain in our lives at some point or another, but these factors should not be the focal point of a relationship, and they certainly should not be what is attractive about someone.  As fucked up as that may sound, yeah, that’s exactly how dysfunctional my thought process has been.

I can honestly say I’ve come to terms with certain aspects of my life, and I can definitely see the forest from the trees at this point.  It’s kind of like finding “Waldo” in one of those busy drawings.  The first time around you can spend hours looking for Waldo, but once you’ve spotted him, it’s hard not to see him, you can find him time and time again in that same picture.  That’s exactly how I feel about learning a little more about myself.  Things I thought I would never get over, or things that have taken me a long time to get a grasp on, are suddenly so clear.  I no longer feel the need to run towards drama.  I no longer feel that empty void within me, that empty feeling that has been driving me to push some people away while running full speed ahead in the wrong direction.  There are some days that are harder than others, but even on the difficult days I can still manage to catch myself, I can still see Waldo if you will.  So what am I saying?  Does this mean I’m good?  No it doesn’t, but I’m glad I’m better than who I was a few months back.  Does this mean my marriage is safe?  No it doesn’t, but I have a better understanding of what’s driving my behavior, and I’m willing to take responsibility for my own shortcomings.

Today I can say I  have a better sense of direction, and I’m actually beginning to pick up the pieces again.  I’m happy to say I’ve been accepted back into graduate school and I’m looking forward to submerging myself into the world of academia once again.  This is something I’ve always been passionate about and I’m extremely proud of myself for making the comeback, for telling myself it’s time to get my act together again, for dusting myself off and moving forward.  I’m certain I will still have other moments of adversity, but I will never give up on myself, never have, it’s why I’m still standing.  I’ve been to the edge, but I’ve always refused let go and to fall.  My experiences have only made me stronger, and they will definitely give me plenty to draw from to help others.  Are there other factors in my life that influence my behavior?  Of course there are.

I don’t consider myself a religious person, but I know religion has played a significant role in how I think.  Although I believe spirituality is a more important factor in my life today, religion was an extremely socializing force in my early development.  That same religion contributes to my concept of spirituality today because of the foundational moral values instilled in me at a very early age.  Although today I do not look at every act as a sin or a non-sin, at some point in my life I did, and while I have a more accepting world view today, there are still some core values that dictate how I interact with others and how I behave in relationships.  I can even say there’s a rebellious side of me when it comes to religion.  I say this because even though I’m not on an anti-Christian crusade, and I don’t think about the religious establishment that much, the fact that I don’t subscribe to many of the established norms makes me a rebel by definition.  I can honestly say that I allow myself to behave outside of some of the moral norms established by “faith” because I believe that a spiritual relationship is greater than any concept taught in church today; it's the sense of connecting with the world, with mankind, and responsibility of doing something for the greater good rather than teaching there is only one way to make to "heaven".  At the same time I know that at some level, the core values that are still with me, at some point cause dissonance within me when I’m violating any of those values that still influences me.  For instance, while I may give myself permission to pursue happiness if in fact I feel I have not achieved it with a given person,  I will feel uncomfortable about beginning an affair without giving my existing relationship proper closure.  The operating value here would be faithfulness to your significant other, a value that is well established within in me.  Have I ever gone against this value?  I certainly have, but I’ve never felt great about it.  In fact, I hated the fact that I had to seek for affection elsewhere and I wondered if this was just the way I was.  Would I ever be able to have a significant relationship without wanting other women?  To me there is the difference between being a “dog” and simply not knowing what you’re looking for.  If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you may confuse one emotion with another and before you know it, you’re sucked into a difficult web to untangle.  But the core value has always been in me, the feeling of being unfair to someone else has always been stronger, it’s always created enough dissonance to question what I’m truly looking for whenever I have strayed away.  As I learn more about myself I can better identify where I stand with every person that is close to me today.  There are still other mysteries to uncover within me.  I haven’t even begun to look for my family, but one step out of time I guess.  Today I’m just happy for being somewhat at peace with myself.  Stay tunned….

WHAT'S EATING ME?

I was speaking to my counselor the other day and I casually mentioned to him that I suddenly picked up on blogging again.  We began to talk about the reasons I decided to pick up blogging again.  You see, I feel that blogging is a great source of escape for me.  Not only I’m able to keep mind off of my reality for a few hours, I’m also engaging into something that elicits passion within me.  I often begin writing about things that bother me socially, things I have a passion for such as race relations, cultural differences, politics, and how all these things connect with one another.  As I began to open up to my counselor, it was almost as if we broke the patient counselor dynamic and we connected on a more personal level because we shared many views.  The main observation my counselor made at that point was that it was probably the first time I ever spoke to him about something I felt passionate about.  So why in the world am I seeing a counselor to begin with? What the hell is wrong with me that I need to see a counselor?  Good questions, you see I happen to be in a pretty dark place right now.  No of course I have not thought of ending my life.  I care far too much about my children to do something as selfish as that.  With that said, my struggle has really taken a toll on me.

My personal relationships have taken so much out of me that I barely have time to think about myself, about the things that keep me alive, the things I live for, the things I want to die doing.  Of course, my responsibility as a father is one of great priority to me, and frankly it’s the only thing that keeps me going nowadays.  But personal unhappiness can do terrible things to one’s personal dreams, aspirations, to the degree in which one even enjoys every breath taken.  I have nobody to blame for my tribulations but myself.  I would just love to understand why is that I put myself through these ridiculous behavioral cycles that only end up confusing me further, complicating my life and making it an unbearable torturous journey that simply begs for an ending.  I know I had a pretty dysfunctional childhood to say the least.  I know I discovered too many things way too early, which makes for a much quicker maturation.  You know for the most part I try to live my life by the golden rule.  Always trying to do what’s right, always trying to give something back, to make someone better for knowing me.  But as I’ve recently discovered, I have the tendency of doing too much, of trying to be a hero for everyone, of always trying to lighten someone else’s burden without any regard for my own.  What the fuck am I trying to prove here?  Why in the world would I put myself through so much pain? Why would I blindly give and give, and sacrifice my own sanity for an impossible mission by design?  Validation is an incredible motivator.  But why do I feel the need to constantly validate my worth?  This is where it gets complicated, where most of the digging needs to take place.  I’ll be the first to tell you how proud of a man I am.  You see, I’ll be the last one to ask for help, I can do it all on my own, and if you act like you don’t need me, then you will never receive the slightest acknowledgement from me.  But deep inside there’s this side of me that just yearns to be accepted, yearns to be wanted, to be needed, and I hate it.   This type of thinking that has dictated so many decisions in my life, many I would say not the wisest ones.  You see I can listen to your problems all day long, I can give you honest and sound advice, and I can separate my personal feelings from a given situation and be perfectly fine.  But whenever I involve my feelings I always seem to fuck something up.  I expect the impossible, set myself up for the impossible, or end up impossibly unhappy with the choices I’ve made. 

Believe it or not what troubles me the most are the people I hurt in the process of righting all my wrongs.  People who cannot possibly understand every single thing that went through my mind to involve them in my life, people who one way or the other invested themselves in me without knowing that I may one day be a source of great pain for them.  People who at some point needed so much of me and mostly got every possible thing from me but now must face my reality, the realization that I enabled a behavior of expectations I can no longer sustain.  But why is that I seem to go through such a rollercoaster in my relationships?  Well, the best I can come up with at this point is because I look for all the wrong things in a person I’m attracted to.  I look for the drama; I look for the sense of adventure, mixed in with a rescue mission, an incredible need to be saved, to be depended on to make things better.  Sometimes it even involves convenience.  Needless to say, none of these things lead to a blissful and fulfilling relationship.  These things have nothing to do with my likes and dislikes, with common ground, with finding someone who accepts me for who I am, not what I am or what I can do.  I often characterize my current relationship as one I sleepwalked through, until I woke up one day.  I’m not going to say I have no love for this woman, mother of the most beautiful daughter I could’ve ever asked for, but I didn’t of course.  My point is that even as I dove further and further into this relationship I gave up on things I promised myself I wouldn’t go through again, including having another child.  I will own up to my responsibility as a father, but the thought that the rest of my life was being decided for me really left me at a lost, in a deep inner struggle.  Why am I here?  Is this what I want?  Am I being acknowledged? Do I have a say in how am I to live the rest of my life?  Am I in love with this woman?  Or was I just comfortable?  Until now that is…  As I’ve grown older, I have been able to understand myself just a little better albeit there’s still so much more to learn.  But my biggest question today is whether I’m actually cut out to be with someone.  Or am I supposed to take this walk on my own?  There are so many things that I’d rather just share with myself, including this entire blogging process.  Not that I don’t know that whatever I post is out there for anyone to read, but the process is mine, and mine alone.  No one wants to grow old alone, I really don’t think I’m the exception, but there are journeys that are best embarked alone.  There’s just too much I want to uncover, but I don’t want company on this.  I can’t remember the last time I had a sense of completeness.  I might’ve thought I felt complete on one occasion or another, but the closest I’ve been to that is when I was free, when I had all my time to myself, where I could just dive into whatever it was I needed to do.  Sure there were some lonely nights, but there was nothing wrong with being able to listen to my own thoughts.  I met some of the most interesting people during that time in my life, and I enjoyed every bit of my freedom.  It had nothing to do with being a man-whore although I had my share crazy nights and easy lays. It was all about the free will, the choice to do so, and the choice to continue the path of self-discovery I have somewhat deviated from.  Trust me, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life falling in and out of love, from relationship to relationship, but I must always be true to myself.  This is why I have a counselor, because I know there is something terribly wrong with my relationship dynamic.  I honestly don’t know if I can save this relationship, but I know I can’t go on living like this.  I can no longer continue to kill myself, who I really am.  This is an extremely painful process for me.  I hate not being able to change anything because of finances as well.  I’ve really tried to talk myself into trying, into wanting to stay, but I honestly don’t know how to change this anymore.   Would things be different if we weren’t struggling financially so much?  Most like, but how would they be different?  Things would’ve definitely been different if our problems would’ve been taken seriously much sooner, before all this shit hit the fan.  The one thing I would like to do right is be fair.  I cannot begin another relationship without ending the one I’m in, something I’ve been guilty of in the past.  Not to mention all that has ever done for me is confuse me even more and get me into so much more trouble.  I don’t even have the strength to think about another relationship right now, can’t do it, won’t do it, been there before.

I’ve shared a lot of my personal life on this blog, but this is something I’ve never talked about.  I must admit this has been one of the most difficult topics I’ve covered because it’s pretty much about how fucked up my thought process is right now as it relates to my personal life.  I’m simply trying to get all this pain and confusion all in one place, let it out, read it back to myself from time to time, and work on not giving up on myself.  There are too many things I need to share with you, with the world, with everyone who has ever come across me.  I just want to be happy; I want to be at peace with myself.  I want to be able to lay my head down at night and hear absolutely nothing.  I’ve always been a man of integrity, a man that likes to live up to his own responsibilities.  Being responsible also involves being honest and owning up to wrongs that must be righted.  I want to be able to breathe again, even if that means enduring a little more pain.

IMPLICIT LEARNING AIDS THE FOUNDATION AND REINFORCEMENT OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES

Introduction

Implicit learning is defined as knowledge about a given stimulus acquired below the level of consciousness (Reber, 1989). The focus of this article is to explore how implicit learning and priming, which is the ability to recognize stimuli by previously presenting the stimuli or similar stimuli (Savage, Lieven, and Theakston, 2006), play a role in forming racial stereotype constructs. Some research has shown that priming is possible in children as young as 4-years-old as documented by Savage et al. The purpose of my research is to better understand the phenomenon of implicit learning, to find out how robust the effects of implicit learning can be, and in turn explain how implicit learning and priming contribute to shaping our social perception on race. One can argue that the explicit teaching of racial superiority has by in large disappeared from mainstream society in the United States, yet strong racial stereotypes toward Blacks in the U.S. still remain and are possibly being taught implicitly (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, and Jackson, 2008).

Cognitive research plays a significant role in the topic of implicit learning and stereotypes because it provides insight on how we learn the aforementioned constructs and how early in life we are capable of learning and reinforcing this information. Although implicit learning and priming are basic concepts of our cognitive processes, they are critical to learning coupled with what we are taught culturally. First I will share foundational information about the concepts of implicit learning and priming and then discuss how these processes can facilitate the learning and reinforcement of racial stereotypes.

Implicit Learning

The term implicit learning first surfaced over four decades ago while attempting to study the concept of intuition, the sense of knowing what is right or wrong in a given situation without a conscious reason for the sense of knowing the appropriate approach (Reber, 1989). Reber argued that one arrives at an intuitive state after implicit learning is experienced. As noted before, Reber defined implicit learning as the acquisition of knowledge below the level of consciousness. In an early study Reber exposed participants to diagrams of strings of letters with directional arrows and loops connecting them and told participants they were engaging in a memory experiment. They were not told they were attempting to memorize diagrams of finite-grammar and they contained rules for stinging letters together. Reber reported that participants under the diagrams containing rules condition showed an increased ability for processing and memorizing strings of letters compared to the control group which was simply exposed to non-ordered strings of letters. Additionally, the experimental group was able to use what was learned (implicitly) about the grammar rules to discriminate between strings of letters that conformed to the rules and those that did not, providing support for the idea that they learned the rules implicitly. One important factor that helps support this idea is that the diagrams and grammar rules were rather complex which eliminates the argument of discerning the rules and strings by chance or by their simplicity. What is most important to remember about the process of implicit learning is that it occurs outside of awareness, it is capable of grasping complex and abstract concepts, and the acquired implicit knowledge may be used without awareness of acquisition as noted by Reber.

Priming

Priming can be viewed as the vehicle used for implicit learning. A priming effect occurs when the exposure of stimuli facilitates the reproduction or recall of that stimuli or similar stimuli at a later time without a conscious recollection (Savage, Lieven, and Theakston, 2006). This should not be confused with the rehearsal of stimuli; priming is a rather casual exposure to the stimuli that can be in some instances as short as a fraction of a second. The idea behind priming is that mere exposure to certain stimuli will aid inferences about associated stimuli independent from consciousness which leads to the idea of implicitly learning something. By priming 4-year-old children with varied passive sentences, Savage et al. were able to show that lexical and structural priming was effective at an early age and it aided children in acquiring language. Savage et al. contend that the reinforcement of primers is a determining factor in implicit learning coupled with variations of the primers. It is important to keep in mind that both implicit learning and priming are natural cognitive processes. Now that there is a basic understanding of implicit learning and priming, I will now shift to how these processes aid the development of constructs, particularly the formation of racial stereotypes.

Making the Connections

Since there is evidence that shows that children use implicit learning for language acquisition as early as 4-years of age (Savage, Lieven, and Theakston, 2006), it can be said that this process may be used to conceptualize even more complex constructs through childhood development. Through the frequent exposure to information children also learn how to make personality trait attributions (Boseovski and Lee, 2006). For example, if a child observes a frequent behavior such as a boy screaming at other children, the observing child may conclude that the boy is rude and the boy’s behavior may be predicted in future scenarios as suggested by Boseovski and Lee. The key factor here is the exposure to the stimuli which suggest that the surrounding environment is important to what is implicitly learned. Negative racial associations towards African Americans are learned early on in life and are reinforced over time through socialization processes that are built into our culture (Rudman, Ashmore, and Gary, 2001). I will later elaborate on the influence of media on racial stereotypes.

There is a considerable body of evidence that shows how we are constantly exposed to positive associations with the color white and negative associations with the color black (Smith-McLallen, Johnson, Dovidio, and Pearson, 2006; Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, and Jackson, 2008; Maher, Herbst, Childs, and Finn, 2008). Smith-McLallen et al. highlight the fact that we are taught that early on in life that White is normally associated with ideas of cleanliness, purity, and goodness while Black is negatively associated with concepts such as ungodliness, evil, bad luck, and death. Smith-McLallen et al. contend that these associations help form color biases preferring the color white over black and these biases can converge into racial biases. Smith-McLallen et al. further note that researchers should be cautious about labeling conditions in experiments as black or white as they may also lead to bias results. An important fact that Smith-McLallen et al. point out is that regardless of their color, people tend to have a preference for the color white and have negative associations with the color black. This observation is true for Black and White children as young as 3-years-old and adults as noted by Williams, Tucker, and Dunham (as cited by Smith-McLallen et al., 2006). What becomes clearer here is that we are exposed to these associations very early on in our lives. These are the beginning stages of implicitly forming racial stereotypes which are then reinforced over time.

So how do these positive and negative associations are reinforce over time? How do they translate into racial associations? One possible answer is the constant exposure to these associations through media such as television. Leonhardt and Kerwin (as cited by Maher, Herbst, Childs, and Finn, 2008) note that children watch 20,000 to 40,000 television commercials per year. Maher et al. also state that African-American and Hispanic children tend to watch on average three or more hours of television per day than do Caucasian children. Given the time children spend in front of the television, it is safe to say that it becomes an influence on their ideas and how they view the world as noted by Maher et al. According to Duckitt (as cited by Maher et al., 2008) media conveys a significant amount of ethnic prejudices which include negative stereotyping minorities and under representation. Maher et al. point out that children are susceptible to racial stereotypes presented in television advertising and programming. Television becomes an instrument of implicit learning through the constant reinforcement of messages being conveyed which facilitate biases and stereotypes once real world interactions occur. Although television programming may not explicitly teach that for example, African-Americans are aggressive and uneducated, or that Hispanics are all illegal immigrants, these racial associations may be implicitly learned by reinforcing them through fictional depictions and applied in real settings even when their representations are not confirmed. As noted by Maher et al. the over representation of minorities in negative roles compared to the general population help reinforce their stereotypes.

Although stereotypes are a form of heuristic that can help shorten our decision making time (Dodson, Darragh, and Williams, 2008), they must be constantly regulated; their strength can lead to memory distortions and false recollections. Dodson et al. posit that by being aware of one’s own stereotypes one can refrain from making attributional errors based on ones stereotyping tendencies. Additionally, the use of inappropriate stereotypes can be reduced by increasing awareness and power over outcomes (Weick and Guinote, 2008). Weick and Guinote contend that powerful individuals such as CEOs or presidents can indeed make decisions independently from their own biases and stereotypes but that a momentary subjective experience may influence their decisions. For example, a confirmed stereotype may interfere and influence their judgment. The argument learned from Weick and Guinote is not necessarily holding a position of power per se, but being in an empowering position of making certain decisions free from preconceived notions. Regulating our own stereotypes, particularly the ones that involve judging or categorizing others, is critical to better social interactions. Pivotal to regulating our stereotypes is recognizing that they are present within us. Honest self-examination is necessary to arrive at this juncture.

A complete and well structured stereotype can be prompted by a single word (Anolli, Zurloni, and Riva, 2006). Anolli et al. analyzed a number of political debates that occurred during the latest Italian elections and found that politicians communicated their thoughts about their political affiliations (in-group or out-group) in stereotypical concepts rather than attribution traits. This is important to note because this form of communication is not specific to politicians alone, it may be used by any person or group who intends to convey a message larger than the expressed words. Anderson and Klatzky (as cited by Anolli et al., 2006) define a stereotype as articulated conception of a particular group consisting of a cluster of attributes that allows one to draw inferences specific to that group. As asserted by Anolli et al., this definition allows for the essence of a stereotype to be condensed into a categorical noun. For example, rather than describing a person with adjectives such as talented, athletic, or respectful, one can use nouns such as leader, hero, or maverick. Descriptive nouns trigger a host of attributes associated with the noun which means that good or bad stereotypes can be captured in them. This linguistic function is important in relation to stereotypes because once a stereotype is formed it could be easily prompted by a noun. In racial terms, some of the adjectives associated with Blacks or African-Americans are “violent, threatening, criminal, unintelligent, uneducated, lazy, poor, athletic, and musical” (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, and Jackson, 2008, p. 294). Note that several nouns used to represent a social group can still evoke the same stereotypical construct. In other words bias people would have the same idea about Black people whether they refer to them as Blacks, African-Americans, or a racial slur. Of course avoiding explicit racial remarks conceal people’s racial biases to some extent. Once the foundational work of implicitly priming and reinforcing negative associations with the color black and more benevolent associations with the color white which are then converged to social groups associations through media depictions (television and radio), they can then be elicited through categorical nouns.

With regard to the persistence of these negative associations with blackness which are implicitly taught and reinforced overtime, research suggest that people implicitly hold racial stereotypical expectations which can influence their own social behavior towards others (Hugenberg and Bodenhausen, 2003). Using implicit association tasks, Hugenberg and Bodenhausen found in their study that European-American participants who showed higher levels of implicit prejudice were also quicker in perceiving anger on African-American faces and took longer in distinguishing a non-threatening African-American facial expression. The implication of Hugenberg and Bodenhausen is that people’s preconceived notion about another social group influences their attitude toward that social group and also influences social interaction so that members of that social group behave towards them in a manner that confirms their beliefs about the social group. For example, if one perceives a person as being aggressive, then one may treat this person in a manner that will make this person behave aggressively. Information learned implicitly about a group of people, truthful or unfounded, affects social interactions with that group.

In another study with greater social implications Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, and Jackson (2008) argue that although the explicit associations between Blacks and apes have been all but removed from society, there are still implicit associations between Blacks and apes that serve as a dehumanizing factor which in turn plays a role in peoples judgment in associating crime with Blacks and or condoning violence against them. Goff et al. contend that early illustrations of the evolutionary spectrum among primates contained monkeys and apes at the lower end of the evolution chain and “Whites” at the highest end indicating full and complete evolution and that people of African descent were believed to fall somewhere between simian and the deformed in that very spectrum. Although this link between Blacks and apes has no validity and is no longer taught, Goff et al. argue that the stereotypes for Blacks in the United States have only increased negatively (violent, threatening, criminal, unintelligent, and uneducated in addition to previous stereotypes such as lazy, aggressive, dim, and hypersexual) and they influence perception and behavior towards Blacks. Therefore Goff et al. hypothesized that the association between Blacks and apes is still present through the convergence of stereotypes and other implicit reinforcers such as the use of ape-like descriptive qualities to describe actions by Blacks. Through a series of studies using IAT, Goff et al. found that White participants as well as non-White participants were able to identify apes in degraded images that improved frame by frame, in fewer frames when they were subliminally primed with Black faces; they did not find an effect at all when participants were primed with White faces. This is yet another way in which implicit learning and priming play a significant role in forming racial stereotypes which influences social interaction and affects multidirectional behavior.

Discussion and Conclusion

It is important to point out that this article only focused on the role of implicit learning and priming on the formation of racial stereotypes and the media such as television help reinforce these stereotypes. Other factors also contribute to this phenomenon such as parental rearing, classroom socialization, and other media such as printed media, the internet, and radio. These factors as well as many other unmentioned factors are all worthy of study. Because multiple environmental factor play a role in the formation of racial stereotypes, causation cannot be claimed by a single factor. The issue of anti-White sentiments was not covered in this article because namely minorities, particularly African-Americans, are largely under represented in television roles and are repeatedly depicted in stereotypical roles (Maher, Herbst, Childs, and Finn, 2008). Additionally, the negative stereotypes associated with African-Americans have significant social implications in terms of how they are viewed and treated even through the judicial system (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, and Jackson, 2008).

After evaluating how the basic processes of implicit learning and priming are an intricate part of how we acquire language (Savage, Lieven, and Theakston, 2006) and other complex constructs throughout our development, we can also see that these very processes do play a role in the formation of racial stereotypes (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, and Jackson, 2008) and that they are reinforced over time through our environment (Maher, Herbst, Childs, and Finn, 2008). In the same way environmental forces such as television have contributed to reinforcing negative racial stereotypes they can equally contribute to form positive representations that can counter deeply rooted negative stereotypes. A worthy study would be one that would correlate positive representations of minorities in television with children’s racial attitudes to determine if stereotypes can be positively changed over time. Of course, in order to conduct such a study the number of representations of minorities in important and positive roles would have to increase significantly. There is some research that suggests that implicit biases and stereotypes can be changed through affective processes of self-awareness (Rudman, Ashmore, and Gary, 2001). The beginning of rectifying unfair stereotypes towards minorities, particularly African Americans, is being personally aware that these stereotypes exist and that we may carry biases even if we hold an egalitarian view of ourselves. By self-examining our intrapersonal beliefs on race we can regulate our stereotypes and refrain from making harmful and unfair generalizations.

References

Anolli, L., Zurloni, V., & Riva, G. (2006). Linguistic intergroup bias in political

communication. Journal of General Psychology 133(3) 237-255.

Boseovski, J. J., & Lee, K. (2006). Children’s use of frequency information for

trait categorization and behavior prediction. Developmental Psychology, 42(3),

500-513.

Dodson, C. S., Darragh, J., & Williams, A. (2008). Stereotypes and retrieval-provoked

illusory source recollection. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory,

and Cognition, 34(3), 460-477.

Goff, P. A., Eberhardt, J. L., Williams, M. J. & Jackson, M. C. (2008). Not yet human:

implicit knowledge, historical dehumanization, and contemporary consequences.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(2), 292-306.

Hugenberg, K., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2003). Facing prejudice: Implicit prejudice and

the perception of facial threat. Psychological Science, 14(6), 640-643.

Reber, A., S. (1989). Implicit learning and tacit knowledge. Journal of Experimental

Psychology: General, 118(3), 219-235.

Rudman, L., A., Ashmore, R., D., & Gary, M., L. (2001). “Unlearning” automatic biases:

The malleability of implicit prejudice and stereotypes. Journal of Personality and

Social Psychology, 81(5), 856-868.

Savage, C., Lieven, E., & Theakston, A. (2006). Structural priming as implicit learning in

language acquisition: The persistence of lexical and structural priming in 4-year-olds.

Language Learning and Development, 2(1), 27-49.

Smith-McLallen, A., Johnson, B. T., & Dovidio, J. F. (2006). Black and white: The role

of color bias in implicit race bias. Social Cognition, 24(1), 46-73.

Weick, M., & Guinote, A. (2008). When subjective experiences matter: Power increases

reliance on the ease of retrieval. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(6),

956-970.

RACE RELATIONS IN AMERICA - REVISITED

        Hello world, I’ve been away for long time. No I was not behind bars doing time thank goodness although I must admit things could’ve gone seriously wrong for me a couple of years ago. For those of you who have read my blog or know me personally, the last time I wrote something I was still fighting for a promotion with the company I worked for before and I wrote an extensive blog about affirmative action. I can tell you that today I still feel as passionate about affirmative action, race relations in America, and my own personal pursuit of self as I ever did. Many things have changed since I last wrote. I eventually did get promoted to a management position, I ventured into private investments which went terribly wrong for me, I married again, began attending graduate school, then I ended up losing my employment of 7 years and looking for comparable employment for 6 months. I now hold a management position in a smaller corporation, but one that is more diverse. In fact, I’m now managing an incredibly resourceful, talented, and supportive group of bilingual employees. I took a significant pay cut in accepting this position, and things are rather challenging for me financially, but I feel no pain getting up in the morning and going to work. I honestly don’t know how much longer I can stay there because of the financial pressures, but I’ve been able to give more of myself there.

I tend to work my ass off because it keeps my mind busy and away from all the problems surrounding me. This is probably one of the reasons my urge to write is coming back to me. Here I am on a Friday night, with nothing else on my mind but to put into words the racing thoughts going in my head. I really do enjoy chronicling my progress and sharing whatever it is that’s keeping me up, whatever it is that reminds me that I’m still alive. Unfortunately writing this time around comes with a heavy dose of pain. I’ve had to go through so much to come to this point, it almost like I have to be in such a dark place in my life to begin picking up the pieces again. I often think that this is just part of my own dysfunction, but in reading my previous work I can see how much writing helps me heal, and how much sense every word still makes to me at least. So my own revolution is still going on, with new things that puzzle me, new chapters to be written such as thoughts about searching for blood relatives, and revisiting life long passions such race relation, Katrina four years later, our first Black president, and who know what else I’ll dare to share. I’ll start by sharing some stuff had already shared in a class I took. So how much have things changed since I last wrote? Are race relations any better today? Not sure about all that. Here’s most of what I wrote with some editing to make it more current.

Some time ago I caught an ABC Primetime special report called “What Would You Do If You Witness a Break-In?” (Taylor & Jaquez, 2008). Click here. This report took place in suburban New Jersey. The setting of the investigation was to setup hidden cameras in a neighborhood park to observe how people would react to an act of robbery and vandalism in broad daylight. For this experiment the control group was made up of 3 white teenage actors and the experimental group was made up of 3 black teenage actors. During the time the white actors were vandalizing the car, most people just simply walked by, some would say something to the boys from a distance, and only one man actually confronted them at a close range (Taylor & Jaquez, 2008). According to Taylor & Jaquez, there was only one 911 call generated to report the actions of the young white actors (2008). Surprisingly, during the time the control group was conducting their part of the experiment, two more 911 calls were generated to report suspicion of some illegal activity from the same park; as it turns out, one person called twice to report he suspected that 3 black kids were lying in a car and looked like they were getting ready to rob somebody (Taylor & Jaquez, 2008). These 3 black kids were actually sleeping, and they were family members of Justin, one of the 3 black teenage actors that were hired to conduct the second part of the experiment (Taylor & Jaquez, 2008). The reaction from people was significantly higher when the actors committing the crime were black (Taylor & Jaquez, 2008). Although the news article didn’t provide me with an exact number of 911 calls for the black actors, while watching the show, the figure was about eleven 911 calls. Apparently race plays a role on how often we report a crime as well. Shouldn’t we report of crime regardless of what the perpetrator looks like?

Racism is a topic of great concern to me, and it is complicated by the different layers of social institutions contributing to stereotypes and discrimination. To be fair, I will say that our nation has made some improvement since the civil rights movement from the 50s and 60s. Today, we even have Black president in the White House. There seems to be notion out there that if we do elected a black president, than we can no longer be seen as a nation with serious racial problems. That notion couldn’t be farthest from the truth. I sometimes wish a magic wand existed to fix this problem, but there is none. Now we seem to have all these so called grass root organizations such as the Tea Party or Tea Baggers, whatever you want to call them (don’t know if they knew about the double meaning in that, but that’s a completely different topic) that claim to be the voice of “the people”, raising there voices because they don’t want our country to turn to socialism. We have Glenn Beck screaming off the top of his lungs, even calling President Obama a racist, yet no one dares to publicly call these so called grass root organizers who by the way feel the need to show up with guns to their rallies and town hall meetings, no one dares to call them racists. Former President Carter did and he is still catching an enormous amount of heat for it. What we have here is a significant amount of people who are extremely uncomfortable with the fact that a Black man is running the country, and there is an intense deliberate agenda to criticize and refute every single policy created by this administration, even if that means not supporting something as beneficial as universal healthcare. There is a constant demonization of words such as socialism, without even a remote understanding of what socialism really is. I’m so disgusted at people like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limgaugh who are constantly talking about how our liberties are being stripped away from us, comparing this administration with the Nazis, such ridiculous claims they themselves couldn’t believe the bullshit coming out their mouths. They never uttered a word when many our rights to privacy were stripped by the PATRIOT ACT all in the name of security, to defend our freedom, what kind of an oxymoron is that? People on this same agenda always tend to define certain values as the sanctity of marriage, belief in God, and heterosexuality to name a few as “American”, which simply marginalizes anyone not fitting into what they define as American. This is exactly how they tend to portray many of the objectives the new president is attempting to accomplish. They criticized him for taking over GM, never mind the billions of tax dollars we forked over to keep the company afloat, they criticized him for the entire bail out fiasco, never mind that this was a mess left behind by the previous administration. Now he is acting “un-American” because he hasn’t approved the additional troops needed in Afghanistan, never mind that he doesn’t want to fall into the same mistakes the previous administration did, mistakes we are still having to deal with since he have not been able to leave Iraq. Do we even want to give the president credit for how well the stock market is doing right now? Don’t get me wrong, I will not sit here and defend everything President Obama has done, he is after all a politician, there are some loyalties he’s had to work through that I don’t necessarily approve of. I do believe he needs to just do what he’s gotta do and not worry about what people are going to say. Why? Because they’re going to come down hard on him anyways, so might as well get whatever bill you feel is best passed now. Bush did not give a flying fuck about how anybody felt about going to war, he simply did what he felt was best for his administration, why couldn’t Obama do the same. Pass the damn healthcare reform bill, public option included as the people want it and be done with it, end of story. I’m digressing from my point here, but what getting at here is perhaps our country is more racially divided now than it’s ever been in years. We are just choosing to mask these feeling behind politics and refusing to see things in an objective manner. We are no longer even considering what is best for the country. This problem can be addressed by honest self-examination, and as humans, we more often than not fail to be honest with ourselves about our own insecurities and fears.

Since the issue of race can be examined in so many different settings such as education, legislation, government assistance, religion, etc, I will narrow my conversation down to the workplace. Joe Feagin argues in his book “Racist America”, that racial barriers in hiring affect blacks at all class levels (2001, p.161). In a study of a thousand black workers conducted in Los Angeles, it was found that 80% of those with a college degree and almost all of those with a graduate-level education reported workplace discrimination, compared to less than half of those with less than a high school education (Feagin, 2001, p. 162). Feagin attributes this higher percentage of discrimination for educated black workers to having to compete with a greater number of white applicants who are also educated (2001, p. 162). You can see how even this narrowed workplace scenario will directly link the problem to access to resources such as significant, high level education.

In my own experience at the workplace, I have seen how opportunities are given disproportionately depending on your color and background. Although I do hold a management position in my current workplace, I did see in my previous job a significant color line as you went higher up in the organizational chart. My job was not given to me, none of them have; I earned my position by demonstrating I was competent, and that I had to do repeatedly to demonstrate my seriousness. By maintaining my position, and often crossing over to debunk pre conceived notions, I am constantly acting as an agent of change in my own work environment. As a scholar-practitioner and a black man, I serve as a role model to the young diverse staff I manage. I share with them my life experiences; I have high expectations for all of them regardless of their race or ethnicity. Many of my employees are also students, and so I am constantly interacting with them, challenging their thoughts, expanding their world view so that they can view situations from more than one dimension. I will not claim to be the one source of social change within my workplace, and I certainly know that the problem is one that spills into all social institutions, but as scholar-practitioner, my duty is to always show competence, fairness, openness to all points of view, and inspire change in others.

References

Taylor, C. & Jaquez, N. D. (2008, February 20). What Would You Do If You Witnessed
a Break-In? Black, White Teen Vandals Break Into a Car, Generating Different
Responses From Public. ABC News. Retrieved March 7, 2008, from
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/WhatWouldYouDo/Story?id=4310491&page=1

Feagin, J. R. (2001). Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, & Future Reparations.
New York, NY: Routledge.

AN EVEN PLAYING FIELD

Wow, here we go again. I’ve been away for a while, partly because I’ve been in a writing funk, but mostly because I’ve been busy trying to keep my head above water; doing the dirty work if you will, still working the night shift, and scrubbing cars on my days off, doing whatever I need to do to keep the lights on. Since my last post, a cease fire in South Lebanon was finally implemented, after approximately 1,300 civilian deaths compared to less than 200 deaths on the Israeli side of the conflict. What really caught my attention was the quick reconstruction response from Hezbollah following the ceasefire. Within days of the resolution, Hezbollah men hit the streets with bulldozers and money for the affected people. I’ve already said this once; let’s not sound foolish by calling people terrorists while overlooking what they mean to the people. Click here for a related reconstruction story. Yet one year after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, we’re still trying to figure out how to rebuild our own cities. Why has it been such a struggle to get New Orleans back on its feet? Does it have to do with race? Class? Both? Very much so if you ask me. Please watch the Spike Lee documentary “WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE” now airing on HBO. If you haven’t had the opportunity to see for yourself what’s going on down there, this documentary will certainly put things into perspective, click here . So anyways, where am I going with this one? Speaking not only of the Katrina recovery efforts, is it an even playing field for minorities today? Would things be further ahead in the recovery efforts if the socioeconomic status of the affected regions was higher and predominantly white? Is the recovery effort seen differently by different races? Well, if you ask Rockey Vaccarella, he’d tell you things are doing great, and he’s happy with the FEMA trailer he lives in, click here. I watched Vaccarella on the news that day, and I have to admit he was painting a picture that not even the news casters could believe; he was just so thankful for all that’s been done for him. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying not to be thankful for whatever help you get. I’m just saying there are a lot of people in New Orleans that would disagree with Vaccarella’s outlook on the recovery efforts, which is probably why his story made it to the media in first place. How do the people that never got trailers feel about the whole thing? How do the people that will never be able to return the New Orleans because they didn’t have any claim to the land to begin with feel about it? Now they are displaced in a different city, in many cases away from everything they once knew, that includes family. This post is not intended to be strictly on Katrina, but on whether or not an even playing field exists at all even when it comes to something so widely covered such as Katrina one year later.
I often get together with a friend of mine to talk about race relations and whatever hot topic is out there. We often do this while attending a baseball game or we’ll just go out for a few drinks and just go at it. My friend Will, now 50 years-old, is by American standards a white person, his father was Irish, and his mother is Italian. I met Will about 8 years ago, we worked for the same company, but we never hung out together or anything and I sometimes wonder if we would’ve ever clicked as friends had it not been for what I call just a simple twist of fate. One night while I was still in the office, a little old lady showed up looking for her son, Will, who called her stating that his car broke down a couple of miles from the office, he needed her to pick him up. So I wound up escorting the little old lady over to where her son was, and with that act of kindness an odd but good friendship was born. So anyways, I began to discuss different topics with Will the other day, and we were talking about the Gulf Coast recovery efforts, how slow things have moved along, we talked about how badly neglected the people in the region were way before Katrina ever hit land, how that was the real crime. Katrina simply put the decrepit state of the minority population, particularly in New Orleans, on a magnifying glass for the entire world to see. So we got to talking about race relations on a greater scale, and so the question was thrown out there: is there an even playing field for minorities? So a mini debate took place on the welfare system, affirmative action, and the education system.
Of course, my take on the entire subject is that minorities are at a huge disadvantage and the playing field is largely tipped against us minorities. Additionally, programs that attempt to even out the playing field such as affirmative action, are constantly under attack by the ruling majority; these attacks create a great deal of animosity towards minorities and women benefiting from them, it’s almost like you’re being punished over again for being black or for being a woman for that matter. The idea of these baseless attacks is to create the perception that white people are in fact the ones at a disadvantage; let me just say right out that this entire perception is a fallacy, we all know that unemployment rates are much higher among blacks, and minorities do not rank higher than whites in education or income levels. I’ve been trying to get promoted into management at my current employer, and the experience has been one filled with so many disappointments. I’ve been turned down for promotions more than I’d like to admit, and unfortunately I haven’t been given a convincing reason as to why I haven’t made the cut. The feedback has always been positive (to the ear at least), yet I’ve never gotten the job because of some other factor, not my qualifications or ability, I’ve even heard them say it wasn’t the right time. While I was venting with Will in one of our outings, he said to me this: “Don’t worry about it man, these things tend to workout in your favor sometimes”, that was six interviews ago. So then he went on to tell about a situation where he wound up not getting a managerial job over a black female, he said that was a way of companies fulfilling a double quota (women and minorities) with only the hiring of one person. Although this might be true as far how some companies deal with affirmative action, his belief and way of thinking is in line with the white disadvantage perception. In Will’s defense, I can say that he’s a work and progress, he’s admitted to acting racist in his youth, and he’s come a long way, at least he’s not afraid of talking about race relations with a person of color face to face, I don’t know how well he’s doing with his own kind though. According to Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, “If someone uses the phrases “affirmative action” and “reverse discrimination” in the same sentence, it is usually a sign that a lesson on White privilege is needed. This is not to say that everyone who understands White privilege supports affirmative action policies, but at least that basic understanding assures that all parties in the conversation recognize that there are systematic social inequalities operating in our society, and that the playing field is not level”. For a good lesson on White privilege I’d recommend stopping by Changeseeker's blog, whyaminotsurprised.blogspot.com , there's a link on my page for her, she’ll break it down for you. So what is affirmative action? So many people get so heated up about this, I thought it be good to actually define what we’re talking about. Dr. Tatum offers a great definition: “attempts to make progress toward actual, rather than hypothetical, equality of opportunity for those groups which are currently underrepresented in significant positions in society by explicitly taking into account the defining characteristics-sex or race, for example-that have been the basis for discrimination”. Now, there are a few ways companies implement affirmative action program, they can be categorized as either process oriented programs or goal oriented programs. What’s the difference? Well, process oriented programs focus on creating a fair, consistent, and equal application process. The assumption is that a fair process is going to yield a fair outcome. So in theory, if everybody got the same shot at the job, everybody was asked the same types of questions, then without a doubt the best candidate is going to be selected, regardless of sex or race. That sounds real good in theory, but is that what really happens? Is there room for bias? If so, how does it go unchecked? What happens quite often is that the decision maker may make his of her decision based on some other exterior reason, if a white candidate has extra credentials that may not even pertain to the job itself, those credential may be used as the deciding factor. On the other hand if a black candidate is carrying some extra credentials, than it may be taken as an over qualification, which may be used as a negating factor. Process oriented programs have been proven to be infective in practice. Now the goal oriented approach to affirmative action attempts to fulfill an organizational goal of diversity. These aren’t quotas being filled, but organizational goals that in fact can be exceeded. All things being equal, job requirements and all, the candidate selected should be the one who fulfills the organizational goal of diversity. In any event, if a minority is selected over a white person, this in no way, shape, or form means that a less qualified minority was given a job over a more qualified White person. In order to apply for a position, the candidate must be qualified, why in the world would I apply for a job as a surgeon if I’m not medical doctor? The problem is most white people always think they’re more qualified than any minority.
I’ve been quoting Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum to help me mull through this entire affirmative action deal; I’ve been trying to understand the way affirmative action policies are implemented so that I can better asses to the extent I myself have been discriminated against, although it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Anyways, I wouldn’t make a claim such as “white people always think they’re better qualified than any minority” without having something to back it up. Let me quote some of the work of social psychologists John Dovidio, Jeffrey Mann, and Samuel Gartner; in “Resistance to Affirmative Action: The Implications of Aversive Racism” they argue that White opposition to affirmative action programs is largely rooted in a subtle but pervasive form of racism they call “aversive racism”, which is defined as “an attitudinal adaptation resulting from an assimilation of an egalitarian value system with prejudice and with racist beliefs”. What this means is that most European-Americans have internalized the cultural values of fairness and justice for all while at the same time being exposed to constant messages of racial biases and stereotypes prevalent in American popular culture. Dovidio et al argue that aversive racists “do the right thing” when the norms of appropriate, nondiscriminatory behavior are clear and unambiguous. In situations when it is not clear what the “right thing” is, or if an action can be justified on the basis of some other factor other than race, negative feelings toward Blacks will surface; in these instances an aversive racist can discriminate against a Black person without threatening his or her “racially tolerant self-image”. So in the case of affirmative action, a White interviewer or human resources executive can indeed discriminate against a Black candidate basing his or her decision on some other factor other than race or specific qualifications. To explore how such a bias can affect how Blacks and Whites are perceived when it comes to competence, Dovidio et al. conducted a study in which White students were asked to rate college applicants who on the basis of transcript information were strongly qualified, moderately qualified, or weakly qualified. For every applicant labeled as a White, there was an identically qualified applicant also labeled as Black. There were no differences in how the students rated the weakly qualified applicants, rejecting the applications regardless of the race ascribed to the application. Whites were rated slightly better than Blacks in the moderately qualified samples, but not significantly different. The significantly different ratings come into play when the applicant had strong qualifications. Even though the strong qualifications applications (as were the others) were identical, only labeled Black or White, the Black applicants were evaluated significantly less positively than the White applicants. In others words, the more qualified the Black applicant is, the more likely he or she will be perceived or evaluated as less competent. In a similar study conducted by Dovidio et al, the bias was even more apparent when the Black person being rated was in a position superior to the White evaluator. While White high- ability supervisors were accepted by subordinate White raters as being somewhat more intelligent than themselves, White raters consistently described high-ability Black supervisors as significantly less intelligent than themselves. So even when we’re talking about a Black supervisor who is more competent than a White subordinate, the White person may see the situation as a Black person with fewer qualifications is receiving preferential treatment. So what did Dovidio et al conclude? :

The aversive racism framework has important and direct implications for the implementation of affirmative action policies. Affirmative action has often been interpreted as “when all things are equal, take the minority person.” Our research suggests that even when things are equal, they may not be perceived as equal particularly when the minority person is well- qualified and the situation has personal relevance to the non-minority person. Because Whites tend to misperceive the competence of Blacks relative to themselves, resistance to affirmative action may appear quite legitimate to the protesters. Insufficient competence, not race, becomes the rationale justifying resistance.

So even with laws that are designed to even out the playing field, you can see that a bias that people may or may not be aware of is still working to keep the scales tipped, favoring the ruling class. One thing is certain, if you don’t know you have a bias, you’ll never understand what I’m talking about, and you’ll never believe racism is still alive. How can you fight something you don’t know is there? How can you get rid of something you don’t even acknowledge? White privilege people, look it up. As I told my friend Will, in reality the ineffectiveness of affirmative action pales in comparison with the poor education we offer our children today, you want to talk about a real equalizer, let’s talk about fixing the education system.
The public education system in our country is nothing to be proud of, and in my opinion, it’s a main cause for inequality, leading to diminishing Black representation in higher learning institutions and the work force in general. Why do we not want to deal with this problem? What the hell is “no child left behind”? It’s a mockery, and politicians out there today have the faintest idea or interest. Providing all children with quality, honest, and competent education is the key to the future of this country. Why are we not putting money where it’s needed the most? We need books, teachers, and computers, all that good stuff, in poor neighborhoods, we need after school programs for under privileged communities, we need to give these kids wings to fly. Instead, funds are still being allocated by zip codes and real estate taxes. Of course the suburban schools are going to be prepared, properly staffed, and even beautified. But why can’t we divide the funds equally? It’s not that hard to do, this way the predominantly Black and Latino schools, located in the ghettos of America, can also enjoy smaller classrooms, state of the art libraries, relevant text books, competent teachers who actually care about their students. Last time I checked the percentage of Black kids who drop out of high school is still above 60 %, highest among all minorities. This is where the unfairness all begins, in the schools. What do you think most of this Black youth is going to do? They are certainly not going to become stock brokers and CEOs, their chances would be slim to none with out education. On the flip side, our government spends dozens of times more money building and running prison facilities than what they could be spending on education. So it’s not that they don’t have money to spend, rather how they choose to spend that money and why. Human warehouses, people that would otherwise be productive citizens had they been given a fair shot, a decent education. I’m not saying crime wouldn’t exist, but our decrepit education system certainly does generate more criminals than scholars. You do the math. But it’s all systemic if you ask me, everything has a functional end result. Our country is systematically set up to provide the best of opportunities to those already in power. Don’t get it twisted, what you see today happening in a country is not an accident, it is a design.
My conversation with Will on welfare was a rather short one. I don’t think he knew that the average welfare recipient is a single-white female, not generational Black baby mamas who get pregnant just to get more money out of the system. That’s just yet another unsubstantiated claim created by some to make us all look bad. I’m just going to wrap this one up right here. I’ll be addressing the racial socialization of children in this country on my next post, good stuff. Holla…….

WHAT'S REAL

I’ve been so busy lately; don’t even know where to begin. Since my last post so much has happened. I’ve been watching the news carefully, and trying to see where the truth lies between all the reporting going on, reporting that I must say is more one sided than not. Many say we’re very close to World War III, so far all I’ve seen in bloodshed, one dominant country, Israel, completely destroying the weaker country Lebanon. I do not intend to minimize what a life is worth, because I understand that what apparently set this whole crisis off was the kidnapping of 2 Israeli soldiers by the Hezbollah organization, one that was born out of the resistance movement against Israeli occupation in Lebanon during 1982. What this tells me is that no matter how one might want to isolate the incident, it always stems from the past, as in any event, in order to completely understand it, you must dig for its history. So the problems in the Middle East can be traced back to the rebirth of the nation of Israel in the 1950’s. Many will tell you that there will never be peace in the Middle East, and from what you hear in the media, the blame always seems to be put on the Arab or Muslim people. Why do you think that is? Why do we always label anything that we don’t fully understand as radical? , Militant? Terrorist? Yet we choose the ignore the carnage around the situation, we chose to ignore who is applying pain and suffering here, we even chose to ignore what the rest of the world thinks about how much force is being exerted here. George Washington led the resistance in our journey towards being a sovereign and independent country. People cannot and will not be oppressed forever, that’s just part of the human condition. So as much as we like to call everybody a terrorist nowadays, let’s not sound foolish while doing it. I will not agree with every tactic employed by some of these organizations, but the one thing they have in common is that they’re all trying to change the social and political conditions they are living in now. So how does that relate to us? Some of the changes these organizations seek may not benefit us as a country, and I’m speaking economically, not security wise. See, I believe that if we really want to be diplomatic at all, or be of any help to the world, we should try to solve conflicts like this with the peoples best interest in mind, not the leaders, not any given country, the people, because they are the ones getting blown into pieces day in and day out. Over 400 Lebanese, most of them civilians have died; every single soul as precious as any Israeli civilian. Click here to see what our ambassador has to say about collateral damage. Same scenario with Palestine, everybody was happy about the country having elections until HAMAS won the elections, chosen by the people, which says a lot if you asked me. Now, that being said, I do understand that you cannot call for the destruction of a people as HAMAS has done as well as other Muslim leaders have done. So, as I mentioned earlier, somewhere in the middle of this whole fiasco lies the truth, buried beneath all the deaths, all the previous wars, and most certainly tied to the past and to religion, more on that further on down.

Now I’m not standing here defending terrorism, I’m standing up for humanity, in much the same way the world responded to the Holocaust when Hitler tried to eliminate the entire Jewish race. And I’ll take the opportunity to say that I don’t think any Arab or Muslim nation can actually accomplish the destruction of Israel, as much as some of them call for it. Israel is too powerful militarily to be taken out like that, not to mention they have the U.S. as their cheerleader and ally. This is why this whole crisis is so alarming to me; it’s not even a fair fight. Was there any other alternative for Israel other than to butcher its neighbor? Of course there was, they could’ve talked, no one group of people is better than any other, and so we should be willing to talk to any group, even if that group shares completely different views on whatever many issues. The word racism has come up in many of the articles I’ve read. Go to the link “ANSWER” I have on my page for more information on this alternative perspective, something you won’t see on CNN. Do I think it has to do with race? Absolutely it does, it has to do with being Arab, it has to do with being Jewish, it has to with weather you’re pro or anti-American; it has to do with religion as well. There’s no single answer to this, but these are the major factors surrounding this issue. Occupation is what I relate this the most with, it comes in different forms, and we just choose to only look at one side of the coin. Some may say that immigrants are taking over our country, right? And this is why we want to secure our borders, and toughen immigration laws, right? I mean, if we don’t stop all these Latino people, they’re going to change our land, they’re going to take over, never mind that we nearly enslave them for labor, they are threatening the status quo, right? I mean, we got some pretty animated people behind this issue, and mind you that we’re not really being threatened by anything eminent per sei, but the loss of political power scares the hell out of the elite. And this is how this all relates to us. Imagine having to deal with some other country trying to take over what we call home. Many speculate on how complicated things would get if Iran and Syria join the fight against Israel. But who fears for what is happening now? Who is speaking out for the hundreds of innocent people that have already died? Walter Mosley once said that we as a country must look at ourselves as among the enemy; that we most consider if we have done anything as a country to provoke all this violence. Are we occupying some of these Middle Eastern countries, and enforcing our will on them? Are we turning our backs to some of these countries? Are we exploiting any of these countries? Or are we guilty by association? Iraq comes to mind when I look at the entire situation, and I can’t help but to feel sad for the 2500+ soldiers we’ve lost in the war, and the tens of thousands of Iraqis that have died in this crazy, unjustified war, in the name of freedom and democracy, ha. Why are we even in this country? These are the kinds of situations that give the rest of Americans a very bad name, when we bully our way through the world, not valuing life, not even our own lives. Digging deeper into this whole scenario, including our involvement, is the core source of all of our differences, an institution that has claimed more lives than all the major catastrophes in history combined, that is the social institution of religion.

Ironically, the 3 most influential religions in the world, Christianity, the Muslim faith, and Judaism are all fundamentally Abrahamic; they share some of the same books, and in theory, they all believe in the same God whether they call HIM Jehovah or Ala. In the name of God, ushered by religious practice, man has committed the biggest crimes in history. Where should I begin? Well, if you look in the Bible itself you will find evidence of brutal wars going on in the name of God, the war between the chosen people of God and the unclean heathens, you’ll find blood all over the Old Testament. The Spanish were at war for 700 hundred years in the name of religion, trying to claim their land back and rid it of Moors and Jews. If you didn’t convert to Christianity you could be expelled from the land or maybe even killed. Then we can go back to the late 14th century and early 15th century where in the name of God, the Christians of the world, began to enslave Africans to bring to the Americas, so they could work them to death. The Spanish for instance argued that they were indeed doing the world a favor by Christianizing the Africans and Natives, that they were nothing but savages, and would not be able to see the face of God if it weren’t for them. In the name of God David Koresh burned with 80+ of his followers. More recently, my hometown of NY was attacked on 9/11/01, in the name of Ala, which is what got us where we are today, fighting the war against terror. So whose God is right? For which of these Gods is it ok to kill for? What happened to the all loving God? This is what I’m getting to, religion is supposed to be a unifying force, a practice that accentuates the good of all humanity, yet none of the religious leaders has been able to stop the bloodshed, always one claiming to be the one true faith and announcing damnation to the rest of the world. Religion is one of the strongest social institutions worldwide; it has so much to do with how we behave everyday, and how we look at the world, our socialization begins at a very early age. As a child, I myself was raised in the Roman Catholic faith, so very early I was taught that I was only supposed to get married once, that murder was a cardinal sin, not forgivable by God, that fornication was bad, that eating meat on good Friday was being irreverent to God, and I got very good at memorizing entire verses of the Bible or the rosary book, let’s not even talk about the Virgin Mary. Later as a young adult, I tried out the protestant approach, now this was even harder in the sense that nearly everything you could possibly think of was a sin. I mean, I went to churches where listening to secular music was ungodly, women couldn’t wear makeup or pants, so many doctrinal procedures, it was hard to keep up with it, it really did feel like a camel would have a better chance of squeezing through a needles’ eye before I could get into heaven. I lived my life in fear of eternal damnation. I used to wake up in the middle of the night sweating, thinking I had missed the rapture. So what am I saying here? All I’m saying is that as human beings we must never lose our ability to think for ourselves, to process the information passed on to us, and actually see if it makes sense. Religion nowadays has nothing to do with spirituality or even salvation for that matter, and I wonder if it ever did. Look, I’m not here to renounce God himself, but none of this that I see today comes from God, and if it does, than that’s not my God. It’s a giant socialization machine, that how I see it, it creates the biggest fears on people, and this is how you get them to follow your every absurd idea. Fear mongering is what it is, this is how George Bush got re-elected, and it’s exactly what goes on with some of these other militia leaders. The right wing extremist of our nation have dictated a lot what we can and cannot do in our country recently, and it all comes from these misplaced values of cleanliness, morality, and righteousness. If we could only practice what we so adamantly preach, we might have a half ass chance into heaven. George Bush just vetoed a bill that would’ve help fund embryonic stem-cell research, click here, on the premise that it was morally wrong, and I quote "Human beings are not a raw material to be exploited or a commodity to be bought or sold and this bill will help ensure that we respect the fundamental ethical line,". The problem I see with this veto is that it is morally hypocritical, the same man that is making a statement about how precious every single life is, is the same man who has created chaos in Iraq, causing death by the thousands, and he hasn’t even skipped a beat. So far he’s done nothing to influence Israel to stop killing people, yet stem cell research is morally wrong, there’s a thin line between precious life and collateral damage I guess. But this veto was done exclusively to satisfy the religious right, let’s not forget we have elections coming up in November, and he needs to make sure that his fan base shows up at the polls. Do you see how powerful the social institution of religion is now? The same could be said about leaders such as Osama Bin Laden and Hassan Nasrallah, they too have a following, and I’m not drawing a direct comparison here, but my point is that all three of these leaders claim to have faith in God, they all appeal to the masses by using religion as the basis for their moral stance or course of action. Who is right? I ask again. What lives are worth saving? Armageddon is coming says the preacher man now, they end of the world is near, the return of Jesus is sure to be soon, let us repent and ask for forgiveness and salvation. Not that these preachers haven’t been saying this for years now, but it certainly is a way to keep the following faithful. The signs are all there, right? But let’s keep in mind that they were probably saying this during WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Desert Storm the year 2000, 9/11, and of course again now. I’m not saying there aren’t any good lessons to be learned from religion, but these are not the lessons we hear of today. Live in fear is what I hear, who knows; maybe the people in power will be able to scare us into another term in office ya know. See, when we don’t know the answer to something, when we don’t know what lies ahead of us, when we are cluttered with unpredictability, that’s when we are most vulnerable, that’s when we turn to God, to faith, to a higher power. Instead we are misguided by those who seek their personal interests and hide behind the holy cloth. Let’s not just take everything at face value people, use your head as much as it may hurt to do so. And that my friend, is real.