tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/racial-stereotypes-16550/articles
Racial Stereotypes – The Conversation
2024-02-15T23:47:21Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222389
2024-02-15T23:47:21Z
2024-02-15T23:47:21Z
Indigenous fathers help build stronger communities. Here’s how we can better support them
<p>When approaching how to support the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, there is a tendency in favour of strengthening and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/1557988317735928?src=getftr">empowering mothers</a>, rather than fathers. </p>
<p>While this emphasis on maternal support is undoubtedly justified (in fact, there probably needs to be more supports that are culturally appropriate), it raises the question of why specialist assistance is not similarly prioritised for fathers. </p>
<p>For instance, within what is arguably the core Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander policy in Australia, <a href="https://www.closingthegap.gov.au/sites/default/files/files/national-agreement-ctg.pdf">Closing the Gap</a>, there is no mention of initiatives specifically for Indigenous fathers or men more broadly. </p>
<p>We analysed data from around 150 First Nations fathers about the support they needed. Here’s what they had to say. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/emu-men-a-new-way-to-recognise-and-celebrate-indigenous-fathers-211741">'Emu Men': a new way to recognise and celebrate Indigenous fathers</a>
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<h2>Doing away with negative stereotypes</h2>
<p>Western society can portray some groups of fathers in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/like-father-like-son-new-research-shows-how-young-men-copy-their-fathers-masculinity-203834">less favourable light</a> and offer limited support. </p>
<p>In Australia, there has been a particularly cruel characterisation of Indigenous fathers as deviant, distant, and/or drunkards. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/BI33JgljItB","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>These harmful characterisations were reflected in a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-04/cartoon-an-attack-on-aboriginal-people,-indigenous-leader-says/7689248">2016 cartoon</a> by Bill Leak of an Aboriginal man unable to recall the name of his son. </p>
<p>These representations are not true of many Indigenous fathers. They are often disciplined, devoted and sober, and want to be positive role models for their children. A great example of this is in the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-06/indigenous-dads-counter-bill-leak-cartoon-with-stories/7697668">social media movement</a> that sprung up in the wake of the cartoon, called #IndigenousDads. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-studied-100-years-of-australian-fatherhood-heres-how-todays-dads-differ-from-their-grandfathers-166348">We studied 100 years of Australian fatherhood. Here's how today's dads differ from their grandfathers</a>
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<p>In light of this social climate, we wanted to know what Indigenous fathers need in order to enhance their experience of fatherhood. We drew the responses from data of 149 Indigenous fathers from the <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/about-the-department/longitudinal-studies/footprints-in-time-lsic-longitudinal-study-of-indigenous-children">Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC)</a>, a large Australian dataset administered by the Commonwealth Department of Social Services. That study asked them “if you could have something to make it easier to raise your child, what would it be?”. We analysed the results. </p>
<h2>More support needed</h2>
<p><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajs4.313">Our research</a> found more than 60% of Indigenous dads surveyed indicated needing further support. </p>
<p>There were several areas that came up most frequently. These were finances, social services, housing, and the ability to spend more time with their children. </p>
<p>Of the ten themes we observed across the comments from Indigenous fathers in response to this question, nearly all were related to socioeconomic and cultural factors. One of the fathers expressed frustration at the lack of available social services, wanting more support in general. Another father shared how finances affected his role, saying:</p>
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<p>I would like to have a decent paying job; I had to stop working to help and care for my children and partner.</p>
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<p>Other fathers mentioned wanting housing that was appropriately sized to accommodate a family, and not wanting to rent. Additionally, fathers wished they had the ability to invest more time in engaging in activities with their children. </p>
<p>Collectively, these desires are reflective of men striving to be involved and <a href="https://theconversation.com/emu-men-a-new-way-to-recognise-and-celebrate-indigenous-fathers-211741">nurturing fathers</a>, not deviant or distant, as illustrated in harsh stereotypes. This is highlighted in their courage in openly asking for help. </p>
<h2>What needs to be done?</h2>
<p>Our research shows policies about and for Indigenous men and fathers need to directly address the areas in which they’ve expressed the most need. This includes looking at their <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/social-determinants-of-health">social determinants of health</a>. This means examining the social and economic circumstances that can affect a person’s life, from their housing situation through to feeling included in society.</p>
<p>As we mentioned earlier, the <a href="https://www.closingthegap.gov.au/sites/default/files/files/national-agreement-ctg.pdf">Closing the Gap</a> strategy does not presently do this. It is important for this policy, and other relevant government strategies, to target these areas and concerns specifically. </p>
<p>Further, urgent attention is needed for greater research funding to support Indigenous dads and men more broadly. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1326020023000080?via%3Dihub">One study</a> shows the minimal amount of Indigenous-specific research funding awarded by Australia’s two central funding bodies. The Australian Research Council (ARC) has provided 1.46%, and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has given a concerning 0.29%. There is a pressing need for additional investigation into how best to support Indigenous fathers and Indigenous men. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/young-dads-are-painted-as-feckless-or-absent-but-theyre-working-to-change-perceptions-220555">Young dads are painted as feckless or absent – but they're working to change perceptions</a>
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<p>Giving Indigenous fathers the support they need is crucial in reducing the <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12889-018-6093-2">well-documented</a> challenges experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men. There are also positive flow-on effects to others, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29025357/">as found</a> by researchers Lyndon Reilly and Susan Rees:</p>
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<p>If you have strong Indigenous fathers, you will have strong Indigenous families. By having strong Indigenous families, you will have strong Indigenous communities.</p>
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<p>As of 2021, Indigenous children are more than <a href="https://www.indigenoushpf.gov.au/measures/2-12-child-protection">ten times</a> more likely to be on a care or protection order than non-Indigenous children. Strengthening the role of Indigenous fathers not only makes financial sense for governments, but also contributes to Indigenous family and community wellbeing, reducing care and protection orders for Indigenous children. </p>
<p>We need to listen to First Nations fathers. If we do, we can deliver services that play to their strengths, rather than seeking to address perceived deficiencies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222389/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kootsy Canuto receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council APP1175214 & MRFF APP2006564. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leonard Collard has previously received funding from organisations such as the Australian Research Council, state and federal as well as other funding bodies. Dr Collard is a member of the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Huw Thomas Peacock, Jacob Prehn, Michael A. Guerzoni, and Mick Adams do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
First Nations fathers are too often the subject of negative, often untrue stereotypes. We analysed data from around 150 dads about what they needed. Here’s what they said.
Jacob Prehn, Associate Dean Indigenous College of Arts, Law, and Education; Senior Lecturer, Social Work, University of Tasmania
Huw Thomas Peacock, Research assistant , University of Tasmania
Kootsy Canuto, Associate Professor in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Male Health & Wellbeing, Flinders University
Leonard Collard, Professor Emeritus in Aboriginal Studies, The University of Western Australia
Michael A. Guerzoni, Lecturer in Criminology | School of Social Sciences, University of Tasmania
Mick Adams, Senior Research Fellow, Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet , Edith Cowan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/198640
2023-02-12T13:19:52Z
2023-02-12T13:19:52Z
Chinese immigrants look to digital Chinatowns to find love online
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506683/original/file-20230126-36630-6ek7qk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4941%2C3319&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dating apps like 2RedBeans and Tantan, that specifically cater to Chinese people, have become increasingly popular.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Joshua Chun/Unsplash)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Where do people go for good Chinese food? One obvious answer is Chinatown. Many large cities have established Chinatowns and other neighbourhoods that serve as a cultural base for different communities. But increasingly, more than existing in physical space, these ethnic communities are forming in cyberspace. </p>
<p>In particular, digital Chinatowns are becoming very important in the dating lives of Chinese immigrants. According to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cars.12414">our new research</a>, many Chinese immigrants in Canada are turning to online communities hoping to find love.</p>
<p>As the internet and smartphones have become ubiquitous in our day-to-day life, millions of singles are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612436522">going online</a> to look for romantic partners. And online dating platforms have burgeoned. </p>
<h2>Digital Chinatowns</h2>
<p>Even if you’ve never tried online dating, you’ve probably heard of Tinder, Plenty of Fish, OkCupid or one of the many dating apps available today. There are also online dating platforms that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95540-7_4">cater to specific groups</a>.</p>
<p>A popular choice among Chinese immigrants is <a href="https://www.2redbeans.com/en/chinese-dating?">2RedBeans</a>, one of the main dating sites for Chinese people living abroad. Another frequently mentioned app, <a href="https://tantanapp.com/en">Tantan</a>, is known as the Tinder of China. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509542/original/file-20230210-22-5ahifc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A hand holfing a smartphone showing a woman's picture on a dating app." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509542/original/file-20230210-22-5ahifc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509542/original/file-20230210-22-5ahifc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509542/original/file-20230210-22-5ahifc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509542/original/file-20230210-22-5ahifc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509542/original/file-20230210-22-5ahifc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509542/original/file-20230210-22-5ahifc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509542/original/file-20230210-22-5ahifc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">dating platforms that cater to specific groups have become increasingly popular.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<p>People of Chinese descent are <a href="https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?LANG=E&GENDERlist=1&STATISTIClist=1,4&DGUIDlist=2021A000011124&HEADERlist=31,30,25&SearchText=Canada">one of the largest visible minority groups</a> in Canada. Nearly 60 per cent of them are foreign-born immigrants to Canada. </p>
<p>In 2018–2019, our research team interviewed 31 heterosexual Chinese immigrants in Metro Vancouver, including 17 women and 14 men. All of our research participants had used online dating services while they were living in Canada. We talked with each of them about their dating and relationship experiences. </p>
<p>About half of the people we interviewed preferred to date someone of the same ethnic background. Many of them preferred Chinese immigrants who had come to Canada at a similar age to themselves. They believed that immigrating from China to Canada around similar ages would indicate shared cultural upbringings. This cultural matching was perceived to facilitate mutual understanding, good conversations, and feelings of “clicking” in intimate relationships.</p>
<p>Interviewees told us it was difficult to make friends in their daily life in Vancouver, let alone find their preferred dates. For example, one interviewee participated in an <a href="https://bcrefugeehub.ca/free-english-conversation-circles-a-comprehensive-listing/">English conversation circle</a> for newcomers to improve her English. However, she found it hard to socialize with people there because everyone “was cold to each other” and “had little interest in chatting further.” So, she went online in search of dates and romantic partners, just like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-10-2020-0547">many other immigrants</a>. </p>
<p>But meeting people on western dating apps was also challenging for our Chinese immigrant interviewees. While Tinder is often seen as a default option in the western dating scene, one interviewee felt there were “very few Chinese” on Tinder. Another said: “If any, those are the Chinese people who can’t speak Chinese; those speaking Chinese don’t use Tinder to look for partners.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508141/original/file-20230203-13612-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Asian woman looks out a window." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508141/original/file-20230203-13612-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508141/original/file-20230203-13612-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508141/original/file-20230203-13612-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508141/original/file-20230203-13612-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508141/original/file-20230203-13612-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508141/original/file-20230203-13612-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508141/original/file-20230203-13612-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Interviewees said that difficulty making friends encouraged them to go online in search of dates.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<p>As a result, many Chinese immigrants we interviewed primarily, or even exclusively, used dating platforms that specifically catered to Chinese people. </p>
<p>Dating apps like 2RedBeans and Tantan have created Chinatowns in cyberspace. Chinese-oriented dating apps not only provide a virtual space for co-ethnic daters to gather, but they also preserve the use of Chinese language. </p>
<p>Speaking Chinese matters when connecting with potential partners. Users who lack Chinese language skills can feel blocked out of cyber-Chinatowns. One of our interviewees, who came to Canada as a child and didn’t speak fluent Chinese, said his experience on Chinese dating apps had not been fruitful. In his experience on Tantan, most women stopped talking to him after he asked if they could speak English. </p>
<h2>Racial stereotypes</h2>
<p>Our research also found that Chinese immigrant men were more likely than women to rely on ethnic online communities to look for romance. Men’s choices of online dating platforms were not just down to personal preference, but rooted in their lived experiences of discrimination in dating. </p>
<p>One man shared with us that he once received the following comment from a white woman: “You are the first Asian man that caught my eye!” While it was meant to be complimentary, it felt more like scorn than praise, echoing stereotypes of Asian men being “unmasculine” and “unattractive.” </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/asian-guys-stereotyped-and-excluded-in-online-dating-130855">Asian guys stereotyped and excluded in online dating</a>
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<p>Some of our male interviewees tried mainstream western dating apps like Tinder and Plenty of Fish but kept getting no matches. Disappointed with their experiences, they soon deleted the apps. </p>
<p>Even if some Chinese men were open to dating women of other ethnicities, non-Chinese women seldom responded to their messages. After experiencing constant non-responses and rejections on western dating apps, Chinese men tended to “retreat” into cyber-Chinatowns as a comfort zone shielding them from potentially disappointing encounters.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508126/original/file-20230203-7058-srd12l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People on a bench using smartphones." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508126/original/file-20230203-7058-srd12l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508126/original/file-20230203-7058-srd12l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508126/original/file-20230203-7058-srd12l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508126/original/file-20230203-7058-srd12l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508126/original/file-20230203-7058-srd12l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508126/original/file-20230203-7058-srd12l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508126/original/file-20230203-7058-srd12l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Chinese users found it difficult to meet people on western dating apps due to racial stereotypes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<p>Without enough intercultural contact that promotes <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/06/does-diversity-actually-increase-creativity">deeper understanding</a>, individuals are often reduced to <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520293458/the-dating-divide">stereotypical characterizations</a>. As such, racial stereotypes remain unchallenged and racial discrimination continues to prevail.</p>
<p>Ethnic, cultural or religious online communities help people find a match. However, such communities can also risk further segregating people into ethnic clusters and reduce interactions across different cultural groups. </p>
<p>Our interviews with Chinese immigrants were conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3626460">anti-Asian racism has surged</a>. That could mean more Chinese immigrants will turn to digital Chinatowns to look for love and companionship. </p>
<p>What can be done to help immigrants attain a sense of belonging without living in the margins of the host society? Ideally, in Canada, a country that <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/services/culture/canadian-identity-society/multiculturalism.html">supports multiculturalism</a>, visible minority immigrants can preserve their ethnic cultures while having plentiful intercultural communications without experiencing racism. But in reality, that is not always the case.</p>
<p>Limited opportunities to make meaningful connections won’t be magically solved by using technology. We must all cultivate more space, on and offline, where we can meet people of different backgrounds and get to know each other as real people and social equals. Culture may define us, but it should not divide us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198640/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Manlin Cai receives funding from the UBC Centre for Migration Studies Small Grants for Faculty-Graduate Student Research Collaborations. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yue Qian receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Development Grant and the UBC Centre for Migration Studies Small Grants for Faculty-Graduate Student Research Collaborations. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders.</span></em></p>
Chinese-oriented online dating platforms create “Chinatowns” in cyberspace, where Chinese daters gather in hopes of finding true love.
Manlin Cai, PhD student, Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia
Yue Qian, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of British Columbia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197237
2023-01-19T06:11:38Z
2023-01-19T06:11:38Z
How the Fifa20 video game reproduces the racial stereotypes embedded within football
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503282/original/file-20230105-26-7ywgsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/kyiv-ukraine-april-12-2019-guys-1373273969">Lutsenko_Oleksandr | Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>EA Sports’ Fifa football videogame series is arguably the most successful sports gaming franchise of all time. Since its debut in 1993, it has sold over 260 million copies across 29 iterations. This position was reaffirmed in 2022, with its latest instalment, Fifa23, <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2022/12/19/fifa-23-is-the-uk-christmas-1-for-video-games-games-charts-17-dec-17960785/">reported</a> as the UK’s highest selling videogame at Christmas. </p>
<p>In Fifa games – soon to be rebranded as EA Sports FC – gamers are able to simulate playing as, and against, their idols, with state-of-the-art graphics and individual player attributes that are assigned to match the abilities of real-world players. It is, as the franchise’s website <a href="https://www.ea.com/en-gb/games/fifa/fifa-22/buy/playstation#ea-play-benefits">puts it</a>, the “most true-to-life experience of the world’s game” without physically kicking a ball about. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2022.2109805">recent study</a> into the Fifa20 game shows that physical play wasn’t the only thing the game replicated. It also reproduced – within its very coding – the racial stereotypes that are deeply embedded within the sport.</p>
<h2>How digital players are ranked</h2>
<p>In Fifa, gamers choose to play as almost any professional club or national team. These are digital versions of current, real-world squads, which include players from Paris St Germain’s Kylian Mbappé to Chelsea’s Samantha Kerr. Each player’s performance level is determined by <a href="https://talksport.com/football/1206820/fifa-23-player-ratings-decide-system-pace-michael-muller-mohring-ea-thomas-muller/#:%7E:text=Muller%2DMohring%2C%20a%20fan%20of,made%20up%20of%2035%20attributes">a score</a> of 1 to 99, assigned to them by the game’s data collection team, which determines their ranking within the game. </p>
<p>This score is an aggregate value of the scores the player gets on 29 different competencies. These <a href="https://fifauteam.com/fifa-20-attributes-guide/">range</a> from the player’s ability to perform “long shots” and how high they can “jump” to their “strength” and “aggression”. And the scores are based on the data collection team’s interpretation of the real-world player’s competencies. </p>
<p>In 2020, we collated data from what was, at the time, the latest instalment in the Fifa series: Fifa20. We examined the aggregate scores assigned to the white and black digital players who were ranked as the game’s <a href="https://www.futbin.com/20/players">top 100 players</a>. We found that when it came to competencies that the game itself had classified as “physical”, black players scored more highly in almost all cases compared to white players. </p>
<p>This included in relation to their sprint speed (79.15 to 71.63), ability to jump (78.19 to 71.24), physical strength (76.69 to 72.0), balance (76.69 to 75.45) and levels of aggression (74.04 to 71.5).</p>
<p>When it came to attributes that the game classified as relating to a player’s technical or cognitive ability, the reverse was apparent. White digital players’ scores were, on average, higher than black players in almost all categories. </p>
<p>White players had higher average scores for their ability to cross a ball (72.29 to 71.35), to accurately take free kicks (67.98 to 64.53) and to accurately curve a pass (74.53 to 71.04). They scored more highly for composure (85.4 to 84.62) too. </p>
<p>Put simply, our study found that the aggregate scores for the digital players’ sporting attributes directly correlated with the racial stereotypes associated with black and white footballers in real life.</p>
<h2>The “natural black athlete” stereotype</h2>
<p>Sociological studies on racism in sports commentary <a href="https://theconversation.com/racism-in-%20football-new-research-shows-media-treats-black-men-differently-to-white-men-160841">have consistently found</a> that football match commentators overwhelming “see” and praise white athletes for their intelligence and black players for their inherent physical prowess – even when black and white footballers are doing the exact same thing on the pitch. </p>
<p>This racist bias is traceable back to pseudoscience that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00948705.1999.9714583?journalCode=rjps20">emerged</a> in Europe during the enlightenment era. White people were argued to be the most evolved, with the largest skull sizes – the most intelligent, learned and civilised. Black people, conversely, were positioned as the least evolved, with the smallest brains, physically and intellectually as close to other animals as they were to white humans. </p>
<p>These beliefs were deployed to argue that black people were naturally more
durable, faster, stronger and less intelligent than white people. This facilitated the view that black people were inherently better suited to physically demanding labour. It also made them “natural” athletes.</p>
<p>The fact that this perception of black talent as simply the result of players’ biology persists in professional football was perhaps most clearly demonstrated in 2018 by ex-Wimbledon footballer, Vinnie Jones. In a TalkSport radio interview, Jones <a href="https://talksport.com/football/397018/raheem-sterling-exeter-vinnie-jones-england-world-cup/">said</a> that if it were not for Chelsea and England forward Raheem Sterling’s inherent ability to run fast, he would not even be a professional footballer, let alone an England international player. (Jones later said <a href="https://talksport.com/football/442026/vinnie-jones-wrong-about-raheem-sterling-manchester-city/">he’d changed his mind</a>.)</p>
<h2>Why this coding matters</h2>
<p>Numerical values represent the foundation on which videogames are built. They influence every aspect of gameplay. In the case of Fifa20, the attributes coded into the virtual football experience dictated what these digital players could do, how they performed, and their artificial intelligence. Crucially, they shaped what the gamer literally feels when controlling each player. </p>
<p>You play this kind of game with a gaming controller. The tech in these pieces of kit responds to the scores that each player has coded into them. If a player scores high in their ability to dribble or to run fast, that is communicated to you through a series of vibrations you feel through your controller. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://fifauteam.com/fifa-20-attributes-guide/">game’s descriptions</a> of attributes put it plainly: scores for balance “influence how responsive the player you are controlling feels. High stats for agility and balance mean you’ll move fluidly. A low score for balance will mean your player could feel sluggish and unresponsive.” </p>
<p>It follows that the racial differences present within the coding mean that, on average, black and white digital players would feel very different to the gamer who is controlling them. In this sense, players of Fifa20 could well learn racial difference – and often from a very young age – through seeing and feeling digital players perform differently. </p>
<p>In her 2021 book, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/on-video-games-9781350217706/">On Video Games</a>, visual culture and gaming scholar Soraya Murray shows how gaming is a powerful space though which children and adults learn racial stereotypes and difference. Our findings demonstrate further subtle ways in which these stereotypes are reinforced. </p>
<p>There is a risk that children are effectively taught that black and white athletes are meaningfully “different” through sight, sound and touch – through the seemingly innocent and banal act of play.</p>
<p><em>A spokesperson for EA Sports, the makers of Fifa20, said: “When accounting for position, there is no correlation between skin tone and skill in our game.”</em> </p>
<p><em>“The data presented within this study provides a narrow and incomplete view of overall player ratings. The study does not control for player position, which is crucial when determining a player’s final attributes. Furthermore, the study accounted for 88 of approximately 17,000 players found within EA Sports Fifa20. In our most recent game, EA Sports Fifa23, this total is now over 19,000.”</em></p>
<p><em>They said: “Racism has no place in the world of football, and has no place in any of our games. While we acknowledge that biases continue to exist in sport, it is our duty as a leader in global football to stand against them. We highlighted this in our <a href="https://www.copa90.com/beatthebias">Beat the Bias</a> campaign alongside our partners at Copa90 in 2020.” They added that teams across the company had taken unconscious bias training “as part of our continual commitment to learn, improve and eliminate prejudice within our game and the world of football.”</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Black footballers in the game are given lower scores for technical or cognitive ability than white players.
Paul Ian Campbell, Associate Professor in Sociology (Race and Inclusion in sport and in education), University of Leicester
Marcus Maloney, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/192493
2023-01-11T15:30:05Z
2023-01-11T15:30:05Z
What is racial battle fatigue? A school psychologist explains
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503409/original/file-20230106-26-n069fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5090%2C3388&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Racial stress can seriously threaten a person's well-being.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/african-man-with-eyes-closed-and-steam-coming-from-royalty-free-image/73232033?phrase=black%20stress&adppopup=true">John M Lund Photography Inc via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When William A. Smith, a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=yBdIODIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">scholar of education and culture</a>, introduced the term “racial battle fatigue” in <a href="https://faculty.utah.edu/bytes/curriculumVitae.hml?id=u0173846">2003</a>, he used it to describe the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=4303721963682388326&hl=en&oi=scholarr">cumulative effects of racial hostility</a> that Black people – specifically faculty and graduate students – experience at predominantly white colleges and universities. In short, it takes a toll on their psychological, physical and emotional well-being.</p>
<p>Since then, the term has been applied by scholars to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1538192714540530">Hispanic undergraduates</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.3138/jelis.2019-0007">women of color</a>. Scholars have also applied the term to groups beyond the college campus, such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085918805788">teachers of color</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2016.1150830">students of color</a> at the K-12 level. Most of the research on racial battle fatigue deals with the matter within the context of education.</p>
<p>As a concept, racial battle fatigue is rooted in <a href="https://doi.org/10.4135%2F9781526421036764633">critical race theory</a>, which holds that racism is systemic and <a href="https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05">embedded in legal systems and policies</a>, not just something that takes place on an interpersonal level.</p>
<p>Smith was not the first to connect race and fatigue in one phrase. For example, in his 1990 book “<a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/content-our-character-new-vision-race-america">Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America</a>,” author <a href="https://www.hoover.org/profiles/shelby-steele">Shelby Steele</a> wrote about “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/16/books/a-kind-of-race-fatigue.html">a kind of race fatigue, a deep weariness with things racial</a>.”</p>
<p>And the term “<a href="https://www.militaryonesource.mil/military-basics/wounded-ill-injured-and-caregivers/understanding-and-dealing-with-combat-stress-and-ptsd/">battle fatigue</a>” has long been used to describe the symptoms that result from the stress of combat, such as depression and anxiety.</p>
<p>The term “racial battle fatigue,” then, likens the collective experiences of people of color who are subjected to racial hostility to that of soldiers who experience <a href="https://www.military.com/spouse/military-life/wounded-warriors/combat-stress-symptoms.html">combat stress</a>. Both are believed to result from being placed in a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764207307742">hostile environment filled with regular threats and attacks</a>.</p>
<h2>What causes racial battle fatigue?</h2>
<p>It may come about from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2016.1214296">racial macroaggressions</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764207307742">racial microaggressions</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi-org.tc.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/09518398.2016.1214296">Racial macroaggressions</a> are far-reaching race-related experiences that may be publicized and traumatic. For instance, when a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000007159353/george-floyd-arrest-death-video.html">video surfaced</a> of George Floyd <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/20/us/derek-chauvin-trial-george-floyd-deliberations/index.html">slowly being killed as a result of a police officer who knelt on his neck</a>, experts say it <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/23/health/george-floyd-death-anniversary-coping-wellness/index.html">traumatized many who saw the video</a>. This experience is an example of how hearing about or observing experiences of racial prejudice and discrimination can <a href="https://doi-org.tc.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/h0087722">add to the distress of people of color</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.62.4.271">Racial microaggressions</a> are defined as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color.” <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.62.4.271">Common racial microaggressions</a> toward Black individuals include questions like “Where are you from?” and statements such as “You are so articulate” or “I’m not racist. I have several Black friends.” They also include asking a Black person, “Why are you so loud?” and confusing a Black professional for a service worker. </p>
<p>Students of color may experience racial microaggressions throughout their academic careers, beginning <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119466642.ch17">before college</a> and persisting into <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028956">college and university settings</a>.</p>
<h2>What does racial battle fatigue cause?</h2>
<p>Chronic racial stress is associated with poorer mental health. This includes <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138511">depression and anxiety</a>. It is also associated with an increased likelihood for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.22670">developing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder</a>.</p>
<p>Chronic racial stress also increases the probability that a person of color <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000104">won’t get good sleep</a>. It is associated with a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000306">diminished sense of well-being</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1538192714540530">a loss of appetite</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2020.0058">elevated blood pressure</a>.</p>
<p>Racial microaggressions in academic settings can <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831217722120">hurt students’ academic achievement</a> and leave them feeling <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764219859613">out of place</a> and <a href="https://jaamejournal.scholasticahq.com/article/18400-racial-microaggressions-the-schooling-experiences-of-black-middle-class-males-in-arizona-s-secondary-schools">invisible</a> to teachers and administrators.</p>
<h2>What can be done?</h2>
<p>There are several strategies students of color can practice to minimize the damage caused by experiencing racial stress.</p>
<p><strong>1. Build community:</strong> Social belonging has been found to <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/9/11/191">mitigate racial stress</a> for Black high school students. It has also been found to improve the academic achievement of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.1.82">Black college students</a>.</p>
<p>To this effect, students of color can seek to form connections with other individuals of color to foster a sense of community, which may <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/48645357#metadata_info_tab_contents">lessen feelings of isolation for people of color</a>. </p>
<p><strong>2. Engage in mindfulness:</strong> Research suggests the benefits of using <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-022-01826-6">mindfulness</a> strategies to manage racial stress. For example, when students of color engaged in a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1128317">self-affirmation exercise</a> that involved writing about important life values, it lessened the effects of negative race-based stereotypes on their academic achievement.</p>
<p>Students can also learn <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.42.3.279">reflective coping strategies</a>, which involve managing stressful events by changing the situation, their emotions or their thoughts. Research has found that the use of such strategies can promote <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000306">positive mental health</a> for students of color exposed to racial microaggressions.</p>
<p><strong>3. Get some exercise:</strong> Students of color can make conscious efforts to engage in regular physical activity, as exposure to racial discrimination has been found to lead to a more <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/25687">sedentary lifestyle</a>, which can in turn lead to poorer health.</p>
<p>As long as racism persists in education, students of color may never be able to completely avoid racial battle fatigue. But by being more conscious of this fatigue and how to fight it, they can at least be equipped to deal with it more effectively and prevent it from harming their academic careers and their lives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192493/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geremy Grant does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Racial hostility can produce symptoms similar to what soldiers experience as a result of going to war.
Geremy Grant, Assistant Professor of School Psychology, Alfred University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/182150
2022-05-09T13:35:03Z
2022-05-09T13:35:03Z
New book unpacks the complexities of whiteness in South Africa
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460535/original/file-20220429-19-vyzzmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A multiracial crowd sings the South African National Anthem at 2019 memorial service for the late rugby Springbok Chester Williams.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rodger Bosch/AFP/ via GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his latest book <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/roger-southall-296862">sociologist Professor Roger Southall</a>, a prolific researcher who has written extensively about political dynamics in Southern Africa, avoids the “negative and condemnatory” approach generally seen in writing on white South Africans, the creators and beneficiaries of apartheid.</p>
<p>In the preface to the book, <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781847012890/whites-and-democracy-in-south-africa/">Whites and Democracy in South Africa</a>, he explains that he’s done this to instead undertake a nuanced and constructive assessment of white people’s adjustment to post-apartheid democracy.</p>
<p>Therefore, he enters the South African debate on critical race studies by setting his study apart from whiteness scholarship that assumes</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the homogeneity of white practices, ideas and attitudes and that being white is synonymous with being racist (p. 13).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Southall criticises academic writing that attempts the corrective re-orientation of white people towards adopting more desirable behaviour as “sociologically overambitious” (p. 13).</p>
<p>He regards such scholarship as prescriptive and removed from the everyday experiences of white people. Instead, he insists that analysis of whiteness must be based on empirical research.</p>
<p>With this approach, Southall cuts through the sometimes shrill debate on race in South Africa with findings that are grounded in solid research. The book assists in taking the sometimes overly abstract idea of whiteness to a more useful engagement with white people, and their actions and ideas. The findings provide a welcome update on white people’s political stances after <a href="https://www.gov.za/FreedomDay2022">almost 30 years of democracy</a>.</p>
<h2>Whiteness in South Africa</h2>
<p>The book is based on data collected through eight in-depth qualitative focus group interviews, conducted in the provinces of KwaZulu Natal, Western Cape, Gauteng and Free State. Southall anchors the study with a historical contextualisation, giving the long view over time of specifically the political development of whiteness.</p>
<p>He provides an analysis of the state of liberalism. There’s renewed interest in this because of controversial stances on <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-main-opposition-party-caught-in-an-unenviable-political-bind-150296">race taken by the main opposition Democratic Alliance</a>. The party is the primary representative of liberalism among opposition parties in the country. </p>
<p>He also analyses changes in Afrikaner politics over time, white people as citizens, and explores the politics of representation through to the politics of wealth redistribution.</p>
<p>The study confirms the diversity in the political positions of white people in the country. This is also <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Whiteness-Just-isnt-What-Used/dp/B01K0UDD44">found in other work</a>. </p>
<p>Whiteness stands centrally in a racial order in which those positioned as “other” to whiteness are regarded as inferior. But it also creates internal hierarchies through overlapping regimes of domination, whether economic, patriarchal, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/heteronormativity">heteronormative</a> or others. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-1994-miracle-whats-left-159495">South Africa's 1994 'miracle': what's left?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sitting-Pretty-Afrikaans-Postapartheid-Africa/dp/1869143760">Analysis</a>, when done from a critical vantage point of taking into account ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality, shows complex intersections within whiteness. In these, women, LGBT and economically marginalised people occupy “lesser” statuses.</p>
<p>Southall’s contribution is to show the political changes within whiteness. Bringing in these internal complexities is important as it guards against <a href="https://wiser.wits.ac.za/system/files/Achille%20Mbembe%20-%20Decolonizing%20Knowledge%20and%20the%20Question%20of%20the%20Archive.pdf">mythologising whiteness</a>, which can make whiteness appear to be an insurmountable form of racial exclusion and dehumanisation.</p>
<h2>Reluctant democrats but without apartheid nostalgia</h2>
<p>One of Southall’s important findings is that limited nostalgia for apartheid exists among his respondents. Not a single respondent expressed the wish that the apartheid dispensation should have continued.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Book cover showing no image ut the words 'Whites and Democracy in South Africa' written several times and the name 'Roger Southall' appearing once." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>He shows in this book that white South Africans might be “reluctant democrats”, but they have accepted democracy (p. 239). This might seem like an underwhelming statement to make. But it serves as a reminder that an inclusive democracy in which all South Africans enjoy equal citizenship status was complete anathema to successive ruling white cliques for centuries.</p>
<p>The violent lengths that the white settler group went to, to sustain its dominance, are well recorded. As late in the day as the first half of the 1990s, the then ruling <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/South-Africa/The-National-Party-and-apartheid">National Party</a> had no intention of <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1770073051/ref=olp-opf-redir?aod=1&asin=1770073051&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1">giving up white power</a>.</p>
<p>In 1992 a whites-only <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/161008?seq=1">referendum was held</a>. The result showed support for a transition to democracy. This indicated that not only the apartheid ruling elite but also the majority of white people wished to open up the political space.</p>
<p>This contributed to, as Southall puts it, the country becoming a “failed settler state”. This is a liberating failure that has created the possibility for the extension of human dignity to all in the country. Those who lose sight of this downplay the gains made since the <a href="https://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/unit.php?id=65-24E-6">end of official apartheid in 1994</a>.</p>
<p>However, the point is not to congratulate white people. Historical conditions mostly beyond their control forced a rethink of political positions beyond the small groups of whites who were already critical. Sustained white dissidence against colonialism and apartheid falls beyond the scope of the book. But, it is important again to keep in mind the multiplicity in white people’s political positions.</p>
<h2>Needed: a ‘politics of responsibility’</h2>
<p>The study finds that white people are willing to admit to the “wrongness” of apartheid, even as they deflect responsibility to apartheid-era securocratic and political elites. They had “a sense of relief” when the country finally transitioned to democracy in the 1990s.</p>
<p>However, respondents in the study do not support redress to correct the effects of colonial and apartheid racist policies. This is despite the legacy of white privilege that remains highly visible in the present. </p>
<p>This worrying finding assists in understanding how white resistance to wealth redistribution partly contributes to continuing black poverty in South Africa.</p>
<p>Foremost postcolonial thinker <a href="https://wiser.wits.ac.za/users/achille-mbembe">Achille Mbembe</a> is quoted in the book to make the point that what is needed among white people, specifically, is a “politics of responsibility” (p. 240). This would include white people bearing a material responsibility towards black people to undo the ravages of centuries of colonialism.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/democracy-loses-its-glow-for-south-africans-amid-persistent-inequality-181489">Democracy loses its glow for South Africans amid persistent inequality</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<hr>
<p>Southall provides a useful set of criteria to give flesh to South Africa’s unique contribution to the global struggle against racism, namely the decades-old idea of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/42705231?seq=1">non-racialism</a>. When it comes to a “politics of responsibility”, non-racialism necessarily involves a socio-economic dimension. This must take the form of addressing racial inequality, the property question and eradicating black poverty. All this alongside strengthening the commitment to democracy and advancing interracial inclusivity.</p>
<p>He may be circumspect about fitting his book within whiteness scholarship. But Southall’s latest work adds significant insights to <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Critical-Studies-in-Whiteness/Hunter-Westhuizen/p/book/9780367403799">a newly critical literature on studies of whiteness</a>, which seeks fresh pathways out of the destructive conundrum created by race and racism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christi van der Westhuizen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Avoiding trite moralisations, Professor Southall uses empirical research to shed light on white South Africans’ adjustment to democracy.
Christi van der Westhuizen, Associate Professor, Centre for the Advancement of Non-Racialism and Democracy (CANRAD), Nelson Mandela University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/165191
2021-08-12T14:52:52Z
2021-08-12T14:52:52Z
Men unpick South African racial stereotyping in bid to reclaim their identity
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415807/original/file-20210812-19-1lp0ldg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C678%2C5136%2C3864&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Men spoke of how crime in the area affected their everyday lives and how they constantly had to stay safe and out of trouble.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simone Peters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Racial segregation in South Africa began with colonialism, but became an official policy in 1948 <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/apartheid-1948-1994/">under apartheid</a>. When the National Party came into power, it imposed apartheid onto the social, economic and political life of South Africans for almost 50 years. </p>
<p>To do so, the government had to create racial categories and make them part of legislation. One of the categories it created was “coloured”. In this article, the term “coloured” has been placed in inverted commas to acknowledge the fact that it is a constructed and contested term. </p>
<p>The racial category of “coloured” was a difficult one to create because it covered a diversity of physical appearances, accents and geography. This was the result of “coloureds” being the descendants of the sexual relationships between colonists, slaves from all over the globe and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10246029.2005.9627597">indigenous Khoe and San people</a>.</p>
<p>The apartheid-era <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/archive-files2/leg19500707.028.020.030.pdf">Population Registration Act No 30 of 1950</a> defined a “coloured” person as someone who was not white or “native”. Later, the group was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1985/09/11/world/south-africa-s-coloreds-a-group-torn-between-black-and-white-worlds.html">further divided</a> into classifications of the Cape “coloured”, “Cape Malay”, Griqua, Indian, Chinese, other Asiatic, and other.</p>
<p>In South Africa today, “coloured” people continue to actively participate in accepting, rejecting and remaking <a href="https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/31443/628130.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">this racial identity</a>. But the term is still sometimes associated with negative stereotypes.</p>
<p>Academic literature has depicted “coloured” men as being unskilled, having minimal education, and at risk <a href="https://theconversation.com/paper-by-south-african-academics-raises-spectre-of-racism-in-the-academy-116612">of perpetrating violence</a>. And some media tend to reinforce this view. In my <a href="https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/33729/thesis_hum_2021_peters%20simone%20maxine.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">research</a> I wanted to look at how “coloured” men see and talk about themselves and their experiences of being “coloured” in post-apartheid South Africa. </p>
<p>The men in my <a href="https://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/33729">study</a> challenged the stereotypes and also told me about the impact of these stereotypes on their lives. These narratives matter because they show the dire consequences of stereotypes and how people can speak back against them. </p>
<h2>Widening the lens</h2>
<p>The academic literature on “coloured” men has focused predominantly on the risk they pose to others and themselves. This often results in particular kinds of representations of them. For example, studies have looked at “coloured” men as perpetrators of domestic abuse and rape. Violence in their communities, and experiences of gang membership and imprisonment, have also been the subject of studies.</p>
<p>This research is necessary as it shows how violence shapes the lives of people. But violence is not the only narrative on “coloured” communities and among “coloured” men. </p>
<p>In my work I wanted to take a more holistic and historical approach and show the complexities of “coloured” men’s experiences.</p>
<p>My study collected data by asking participants, aged 18 to 60, to show their experiences in the form of photo narratives and through interviews. I used data from 20 men who were historically classified as “coloured” and lived and worked in Bishop Lavis. Bishop Lavis is a “coloured” community created <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/cape-flats-cape-town">under apartheid</a>, about 20 km from central Cape Town, and is often in the news for <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-09-26-gang-violence-mother-of-slain-bishop-lavis-woman-doesnt-have-much-faith-in-the-army/">incidents of crime</a>. The questions were about what it meant to be “coloured”, what it meant to be a man, and their experiences of living in Bishop Lavis.</p>
<p>I found that the participants used the research process as a way of claiming a positive self-image and constructing alternative narratives about themselves and their communities. </p>
<p>In telling their stories, the men renegotiated power by reasserting their versions of self and community. They resisted the dominant stories that are constantly told about the community of Bishop Lavis and how dangerous the place is. They constructed the space as “lekker” (“nice”), and as home, where they belonged. </p>
<p>The participants challenged the picture of “coloured” men as drunkards, violent, gangsters, and absent fathers. They positioned themselves as respectable men who took responsibility for their children, provided their children with love and support, and were not thieves or gangsters. The old and young men shared similar stories about what it meant to be a “real man”. A “real man” provides, protects and takes responsibility for his family. He does not abuse women and children. He is not a gangster.</p>
<p>Their photographs also spoke back to negative stereotypes about their community and their racial identity. They took pictures of their communities showing how vibrant it is but also showing the run-down parks and lack of resources. There were pictures of their friends, children and family and their businesses and sports.</p>
<p>Throughout the research process, the men spoke of how crime in the area had affected their everyday lives and how they constantly had to take care to stay safe and out of trouble. They all emphasised their lack of freedom and how they felt unsafe in the area. When looking for work, men from areas such as Bishop Lavis, who are stereotyped as violent and gangsters, have to deal with employers seeing them as untrustworthy and a threat to people’s safety. These stereotypes also result in “coloured” men being stopped and searched by police officers, which strips them of their dignity.</p>
<h2>Redefining identity</h2>
<p>My research contributes to work on “colouredness” by understanding how people define and renegotiate their racial identity, how they challenge stigmatising characteristics and present alternative ways for imagining “colouredness”. </p>
<p>These marginalised men, despite their situation of high unemployment, a lack of resources and opportunities and despite gangsterism, are refusing to be violent and are choosing to “do masculinity” differently. </p>
<p>A more balanced picture of these men’s experiences and lives allows society to see them as more than just criminals. This has a profound impact on these men’s lives. They are often racially profiled and searched by the police. They miss out on job opportunities because of the stereotypes attached to their racial identities and communities.</p>
<p>As researchers we have a big responsibility to avoid reproducing or reinforcing stereotypes in the work that we do.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simone Peters received funding for the PhD from the National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences.</span></em></p>
A more balanced picture of “coloured” mens’ experiences and lives allows society to see beyond negative stereotypes.
Simone Peters, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/150225
2020-11-18T15:35:04Z
2020-11-18T15:35:04Z
Football must stop blaming British South Asian communities for under-representation
<p>When one of the most senior figures in English football was forced to resign <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/54894864">over “unacceptable” language</a> there was renewed discussion around British football’s “Asian problem”. While speaking to a select committee, the now former FA Chairman, Greg Clarke, referred to people of colour as “coloured” and said that British South Asians work in IT, rather than play professional football because of their “different career interests”.</p>
<p>These are lazy, outdated stereotypes. Sadly, he was probably correct in saying there are more British South Asians within the FA’s IT department than playing professional football in England – after all, there are <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/50063299">only 12</a> British South Asian male footballers out of approximately 4,000 professionals across the 91 clubs.</p>
<p>Yes, there are some great role models out there. Yan Dhanda continues to make a big impact at Swansea City FC, both on <a href="https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11688/12132890/yan-dhanda-says-south-asians-in-football-feel-betrayed-by-greg-clarke-comments">and off the field</a>. But by the end of the 2018-19 season, only five British footballers of South Asian descent (that includes Pakistani, Indian or Bangladeshi) had played in the Premier League – Jimmy Carter, Michael Chopra, Hamza Choudhury, Zesh Rehman and Neil Taylor.</p>
<p>I have <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Exclusion-Football-Industry-Routledge-Research/dp/1138308609/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">researched this exclusion</a> for over a decade and I’ve found that football is woven into the fabric of British South Asian cultures. Writing in their 1998 book Corner Flags And Corner Shops, Jas Bains and Sanjiev Johal, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Corner-Flags-Shops-Jas-Bains/dp/0753808528">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The truth is there is mass Asian participation in football on a variety of different levels. From playing the games in their thousands to travelling around the country supporting their favoured teams… British-Asians, be they young or old, rich or poor, male or female, have either dipped their toes or fully immersed themselves in the dynamic waters of the modern game.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I am now left wondering whether Clarke has ever spoken to any British South Asian people about football, because he completely failed to acknowledge this rich history and passion for the game. Instead, Clarke relied on uninformed and unhelpful stereotypes as he blamed British South Asians to help make sense of this exclusion. He implied that it is the British South Asian “culture” that prevents inclusion and success. In turn, this negates any responsibility from the FA and disregards structural forms of racism.</p>
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</figure>
<h2>‘New’ surveys, old news</h2>
<p>What Clarke’s comments did was demonstrate how leading institutional figures – responsible for ensuring the game is truly inclusive, diverse and equal – are so out of touch with modern Britain. In the days following his resignation, British South Asians and football continued to make the headlines after a <a href="https://beyond-entertainment.co.uk/2020/11/12/footballs-british-asian-problem/">new survey</a> “revealed” football’s “British Asian problem”. </p>
<p>Sports and entertainment agency, Beyond Entertainment, and the Football Supporters Association surveyed 500 football fans and found that almost half of the participants wanted football to do more to increase British South Asian participation levels. The survey found that 86% of fans they spoke to believed role models were important and 42% suggested that football isn’t taking this problem seriously enough.</p>
<p>This survey is helpful in that it attempted to publicly highlight the issue. But what does it offer that we don’t already know? The answer is, very little. Research has been delivering this same information around British Asians and football for years.</p>
<p>In 1991, Manchester Metropolitan University <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-asians-will-flourish-if-football-creates-more-role-models-vcfwpmj55">revealed</a> that British Bangladeshi boys played football, on average, more than white British boys. In 1996, football writers Jas Bains and Raj Patel published <a href="https://capitadiscovery.co.uk/brighton-ac/items/703276">the first comprehensive report</a> investigating British South Asians in football. Daniel Burdsey and Aarti Ratna – respected academics with expertise in sport, race and ethnicity – have also <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Asians-Football-Exclusion-Routledge/dp/0415395003">investigated</a> the exclusion. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/110330881001800201">Their work</a> has helped to further understand the barriers and how they can be overcome.</p>
<p>In 2016, I published <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Exclusion-Football-Industry-Routledge-Research/dp/1138308609/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">my own research</a> which explored the nuanced experiences of British South Asian football communities and offered recommendations for reform. This entire body of work centres on British South Asian voices and all of the proposed inclusion strategies are empirically grounded. If researchers, organisations or agencies plan on launching surveys into this topic then one of the most useful things they can do first is look into what previous work has been done so they can build upon it – not repeat the same ideas. </p>
<h2>Turning the page</h2>
<p>It’s time for a fresh approach. The evidence is out there and we know what the exclusionary factors are. “New” reports illustrating that there is a “problem” don’t push the issue forward – they keep the conversation static. </p>
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<p>The focus must now be on what needs to change and how. All that previous research has already offered up solutions, including: increasing pathways into the professional game, developing opportunities within grassroots football, stamping out overt forms of racism and profiling role models from across the game. </p>
<p>Role models are important for two reasons. First, they play a <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/108/1087928/the-talent-code/9781847943040.html">powerful role</a> in igniting peoples’ self-belief. They also challenge stereotypes held by institutional insiders such as scouts, coaches and managers – some of whom may perceive British South Asians to be a “gamble”. </p>
<p>Only when the narrative is changed, will the game stop treading water on this issue. British football must stop blaming British South Asian communities and avoid lazy stereotypes. Instead, the game must highlight the positive stories of role models – past and present – and challenge narrow perceptions. </p>
<p>British South Asian voices must be heard and be heavily involved in the construction of counter measures. Only when this is done will we see a world where they are considered a true part of British football culture – and not just members of the FA’s IT department.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150225/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Kilvington does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
British football should utilise 30 years of academic research to focus on what it needs to do to solve the game’s exclusion problem.
Daniel Kilvington, Senior lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, Leeds Beckett University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/141676
2020-09-17T11:25:16Z
2020-09-17T11:25:16Z
American society teaches everyone to be racist – but you can rewrite subconscious stereotypes
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358228/original/file-20200915-18-1uduvtc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=202%2C50%2C2192%2C1539&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People learn racism from the culture that surrounds them and media they consume, but that doesn't need to be the end of the story.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/teacher-during-an-online-coding-language-class-for-school-news-photo/1208282634"> Gavriil Grigorov\TASS via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Progress toward a more just and equitable society may be on the horizon. Since the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in May, around the United States, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52951093">millions of people have taken to the streets</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53005243">statues have been felled</a>, leaders have been <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/07/01/every-ceo-and-leader-that-stepped-down-since-black-lives-matter-protests-began/#170265855593">fired and pressured to resign</a>, and activists-turned-politicians have <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/2020-elections/2020/08/cori-bush-defeats-lacy-clay/">gained traction in prominent political races</a>. </p>
<p>But until people recognize that racism is wired into the American mind, we believe that few of these efforts are likely to actually reduce racist behavior.</p>
<p>Our work provides a way to understand how race and society influence the brain. One of us (<a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=nwI8ZXIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Waddell</a>) is a sociologist who researches social inequality; the other (<a href="https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=Xvqh8BQAAAAJ&hl=en&citsig=AMD79oqHy00tGTBoPDqjnMYchPCsZhRJxQ">Pipitone</a>) is a psychologist who examines the biological implications of human behavior.</p>
<p>Our respective work reveals a difficult fact regarding recent efforts to eradicate racism from U.S. society: If you’re American – regardless of the color of your skin – racism likely structures how you think.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358229/original/file-20200915-14-1j677vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman walks past a Black Lives Matter mural" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358229/original/file-20200915-14-1j677vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358229/original/file-20200915-14-1j677vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358229/original/file-20200915-14-1j677vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358229/original/file-20200915-14-1j677vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358229/original/file-20200915-14-1j677vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358229/original/file-20200915-14-1j677vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358229/original/file-20200915-14-1j677vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Awareness of racial injustice in the United States seemed to increase in 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-walks-past-a-black-lives-matter-mural-on-august-25-news-photo/1268581512">Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images News via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Everybody’s racist</h2>
<p>A great deal of attention has been paid to the rates at which police officers kill minorities. In the U.S., police <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/">shoot and kill Black people at two and a half times the rate</a> at which they kill white people, and the disparity between Latinos and whites is nearly as high, about 1.8 times more frequent.</p>
<p>But it’s not only white officers who kill minorities at higher rates. Researchers who <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903856116">compiled a database of officer-involved shootings</a> found that <a href="https://research.msu.edu/the-truth-behind-racial-disparties-in-fatal-police-shootings/">minority police officers are just as likely</a> as their white counterparts to shoot Blacks and Latinos more frequently. This work is supported by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12956">additional research</a>, which concludes that “The killing of black suspects is a police problem, not a white police problem.”</p>
<p>Does that mean that racism isn’t at play? Not at all. Rather, these facts reflect the depth to which race affects everyone in U.S. society. The aforementioned findings are echoed by the anti-racism movement advanced by historian <a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/ibram-kendi-leading-scholar-of-racism-says-education-and-love-are-not-the-answer/">Ibram Kendi, who recently said</a>:</p>
<p>“You can be someone who has no intention to be racist, but because you’re conditioned in a world that is racist and a country that is structured in anti-Black racism, you yourself can perpetuate those ideas.”</p>
<p>Racism is so deeply <a href="https://theglobepost.com/2020/06/17/racism-us-poc/">interwoven into the nation’s culture</a> that it is <a href="https://www.russellsage.org/publications/categorically-unequal-1">embedded in the neural processors inside our skulls</a>. This is true for minorities and nonminorities alike. Racism subconsciously affects the way we view other humans and perniciously affects people of color.</p>
<h2>Mental shortcuts form the foundation for bias</h2>
<p>One important feature of the human mind is its ability to consolidate and organize massive amounts of information into categories. Categorization allows you to create mental shortcuts – <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-schema-2795873">what psychologists call schemas</a> – which speed up decision-making in the future. In doing so, you’re able to make quicker decisions without reconsidering streams of information again and again.</p>
<p>Schemas allow you to reduce the amount of energy you expend on decision-making by categorizing your world into simplified, transferable forms – better known as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12170">stereotypes</a>. </p>
<p>This categorical behavior has been <a href="https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/olisng/files/2019/08/Sng-Williams-Neuberg-2016-Handbook-Chapter.pdf">largely adaptive throughout human history</a>. Living in small bands under ancestral conditions, detecting allies or potential enemies would have been paramount to survival. In the modern world, however, these mental shortcuts come with a dark side.</p>
<p>Schemas are grounded in cultural teachings. They’re nurtured by your upbringing, your educators, your mentors, the movies and shows you watch, and your physical surroundings. And when it comes to race and ethnicity, schemas embody both the positive and negative associations that society teaches about different racial and ethnic groups. Over time, everyone, regardless of their own race and ethnicity, can develop implicit biases that feed into stereotypes, prejudiced behavior and discrimination.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.6.1464">Psychologists have examined implicit attitude biases</a> within the context of race and ethnicity. The Implicit Association Test measures the way in which people’s ideas and beliefs relate to their subconscious attitudes about viewing Black or white faces, or names that are typically associated with a particular racial or ethnic group. <a href="https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html">You can take the test here</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/B0cW7c0pF22","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Researchers ask participants to pair concepts associated with being “Black” or “white” with attributes such as “pleasant” or “unpleasant.” They then measure the time that participants take to process information. Fast times imply the association makes sense to participants, whereas slow times indicate the opposite.</p>
<p>The results show that white Americans hold more positive associations for other white Americans than they do for Black individuals. Research by psychologist <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037//1089-2699.6.1.101">Brian Nosek and colleagues</a> shows that Black Americans report conscious, or explicit, attitudes that are more positive toward other Black individuals than toward whites. However, the same Black participants show more positive implicit associations, or subconscious attitudes, toward white individuals than they do toward Blacks, thus demonstrating how implicit racial biases affect members of the majority and minority groups alike.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=__Ip_Q0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Psychologist B. Keith Payne</a> studied how implicit biases <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2006.00454.x">can have deadly consequences</a>. He and his colleagues asked volunteers to play a computer simulation in which they shoot people holding weapons while refraining from shooting people holding harmless objects, such as a hand tool.</p>
<p>Across multiple studies, participants are significantly more likely in the simulation to shoot Black men holding harmless objects than white men holding the same things. In these studies, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.6.1314">Black participants make the same deadly errors</a> as their white counterparts.</p>
<h2>Short-circuiting the mental shortcuts</h2>
<p>The mental shortcuts in people’s minds are structured mainly by society. And if you are American, your mind observes from a very early age, whether consciously or not, that opportunity is <a href="https://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/">tilted in favor of white people</a>.</p>
<p>Your brain notices details like white individuals having more access to <a href="https://uncf.org/pages/k-12-disparity-facts-and-stats">quality education</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK24693/">good health care</a> and <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/white-workers-are-more-likely-than-black-or-latino-americans-to-have-a-good-job-even-with-the-same-level-of-education-2019-10-17">high-paying jobs</a>. And every day, from the news, entertainment and social media, your mind absorbs images of <a href="https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/Media-Impact-onLives-of-Black-Men-and-Boys-OppAgenda.pdf">minorities being portrayed as criminals, gang members and freeloaders</a>. Over time, your mind begins to subconsciously categorize minorities as inferior.</p>
<p>As depressing as this process might sound, not all is lost. Along with a natural proclivity to take mental shortcuts and be more suspect of individuals from groups different from your own, human beings have an innate ability to critically think and reason. Your frontal cortex, the area of the brain that allows for the most complex cognitive abilities and behavioral inhibition, is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.360.6395.1311-g">unmatched in the animal kingdom</a>. So, while your brain may jump to conclusions, you have the ability to reconfigure your subconscious inclinations.</p>
<p>How can you do this? </p>
<p>At the individual level, you can begin breaking down dangerous stereotypes by introducing your mind to <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/06/a-reading-list-on-issues-of-race/">more accurate depictions of our highly unequal social reality</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Individual awareness is necessary, but not sufficient to bring about societal-level change. The only way to permanently shift a mental construct such as racism is by fundamentally reorganizing the physical world that informs our minds. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358230/original/file-20200915-20-hu8lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Back of a man whose t-shirt reads 'Speak up against injustice'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358230/original/file-20200915-20-hu8lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358230/original/file-20200915-20-hu8lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358230/original/file-20200915-20-hu8lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358230/original/file-20200915-20-hu8lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358230/original/file-20200915-20-hu8lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358230/original/file-20200915-20-hu8lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358230/original/file-20200915-20-hu8lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Recognizing and changing racially biased systems should start to chip away at unconscious biases.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/âblack-lives-matterâ-demonstrators-gathered-at-the-columbus-news-photo/1228502145">Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the United States, this would require desegregating America’s schools, which, 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/schools-are-still-segregated-and-black-children-are-paying-a-price/">remain unequal</a>. It would also require desegregating American neighborhoods, which are <a href="https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/SOTU_2015_spatial-segregation.pdf">deeply divided along racial and ethnic lines</a>. This shift would also depend on equal access to health care, <a href="https://www.kff.org/disparities-policy/report/key-facts-on-health-and-health-care-by-race-and-ethnicity/">which did improve a bit for minorities</a> following the passage of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Finally, a true shift in mental constructs regarding race and ethnicity will rest upon equal representation in political offices, where <a href="https://scholars.org/contribution/how-local-political-party-leaders-perpetuate-underrepresentation-minorities-us">minorities continue to be severely underrepresented</a>. </p>
<p>In time, more equal opportunities for minorities will rewrite the implicit biases that guide each of us. Until then, Americans’ subconscious minds, as well as our decisions, will continue to reflect the divisions we see in our physical world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141676/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
If you’re American – regardless of the color of your skin – racism structures how you think. Changing the system should change these implicit biases.
Benjamin Waddell, Associate Professor of Sociology, Fort Lewis College
R. Nathan Pipitone, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Florida Gulf Coast University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/137284
2020-05-27T16:41:35Z
2020-05-27T16:41:35Z
Collecting race-based data during coronavirus pandemic may fuel dangerous prejudices
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336560/original/file-20200520-152315-1ypwkoa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=121%2C110%2C6952%2C4792&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Racially sorted patients are surveilled, often with negative consequences.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Brian Sinclair wheeled himself into a Winnipeg emergency room in September 2008 seeking assistance with his catheter bag. He had a bladder infection, but instead of receiving treatment, remained in the waiting room for 34 hours until his body — now lifeless — finally received medical attention. </p>
<p>Sinclair was an Indigenous man who hospital staff believed was there “<a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4445582/brian-sinclair-health-care-racism/">to watch TV</a>,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NITrHzxbhKw">appeared “intoxicated”</a> and was simply “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NITrHzxbhKw">sleeping it off</a>.” He was arguably triaged within what scholars of Indigenous histories Mary Jane Logan McCallum and Adele Perry call <a href="https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/structures-of-indifference">a “highly racialized” health-care system</a>. </p>
<p>Sinclair’s case shows how <a href="https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/punched-drunk">stereotypes of indigeneity in Canada</a> can influence patient care with fatal consequences. More broadly, this adds to trends of <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Coming-to-Terms-with-Chance-Engaging-Rational-Discrimination-and-Cumulative/Gandy/p/book/9781138260474">cumulative disadvantage</a>, where negative circumstances that affected population groups in the past continue to affect the same groups today.</p>
<p>Is there a risk that the COVID-19 pandemic will fuel such trends in Canada, especially against the backdrop of the country’s racialized past? As a sociologist, my answer to this question is yes. </p>
<p>As a researcher affiliated with the <a href="https://www.sscqueens.org/">Surveillance Studies Centre</a>, I am also concerned with how racially sorted patients are surveilled, often with negative consequences. Therefore, as a privacy and ethics officer evaluating health data for Ontario’s <a href="https://news.ontario.ca/mohltc/en/2020/04/province-developing-new-health-data-platform-to-help-defeat-covid-19.html">Pandemic Threat Response (PANTHR)</a>, I caution the Ministry of Health and its partners against the use of race- and ethnicity-based health data in dealing with COVID-19.</p>
<h2>Collecting race data for good medicine?</h2>
<p>Canada’s attention to race during the first 100 years of immigration policy shaped aspirations of a settler colonial “<a href="https://youtu.be/mhr1Ucr7qlc?t=66">White Canada Forever</a>.” Unsurprisingly, historical racial inequalities shape Canadian experiences in health care. </p>
<p>Dr. Kwame McKenzie of Toronto’s <a href="https://www.wellesleyinstitute.com/">Wellesley Institute</a> believes that <a href="https://youtu.be/beQSp5Zbvpk?t=5">race-based data is essential for “good medicine.”</a> And many additional doctors and scholars believe that <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-discriminates-against-black-lives-through-surveillance-policing-and-the-absence-of-health-data-135906">collecting race data might improve understandings of the social determinants of health</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r0BckmEWi-w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A few local Canadian authorities have started tracking the racial data of those infected with COVID-19.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, when race data is collected to understand the social determinants of health, it could inadvertently <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0957926504043707">legitimate biological understandings of race</a>. This is an essentialist position that necessarily ties the racial attributes and behaviours of one person to another. </p>
<p>Further, when race data is used in these circumstances, it creates more scope to arrive at racist responses to a pandemic than it does to address social vulnerabilities like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA4ZfJoREZg">the poor work conditions of minority populations in essential services</a>. </p>
<h2>Linking race and health</h2>
<p>Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/04/10/race-based-coronavirus-data-not-needed-in-canada-yet-health-officials-say.html">acknowledges that systematic racism disadvantages certain populations</a>. However, Hinshaw has not yet committed to collecting such data. Initially, her Ontario counterpart, Dr. David Williams, said the province would focus on age and chronic illness “regardless of race, ethnic or other backgrounds.” Ontario now says <a href="https://toronto.citynews.ca/2020/05/06/ontario-to-begin-collecting-race-based-data-during-coronavirus-pandemic/">it will collect race-based data</a> during the pandemic.</p>
<p>Williams’ revised position certainly eases tensions with a coalition of Black health leaders that has called for attention to race. </p>
<p>Endorsed by 192 organizations and 1,612 individuals, the coalition wrote an <a href="https://www.allianceon.org/news/Letter-Premier-Ford-Deputy-Premier-Elliott-and-Dr-Williams-regarding-need-collect-and-use-socio">open letter</a> to Ontario Premier Doug Ford and other provincial officials. It argues for “the collection and use of socio-demographic and race-based data in health and social services … as it relates to COVID-19.” </p>
<p>But the use of race data may be problematic because links between health conditions and race have been connected to discriminatory outcomes in the past.</p>
<h2>Race-based medical practice</h2>
<p>Diseases like Tay-Sachs and sickle cell anemia <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20058712">have discursively been described as a “Jewish disease” and “Black disease” respectively at least since the early 1900s</a>, even though these associations with races <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13557858.2010.541902">can lead to inaccuracies</a> in terms of who is deemed high risk. Moreover, racializing these diseases reinforced discriminatory notions of race that were tied to other policies of racial oppression, such as <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/testing-fate">anti-immigrationism</a>.</p>
<p>Because <a href="http://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp1511294">race data are routinely associated with medical conditions and treatment</a>, many medical doctors turn to race as <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/testing-fate">illness inducing</a>, instead of examining an individual’s symptoms, individual patient history or family history. </p>
<p>Racial categories are therefore deemed scientific, despite their <a href="https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mjlst/vol12/iss1/3/">unscientific construction</a>.</p>
<h2>Racializing COVID-19</h2>
<p>If race-based data collection is to be attached to COVID-19 in Ontario, then attention should be given to what happens when medical conditions are associated with one’s race. </p>
<p>What happens when a disease is racialized? One example of the racializing of COVID-19 are the many <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/anti-asian-racism-on-the-rise-in-canada-s-biggest-cities-amid-covid-19-crisis-poll-1.4913957">cases of anti-Asian racism across North America</a> ignited by <a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-on-covid-19-the-world-succumbed-to-a-pandemic-of-hysteria-more-than-a-virus">xenophobic hysteria</a>. </p>
<p>Another example comes from China where a McDonald’s franchise in Guangzhou <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52274326">allegedly posted a sign</a> in April reading, “We’ve been informed that from now on Black people are not allowed to enter the restaurant” because of “rumours” that coronavirus was spreading among African people. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1250472106766327809"}"></div></p>
<p>If surveillance is the <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-ca/Surveillance+Studies%3A+An+Overview-p-9780745635927">attention to human attributes and behaviours</a> so that people can be “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/Surveillance-as-Social-Sorting-Privacy-Risk-and-Automated-Discrimination/Lyon/p/book/9780415278737">socially sorted</a>” and potentially treated differently, then the systematic collection of race data is also a form of surveillance. </p>
<p>When rumours like those in the McDonald’s example are connected to reports generated through <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html">racial surveillance by leading health agencies that monitor COVID-19 by race</a> (like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), then the racial dimensions of the virus can further fuel xenophobia. </p>
<p>Therefore, a call for <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/dark-matters">increased racial surveillance potentially fuels racism</a>. </p>
<h2>Measuring race, fuelling racism</h2>
<p>Health scholars have raised concerns about “<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-is-not-the-great-equalizer-race-matters-133867">… how anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism and other forms of intersectional violence will impact the health of our communities during this crisis</a>.” </p>
<p>In the open letter from the coalition of Black health leaders to Ontario’s political leaders, a case is made for collecting race data because, “<a href="https://www.allianceon.org/news/Letter-Premier-Ford-Deputy-Premier-Elliott-and-Dr-Williams-regarding-need-collect-and-use-socio">We cannot address what we cannot measure</a>.” But can race be measured?</p>
<p>What determines the boundary between one race and another, especially if self-identification means that race is a subjective term, not a medically objective one? </p>
<p>Prejudicial inferences from race-based data are of significant concern. It is these prejudices, contributing to historical trends of racism, that we are reminded of when recalling Brian Sinclair’s tragic death in a Winnipeg ER. </p>
<p>It is these prejudices that are fuelled by collecting race data for health care, especially when coupled with public hysteria during a pandemic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137284/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sachil Singh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The COVID-19 pandemic presents potentially concerning trajectories for race relations. Many of these concerns might even originate within the medical profession.
Sachil Singh, Adjunct Assistant Professor (Sociology), and Associated Faculty member (Surveillance Studies Centre), Queen's University, Ontario
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/128340
2019-12-15T08:04:29Z
2019-12-15T08:04:29Z
Being darker makes being a migrant much harder
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305423/original/file-20191205-38993-12cdkfr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In India, dark skin is often associated with poverty, partially due to the hierarchichal caste system.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa is becoming infamous on the world stage for its violent, even deadly, xenophobia. Attacks periodically <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47800718">erupt</a>. Often the targets are African foreign nationals as well as Bangladeshis and Pakistanis.</p>
<p>Similarly, in India, xenophobic sentiment is aimed at Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and African migrants, some of whom have <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-failed-to-deter-xenophobic-racist-attacks-on-africans-envoys/articleshow/57989227.cms">even lost their lives</a>.</p>
<p>Yet, in my <a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3-030-04941-6_22-1">research</a> on migration to India and South Africa, I found that migrants’ experiences vary greatly: while many experienced xenophobia, many did not. In fact, there were migrants in both societies who were warmly received and enjoyed xenophilia – the love of foreigners.</p>
<p>The aim of my research was to try to find out why some foreigners are welcomed with open arms while others are denigrated, or even murdered. </p>
<p>I found that socio-economic status was extremely significant. Two additional characteristics also determined what daily life in a new country was like for a person: their skin colour and their country of origin. Local people assign values to these characteristics.</p>
<p>Wealthier, lighter-skinned migrants were often the most warmly greeted, especially those from “developed” countries with <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-abstract/29/2%20(82)/261/31081/Frontier-Heritage-Migration-in-the-Global-Ethnic">“First World cultural capital”</a>.</p>
<p>In a skewed, unequal global economy, it is important to understand how the experiences of white or light-skinned migrants compare to darker-skinned migrants. This comparison enables an analysis of how prejudice and privilege affect daily life. </p>
<p>In South Africa, as in India, whiteness or lightness often denotes power and prestige. There are many stereotypes associated with <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5749813/">skin colour</a>. For example, the label “yellow-bone” is often used in South Africa as a compliment to women with light brown skin. The term is <a href="http://www.bookverdict.com/details.xqy?uri=Product-61940103365638.xml">associated </a>with US slavery.</p>
<p>In South Africa, dark skin is often used as a way to identify foreigners during xenophobic attacks. (Stereotype holds that South Africans are “light” but this is not true as they can have any skin tone.) In India, dark skin is often associated with poverty, partially due to the hierarchichal caste system.</p>
<p>When a migrant enters the new society, the local population tends to “read” the migrant’s skin tone and then assign it positive or negative associations. Thus to understand the migrant experience, we must understand these associations and stereotypes.</p>
<h2>Colour matters</h2>
<p>Skin colour dictates what opportunities and challenges occur in a migrant’s daily life. </p>
<p>For example, previous <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0002764218810758?journalCode=absb">research found</a> that darker-skinned migrants to the US received significantly lower wages than migrants with the same qualifications who had fairer complexions. </p>
<p>My research, which involved collecting data through interviews, focused on middle-class professionals who had left more industrialised countries such as Japan, South Korea and those in the West to live in industrialising countries like India and South Africa. </p>
<p>In India, white men told me how their white privilege enabled them <a href="https://theconversation.com/white-mens-privilege-in-emerging-economies-isnt-measured-it-should-be-75557">to get ahead</a> in their business and social lives. For their part, dark-skinned African migrants told me that they were sometimes called derogatory names like “monkey.” </p>
<p>In South Africa, racial hierarchies affected the experiences of migrants. An American woman living in Johannesburg explained to me that being Caucausian in a highly-racialised South Africa where white people wielded a great deal of economic power afforded her a lot of clout.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If anything, I think I’m surprised by how often as a white American, people are still afraid to confront or challenge me in some way. I think there are times in which probably the colour of my skin gives me power in their eyes…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But white privilege and prejudice against dark skin are not just about a migrant’s skin colour. The reception of a migrant is also related to local attitudes about the migrant’s country of origin.</p>
<h2>Developed country advantage</h2>
<p>People in “emerging markets” like South Africa and India view migrants from more “developed” nations as adding value because they see them as a benefit to their own country’s development. </p>
<p>This belief is based on the perceived relative difference in “modernity” and “developmental” levels between different countries.</p>
<p>For example, in South Africa and India, the <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2017/10/the-african-churches-of-south-delhi/">local populations</a> tended to view their economic development as more “advanced” than that of countries like Zimbabwe or Nigeria.</p>
<p>Hence when South Africans and Indians encounter African migrants they associate them with the negative stereotype of being from less “developed” countries.</p>
<p>The inverse perception becomes a benefit for migrants from “First World” countries. Researchers in international politics illustrate how <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264774679_Volgy_Thomas_J_Jennifer_L_Miller_Jacob_Cramer_Megan_Hauser_Paul_Bezerra_2013_An_Exploration_Into_Status_Attribution_in_International_Politics_Occasional_Paper_Series_on_Political_Science_and_Public_Po">“status attribution”</a> benefits powerful countries because their perceived status gives them even more power. This is true for migrants from powerful countries too. </p>
<p>Many of the middle-class professionals I studied were actually economic migrants seeking out better opportunities by moving to “developing” countries. But they were not perceived in the same way as economic migrants from poorer countries because of the admiration local people had for their country of origin.</p>
<p>A white American man who moved from New York to Johannesburg told me that South Africans would ask him: “Why would you choose to be here as opposed to the USA … I think the States in general, Europe in general, people look up to it.”</p>
<p>A white Dutch woman who had moved to Cape Town told me, “Many
people think of Europe as this wonderful place of opportunity and of education … I think that’s why many people are quite open to having me.”</p>
<p>Developed-country advantage is not only enjoyed by white migrants. I found that skin colour, like gender, was a dependent variable that was interpreted in relation to other factors. African American, black British, and Afro-German migrants I interviewed in South Africa also reported experiencing the developed country advantage.</p>
<p>When a migrant benefits from positive stereotypes of being wealthier, fairer or coming from a “developed” country, xenophilia can result. The converse is that being perceived as darker, poorer and coming from an “inferior” country can factor into xenophobia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128340/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa Tandiwe Myambo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
For migrants, prejudice can be a life and death matter. Research in India and South Africa shows life is considerably harder if migrants have a darker skin and come from a poorer country.
Melissa Tandiwe Myambo, Research Associate, Centre for Indian Studies, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/109621
2019-01-23T11:48:08Z
2019-01-23T11:48:08Z
Why it’s wrong to label students ‘at-risk’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254420/original/file-20190117-32807-1skekoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The term "at-risk" is frequently used to describe students from challenging circumstances. Some educators are working to change that.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-people-education-group-hispanic-students-583892335?src=ATrTAJnT0I6cVrwmvHbO2g-8-27">Diego Cervo/www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Of all the terms used to describe students who don’t perform well in traditional educational settings, <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED493702">few are used as frequently</a>– or as casually – as the term “at-risk.”</p>
<p>The term is regularly used in <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/pubs92/92042.pdf">federal</a> and <a href="https://www.kob.com/new-mexico-news/lawmakers-plan-to-provide-a-better-education-for-at-risk-students/5214101/">state</a> education policy discussions, as well as <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/beta-story-container/US/lebron-james-opening-school-risk-kids-culmination-decade/story?id=56913186">popular news articles</a> and <a href="https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/02/at-risk-students.aspx">specialty trade journals</a>. It is <a href="https://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/DefiningAtRisk1.pdf">often applied to large groups</a> of students with little regard for the <a href="https://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/2513">stigmatizing effect</a> that it can have on students.</p>
<p>As education researcher <a href="https://naeducation.org/our-members/gloria-ladson-billings/">Gloria Ladson-Billings</a> <a href="https://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/2513">once said of the term “at-risk,”</a> “We cannot saddle these babies at kindergarten with this label and expect them to proudly wear it for the next 13 years, and think, ‘Well, gee, I don’t know why they aren’t doing good.’” </p>
<p>My most recent encounter with the term “at-risk” came when I was tapped to review and <a href="http://dls.maryland.gov/pubs/prod/NoPblTabMtg/CmsnInnovEduc/2018_12_06_ToldsonFinalRecommendations2.pdf">critique</a> a draft report for the Maryland Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education, also known as the “<a href="http://dls.maryland.gov/policy-areas/commission-on-innovation-and-excellence-in-education">Kirwan Commission</a>.”</p>
<p>The Kirwan Commission, chaired by <a href="https://www.agb.org/bios/william-e-kirwan">William E. Kirwan</a>, a longtime higher education leader, was <a href="http://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2016RS/chapters_noln/Ch_702_hb0999T.pdf">created in 2016</a> to make recommendations for improving education in Maryland. The initial draft of the Kirwan Commission report included a working group report called, “More Resources for At-risk Students.”</p>
<p>Fortunately, in this instance, commission members were aware of some common objections to using “at-risk” to categorize students and <a href="https://www.aclu-md.org/en/press-releases/race-equity-expert-delivers-highly-anticipated-second-address-kirwan-commission-what">publicly discussed</a> the <a href="https://www.edglossary.org/at-risk/">limitations</a> of using the term. Some of those objections included risk of social stigma to students and <a href="http://www2.ncte.org/blog/2017/02/redefining-risk-new-times-call-new-ground-rules/">lack of a uniform definition</a> of “at-risk.”</p>
<p>However, when it came to finding a better way to describe students who show lower levels of academic success because of nonacademic factors, such as poverty, trauma and lack of English proficiency, commission members were not sure what term to use.</p>
<p>As an <a href="http://www.qem.org/presidentbio/">outside consultant</a> for the commission, I was asked to come up with an acceptable alternative word or phrase. As I argue in my forthcoming book, “<a href="https://brill.com/view/title/54716">No BS (Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe in Black People Enough Not to Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear about Black People</a>,” three things are essential to good decision making in education: good data, thoughtful analysis and compassionate understanding. What I have to say about the term “at-risk” will be based on those three things.</p>
<h2>Practical uses exist</h2>
<p>First, let’s acknowledge that, paired with good data, “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/01623737015004380?fbclid=IwAR0hGmYiFL93HcnHT2SUCfCYcDBQvR_ZmqfuahwFO_TnIY3dIhx4uvqWiac">at-risk</a>” is practically useful and generally accepted in professional and academic settings. Used <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25608745?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">effectively</a>, identifying risk and protective factors can help mitigate harm to students.</p>
<p>For example, dating back to the 1960s, research about how <a href="http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/90/6/855.short">exposure to lead</a> placed children at risk for cognitive impairments helped educators create <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1240871/pdf/ehp0110-000563.pdf">safer learning environments</a> for students by removing lead from paint, toys and drinking water.</p>
<p>Today, in educational <a href="https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/S1479-3644(2009)0000007009">research</a> and <a href="https://www.fdschools.org/departments/student-services/at-risk-programs">practice</a>, educators <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED493702">routinely use “at-risk”</a> to classify students who do not perform well in traditional educational settings. However, the factors that determine “at-risk” are often either unknown or beyond the control of the student, caregiver or educational provider.</p>
<p>As a scholar of counseling psychology – and as one who specializes in <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=i9M5DQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA143&dq=Ivory+Toldson+counseling+psychology&ots=mwAv76j3Ea&sig=MBU-X3J5lMJkQKaVyz-LuvWdFvE#v=onepage&q=Ivory%20Toldson%20counseling%20psychology&f=false">counseling persons of black African ancestry</a> – I believe that to designate a child “at-risk” for factors such as growing up in a single-parent household, having a history of abuse or neglect, or how much money their families make or their race or ethnicity – adds more chaos and confusion to the situation. Instead, compassion and care are what are needed.</p>
<h2>Never use ‘at-risk’ as an adjective</h2>
<p>Using “at-risk” as an adjective for students is problematic. It makes “at-risk” a category like honors student, student athlete or college-bound student. “Risk” should describe a condition or situation, not a person. Therefore, “More Resources for At-risk Students” might more appropriately be “More Resources to Reduce Risk Factors for Students.”</p>
<h2>Be specific</h2>
<p>Assessments of risk should be based on good data and thoughtful analysis – not a catch-all phrase to describe a cluster of ill-defined conditions or characteristics. If the phrase “at-risk” must be used, it should be in a sentence such as: “‘This’ places students at risk for ‘that.’” If the “this” and “that” are not clearly defined, the “at-risk” characterization is useless at best, and harmful at worst. But when these variables are clearly defined, it better enables educators and others to come up with the solutions needed to reduce specific risk factors and improve outcomes.</p>
<h2>Skip the alternatives</h2>
<p>Common alternatives to “at-risk” include “historically underserved,” “disenfranchised” and “placed at-risk.” These indicators acknowledge that outside forces have either not served the individual student or population well, or have assigned the at-risk label to unwitting subjects.</p>
<p>These phrases move the conversation in the right direction. However, using these phrases still comes up short because they obscure the problem. For example, research suggests that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10509674.2010.519666">child abuse</a>, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10911359.2013.747407">poverty</a> and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25608729?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">racism</a> can place students at risk. However, different strategies can lessen each risk. When the risk factors are more clearly identified, it puts educators and others in a better position to strategically confront the issues that impede student learning. It also better enables educators and others to view the individual student separately and apart from the particular risk.</p>
<p>Some have suggested replacing the term “at-risk” with “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fQX2czepcW8C&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=%22at-risk%22+%22at-promise%22&ots=yLkU8c1_8q&sig=Jf5h6Ya_p9gIh-p7n0RP7OmRNlM#v=onepage&q=%22at-risk%22%20%22at-promise%22&f=false">at-promise</a>.” While well-intended, the problem I see with that is it could easily be seen as a condescending euphemism for the term it was meant to replace.</p>
<h2>The best alternative for ‘at-risk’</h2>
<p>In my book, I describe an in-service training for staff members of a public high school, in which I asked the participants to describe the neighborhoods of their students. I heard phrases like “crime-ridden,” “broken homes” and “drug-infested.” I then asked if anyone grew up in neighborhoods that had similar characteristics. After several raised their hands, I asked, “How did you grow up in such a neighborhood and still become successful?” This question spurred a more meaningful discussion about the neighborhoods where students are from. It was a discussion that considered community assets – such as hope and resilience – against a more thoughtful examination of community challenges.</p>
<p>Every student has a combination of risk and protective factors among their friends, in their homes, schools and neighborhoods. These factors can help or hurt their academic potential. Students who live in poverty, or have been assigned to special education, or have a history of trauma, or who are English learners, may or may not be “at risk” depending on their respective protective factors. But when students are labeled “at-risk,” it serves to treat them as a problem because of their risk factors. Instead, students’ unique experiences and perspectives should be normalized, not marginalized. This reduces a problem known as <a href="https://www.edglossary.org/stereotype-threat/">“stereotype threat,”</a> a phenomenon in which students perform worse academically when they are worried about living up to a negative stereotype about their group.</p>
<p>For all these reasons and more, I believe the best alternative to describe “at-risk students” is simply “students.” For what it’s worth, the Kirwan Commission agrees. The commission recently <a href="http://dls.maryland.gov/pubs/prod/NoPblTabMtg/CmsnInnovEduc/2019_01_18_PolicyArea4.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2rCDkWkBSdXnbfQely6FiUiUoGU2aupfmXrxPVm360veL_VVceEa4KBXc">revised its call</a> for “More Resources for At-risk Students” to “More Resources to Ensure All Students are Successful.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109621/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ivory A. Toldson is affiliated with Howard University and The QEM Network. </span></em></p>
Using the term ‘at-risk’ to describe students from challenging circumstances often creates more problems than it solves, a professor of counseling psychology argues.
Ivory A. Toldson, Professor of Counseling Psychology, Howard University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/102982
2018-09-11T11:10:53Z
2018-09-11T11:10:53Z
The Herald Sun’s Serena Williams cartoon draws on a long and damaging history of racist caricature
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235742/original/file-20180911-144455-1pdd051.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Racist caricatures began appearing in the US as slavery was coming to an end. They have persisted into the 21st century.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jason Szenes/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the aftermath of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/09/sports/serena-osaka-us-open-penalty.html">dramatic US Open women’s final</a> between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, Herald Sun cartoonist Mark Knight <a href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/editorial-mark-knights-cartoon-rightly-mocks-serena-williams-us-open-finals-dummyspit/news-story/bff3c329c6c706b966636620bcb21be7">sketched a cartoon</a> of Williams that has drawn opprobrium worldwide. </p>
<p>Critics such as writer <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/j-k-rowling-leads-condemnation-of-australian-artist-s-racist-cartoon-of-serena-williams-20180911-p502yl.html">J.K. Rowling</a> and basketball player <a href="https://au.sports.yahoo.com/truly-disappointed-ben-simmons-blasts-serena-williams-cartoon-031740595.html">Ben Simmons</a> have denounced it as racist and sexist. However, the Herald Sun’s editor defended Knight, saying the cartoon had “<a href="https://sslcam.news.com.au/cam/authorise?channel=pc&url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.heraldsun.com.au%2fnews%2fvictoria%2fherald-sun-backs-mark-knights-cartoon-on-serena-williams%2fnews-story%2f30c877e3937a510d64609d89ac521d9f">nothing to do with gender or race</a>”.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1039135147415793664"}"></div></p>
<p>But whether Knight and his editor realise it or not, the cartoon draws on at least 200 years of racist and sexist caricaturing of African and African-descended women.</p>
<h2>Early cartoon caricatures</h2>
<p>In the United States, the tradition of racist caricature began as slavery came to end. This was not a coincidence.</p>
<p>The first place to <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/vermont-1777-early-steps-against-slavery">outlaw slavery</a> in the newly formed United States was Vermont in 1777. Over the next 50 years, northern states abolished slavery at different rates. Then, in 1861, the nation <a href="https://www.nps.gov/shil/learn/historyculture/upload/SLAVERY-BROCHURE.pdf">went to war</a> over slavery, and with the Union’s victory four years later, this dark period of the nation’s history officially came to a close. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-is-bigger-than-serena-williams-lessons-from-the-2018-us-open-tennis-102912">This is bigger than Serena Williams: lessons from the 2018 US Open tennis</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>But wealthy whites’ desire for cheap labour did not end. In order to maintain a permanent underclass of workers, new and pernicious forms of racial classifications emerged. These were designed to keep black people “in their place,” or prevent them from becoming “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/11/yep-uppity-racist/335160/">uppity</a>.”</p>
<p>The 19th century also saw the solidifying of now-discredited forms of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-biggest-mistake-in-the-history-of-science-70575">science</a> that pegged <a href="https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/diversity-in-science/black-history/types-of-mankind/">races</a> to a so-called ladder of civilisation. White people, in this logic, had ascended to the top of the ladder. In the United States, African-descended people were at the bottom. (In <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/04/11/3187793.htm">Australia</a>, white people pegged Aboriginal people to the bottom rung.)</p>
<p>Alongside such ideas came new ways to represent - or misrepresent - groups of people in imagery. Racist and sexist caricaturing became a staple of newspapers and pamphlets, which were circulating ever more cheaply by the decade. This was “<a href="http://clements.umich.edu/exhibits/online/colorline/colorline.html">racism’s visual vocabulary</a>”, to use a phrase coined by American professor <a href="http://history.jhu.edu/directory/martha-jones/">Martha S. Jones</a>.</p>
<p>American cartoonists exaggerated the features, clothes, speech and deportment of black people. The effect, as in Edward Clay’s famed “<a href="http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/gallclayf.html">Life in Philadelphia</a>” series, was to suggest that African Americans would never fit into city life as free people. Such stereotypes helped undermine free black people’s claim to citizenship and to rights as fundamental as the vote. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235743/original/file-20180911-144482-l9szqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235743/original/file-20180911-144482-l9szqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235743/original/file-20180911-144482-l9szqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235743/original/file-20180911-144482-l9szqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235743/original/file-20180911-144482-l9szqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235743/original/file-20180911-144482-l9szqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235743/original/file-20180911-144482-l9szqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Life in Philadelphia etching.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">US Library of Congress</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stereotypes of black people took several forms. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minstrel_show#Zip_Coon">Zip Coon</a> was a dandy who imperfectly mimicked modern city ways and never earned an honest dollar; the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammy_archetype">“mammy”</a> existed only to take care of white people; harmless “uncles” or <a href="https://ferris.edu/jimcrow/coon/">“sambos”</a> were not very bright and good only for menial labour. </p>
<p>Cartoons often infantilised black people into odd-looking, overgrown “<a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2007.7.188ab?destination=explore/collection/search%3Fedan_q%3D%252A%253A%252A%26edan_fq%255B0%255D%3Dtopic%253A%2522Stereotypes%2522%26edan_local%3D1%26op%3DSearch">picaninnies</a>”, similar to Knight’s depiction of Williams in his cartoon.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235766/original/file-20180911-144479-143e9x6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235766/original/file-20180911-144479-143e9x6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235766/original/file-20180911-144479-143e9x6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235766/original/file-20180911-144479-143e9x6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235766/original/file-20180911-144479-143e9x6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235766/original/file-20180911-144479-143e9x6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235766/original/file-20180911-144479-143e9x6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aunt Jemima advertisement from 1909.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">US Library of Congress</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Damaging stereotypes of hyper-sexed black characters emerged too, including the “<a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/toms-coons-mulattoes-mammies-and-bucks-9780826429537/">buck</a>” and “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Mammies_No_More.html?id=wTtaAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Jezebel</a>.” These served as yet another way to control black lives and labour.</p>
<h2>Minstrels and film</h2>
<p>Caricatures also extended beyond cartoons to what was fast becoming the most popular form of entertainment in the 19th century United States: <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-blackface-97987">blackface minstrelsy</a>. Audiences across the country, and eventually all over the world (<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10314618908595819?journalCode=rahs20">including</a> <a href="https://bellanta.wordpress.com/2007/11/15/the-larrikins-hop-blackface-minstrel-routines/">Australia</a>) revelled in this new comic form. Sharing a laugh by making fun of black people became one way that white Americans united with large new groups of immigrants.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-spike-lees-blackkklansman-language-is-power-102716">In Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, language is power</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The idea that African-descended people were somehow less human or less advanced also enabled white people of different classes to feel united and superior to black people. This feeling of superiority is what black intellectual and activist W. E. B. Du Bois <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/magazine/how-privilege-became-a-provocation.html">called</a> “a psychological wage”. It helped wealthy white people suppress alliances between poor white people and black people who had been enslaved, or their descendants.</p>
<p>Racist caricaturing was so useful to those in power that by the end of the 19th century it was everywhere. Consumer goods, an ever-expanding market, were sold with images of caring <a href="http://gawker.com/397129/just-how-racist-was-aunt-jemima">Aunt Jemima</a> and benign <a href="https://www.wired.com/2007/03/racist-or-not-u/">Uncle Ben</a> (the latter is still on grocery shelves in Australia today, albeit with an updated image).</p>
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<p>Such caricaturing continued to demean African Americans into the <a href="https://youtu.be/1XolTnP83wE?t=2261">20th century</a>. Some of the very first <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520233492/migrating-to-the-movies#table-of-contents">short films</a> and <a href="https://youtu.be/QBYTFbK4Ud0?t=1570">feature films</a> in the United States centred on black characters who were stereotyped as lazy, thieving and/or stupid. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Jazz-Singer-film-1927">The Jazz Singer</a>, the first “talkie” released in 1927, featured Al Jolson in blackface singing a song called “Mammy”. </p>
<p>Right into my childhood in regional Australia, racial caricatures could be seen on TV’s Bugs Bunny, while more recent examples include <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rn6N1kuZ_o">Eddie Murphy’s donkey</a> in Shrek (2001) and the <a href="https://medium.com/writing-the-ship/racism-in-the-lion-king-2c7a044ec6de">Lion King’s hyenas</a> (1994).</p>
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<p>The purpose of racist caricature of African Americans is no longer to maintain a cheap workforce. It is also vital to note the ways African Americans have <a href="https://walkerart.org/collections/artists/kara-walker">resisted</a>, <a href="http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/fall_2009/cutler.htm">negotiated</a> and <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300188189/sister-citizen">minimised</a> harm wherever possible. But such images do continue to perpetuate racist myths about black people’s natures and capabilities, with other deleterious effects. They have had a long, damaging history, and it’s time that 21st century media outlets such as the Herald Sun let them go.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102982/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clare Corbould receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>
The Herald Sun claims its cartoon of Serena Williams isn’t racist, but it draws on 200 years of caricaturing of African women.
Clare Corbould, Associate professor, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/74912
2017-10-30T01:52:29Z
2017-10-30T01:52:29Z
Measuring the implicit biases we may not even be aware we have
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192256/original/file-20171027-13331-15sspo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Introspection won't necessarily reveal what's going on in there.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/OWSC2LRuO8U">Photo by Septian simon on Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When most people think of bias, they imagine an intentional thought or action – for example, a conscious belief that women are worse than men at math or a deliberate decision to pull someone over because of his or her race. Gender and race biases in the United States have historically been overt, intentional and highly visible. But, changes to the legal system and norms guiding acceptable behavior in the U.S. have led to <a href="http://news.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-whites.aspx">clear reductions in such explicit bias</a>. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, we still see disparities in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.canep.2016.07.018">health</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/us/no-sharp-rise-seen-in-police-killings-though-increased-focus-may-suggest-otherwise.html">law enforcement</a>, <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/28/5-facts-about-latinos-and-education/">education</a> and <a href="http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-ceos-sp-500">career</a> outcomes depending on group membership. And many large-scale disparities we see in society also show up in small-scale <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1211286109">studies of behavior</a>. So, how are these inequalities sustained in a country that prides itself on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2010.00604.x">egalitarianism</a>?</p>
<p>Of course, overt sexists and racists still exist and explicit biases are important. However, this isn’t how many social and organizational scientists like us currently understand <a href="https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/faqs.html#faq11">prejudice</a> – negative attitudes toward members of a social group – and <a href="https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/faqs.html#faq1">stereotyping</a> – beliefs about the characteristics of a social group. Our field is working to understand and measure implicit bias, which stems from attitudes or stereotypes that occur largely outside of conscious awareness and control.</p>
<h2>How to reveal biases we may not know we have</h2>
<p>In many cases, people don’t know they have these implicit biases. Much like we cannot introspect on how our stomachs or lungs are working, we cannot simply “look inside” our own minds and find our implicit biases. Thus, we can only understand implicit bias through the use of psychological measures that get around the problems of self-report.</p>
<p>There are a number of measures of implicit bias; the most widely used is called the Implicit Association Test (IAT; you can try one <a href="http://implicit.harvard.edu">here</a>). Researchers have published <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=302378224541015580&hl=en&as_sdt=40005&sciodt=0,10">thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles</a> based on the IAT since its creation in 1998. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192294/original/file-20171027-13340-t3od9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192294/original/file-20171027-13340-t3od9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192294/original/file-20171027-13340-t3od9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192294/original/file-20171027-13340-t3od9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192294/original/file-20171027-13340-t3od9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192294/original/file-20171027-13340-t3od9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192294/original/file-20171027-13340-t3od9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192294/original/file-20171027-13340-t3od9l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Example of a screen in the IAT. Participants are asked to sort the image in the middle to the left or right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Project Implicit</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The IAT measures the strength of associations between social groups (for instance, black and white people) and evaluations (such as good and bad). Just as you likely have a strong mental link between peanut butter and jelly, or doctor and nurse, our minds make links between social groups (like “women”) and evaluations (“positive”) or stereotypes (“nurturing”). </p>
<p>When taking an Implicit Association Test, one rapidly sorts images of black and white people and positive and negative words. The main idea is that making a response is easier when items that are more closely related in memory share the same response key. In one part of the test, black faces and negative words share the same response key, while white faces and positive words share a different response key. In another part of the test, white faces and negative words share the same response key, and black faces and positive words share a different response key. The extent to which one is able to do the white + good version of the test more easily than the black + good version reflects an implicit pro-white bias.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192295/original/file-20171027-13327-1ejowp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192295/original/file-20171027-13327-1ejowp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192295/original/file-20171027-13327-1ejowp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192295/original/file-20171027-13327-1ejowp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192295/original/file-20171027-13327-1ejowp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192295/original/file-20171027-13327-1ejowp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192295/original/file-20171027-13327-1ejowp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192295/original/file-20171027-13327-1ejowp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Other screens within the IAT are text-based.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Project Implicit</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Pro-white implicit biases are pervasive. <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10463280701489053">Data from millions of visitors</a> to the <a href="http://implicit.harvard.edu">Project Implicit website</a> reveal that, while about 70 percent of white participants report having no preference between black and white people, nearly the same number show some degree of pro-white preference on the IAT. Other tests reveal biases in favor of straight people over gay people, abled people over disabled people and thin people over fat people, and show that people associate men with science more readily than they associate women with science.</p>
<h2>Do IAT scores relate to real-world behavior?</h2>
<p>Another central question about implicit bias and the IAT is how it relates to discriminatory behavior. Arguably, what people actually do is most important, particularly when trying to understand how individual biases might lead to societal disparities.</p>
<p>And, in fact, researchers have demonstrated that people’s scores on the IAT predict how they behave. For example, one study showed that physicians with higher levels of implicit race bias were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-007-0258-5">less likely to recommend appropriate treatment</a> for a black patient than a white patient with coronary artery disease. A meta-analysis of more than 150 studies also supports the idea that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015575">there is a reliable relationship</a> between implicit bias, measured by the IAT, and real-world behavior.</p>
<p>This is not to say, however, that there’s a one-to-one correspondence between implicit bias and behavior; someone with strong pro-white implicit bias might sometimes hire a black employee, and someone with little or no implicit pro-white bias might sometimes discriminate against a black person in favor of a less qualified white person.</p>
<p>While the link between race bias and behavior is robust, it is also <a href="https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/DV8TU">fairly small</a>. But small <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000016">does not mean unimportant</a>. Small effects can have cumulative consequences at both the societal level (across lots of different people making decisions) and at the individual level (across lots of different decisions that one person makes). And some implicit biases are more related to behavior than others; for example, implicit political preferences have a very strong relationship with voting behavior.</p>
<p>Certainly more work is needed to understand the precise conditions under which the IAT will predict behavior, and how strongly, and for what attitudes. But in the aggregate, across people and settings, there is a substantial body of evidence indicating that the IAT is related to behavior.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192289/original/file-20171027-13367-1n91323.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192289/original/file-20171027-13367-1n91323.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192289/original/file-20171027-13367-1n91323.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192289/original/file-20171027-13367-1n91323.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192289/original/file-20171027-13367-1n91323.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192289/original/file-20171027-13367-1n91323.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192289/original/file-20171027-13367-1n91323.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192289/original/file-20171027-13367-1n91323.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Job applicants at a career fair might be up against the implicit biases of the hirer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/byuhawaii/8225243182">BYU–Hawaii</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>With or without a test, implicit bias exists</h2>
<p>The idea that people have associations in their minds, particularly in socially sensitive domains, that contradict their self-reported beliefs is well-established within the social sciences. But there remain important open questions about how best to identify and quantify such implicit biases and when and how implicit biases in people’s minds translate into meaningful, real-world behavior.</p>
<p>The IAT has withstood constant <a href="https://faculty.washington.edu/agg/iat_validity.htm">criticism since its creation</a> in 1998. These critiques have led to improvements of the measure and the way it is scored, as well as the tempering of early claims and the creation of new measurement procedures. That’s the way a healthy science progresses. As a result of criticism, the IAT is one of the best-understood psychological measures in use by social scientists.</p>
<p>Even if it were to turn out that our current measures of implicit bias are problematic, that would have little bearing on whether or not implicit bias exists. Mental links between social groups and evaluations and attributes are real. Bias exists. And while learning about implicit bias can be an important step in initiating behavior change for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2017.35.5.520">some people</a>, there is no published evidence that awareness alone is an antidote to the influence of implicit bias. To see a reduction in bias-based disparity, it is essential that we develop and implement empirically tested interventions – specific tools we can use to produce egalitarian behavior.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74912/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Ratliff is Executive Director of and a consultant with Project Implicit, Inc. She has received grant funding from that organization to study issues related to implicit bias.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colin Smith is Director of Education of and a consultant with Project Implicit, Inc. </span></em></p>
Prejudice and stereotypes are part of why social inequality persists. Social scientists use tests to measure the implicit biases people harbor and see how much they relate to actions.
Kate Ratliff, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Florida
Colin Smith, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Florida
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83331
2017-09-05T11:52:33Z
2017-09-05T11:52:33Z
From Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Hellboy: the ongoing problem of Hollywood ‘whitewashing’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184683/original/file-20170905-13783-q1ohib.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mickey Rooney as Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/29069717@N02/31910335016/in/photolist-U8jrQq-T5V89f-TMkLaY-U8jszS-T5Vei9-T5V7dN-T8GoDR-U8jrAN-T5Vemq-U8jsgq-T8Goci-T5V8jf-T8GpBc-QBNNRW-QuBw4X-QrSmnw-QuJYFF-QrShvd-QuBwoK-PoFvN5-PoFsqd-QrSm9f-QBNNAf-Q6We1h-PoFt9Y-QBKA1w-PoFwSQ-QuJYpP-QrSkVQ-PoFtr1-QrScRU-Q6WgnG-QrShQ1-QrSi8L-PoFsES-PoFw4L-PoFrTG-PoPp3L-PoFvHq-QBL78q-QrSkvm-PoFvVE-Q749DC-QBC27u-QEWzfn-QrSir1-Q77T1q-5dQV2X-PrAh6B-QEY1VD">Classic Film/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Actor Ed Skrein’s much applauded <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41077054">withdrawl</a> from the role of Asian character, Major Ben Daimio, in the Hellboy reboot has again highlighted the pervasive practice of “whitewashing” in contemporary Hollywood. Whitewashing is not new. It was a common practice in classical Hollywood where some of its most egregious examples include <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/movie-toxic-killed-john-wayne-tragedy-conqueror/">John Wayne as Ghengis Khan</a> in The Conqueror and Mickey Rooney as Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. </p>
<p>Audiences know instinctively that whitewashing is bad – hence the criticisms of other whitewashing films and the resulting hashtag <a href="http://starringjohncho.com/">#StarringJohnCho</a> that went viral in spring 2016. As a cultural practice, having white people play, replace and stereotype characters of colour obscures and erases their history, agency and power. Although it is fair to reject whitewashing as false and offensive on these ideological grounds, to do so without further scrutiny does not allow us to explore the reasons why it exists.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EHt0Pb8rkXU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Whitewashing happens in a number of ways. It can be the whitening through casting of a character who was originally a person of colour in historical or source material, as with Daimio in the new Hellboy or Major (Scarlett Johansson) in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219827/">Ghost in the Shell</a>. But it can also be the casting of a white actor to play a character of colour and the use of makeup, acting and other features of <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199587261.001.0001/acref-9780199587261-e-0447">mise-en-scene</a>, editing and narrative to draw on racial attributes – a practice often referred to as Yellow, Brown or <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/01/history-of-blackface_n_4175051.html">Blackface</a>. One early use of the latter includes D W Griffith’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/story/20150206-the-most-racist-movie-ever-made">Birth of Nation</a> in 1915: a white supremacist text that celebrates the founding of the Klu Klux Klan. All the major black characters are played by white actors in Blackface.</p>
<h2>Whiteness as the ‘norm’</h2>
<p>Whitewashing exists historically and contemporaneously in Hollywood because from its early and silent periods Hollywood has, as Daniel Bernardi points out in <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/classic-hollywood-classic-whiteness">Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness</a> “constructed whiteness as the ‘norm’”. What’s more, Hollywood acting styles have shown “whiteness” to be the norm over “otherness”. Look no further than John Wayne’s impassive acting style in almost every film he appears in. We also see the assumption of whiteness as the norm in the idea that a white actor can play any character by simply “being” themselves or – if they are cast as a character of colour – by putting on an accent, makeup and other ethnically defining attributes and performance styles. </p>
<p>The flip side of whitewashing is that an actor of colour can only ever be cast as a character of colour and must perform in a way that marks or over determines their “difference” to the “norm”. Thus, in John Ford’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040064/">Three Godfathers</a>, Mexican actor Pedro Armendariz – who actually grew up in the US and spoke English without an accent – has to put on a stereotypical Mexican accent and act with exaggerated gestures to play a Mexican character.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184686/original/file-20170905-13755-11pg7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184686/original/file-20170905-13755-11pg7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184686/original/file-20170905-13755-11pg7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184686/original/file-20170905-13755-11pg7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184686/original/file-20170905-13755-11pg7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184686/original/file-20170905-13755-11pg7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184686/original/file-20170905-13755-11pg7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charlton Heston (far right) playing Mexican character Mike Vargas in Tough of Evil.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pinkcowphotography/5548817119/in/photolist-9sk91F-5QnLkJ-4NtPhe-NowwZ-7op5bG-494c6m-4zq9N3-9pPfRV-4zkYm8-4zqca1-4zq9xC-4ZkZvY-5fNosy-4ZgM7F-4zkiqi-5Qivon-4zkTPr-5FzhUw-d2jLc-8aX4gf-rdYxkJ-rqKUza-d5L52G-qfb5oo-a8dXe-45CWJ7-x6b5F-4RAR8j-qWBt28-r9qJnD-btLj4a-r9qJqV-4M9VDs-rqKUWx-joHUJU-8euaRf-qWvsdY-rqMqxq-omiVJm-hGgDr-qhgB3k-PaQJiJ-oALv4Q-r9F6iU-omjmY8-er15Z-aGxL9c-7sNv3h-btLk8z-jCHgW">CraigDuffy/Flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the post World War II Hollywood of “liberal” race dramas, whitewashing allowed whiteness to be the clear moral voice of films, even when the narrative focus was on non-white characters. For instance, the sense of visible whiteness that whitewashing permitted is important to the 1958 movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052311/">Touch of Evil</a>. In it, Charlton Heston plays Miguel Vargas, a Mexican police chief fighting against corruption and organised crime on both sides of the US/Mexico border. </p>
<p>Heston is visually “Mexicanised”: he has curly hair, a moustache and darker skin. But as the hero of the film, it is important that Heston’s whiteness is maintained, at least in terms of his star profile. Interestingly, Heston went almost directly to the character of Vargas after playing Moses in The Ten Commandments – another whitewashing role.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184685/original/file-20170905-13714-1dgleaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184685/original/file-20170905-13714-1dgleaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184685/original/file-20170905-13714-1dgleaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184685/original/file-20170905-13714-1dgleaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184685/original/file-20170905-13714-1dgleaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184685/original/file-20170905-13714-1dgleaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184685/original/file-20170905-13714-1dgleaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One in Doctor Strange.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.image.net/xads/actions/layout/endusersearch.do?folder_max=48&selection_action=null&box=false&page=3&forward=search&product_nav_root=&product_nav=&category_nav=&search_spec=541516138&display_asset_matches=true&seldir=4&unselected_assets_prodgrid_search=478183579%2C478183586%2C478183598%2C478183620%2C469927379%2C478183236%2C469927344%2C474988334%2C453915623%2C453915624%2C453915634%2C469927333%2C469927352%2C469927367%2C469927373%2C469927375%2C474988355%2C478183297%2C478183250%2C478183311%2C478183536%2C478183615%2C469927364%2C469927388%2C&pageNoTop1=">Film Frame..©2016 Marvel.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the contemporary era, the casting of white actors in non-white roles persists. For this, we need look no further than Tilda Swinton as a Tibetan mentor in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1211837/">Doctor Strange</a>. This despite protests from minority advocacy groups demanding more accurate representation and more parts for actors of colour. </p>
<p>The problem of whitewashing is frequently linked to the lack of diversity and institutional racism of a Hollywood film industry that is disproportionately white and male and in which people of colour are underrepresented – not just in front of the camera but also at the executive level and in producer and director roles.</p>
<p>It has been suggested that the key to solving Hollywood’s whitewashing issue is recognising the achievements of those actors and film personnel of colour who are making films. This has been encapsulated in the hashtag <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/feb/25/oscarssowhite-right-and-wrong-academy-awards-audience">#OscarsSoWhite</a>. There needs to be structural change and more effort needs to be made at getting more minorities into the industry. Audiences also need to start signalling to film executives that the casting of white stars in non-white roles is not acceptable. Ed Skrein’s rejection of whitewashing is to be applauded. We will now see if other actors are brave enough to follow his lead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83331/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dolores Tierney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Why whiteness became the ‘norm’.
Dolores Tierney, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sussex
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/64509
2016-10-05T10:02:20Z
2016-10-05T10:02:20Z
How saying you’re multiracial changes the way people see you
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140199/original/image-20161003-20239-1atkaxm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Race and perceived beauty are closely intertwined.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-176175434/stock-photo-cultural-diversity-two-faces-colored-black-white-yin-yang-style.html?src=pp-same_model-176972174-2&ws=1">'Faces' via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last month, rapper Kanye West posted <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2016/09/kanye-west-multi-racial-casting-call-backlash">a controversial casting call</a> for his clothing line, Yeezy, mandating “multiracial women only.” Many objected, arguing that West had insulted darker-skinned black women. </p>
<p>But Kanye was only adhering to something fairly common in <a href="https://psmag.com/the-idea-of-racial-hierarchy-remains-entrenched-in-americans-psyches-3dcf1cc3a815#.5zxexe2ka">a society that still operates under a racial hierarchy</a>: the belief that multiracial people are more attractive, what <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1070289X.2012.672838">sociologist Jennifer Sims has termed</a> the “biracial beauty stereotype.”</p>
<p>Attractiveness may seem like a trite and shallow topic for an academic to study or even care about. But as a sociologist who specializes in inequality, I believe there’s a great deal to unpack, particularly when exploring how attractiveness might lead to biases in the same way race and gender do. </p>
<p>It’s not just important to point out who we find attractive; just as important is why we find them attractive. I’ve been especially interested in how racial self-identification influences these perceptions, exploring this topic in a recent study.</p>
<h2>The gift of beauty</h2>
<p>A wide variety of research has demonstrated that how attractive you’re perceived to be can dramatically shape your life. For example, <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6348439.pdf">people who are seen as more attractive earn more money</a>, while in the classroom, <a href="http://rer.sagepub.com/content/62/4/413.short">teachers assume attractive people are more capable students</a>. </p>
<p>In addition, a <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0155313">2016 study by sociologist Shawn Bauldry</a> found that more attractive people were much more likely to achieve social mobility. And as with many other aspects of American society, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886903002022">attractiveness has a racial element</a>, with black people on the bottom – seen as the least attractive – and white people perceived as most attractive.</p>
<p>But racialized attractiveness doesn’t operate in a strict dichotomy, with all black people automatically deemed uniformly unattractive.</p>
<p>Instead, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3090169?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">it’s more of a spectrum</a>. Studies have shown that black people who look more stereotypically black (darker skin, bigger lips, wider noses) tend to be perceived as less attractive than those who look less stereotypically black (lighter skin, thin lips, straight hair). </p>
<p>This idea undergirds the biracial beauty stereotype, particularly for black people. The prevailing belief is that multiracial people will have fewer of the physical features that make black people appear unattractive. In other words, in the context of beauty, multiracial means “more white” or “less black.”</p>
<p>These sentiments are historically rooted and build on a <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.600.7562&rep=rep1&type=pdf">long history of racial stratification and color segmentation</a> facilitated by <a href="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-0-387-79098-5_3">the media</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CyQEzCEV9XkC&pg=PA379&lpg=PA379&dq=Mulattoes+and+Blacks:+Intra-group+Color+Differences+and+Social+Stratification+in+Nineteenth-Century+Philadelphia&source=bl&ots=6vEQwFa3qI&sig=PSZzO96tJogilcvl0oGUkCZJQnU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwis1snHy6zPAhUn4YMKHcZYDNsQ6AEILzAF#v=onepage&q=Mulattoes%20and%20Blacks%3A%20Intra-group%20Color%20Differences%20and%20Social%20Stratification%20in%20Nineteenth-Century%20Philadelphia&f=false">social organizations</a> and other cultural forces. It all <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/45857099/Shades_of_Discrimination_Skin_Tone_and_W20160522-8650-5a7h11.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1474880806&Signature=iI3hClyhdNHBl6LWO4my9A9DgbE%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DShades_of_Discrimination_Skin_Tone_and_W.pdf">culminates in a preference for whiteness</a> that privileges black people who appear more like white people.</p>
<h2>Digging deeper</h2>
<p><a href="http://media.wix.com/ugd/5fff9b_76453571b1a54ed0bb5cd1bea7af4317.pdf">In a study I published in The Review of Black Political Economy</a>, I wanted to take this idea a step further. I wondered: What if people who identified as black simply said they were multiracial? Would people, in turn, tend to rate them as more attractive by virtue of how they self-identified? </p>
<p>In other words, is the simple suggestion that a person is not just black but black “plus something else” so powerful that others will think those people are more attractive irrespective of how they actually look?</p>
<p>Research already conducted by <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-010-0010-5">sociologist Siohban Brooks</a> and <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/g-strings-and-sympathy/?viewby=title">cultural anthropologist Katherine Frank</a> hinted this would be the case. In separate studies of American strip club patrons and workers, they found that female exotic dancers would tell customers they were multiracial as a way to make more money. They’d do this regardless of whether they actually identified this way, often fabricating a genealogy (“one-quarter Asian, one-quarter Native American, half black”) instead of just saying they were black.</p>
<p>For my investigation, I relied on regression analysis and a nationally representative survey, <a href="http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth">the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health</a>, which was originally conducted to track the social outcomes of adolescents through young adulthood. A diverse team of trained interviewers collected data on 3,200 black people. The interviewers recorded, among much other information, the skin tone of the respondent on a scale of one to five, hair color, eye color, race and how attractive they perceived the person on a scale from one to five. </p>
<p>The interviewers recorded their information, including attractiveness, about each respondent at the end of each interview – but only after they’d learned the respondent’s racial identification. </p>
<p>I tested whether multiracial black people were rated more attractive than monoracial black people even when accounting for racialized physical features: skin tone, hair color and eye color. </p>
<p>They were. Multiracial identification positively predicted attractiveness regardless of other physical features. In fact, it was a stronger predictor of attractiveness than skin tone – an astonishing finding considering the <a href="http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/03/04/sf.sou007.short">growing amount of research</a> demonstrating the strong negative effect of skin tone on social outcomes. </p>
<p>Not only were people who identified as multiracial rated as more attractive on average, but even the multiracial people with the darkest skin tones were rated as more attractive than the monoracial black people with lighter skin tones. In essence, this combination of results means that simply identifying as multiracial may make a black person appear more attractive to others, regardless of how he or she actually looks.</p>
<h2>The power of simple self-identification</h2>
<p>This complicates both our idea of race and our idea of attractiveness. </p>
<p>Research already suggests that perceived attractiveness influences people’s perception of characteristics completely unrelated to physical appearance. (For example, <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-015-9644-6">people who are perceived as more attractive are also thought to be happier and more competent</a>.) </p>
<p>As far as race is concerned, it adds to our understanding of how knowing someone’s racial identification can have astonishing cognitive effects. </p>
<p>Famously, MacArthur Fellow and social psychologist Jennifer Richeson found that the stress of interracial interactions may be so great that <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/14/3/287.short">it temporarily decreases the memory and reasoning ability</a> of some white people as they struggle to not be perceived as racist. Conversely, <a href="http://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/soco.2005.23.4.336">she found a similar phenomenon at play</a> for black people as they try to avoid conforming to racist stereotypes. And more recently, psychologists Adam Waytz, Kelly Marie Hoffman and Sophie Trawalter report that white people, in a display of dehumanization, <a href="http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/03/1948550614553642.abstract">generally think of black people as superhuman</a>, possessing abnormal strength, speed and pain tolerance.</p>
<p>The relationship between racial identification and attractiveness may operate similarly. It doesn’t matter what we see. The mere suggestion of a person’s blackness creates a cognitive hiccup that leads a sweeping judgment that influences how attractive they seem. </p>
<p>This, in turn, may influence how happy, competent and successful they appear – and, in the end, are.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64509/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert L. Reece does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A sociologist wanted to know how simply self-identifying as ‘multiracial’ – regardless of how you actually looked – would influence your attractiveness.
Robert L. Reece, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology, Duke University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/63861
2016-09-13T00:40:53Z
2016-09-13T00:40:53Z
New research shows how Native American mascots reinforce stereotypes
<p>For years, many have said that sports teams with Native American mascots – the Cleveland Indians, Chicago Blackhawks and Florida State Seminoles, to name a few – perpetuate stereotypes against Native people. Others have <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jeb-bush-washington-redskins-team-dont-change/story?id=34136672">argued</a> that these mascots are harmless; if anything, they symbolize reverence and respect, while honoring the history of Native Americans. </p>
<p>At the epicenter of the debate have been the Washington Redskins, a football team <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dc-sports-bog/wp/2016/07/13/redskins-worth-2-85-billion-eighth-overall-in-the-world-third-highest-in-nfl/">worth nearly US$3 billion</a>. But as the Redskins kicked off their season on Sept. 12, there was hardly a mention of the name controversy that has, in recent years, elicited <a href="http://religionnews.com/2015/06/29/united-church-christ-boycott-washington-redskins/">boycotts</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/judge-upholds-cancellation-of-redskins-trademarks-in-a-legal-and-symbolic-setback-for-team/2015/07/08/5a65424e-1e6e-11e5-aeb9-a411a84c9d55_story.html">lawsuits</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/in-minnesota-native-americans-march-rally-to-protest-redskins-name/2014/11/02/fc38b8d0-6299-11e4-836c-83bc4f26eb67_story.html">protests</a>. </p>
<p>Perhaps it’s due to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/new-poll-finds-9-in-10-native-americans-arent-offended-by-redskins-name/2016/05/18/3ea11cfa-161a-11e6-924d-838753295f9a_story.html">Washington Post survey</a> from last spring finding that 90 percent of the Native Americans polled weren’t offended by the Redskins name. Since then, defenders of the name – including team owner Daniel Snyder – have considered the controversy over and done with. The “sticks and stones” argument suggested by the poll makes complete sense from a self-preservation standpoint; after all, Native Americans have had to persevere through worse offenses than mascots. </p>
<p>But that stance ignores the dangerous possibility that such ethnic names and imagery affect how <em>other people</em> view Native Americans – possibly in subtle and damaging ways.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-consumer-psychology/forthcoming-articles/activating-stereotypes-with-brand-imagery-the-role-of-viewer">Our research</a> has shown that incidental exposure to Native American sports mascots can reinforce stereotypes in people. Perhaps more disturbingly, people aren’t even aware that this subtle reinforcement is taking place. </p>
<h2>How a name strengthens a bias</h2>
<p>In our lab, we showed participants an unfamiliar mascot; some were shown a Native American image, while others were shown an image of an animal. We then measured how strongly all participants associated Native Americans with “warlike,” a stereotype leveraged by many sports teams that use Native mascots (“Braves,” “Warriors”). When asked directly, participants, regardless of the mascot they saw, reported no differences in how warlike they thought Native Americans were. </p>
<p>But when participants completed an indirect – or <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/agg/pdf/Gwald_McGh_Schw_JPSP_1998.OCR.pdf">implicit</a> – stereotype measure, those who’d viewed the Native American mascot were more likely to associate warlike qualities with Native Americans.</p>
<p>This difference in results represents something called <a href="http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1250&context=californialawreview">implicit bias</a>, which often takes place when asking people about socially sensitive subjects such as race or gender. Our participants were either unwilling to admit or unaware of the mascot’s influence on their views of Native Americans; their bias was implicit, either hidden or incognizant.</p>
<p>Implicit bias can influence decisions ranging from <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873">hiring practices</a> to <a href="http://perception.org/app/uploads/2014/11/Implicit-Bias-in-the-Courtroom.pdf">jury preferences</a> and <a href="http://perception.org/app/uploads/2014/11/Implicit-Bias-in-the-Courtroom.pdf">criminal sentencing</a>. And it’s all the more pernicious because the people making these biased decisions are unlikely to be aware that they’re doing so.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the liberal participants in our studies were more affected by Native American mascots than were their conservative peers. </p>
<p>Because liberals often <a href="http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2012/10/poll_majority_of_americans_are/">think of themselves</a> as being less susceptible to racial bias, this might seem counterintuitive. But liberals <a href="http://www-bcf.usc.edu/%7Ejessegra/papers/GrahamHaidtNosek.2009.Moral%20foundations%20of%20liberals%20and%20conservatives.JPSP.pdf">also have been shown</a> to have more malleable worldviews and be more open to new information. And in our study, we found a stereotypical mascot could significantly degrade liberals’ attitudes toward Native Americans.</p>
<h2>Some mascots more damaging than others</h2>
<p>These lab results prompted us to try to replicate our findings in a real world setting. If the media market you live in determines how often you’re exposed to a Native American sports mascot, we would expect to see differences in attitudes toward Native Americans between people who live in cities with Native American-themed sports franchises and people who don’t. Indeed, our results showed that people living in cities with Native American mascots were more likely to think of Native Americans as warlike. </p>
<p>We decided to focus on the Cleveland and Atlanta media markets because the Native American mascots of their baseball teams – the Indians and the Braves – were considered the most and least offensive examples, respectively, according to a pre-experiment survey. (Detroit, home of the Tigers, and Miami, which houses the Marlins, were used as control cities.) </p>
<p>Using the same implicit measures as our earlier study, residents of Cleveland were more likely to associate Native Americans with warlike traits than residents of Atlanta, Detroit and Miami. </p>
<p>In other words, the more offensive the mascot, the greater the effect. </p>
<p>And just like in our lab, liberal participants were particularly sensitive to the influence of the Native American mascot. The study represents perhaps the first real-world demonstration of the adverse effects of incidental exposure to Native American sports mascots in the general population. </p>
<h2>The perils of stereotypes</h2>
<p>Some might wonder what the problem is with being seen as warlike. After all, isn’t that associated with bravery and toughness? </p>
<p>But studies have shown how stereotypes of any kind – even positive ones – carry consequences. They can lead to <a href="http://depts.washington.edu/sibl/Publications/Cheryan%20&%20Bodenhausen%20(2000).pdf">performance anxiety</a>, as <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/scheryan/">Sapna Cheryan</a> and her colleagues found when looking at stereotypes concerning Asian Americans’ math ability. Subsequent studies have shown how experiencing a positive stereotype can make people expect <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B55GW-I12cA-WTVCanlvckVwOEU/view">future prejudicial treatment</a>.</p>
<p>Despite these findings, <a href="http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/11313245/daniel-snyder-redskins-term-honor-respect">defenders of Native American mascots</a> continue to argue that the mascots honor Native Americans and improve perceptions of Native people. </p>
<p>Furthermore, stereotypical representations of minority groups aren’t just relegated to Native American team mascots.</p>
<p>Many prominent brands, such as Aunt Jemimah, Uncle Ben’s and Land-O-Lakes Butter, actively promote certain stereotypes. And as our study showed, these representations can change how we think about the actual members of those groups – often without us even knowing it. </p>
<p>So when it comes to the Washington Redskins – despite the results of the spring poll – the evidence is clear: The presence of the name subconsciously causes people to stereotype Native Americans. Even President Obama <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/president-obama-says-id-think-about-changing-name-of-washington-redskins/2013/10/05/e170b914-2b70-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html">has weighed in</a>, recommending a new name. </p>
<p>He’s right. It’s high time for change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63861/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Angle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
If your city has a team with a Native American mascot, you’re more likely to hold stereotypical views of Native people.
Justin Angle, Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Montana
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/53724
2016-02-04T11:07:51Z
2016-02-04T11:07:51Z
Intersectionality: how gender interacts with other social identities to shape bias
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110235/original/image-20160203-5865-yz096.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Everyone ticks multiple demographic boxes.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=50008087">Form image via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Actress Patricia Arquette’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgOxjdtRwWY">comments at the 2015 Oscars award night</a> drew criticism for implicitly framing gender equality as an issue for straight white women. She insisted that, “It’s time for all the women in America and all the men that love women and all the gay people and all the people of color that we’ve all fought for to fight for us now.”</p>
<p>Among other concerns, critics argued she <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/02/25/what-patricia-arquette-got-wrong-at-the-oscars/">overlooked the unique challenges</a> faced by queer women, women of color and other women at the intersection of multiple minority groups. This sentiment reflects <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/24/why-intersectionality-cant-wait/">a growing movement</a> within feminist circles to understand how people simultaneously face bias along multiple identity dimensions such as gender, race, and sexual orientation – an idea called intersectionality.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ROwquxC_Gxc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw defines and discusses ‘intersectionality’ – a term she coined in the late 1980s to describe how individuals may experience multiple forms of prejudice simultaneously.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Social psychologists have recently joined in this movement, but have also reframed the discussion. The politics on intersectionality can “resemble a score-keeping contest between battle-weary warriors,” argued social psychologists Valerie Purdie-Vaughns and Richard Eibach in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11199-008-9424-4">an influential 2008 review article</a>. “The warriors display ever deeper and more gruesome battle scars in a game of one-upmanship.”</p>
<p>Setting aside these “oppression Olympics,” intersectionality is a fertile area for scientific research, argued Rutgers University psychologist <a href="http://psych.rutgers.edu/faculty-profiles-a-contacts/112-diana-sanchez">Diana Sanchez</a> at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (<a href="http://www.spsp.org/">SPSP</a>) conference last week. At this academic gathering, intersectionality was a major topic at a <a href="http://meeting.spsp.org/gender">daylong session about gender</a>.</p>
<p>Here are three lines of research illustrating how gender interacts with other social identities to shape bias in often surprising ways. People of multiple minority groups face both distinct advantages and disadvantages. Biases based on gender and race do not always simply pile up to create double disadvantages, for instance. </p>
<h2>When stereotypes can both help and hurt black women leaders</h2>
<p>Women are often viewed negatively for exhibiting <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2008.00454.x">traditionally masculine behavior</a>. Assertive female leaders <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00239">are disliked</a>, while assertive male leaders <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.109.3.573">gain respect</a>, for instance. However, could this distaste for assertive female leaders vary by race?</p>
<p>Unlike white women, black women <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0361684312464203">are often stereotyped</a> as being assertive, confident and not feminine. These masculine traits are not only expected for black women but also <em>allowed</em>, at least in leadership roles, according to research presented at the SPSP conference.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.hks.harvard.edu/about/faculty-staff-directory/robert-livingston">Robert Livingston</a>, lecturer of public policy at Harvard University, presented <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797611428079">an experiment</a> about how 84 nonblack participants responded to a corporate executive described as either “tough, determined” or “caring, committed.” The race and gender of the fictitious leader were also varied across conditions.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Robert Livingston discusses his research on how gender and race interact to influence evaluations of corporate leaders.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both white female and black male leaders were rated more negatively when described as tough rather than caring. In contrast, black women faced no such penalty for behaving assertively and were instead rated similarly to white men. Livingston concluded black women “were able to show dominance, assertiveness, agency without the same penalty that either white women or black men suffered.” </p>
<p>He suggested that white women get knocked for being “tough, determined” because they are expected to be warm and caring. Black men are penalized because they are feared by others and activate other stereotypes such as being dangerous. In contrast, black women are expected to be assertive and confident, unlike white women, and they’re not feared in the same way as black men, Livingston suggested.</p>
<p>Livingston, however, emphasized that these evaluations are complex and likely depend on context. In <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.05.002">a follow-up experiment</a> led by Duke University associate professor of management and organizations <a href="http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/faculty_research/faculty_directory/rosette/">Ashleigh Rosette</a>, black female leaders were evaluated especially harshly if their corporation had performed poorly during the past five months. Under those conditions, black women were rated more negatively than white women or black men for the exact same business scenario.</p>
<p>If you are a black woman, you can be an assertive leader as long as you don’t make any mistakes, Livingston argued. “But the first time you make a mistake, your competence is called into question well before the white woman or the black man.”</p>
<h2>When multiple minority identities render groups invisible</h2>
<p>Individuals of multiple minority groups may be overlooked and marginalized for not being prototypical of their respective groups, argued <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/%7Erim2109/Rebecca_Mohr/Home.html">Rebecca Mohr</a>, doctoral psychology student at Columbia University. For instance, white women are seen as prototypical of “women.” Black men are seen as prototypical of “black people.” But black women are seen as neither prototypical of “black people” nor “women,” Mohr argued based on <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11199-008-9424-4">prior research</a>.</p>
<p>Racial minority women can therefore be rendered metaphorically invisible. Along with Columbia Associate Professor of Psychology <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/fac-bios/PurdieVaughnsV/faculty.html">Valerie Purdie-Vaughns</a>, Mohr tested whether racial minority women are featured in mass media less frequently than more prototypical others.</p>
<p>In a currently unpublished study, the researchers analyzed covers of <em>Time</em> magazine published from 1980 to 2008. They chose <em>Time</em> because it’s one of the longest-running U.S. publications and is published weekly, offering a large archive of covers. It’s also a general interest magazine, meaning that people on the covers should presumably “appeal to a wide swath of Americans,” Mohr pointed out.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110232/original/image-20160203-5850-7qdsco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110232/original/image-20160203-5850-7qdsco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110232/original/image-20160203-5850-7qdsco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110232/original/image-20160203-5850-7qdsco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110232/original/image-20160203-5850-7qdsco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110232/original/image-20160203-5850-7qdsco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110232/original/image-20160203-5850-7qdsco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110232/original/image-20160203-5850-7qdsco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photos of racial minority women, like this one of Condoleezza Rice, were underrepresented over the 28 years of analyzed <em>Time</em> covers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Time</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The study found that racial minority women were underrepresented when racial minorities were on the cover of <em>Time</em>. For instance, women were only 20 percent of the covers that featured racial minorities. Conversely, when women were on the cover, racial minority women were underrepresented relative to their share of the U.S. population. </p>
<p>Mohr suggested that these results reflect the broader invisibility of racial minority women in American society. For instance, even though three black queer women <a href="http://blacklivesmatter.com/herstory/">started the Black Lives Matter movement</a>, most media attention <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/05/black-women-police-killing-tanisha-anderson">has focused</a> on black men killed by police. In contrast, black women killed by police such as Meagan Hockaday, Tanisha Anderson and Rekia Boyd are invisible, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/21/black-women-matter_n_7363064.html">critics argue</a>. </p>
<h2>How gender gaps in STEM participation vary by race</h2>
<p>Gender gaps in pursing natural science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields surprisingly sometimes vary by race, noted <a href="https://tulane.edu/sse/psyc/faculty-and-staff/faculty/obrien.cfm">Laurie O’Brien</a>, associate professor of psychology at Tulane University. Women of color in STEM may sometimes face “<a href="http://www.uchastings.edu/news/articles/2015/01/double-jeopardy-report.pdf">double jeopardy</a>” because of both racial bias and gender bias in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.17763/haer.81.2.t022245n7x4752v2">some contexts</a> such as <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167202288010">gaining influence over others</a> in academic departments.</p>
<p>However, “double jeopardy” is not the full story, O’Brien argued in her SPSP talk. For instance, when entering college, black women are more likely than white women to intend to major in STEM. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0037944">Her research</a> shows that black women hold weaker gender-STEM stereotypes than white women, helping explain that difference.</p>
<p>O’Brien also pointed to research by psychologists Monica Biernat and Amanda Sesko about <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2013.01.008">bias favoring male computer engineers</a>. This bias was found only when undergraduates evaluated fictitious white, but not black, employees. Black women were instead evaluated similarly compared to white men. </p>
<p>In one large nationally representative experiment, gender bias in STEM even <em>reversed</em> by race and ethnicity. <a href="https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/apl-0000022.pdf">STEM faculty responded less often</a> to emails from white female than white male prospective graduate students. However, STEM faculty consistently responded <em>more</em> often to Hispanic women than Hispanic men.</p>
<p>O’Brien emphasized these data are complex. For instance, even though black women start out in college more interested in STEM than white women, black women <a href="http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/09/women-stem-majors.aspx">may face unique barriers</a> such as race-based stereotypes to completing college with a STEM degree. In her current research, O’Brien studies how the effects of interventions to bring girls into STEM may vary by race. </p>
<h2>Thinking beyond ‘double jeopardy’</h2>
<p>This research on intersectionality challenges the simple narrative that prejudices such as sexism and racism always combine to create “double jeopardy.” For instance, racial minority women can be rendered “invisible.” But this invisibility may also <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11199-008-9424-4">protect them</a> in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2013.01.008">some cases</a> by making them less prototypical targets of common forms of bias. </p>
<p>This research is still in its early stages. For instance, more studies are needed to test how evaluations of black female leaders found in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797611428079">small laboratory experiments</a> generalize to real world settings. Attendees at the SPSP conference also emphasized the need to develop theoretical frameworks that can help explain the nuanced results. The emerging data show that gender can interact with other social identities to shape perceptions and evaluations in complex and often surprising ways.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53724/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Miller receives funding from National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>
No one is only their sex or only their race or only their sexual orientation. Social psychologists are starting to investigate how people of multiple minority groups are perceived.
David Miller, Ph.D. Candidate in Psychology, Northwestern University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/46052
2015-08-21T09:44:39Z
2015-08-21T09:44:39Z
For Asian-American students, stereotypes help boost achievement
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92619/original/image-20150820-7231-m66oe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What is behind Asian-American success?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/quatar/10102090525/in/photolist-goFRyz-j9QQpv-j9RKTf-j9PmMa-jDiTdL-4ynR9Q-kY9ADt-58irSr-bCJzUA-PdvqJ-sb5Fy-4WKfzA-5zvhUB-4WKfgN-byqRgF-5zzwAS-5zzRBs-5zzbuG-5zAi9S-5zvULt-5zzkkS-5zuWke-5zzTqq-5zuUYK-5zvPzz-5zzZ8G-5zvw46-5zvRU2-5zvYLt-5zv4nH-5zuXBV-5zvpVg-5zvmqn-5zviMz-5zve8z-5zvgFv-5zv7a2-5zvXY6-5zzP7A-5zzpVL-5zA4zf-5zvfEz-5zvagc-5zAbwj-5zv7Ez-5zAh4y-5zvyzF-5zvQtz-5zuR8z-5zzC1s">Nicola Sapiens De Mitri</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Conventional wisdom is that all stereotypes are negative and damaging. </p>
<p>African Americans are <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/%7Eeberhard/downloads/2004-SeeingBlackRaceCrimeandVisualProcessing.pdf">stereotyped</a> as violent and threatening. Employers stereotype <a href="http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/motherhoodpenalty.pdf">mothers</a> as less competent and less committed. And undocumented immigrants are <a href="http://conf.som.yale.edu/obsummer07/paperleefiske.pdf">stereotyped</a> as incompetent and untrustworthy. </p>
<p>Each of these stereotypes has negative consequences for members of these groups. But is there such a thing as a positive stereotype, and, if so, can positive stereotypes have positive consequences?</p>
<p>In our new book, <a href="http://www.russellsage.org/asian-american-achievement-paradox">The Asian American Achievement Paradox</a> – based on a <a href="http://www.russellsage.org/research/Immigration/IIMMLA">survey</a> of 4,780 adult children as well as 140 in-depth interviews of Chinese, Vietnamese and Mexican immigrants – fellow sociologist Min Zhou and I found ways in which positive stereotypes can be advantageous. </p>
<p>We found that racial stereotypes and implicit biases could actually be helping Asian Americans achieve their much-touted academic success. </p>
<h2>The Asian ‘advantage’</h2>
<p>Studies have shown how teachers’ <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-chalkboard/posts/2015/08/18-teacher-expectations-gershenson">expectations</a> impact achievement. Traditionally disadvantaged students have been known to perform poorly as a result of low expectations from teachers. But when teachers perceive their students as smart, their academic performance can improve. </p>
<p>In the case of Asian Americans, it contributes to their success.</p>
<p>In spite of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-there-an-asian-disadvantage-in-higher-ed-44070">tremendous diversity</a> of the US Asian population, Asian immigrants are perceived as smart, high-achieving and successful. This is largely due to the influence of some highly educated immigrant Asian groups. </p>
<p>Take, for instance, the Chinese immigrants in the US. Our study found that over 60% of Chinese immigrant fathers and over 40% of Chinese immigrant mothers had a bachelor’s degree or higher. We found this population to be even more highly educated than the general US population – only 28% of whom have graduated from college. </p>
<p>The Chinese and Vietnamese respondents in our study revealed that their teachers and guidance counselors perceived them as smart and promising. They expected them to excel and attend four-year universities.</p>
<p>Mexican students, by contrast, were perceived as low achievers who did not value education and were tracked for two-year community colleges. The children of Mexican immigrants had the lowest levels of educational attainment of any of the groups in our study. Only 86% graduated from high school, and even fewer – 17% – graduated from college. </p>
<h2>How expectations work</h2>
<p>Perception – regardless of validity – has consequences. Or as the American sociologist W I Thomas aptly <a href="http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/merton/thomastheorem.pdf">noted</a>, “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” </p>
<p>We found that expectation can enhance the academic performance of even some of the most mediocre Asian-American students. </p>
<p>Take the case of Trang, a 24-year-old, second-generation Vietnamese woman, who was placed into honors classes in high school, even though she admits she was not an outstanding junior high student.</p>
<p>Even more surprising is that Trang has no idea why or how she was placed in honors classes.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92620/original/image-20150820-7231-bqxoag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92620/original/image-20150820-7231-bqxoag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92620/original/image-20150820-7231-bqxoag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92620/original/image-20150820-7231-bqxoag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92620/original/image-20150820-7231-bqxoag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92620/original/image-20150820-7231-bqxoag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92620/original/image-20150820-7231-bqxoag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When teachers expect more from their students, students are motivated to perform better.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/brainchildvn/3004689743/in/photolist-5zvPzz-5zvpVg-5zvmqn-5zviMz-5zve8z-5zvyzF-5zvwYF-5zzSgQ-5zzKs5-5zuToc-5zzCuL-5zzhcm-5zzgfb-5zv7a2-5zzYA5-5zzpVL-5zvHWX-5zzTWs-5zzsHu-5zz9wh-5zvoRZ-5zzJKU-5zvdua-5zAh4y-5zzqVW-5zuR8z-5zvL4x-5zzWhw-5zvYLt-5zv4nH-5zuXBV-5zv6vi-5zA2F5-5zuSsa-5zvJsB-5zvXY6-5zzP7A-5zvg7n-5zv2HF-5zzsh9-5zA4fL-5zuWUt-5zzZwm-5zvngK-5zzuwd-5zuUp2-5zzfKb-5zzN2Q-5zvmQT-5zv7Ez">Charlie Nguyen</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But once Trang was placed into the honors track, she began taking her schoolwork more seriously, spending more time doing her homework and studying hard for tests to keep up with her high-achieving peers. </p>
<p>Trang graduated with a GPA (grade point average) above 4.0 and was admitted to all the University of California schools to which she applied.</p>
<p>Ophelia, a 23-year-old, second-generation Vietnamese woman, also benefited from being positively stereotyped. </p>
<p>She described herself as “not very intelligent” and recalls nearly having to repeat second grade because of her poor academic performance. By her account:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I wasn’t an exceptional student; I was a straight C student.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ophelia took the AP (advanced placement) exam at the end of junior high school, but failed. Despite that, she was placed into the AP track in her predominantly white high school.</p>
<p>Once there, something “just clicked,” and Ophelia began to excel in her classes.</p>
<p>When we asked, she elaborated, “I wanted to work hard and prove I was a good student,” adding, “I think the competition kind of increases your want to do better.” </p>
<p>She graduated from high school with a 4.2 GPA and was admitted into a highly competitive pharmacy program.</p>
<p>In contrast, Mexican students were <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/academic-profiling">academically profiled</a> as low achievers who did not value a college education and found themselves having to actively vie for the attention of their teachers and guidance counselors. </p>
<h2>Stereotype promise yields results</h2>
<p>In both Trang’s and Ophelia’s cases, self-fulfilling prophecies were at work in the precise definition of the term. As sociologist Robert K Merton has defined, <a href="http://entrepreneurscommunicate.pbworks.com/f/Merton.+Self+Fulfilling+Profecy.pdf">a self-fulfilling prophecy</a> begins with a false definition of the situation, evoking a new behavior that makes the original false conception come true. </p>
<p>And this is what happened in the case of Trang and Ophelia when they were favored by their teachers’ high expectations. It resulted in a change in both students’ behavior, and ultimately, a boost in their academic performance. </p>
<p>This also went into reinforcing prevailing stereotypes. Because Trang’s and Ophelia’s academic outcomes matched their teachers’ expectations, the teachers pointed to these students’ stellar academic achievement as proof of their initial assessment about Asian-American students (that they are smart, high-achieving, and deserving of being placed into the most competitive academic tracks so that they can reach their potential). </p>
<h2>A double-edged sword</h2>
<p>However, it is important to note that these same positive stereotypes and biases also have negative consequences.</p>
<p>First, those who do not attain high academic outcomes feel like failures and ethnic outliers. As we found in our study, some rejected their ethnic identities, claiming that they were not really Chinese or Vietnamese because they linked their ethnic identity to exceptional academic achievement.</p>
<p>Adam, a 21-year-old second-generation Vietnamese, identifies as “American Asian” rather than as Vietnamese or Vietnamese American because he dropped out of college. Adam also compares himself to his brother, who he described as “much more Vietnamese than me” because he attends a prestigious university and is on the path to medical school. Similarly, Paul, a 36-year-old second-generation Chinese American, described himself as “the whitest Chinese guy you’ll ever meet” because he attended art school rather than an elite university.</p>
<p>Second, the biases can also disadvantage Asian groups such as Cambodians, Laotian and Hmong, who have higher high school dropout rates than African Americans and Latinos – underscoring the extreme diversity among Asian Americans. </p>
<p>Additionally, the very same stereotypes that can boost Asian-American students’ academic performance can operate against them as they vie for leadership positions in the workplace. </p>
<p>Asian American students may be perceived as lacking leadership skills, creativity and managerial bravado. A <a href="http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/ascendleadership.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/Research_NEW/The_Failure_of_Asian_Success.pdf">recent study</a> of Silicon Valley’s tech industry showed that while Asian Americans make up 27.2% of the professionals in tech, they comprise only 13.9% of executives. </p>
<p>Much like the glass ceiling that women face, a <a href="http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2015/06/09/why-asian-americans-shouldnt-chuck-affirmative-action-out-the-window/ideas/nexus/">“bamboo ceiling”</a> keeps Asian Americans from rising to the top leadership positions.</p>
<p>These are the burdens that come with stereotypes. Positive stereotypes can also be double-edged swords.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46052/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Lee received funding from the Russell Sage Foundation to conduct the research on which her book with Min Zhou, The Asian American Achievement Paradox, is based.</span></em></p>
Asian-American kids are often viewed as high-achieving and smart. Does such a stereotype contribute to their academic success?
Jennifer Lee, Professor of Sociology , University of California, Irvine
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/43305
2015-06-16T16:10:19Z
2015-06-16T16:10:19Z
Spokane’s black community embraces white allies, so what’s behind Rachel Dolezal’s perplexing deception?
<p>In the latest chapter of the peculiar story of Rachel Dolezal, Dolezal officially resigned from her leadership position with the Spokane, Washington NAACP yesterday <a href="https://www.facebook.com/spokane.naacp/posts/1623781377868883">via Facebook</a>. </p>
<p>While Dolezal’s remained committed to the cause of social and political justice in her note, she spoke nothing of her decision to take on a black identity. It’s unlikely that we’ll ever know the depths of her reasoning.</p>
<p>But when it comes to the story of Rachel Dolezal, a little context goes a long way in understanding why black Spokane residents may have supported Dolezal’s leadership prior to this scandal. With white allies needed more than ever, it also makes one question Dolezal’s actual motives – and whether or not she was truly committed to social and political justice. </p>
<h2>Being black in the Pacific Northwest</h2>
<p>Like Rachel Dolezal, I lived in Spokane. And while Dolezal taught African American history at Eastern Washington University, I taught the same subject at Spokane’s Gonzaga University, where I was also the advisor to the Black Student Union. </p>
<p>Had I stayed, it may have only been a matter time before Rachel and I met. Perhaps we’d have even become friends (we’re both Howard University alums). And we both probably would have talked about how being black in the Pacific Northwest is a unique experience; in Spokane – where the African American population <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/14/became-a-black-woman-spokane-rachel-dolezal-black-girl">hovers around 2%</a> – being black is largely a struggle for significance.</p>
<p>When I advised the Black Student Union (BSU), our membership was about 30% to 40% non-African American. We had Latino members and Filipino members. And if white students wanted to join, they were welcomed, no questions asked. </p>
<p>Because diversity at Gonzaga and in the Pacific Northwest is dismal, solidarity was paramount; no one ever seemed to question the presence of other marginalized groups or white allies because they viewed them as students with the same goals.</p>
<h2>White guilt, or something more pathological?</h2>
<p>Therefore, Dolezal’s deception elicits many questions, namely: <em>why?</em> </p>
<p>Could it be white guilt? Perhaps Dolezal is a modern-day John Brown, the white radical abolitionist. Frederick Douglass once <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1550.html">described Brown</a> as “a white gentleman” who “is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery.” </p>
<p>So maybe Dolezal sympathized with the African American experience to such an extent that she decided to engage in a form of racial suicide, forfeiting her privilege entirely. She made herself marginalized even in the face of threats from the Ku Klux Klan, as she’s claimed. </p>
<p>These purported hate crime cases (which have been <a href="http://www.krem.com/longform/news/local/spokane-county/2015/06/10/detectives-question-naacp-hate-mail-processing/71043278/">suspended</a> by the Spokane Police Department) lead to another explanation for her actions: pathological behavior, perhaps born out of mental illness. </p>
<p>After all, her experiences – put together – seem just too extreme for one person to have faced over the course of one life. Most African Americans discuss their encounters with racism in the form of <a href="http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/02/microaggression.aspx">micro-aggressions</a> – the subtle, daily forms of racism that reinforce white supremacy in work, school or social activities. </p>
<p>Did the KKK really burglarize each of her homes and frequently send her hate mail? Did she grow up in a teepee and bow-hunt for her food, <a href="http://easterneronline.com/35006/eagle-life/a-life-to-be-heard/#sthash.1aUk3liU.BXipJrXp.dpbs">as she’s claimed</a>?</p>
<p>These stories sound like lazy caricatures of racism and race. And to have gone to such lengths to concoct and spread such myths (if they’re found to be untrue) – well, that sounds like grounds for some intensive counseling. </p>
<p>Worse, because of Dolezal’s actions, more and more biracial and multiracial Americans could be confronted with micro-aggressions, like questions about the authenticity and legitimacy of their blackness: “Are you black?” or the even more sinister, “What are you?”</p>
<h2>White allies needed more than ever before</h2>
<p>Let’s be clear: Dolezal passing for African American is completely different from when African Americans have passed as white. “Passing” – as some African Americans have done throughout history – largely stemmed from a place of oppression. </p>
<p>Passing to join the military, obtain a bank loan or gain acceptance into a particular school was part of navigating a racist, segregated society. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/20/light-girls-skin-bleaching-phenomenon_n_6503630.html">Skin bleaching</a> – and the self-hatred that accompanies it – are painful consequences of a discriminatory world that has deemed blackness a bad thing. Though hilarious on TV, Dave Chappelle’s <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/tumblr_m5vc3oGAhr1qglvrpo1_1280.png">Clayton Bigsby</a> – a blind and black white supremacist – could never exist in the real world. </p>
<p>Which leads to the third rationale for Dolezal’s actions: power couched in white privilege. </p>
<p>By some logic, Dolezal’s rejection of her whiteness is an extreme form of white privilege. No black woman could ever navigate whiteness so successfully that she could become, say, president of the Daughters of the Confederacy. Yet Dolezal was able to seamlessly enter a world where she was given the benefit of the doubt – likely because she was positioning herself as a minority. And she didn’t simply use deception to <em>join</em> a traditionally black group; she used deception to <em>lead</em> one. </p>
<p>Moreover, her actions clearly undermine the significant value of white allies. Yes, the NAACP didn’t even have its first black national president until 1975. But in what could be a warped form of maternalism, Dolezal deemed herself the authority on what was best for the black community and other marginalized groups. </p>
<p>When black people throw their hands up in frustration, it’s not because they can’t lead. It’s because their so-called allies refuse to follow. Dolezal could have been just as powerful – perhaps even more powerful – if she had been a white ally. </p>
<p>What might it mean to see a white person marching with a sign that read Black Lives Matter? The image of progress can’t be a minister preaching to the choir. </p>
<p>Dolezal didn’t just assume African American cultural accouterments; she occupied spaces and positions where we expect to see a black face. Dolezal’s deceptions goes along the lines of what Toni Morrison once said during a talk at Howard University: “White people steal what’s yours, and then they sell it back to you.” </p>
<p>Except Dolezal isn’t selling albums like <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3123904/Aboriginal-activist-accuses-Iggy-Azalea-adopting-black-persona-comparing-civil-rights-leader-outed-white-woman.html">Iggy Azalea</a>, the singer who’s also drawing some criticism for assuming a black identity. </p>
<p>Instead, Dolezal’s peddling a bill of goods, a knock-off version of what she thinks is blackness. And because she is doing so in a place like Spokane, where blackness and allies are hard to come by, we buy it.</p>
<p>But while we need allies, we don’t need avatars.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43305/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kellie Carter Jackson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Blacks need allies, not avatars.
Kellie Carter Jackson, Assistant Professor of History, Hunter College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/40360
2015-05-01T10:02:44Z
2015-05-01T10:02:44Z
Why do so few black males go into STEM areas? Here’s what made DeAndre give up
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79995/original/image-20150430-30711-9gc0b0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Negative stereotypes hamper the success of black males in STEM fields.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/s/black+male+science/search.html?page=2&thumb_size=mosaic&inline=149239352">Student image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dressed in a black hoodie and sagging jeans, DeAndre (name changed) swaggers down the street, singing loudly the gritty lyrics of a gangsta rap.</p>
<p>This routine typifies DeAndre’s journey to and from school. Many of those watching DeAndre’s behavior during his school commute could assume him to be a thug and a gangster.</p>
<p>Such a narrative, a result of the <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11256-013-0265-2">racialized and gendered narratives</a> that black male adolescents live with in urban areas, is part of DeAndre’s schooling as well as out-of-school experiences. </p>
<p>Black males are presumed to lack intelligence when it comes to academics, particularly <a href="http://uex.sagepub.com/content/49/4/363.short">mathematics</a>. </p>
<p>For more than ten years, I have been <a href="http://uex.sagepub.com/content/49/4/363.short">researching</a> the lives and experiences of black STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) high school students all the way up the pipeline to black STEM faculty. I have looked at the achievements of black students in mathematics within their first eight or nine years of schooling. </p>
<h2>Negative messages</h2>
<p>I have found that black males who consistently outperform their peers in mathematics, are also victims of <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11256-014-0317-2#page-1">covert racial stereotypes</a> and <a href="http://aer.sagepub.com/content/48/6/1347.short">racial microaggressions</a>.</p>
<p>The truth is DeAndre is a high school junior and a high-achiever in mathematics and science from an urban area. DeAndre is not hardened, but he is fragile. </p>
<p>His STEM identity is especially tenuous. </p>
<p>DeAndre is not alone. There are <a href="http://journalofafricanamericanmales.com/issues/jaame-issue-archives/vol2no1">thousands of young men</a> like DeAndre in urban cities across the country, who are STEM high-achievers and have the potential to succeed as STEM professionals. </p>
<p>However, too often they receive negative messaging about their continued success in STEM. Such <a href="http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=44fCBDIPrZYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA193&dq=counselor+discouraging+Black+males+in+STEM&ots=4zy3XrEOMN&sig=muzQTkQVe2dvjys-eMetklU_nRk#v=onepage&q=counselor%20discouraging%20Black%20males%20in%20STEM&f=false">messages</a> from teachers or counselors <a href="http://hipatiapress.com/hpjournals/index.php/remie/article/view/remie.2013.15">downplay or minimize</a> their mathematics abilities. The low expectations from these talented boys serve to further <a href="http://ed-osprey.gsu.edu/ojs/index.php/JUME/article/view/178">discourage</a> them from pursuing STEM fields. </p>
<h2>Academic challenges</h2>
<p>As a result, <a href="http://beta.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2013/acs/acs-24.pdf">black participation</a> in STEM fields has been left far behind. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-24.pdf">In 2011</a>, whites held 71% of STEM jobs, Asians held 15% and blacks only 6%. In 2009 white students obtained 65.5% of the STEM undergraduate degrees. However, STEM undergraduate degrees for blacks have <a href="http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c2/c2s2.htm">remained flat for the last 9 years</a>. </p>
<p>Blacks received just 6% of all <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/24/stem-education-and-jobs-d_n_1028998.html">STEM bachelor’s degrees</a> and less than half of those went to black males. Overall blacks received <a href="http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010015.pdf">4% of master’s degrees, and 2% of PhDs in STEM</a>, despite constituting 12% of the US population. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79829/original/image-20150429-6250-13d61j3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79829/original/image-20150429-6250-13d61j3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79829/original/image-20150429-6250-13d61j3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79829/original/image-20150429-6250-13d61j3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79829/original/image-20150429-6250-13d61j3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79829/original/image-20150429-6250-13d61j3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79829/original/image-20150429-6250-13d61j3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black kids face many challenges related to schooling.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&search_tracking_id=OUgCl0HU1Q9CkyFOG1ECzg&searchterm=black%20boys%20school&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=154179290">Boy image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When it comes to academic success, young black students face many other challenges that are only made worse by the negative messaging. </p>
<p>There are societal messages that equate black maleness with criminality, with teachers often being afraid of their black male students.</p>
<p>Often enough, as my own <a href="http://uex.sagepub.com/content/49/4/363.short">research </a> shows, unequal access to treatment results in <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953613003778%20and%20%20http://isw.sagepub.com/content/52/4/459.short">poorer health</a> outcomes for black kids.</p>
<p>The early academic years for these students are riddled with long-term (two months or longer) illnesses that negatively impact their schooling and result in attending at least one summer school term. </p>
<p>Some of <a href="http://aer.sagepub.com/content/49/3/487.full">these students</a> also <a href="http://uex.sagepub.com/content/49/4/363">change schools</a> <a href="http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=mF_me7HYyHcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&dq=Whither+Opportunity%3F:+Rising+Inequality,+Schools,+and+Children%27s+Life+Chances&ots=wsca4NG2s6&sig=ISm6f11uBDoLUy6p8p8eWLjm6y4#v=onepage&q=Whither%20Opportunity%3F%3A%20Rising%20Inequality%2C%20Schools%2C%20and%20Children%27s%20Life%20Chances&f=false">quite often</a>. </p>
<p>DeAndre, for example, has a higher rate of school transfer; his current school is his third high school in three years. This lack of continuity for high achieving black male students can lead to additional pressures to prove their intellectual abilities in mathematics to an unwelcoming or skeptical school culture.</p>
<p>Fighting racial stereotypes can also <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11256-013-0265-2#page-1">wear them down.</a> DeAndre is weary of racial stereotypes in general and stereotypes about black males in particular.</p>
<p>DeAndre’s coarse behavior during his school commute is actually performed to repel or deflect potential violence via <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11256-013-0265-2#page-1">aggressive posturing</a>, as evident in his “swagger.” In reality, he hasn’t been in any “real” fight since second grade and is filled with trepidation every time he walks home from school. </p>
<h2>Such few options</h2>
<p>Young black students also work toward what is called “performing whiteness.” This in their words means: talking ultra proper English while enunciating every syllable, dressing preppy, not talking about their families, pretending to go on vacations, not telling too many jokes and proving to their white female teachers that they are not to be feared but to be loved and nurtured. </p>
<p>The result is that their intrinsic motivation for learning mathematics and steadfast internal drive get constantly eroded by a host of structural and environmental challenges.</p>
<p>In addition to all these above challenges, they are often at schools that do not offer enough academic opportunities to support their interests. DeAndre’s school does not offer AP classes that would position him more favorably for a STEM college major. </p>
<p>Another problem that black kids face is an absence of role models. The successful black role models that students like DeAndre are exposed to are mostly athletes and rappers. DeAndre does not want to be an athlete or a rapper. </p>
<p>Even so, the likelihood of DeAndre going on to pursue STEM remains frail. </p>
<p>Instead DeAndre has chosen to be a social worker. Through this justice-orientated work, DeAndre wants to address the social and racial inequities in his neighborhood. We don’t know if he will use STEM in the future or not.</p>
<p>If DeAndre has managed to come this far, it is thanks to the support he has received from family members. DeAndre has fond memories of playing dominoes with his grandfather and mathematically complicated card games with his aunts. </p>
<p>His first mathematics teacher was his father. Today, DeAndre is like a human calculator, spitting out complicated number algorithms. </p>
<h2>Diversity vital to STEM</h2>
<p>As we work to minimize the fragility factors affecting youth like DeAndre, we often overlook what protects DeAndre’s STEM and academic identity. The socialization in mathematics that does happen in many black households remains unappreciated by schools as it does by the predominantly white social structures. </p>
<p>My experience of investigating lives, such as those of DeAndre has convinced me of the need for rigorous research that contributes to a more accurate and nuanced portrayal of black males in STEM. </p>
<p>The vitality of United States will be derived in large part from fostering the STEM identities of young men like DeAndre who reside within our urban communities. Their participation is important for innovation – and for a more equitable society. </p>
<p>Our DeAndres should not see a conflict between pursuing a STEM college trajectories and an unyielding sense of responsibility for the improvement of their home communities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40360/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ebony O McGee received funding for the research from the National Academy of Education and the Spencer Foundation.</span></em></p>
Black male kids who start out by excelling in STEM gradually lose interest due to low teacher expectations and racial stereotyping. The result? Blacks hold only 6% of all STEM jobs.
Ebony O. McGee, Assistant Professor of Education, Diversity and Urban Schooling, Vanderbilt University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.