I have never felt that I hold biases against any religions because I of my own religion. I am a Unitist. It isn't a well known division of Christianity but essentially, the way I interpret the views, the teachings are this: 1.Everyone should strive to do good things in their life, 2.Heaven is the only after life and you get there by following the beliefs of whatever religion you ascribe to and/or by being a good person, 3.Hell is an environment created when you allow the problems of the world to affect you negatively or when you do bad things, 4.Each person describes god as they need. There is one god described by different religions in different ways. Each part of the world was affected by god in a different way at the same time because god is everywhere and anywhere at the same time. As long as each person follows there own belief in god, they will get to heaven just as everyone else.
With those beliefs, it is hard to see the problem with any religion. I am obviously against Muslims bombing people and wars over religion as I still believe that everyone should believe what they need to in order to make their life on earth bearable. I feel that this will be a great asset to me going into an educational setting because I have learned my whole life to be tolerant of other religions and to ask questions to see why they believe what they do. I believe that I could even be a good advocate for students having issues with religions and their teachers because I understand the need to believe what you feel is true.
As far as gender goes, I feel that I have slightly less problems than I do with race. I have always had many friends who are women and have never felt that women were not as good as men. That being said, I am very oblivious to the problems that women face because I don't perpetuate them and my female friends don't want to tell me because I am still a man regardless of if I am a friend. I wholeheartedly believe that payment should be gender-blind and that women should have equal access to jobs as men. One way to accomplish this could be through blind interviews where the interviewer and the interviewee chat over social media or Google+. I know that it destroys the personal feel that an interview usually has but it might show employers that there are capable women they haven't been giving a chance.
It makes me sad to know that I have very little power to fix the gender bias of the world. I can do my part and try to convince others but until my generation of people takes over the executive and government positions there won't be that much real change. People learn biases over time and the people in charge lived in a time when women were never allowed to work let alone be equal to men. We may simply have to do the best we can until that mentality is removed from power.
Monday, April 21, 2014
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Blog Posting #2
As I think about the talks that we have had on race and how this type of thing has affected my life it feels difficult. As a white man, I don't often notice when the things I do could be considered racially insensitive because I have never really felt discrimination because of my race. I find that my biggest offense is that I tend to generalize far too often. Stereotyping is human nature. We do this naturally to save time when analyzing a new situation. We do it when we aren't dealing with people and we don't think anything of it. I walked into a restaurant and was offered the Cajun special that they were serving. Using background knowledge on the word, Cajun, knowing that it was from Louisiana and that there tends to be a large amount of spice in their dishes I determined that the food must be some sort of spicy dish from Louisiana and politely passed. This went unnoticed by those around me and did not seem racist in the least bit but what if it were a person? If I walked into a restaurant and they said that there would be a Cajun singer playing tonight, it would be racist of me to think that his music would be sub-par because he was most likely a traveling folk singer with French heritage who did not have much education. I understand that such a thought is wrong and damaging to society as a whole especially if you express that opinion openly. In truth, however, those types of thought are entirely natural. The goal should not be to suppress them as they do provide a feeling of security until the point at which you can acquire more information on the individual, but we must ensure that we don't act on these feelings so we don't appear to have racist feelings.
I know there are other issues that are not my largest problem. White privilege is a large problem that hardly notice. I know that I go through life mostly untouched by racism against myself. I noticed an interesting phenomenon in a store the other day. As I was walking out of the store I saw a black man walking through the scanners at the door and they went off. The white lady employee called him back in and looked at his receipt. After checking his bags she found no problem and let him go through. As I went out the same door the security went off again. I turned around to go through the same process but the lady looked at me and said, "You're fine," and waved me on. It was eye opening because it was not at all what I expected. Looking at the two of us, the black man had been wearing a suit and looked like a business man. I was a college student with scruffy facial hair in a t-shirt and shorts with moccasins and socks on my feet. It would have made much more sense to stop me because I looked much more like the type of person who would try to steal something but my whiteness kept me from the same fate that a much more respectable black man suffered.This isn't the only time things like that have happened but half the time I'm not watching closely enough to catch it. Often in video game stores, I watch the salesmen hover around a non-white customer until they leave and completely ignore the white guests no matter how much shadier they look. I even stopped a young white boy from stealing a game because I could tell he seemed nervous and fidgety but the clerks only noticed the homeless-looking man who ended up actually paying for his game.
I am disheartened by what goes on everyday with racism and white privilege but I haven't fully found a way to solve it. I agree that there is less racism but what is left is more subtly and can grow under the radar forever. my thought is that the best way to stop it is to point it out. As a white man, my voice is heard when I speak and I can use that to point out obvious racist practices. I have actually considered setting up live acting projects in stores like the show, What Would you do?, where a black friend and I test for racism in public areas. I hope that with enough peoples' help, we can begin to tear down the last remnants of an older system of discrimination in our country.
I know there are other issues that are not my largest problem. White privilege is a large problem that hardly notice. I know that I go through life mostly untouched by racism against myself. I noticed an interesting phenomenon in a store the other day. As I was walking out of the store I saw a black man walking through the scanners at the door and they went off. The white lady employee called him back in and looked at his receipt. After checking his bags she found no problem and let him go through. As I went out the same door the security went off again. I turned around to go through the same process but the lady looked at me and said, "You're fine," and waved me on. It was eye opening because it was not at all what I expected. Looking at the two of us, the black man had been wearing a suit and looked like a business man. I was a college student with scruffy facial hair in a t-shirt and shorts with moccasins and socks on my feet. It would have made much more sense to stop me because I looked much more like the type of person who would try to steal something but my whiteness kept me from the same fate that a much more respectable black man suffered.This isn't the only time things like that have happened but half the time I'm not watching closely enough to catch it. Often in video game stores, I watch the salesmen hover around a non-white customer until they leave and completely ignore the white guests no matter how much shadier they look. I even stopped a young white boy from stealing a game because I could tell he seemed nervous and fidgety but the clerks only noticed the homeless-looking man who ended up actually paying for his game.
I am disheartened by what goes on everyday with racism and white privilege but I haven't fully found a way to solve it. I agree that there is less racism but what is left is more subtly and can grow under the radar forever. my thought is that the best way to stop it is to point it out. As a white man, my voice is heard when I speak and I can use that to point out obvious racist practices. I have actually considered setting up live acting projects in stores like the show, What Would you do?, where a black friend and I test for racism in public areas. I hope that with enough peoples' help, we can begin to tear down the last remnants of an older system of discrimination in our country.
Friday, January 31, 2014
As I think about how the past couple of classes have affected me I have to look at my own behavior and beliefs first. I have never liked being a person who gets involved in controversial issues. I do not give my political view, ESPECIALLY around friends, because I like to avoid being told that I am wrong having to fight to think that what I think is right. I find that this class is full of this same kind of problem and I am trying to get around it.
When we looked at the pictures on the first days of class, I immediately placed all of those people into little boxes based on what I thought they would be like from a glance. I was worried that I would be told that I was a racist, or sexist, or any other terrible name because I believed that these people might actually be what they were stereotyped as even though I had never met them. I thought that everyone would jump on me for being the white male who was ignorant and stuck up. I was so glad to find that we were allowed to do them anonymously. Seeing that my answers matched many of the other students' gave me a bit of peace. I know that I am not racist for prejudging people but it still feels bad to have someone tell you that you are. It is a human trait based on instincts to judge quickly.
I found that the book was very easy to read. It is facts but it is not too wordy. It does repeat itself A LOT but that is alright as long as he gets to the point. I liked the discussion of chapters 1-3 because everything was fresh. The experiments that he did showed remarkably strong results and I feel like the class was in favor of the book at that point. I was surprised that the studies all worked out exactly as he had hypothesized they would, but what was more interesting was that it seemed like the students in the class had no objections to the fact that stereotype threat exists. It seemed odd until I realized that it probably meant what I realized should have been obvious: they had all EXPERIENCED stereotype threat. Since the idea of stereotype threat is a universal concept in that all people have some positive or negative stereotype that they are aware of if at no other time, when stereotypes are brought up. This made me start to think things through a little more carefully and actually observe them to find their hidden traits that might stigmatize them. The boy tapping his pencil and fidgeting might have ADHD. The one student who had alternative schooling worried others will not accept them or their reasons for doing it. I have found that I still judge people when I first meet them, but I do it in a new way where I attempt to find their stereotypes and understand how and why that might affect their personality
As the discussions have gone on, I have continued to grow more open about my own stereotypes. I know that I have always had small reservations when telling my friends and especially girls my age that I sing and took dance and was in show choir because of the stereotype that goes with that: being gay. I know that it is not the only one but it is the one that I was most worried about in high school. I knew that I was nerdy so that did not bother me, I just chose friends who got similar grades. I was concerned that I could never get a girlfriend and I began to wonder if they had judged me wrongly because of my activities. I later found out that was actually the case for some of them. I have found the most remarkable thing, however, that directly parallels the book. When I left high school and came to college, all of the stigmas had changed. Now singing was sexy and dancing, as long as it was the right kind and "good", was considered cool. I had changed my location and found that the stereotypes there were different. I think that the final question I have now is whether or not we can force a good stereotype to cover up the bad ones for each race instead of just getting by with little quick fixes for specific tests.
When we looked at the pictures on the first days of class, I immediately placed all of those people into little boxes based on what I thought they would be like from a glance. I was worried that I would be told that I was a racist, or sexist, or any other terrible name because I believed that these people might actually be what they were stereotyped as even though I had never met them. I thought that everyone would jump on me for being the white male who was ignorant and stuck up. I was so glad to find that we were allowed to do them anonymously. Seeing that my answers matched many of the other students' gave me a bit of peace. I know that I am not racist for prejudging people but it still feels bad to have someone tell you that you are. It is a human trait based on instincts to judge quickly.
I found that the book was very easy to read. It is facts but it is not too wordy. It does repeat itself A LOT but that is alright as long as he gets to the point. I liked the discussion of chapters 1-3 because everything was fresh. The experiments that he did showed remarkably strong results and I feel like the class was in favor of the book at that point. I was surprised that the studies all worked out exactly as he had hypothesized they would, but what was more interesting was that it seemed like the students in the class had no objections to the fact that stereotype threat exists. It seemed odd until I realized that it probably meant what I realized should have been obvious: they had all EXPERIENCED stereotype threat. Since the idea of stereotype threat is a universal concept in that all people have some positive or negative stereotype that they are aware of if at no other time, when stereotypes are brought up. This made me start to think things through a little more carefully and actually observe them to find their hidden traits that might stigmatize them. The boy tapping his pencil and fidgeting might have ADHD. The one student who had alternative schooling worried others will not accept them or their reasons for doing it. I have found that I still judge people when I first meet them, but I do it in a new way where I attempt to find their stereotypes and understand how and why that might affect their personality
As the discussions have gone on, I have continued to grow more open about my own stereotypes. I know that I have always had small reservations when telling my friends and especially girls my age that I sing and took dance and was in show choir because of the stereotype that goes with that: being gay. I know that it is not the only one but it is the one that I was most worried about in high school. I knew that I was nerdy so that did not bother me, I just chose friends who got similar grades. I was concerned that I could never get a girlfriend and I began to wonder if they had judged me wrongly because of my activities. I later found out that was actually the case for some of them. I have found the most remarkable thing, however, that directly parallels the book. When I left high school and came to college, all of the stigmas had changed. Now singing was sexy and dancing, as long as it was the right kind and "good", was considered cool. I had changed my location and found that the stereotypes there were different. I think that the final question I have now is whether or not we can force a good stereotype to cover up the bad ones for each race instead of just getting by with little quick fixes for specific tests.
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