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In 1940, psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark performed the groundbreaking "doll experiments" study on children's attitudes on race using white and black dolls (the study was repeated in 2005 and documented by Kiri Davis in the film A Girl Like Me). The study showed how minorities view themselves in respect to racial stereotypes.
Recently, the Mexican government released a YouTube video on racism in Mexico - which brought a lot of comments on this thorny question: is Mexico an inherently racist society?
The kids are seated at a table before a white doll and a black doll, and are asked to pick the "good doll" or the doll that most resembled them. The children, mostly brown-skinned, almost uniformly say the white doll was better or most resembled them.
One child in the video with mixed-race features says the white doll resembled him "in the ears."
"Which doll is the good doll?" a woman's voice asks the child.
"I am not afraid of whites," he responds, pointing to the white doll. "I have more trust."
Mexico's National Council to Prevent Discrimination, or Conapred, in mid-December began circulating the video, modeled on the 1940s Clark experiments in the United States. The children who appear in it are mostly mestizos, or half-Spanish, half-Indian, and a message said they were taped with the consent of their parents and told to respond as freely as they could.
Daniel Hernandez of The Los Angeles Times reports: Link
It would prove to be an unwise decision. The encounter began when the suspect informed the boxer that gentlemen of his race were not welcome in a particular bar:
Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department officials said at the time of Abbey’s arrest that he threatened to stab Baker.
Baker, of Spokane Valley, left the bar to avoid a fight, but Abbey followed him outside and toward a marina, hurling racial slurs.
According to a sheriff’s department report, “Baker stated Abbey told him ‘blacks’ were not welcome in Bayview and he had better leave before something happened.”
Abbey then poked Baker in the chest, the report said.
Baker told sheriff’s investigators that he felt threatened as Abbey followed him, wouldn’t leave him alone, and he instinctively punched Abbey in self-defense.
“Baker stated Abbey immediately fell to the ground and did not get up,” the report said.
Link -via Dave Barry | Photo: Flickr user Todd Huffman
Halloween is a time for silly costumes, and some use it as an excuse to drag out every racial and cultural stereotype they can think of for a silly costume. That’s not cool. Students Teaching Against Racism (STARS) is an organization at Ohio University that put out a series of posters to “educate and create dialog” and to ask people to think before they select an insensitive Halloween costume. See the rest of the posters at Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Link -via I Am Bored
Earlier this month was National Sisters Day, which got me thinking about famous sibling duos. I thought it would be fun to share a list of the most famous of these sister pairings, but to be fair, there are so many famous pairs of sisters out there that it would be impossible to list them all. That’s why I’ve decided to leave out most of the contemporary examples you’re probably already familiar with, like Paris and Nikki Hilton and Venus and Serena Williams. I’ve also left out all of the popular sister singing groups from the last hundred years because there are so darn many of them between the Pointer Sisters, The Andrews Sisters and the gals from Heart.
That being said, here are some sisters who impacted history.
These not-so-attractive ladies are probably some of the earliest examples of famous sister groups, even if they aren’t exactly real. The Graeae were three ancient goddesses from Greek mythology who shared one eye and one tooth amongst the group. While they were actually archaic goddesses, when they interacted with humans, they usually took the form of old witches.
Perseus stole the eye of the witches when they were passing it amongst themselves and used it to force the Graeae to tell him where the three objects he needed to kill Medusa were hidden. Thus, the Graeae were instrumental in the killing of Medusa, who was one of their sisters. Even if these siblings aren’t real, the story has been so long-lasting that it’s hard to imagine it not having any impact on European history to some extent.
Around the same time that tales of Jesus were starting to be spread through the Middle East, two Vietnamese sisters were kicking butt, leading a revolt against the Chinese oppression of their country.
It all started when Trung Trac fell in love and married a man named Thi Sach. The Chinese rulers of Vietnam were making assimilation into their way of life mandatory and when Thi Sach took a stand against the repression of his culture, he was executed. His death was supposed to be a warning against all those who would consider rebelling, but instead it spurred his wife and sister-in-law, Trung Nhi, to take up his cause and fight against the Chinese.
The two sisters were raised learning martial arts and studying the art of warfare, so when it was time to start a rebellion, they were ready. In 39 AD, the two women repelled a small Chinese unit from their village and started to assemble a large army of rebels –mostly women according to popular legends. Within a few months, they already had taken back over 60 citadels from the Chinese and had liberated the kingdom of Nam Viet. The two were named as queens of their free country and they were able to keep the territory free from the Chinese for over two years.
more …
Photo: Charlotte Button
After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, school teacher Jane Elliott wanted to teach her third-grade class about racism. Rather than a lengthy discussion about it, she decided to show the 8-year-olds what racism is all about in a famous "experiment":
With King shot just the day before in Memphis, Elliott encouraged her third-graders to discuss how something so horrible could happen.
"I finally said, ‘Do you kids have any idea how it feels to be something other than white in this country?’ "
The children shook their heads and said they wanted to learn, so Elliott set the rules. Blue-eyed children must use a cup to drink from the fountain. Blue-eyed children must leave late to lunch and to recess. Blue-eyed children were not to speak to brown-eyed children. Blue-eyed children were troublemakers and slow learners.
Within 15 minutes, Elliott says, she observed her brown-eyed students morph into youthful supremacists and blue-eyed children become uncertain and intimidated.
Brown-eyed children "became domineering and arrogant and judgmental and cool," she says. "And smart! Smart! All of a sudden, disabled readers were reading. I thought, ‘This is not possible, this is my imagination.’ And I watched bright, blue-eyed kids become stupid and frightened and frustrated and angry and resentful and distrustful. It was absolutely the strangest thing I’d ever experienced."
Corina Knoll of the Los Angeles Times has the story: Link
Soon to be an ex-racist
Are you a racist? While most people don’t view themselves as prejudiced, a surprising new study revealed that many unknowingly have racist views:
The authors divided 120 non-black participants into the roles of "experiencers" and "forecasters." The "experiencers" were placed in a room with a white person and a black person, who played out pre-arranged scenarios for the experiment. The scenarios began when the black role-player bumped the white role-player’s knee when leaving the room.
In the first scenario, the white person did not comment afterwards. In the "moderate" case, the white person said, "Typical, I hate it when black people do that," after the black person left the room. In the "extreme" case, the white person remarked, "Clumsy n****r."
The "forecasters," meanwhile, predicted how they would feel in these situations.
The magnitude of the results surprised even the authors, Kawakami said. Experiencers reported little distress in all three scenarios, much less than the forecasters did in the moderate and severe situations.
"Even using that most extreme comment didn’t lead people to be particularly upset," said co-author Elizabeth Dunn, assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Previously on Neatorama: How Racist Are You? Take the test!
