Race and Education

Two links:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/at-top-city-schools-lack-of-diversity-persist/

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/02/08/do_colleges_redline_asian_americans/ (more on this topic we've seen before)

Race in "Avatar"

Check out this blogger's take on the racial messages in Avatar: http://io9.com/5422666/when-will-white-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar . Very thought provoking.

Some pulled quotes to pique your interest:

"In both Avatar and District 9, humans are the cause of alien oppression and distress. Then, a white man who was one of the oppressors switches sides at the last minute, assimilating into the alien culture and becoming its savior."

"This is the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare. It's not just a wish to be absolved of the crimes whites have committed against people of color; it's not just a wish to join the side of moral justice in battle. It's a wish to lead people of color from the inside rather than from the (oppressive, white) outside."

"...it is nevertheless a story that revisits the same old tropes of colonization. Whites still get to be leaders of the natives"

"Pure Blood?"

An interesting article over on NYT about South Korean's growing foreign student/labor situation. The gist is this:


For most South Koreans, globalization has largely meant increasing exports or going abroad to study. But now that it is also bringing an influx of foreigners into a society where 42 percent of respondents in a 2008 survey said they had never once spoken with a foreigner, South Koreans are learning to adjust — often uncomfortably.

Politcal Correctness?

I brushed up a great post I noticed a few weeks ago that came up on my google reader.

Its a great post about the meaning of "Political Correctness" and its etymology.

Here's the basic gist:

Will Hutton, former editor-in-chief for the UK publication the Observer, described in his column how the term ‘PC’ was never really a political stance at all, contrary to popular belief. It was actually perceived by many as a right-wing tactic to dismiss—or backlash against—left-leaning social change. Mock the trivial aspects of human rights politics, like its changing language, and you’ll succeed in obscuring the issue altogether.

Berg believes this is what political correctness is all about: “The term politically correct is a reactionary term,” he said. “[It was] created by people who were worried by [social] changes…that affected their everyday understanding of the world in ways that pointed out their role in creating or reproducing dominance and subordination.”

enjoy
-Michael

Another activity from UVA

Have the group come up with tasks, careers, and adjectives that they associated with either males or females. This leads into a discussion of how the group does or does not fit those characterizations and whether or not stereotypical gender characterization affected the way the group operated on a day-to day basis. The UVa group that did this found that many of the words used to describe females were more negative than males. They noted that having the group come up with a list of charcterizations on their own was really helpful because trends emerged in the lists that were not evident or intentional as we were making up the activity, then the group had to react to and reconcile with there stated opinions of gender issues. This activity could easily be applied to racial, religious or ethnic groups as well as people with different sexual orientations.

An idea for talking about race

There was an article in Newsweek last spring about whether Princeton is "postracial" - it was co-written by a friend of mine and I think brings up a lot of really interesting issues. Check it out if you feel like talking about race at Princeton! It's linked here.

Prompts!

A list of prompts for discussion (many more to come). If you have an idea for a better format to present them in, please let me know!

Some of these might be great prompts to give to your group and have them answer anonymously on index cards (numbers 5 and 11), that way you can form more prompts with the answers and bring them up in later dialogues.

1. What do you do on a typical Saturday night? Why?
2. What would you like to change most about social (gender, race, religious) dynamics on this campus?
3. How do people at Princeton feel about legacy students? Are they stereotyped?
   
4. Who feels like a visitor on this campus? Who feels like part of the community?
5. What is a topic you are passionate about and believe every student should have an understanding of before they graduate?
6. Pick three words to identify yourself, then state how you are similar or dissimilar to each identifier
7. Who would your parents least like you to bring home?
8. What is the story behind your name?
9. What is a home-cooked meal to you?
10. In what ways do you feel "mainstream" on campus? In what ways do you feel like a "misfit"?
11. What is the most racist/sexist/prejudiced event you have witnessed on campus? How did you feel? How did you react?
12. What are you afraid of?
13. How has your identity been challenged since coming to Princeton?

More prompts to come!

-Alexis

Questions for Princeton SD

During our Mod Workshop we came up with lots of "big questions" (and some "smaller" questions as well) about our program. I'll be working them into core group materials, but here's the list in case you want to mull them over with your co-mod, your group, your friends, or in your head. More to come after this as well.

-How do we get students to the table who don't notice any problems on campus or don't particularly care?

-Are we adjusting our moderating to what our group wants to talk about? How do we know what they want to talk about? Do their desired topics surprise us at all?

-How well are we communicating with our co-mod? What does ideal communication with a co-mod look like?

-How can we utilize past action projects now? Can we create a list of past action projects that have come out of Princeton SD? How would that be valuable, or would it be?

-How should we do PR for Sustained Dialogue? What kind of image do we want to project? Is it welcoming, or controversial, or challenging, or urgent, or friendly, or none of those things?

-How can we use the information contained in the moderator manual to keep us on track during dialogues? Do we put it in front of us at dialogue, or do we quiz each other on it at co-mod meetings? How can we take advantage of all of these dialogue resources?

-How transparent about the SD method should we be with our groups? What do we have to gain or lose by being transparent?


-Alexis

Do elite private colleges discriminate against Asians?

This new Princeton study covered on US News and World Report says so.

Highlights:

• Translating the advantages into SAT scores, study author Thomas Espenshade, a Princeton sociologist, calculated that African-Americans who achieved 1150 scores on the two original SAT tests had the same chances of getting accepted to top private colleges in 1997 as whites who scored 1460s and Asians who scored perfect 1600s.
• Deborah Santiago, vice president for policy and research at Excelencia in Education, noted, however, that other recent studies have shown that many well-qualified students who come from low-income, African-American, or Hispanic families don't apply to elite schools. So the few who do apply are likely to have better odds.

• Espenshade found that when comparing applicants with similar grades, scores, athletic qualifications, and family history for seven elite private colleges and universities:

• Whites were three times as likely to get fat envelopes as Asians.
• Hispanics were twice as likely to win admission as whites.
• African-Americans were at least five times as likely to be accepted as whites.
• Athletes were more than twice as likely to get in as non-athletes with similar qualifications.
• Students from .private high schools were twice as likely to receive acceptance letters as similar students from regular public high schools.

A Game from UVA

Rhonda forwarded this along from our pals at UVA:

"Priya and I used an activity called "Culture Cards" this week which we found in the Stage 2 section of the Moderator Manual. Basically, we split the group in several groups of 4 and gave them a few cards with different aspects of culture on them...food, language, clothing, customs and traditions, social hierarchy, familial relations/generational differences, religion, etc... We gave each small group one of these and asked them to discuss it for a few minutes, talking about their own experiences with the cultural element they had and how they differed from others in the group. After about 4 of these we came back together as a group and talked about what they had been struck by in the conversations, what had interested them, what had surprised them.

The group really enjoyed the activity and I think it was a good way to get frank conversations going as the group is still getting used to dialogue and getting to know one another. I would suggest limiting the number of culture cards you make though. We made too many and the all groups talked about different aspects of culture so the conversation when we came back together was difficult. The final conversation would have been much better had everyone discussed the same things in the small groups."

Racial and Religious Trends on OK Cupid

From Rhonda:

I read this last night and can not stop thinking about how interesting this is! I figured I'd send to you - maybe it's bloggable, dialogueable, maybe not. But I thought it was ballsy for this site to go ahead and record things this way and state what they're seeing. And then also ballsy in a different way to call everyone racist dorks haha. It's got people angry/defensive in a way that I can't help but find slightly endearing, watching all these folks grapple with group behavior.

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/10/05/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/

OKcupid was started by a bunch of harvardians and they're known for being free and hip and trendy and youthful compared to other dating sites. The blog also has some data on who is willing to date whom by religious data here.

That sort of aggregate data on how trends work out is so rarely packaged to young non-academics, so I thought the comments were really notable for the shock/defensiveness.

Even Babies Discriminate

This Newsweek article, which explains that babies start recognizing skin color as young as six months is fascinating.

Highlights:

• Vittrup [the lead researcher] also asked all the kids a very blunt question: "Do your parents like black people?" Fourteen percent said outright, "No, my parents don't like black people"; 38 percent of the kids answered, "I don't know." In this supposed race-free vacuum being created by parents, kids were left to improvise their own conclusions—many of which would be abhorrent to their parents.
• Of all those [families] Vittrup told to talk openly about interracial friendship, only six families managed to actually do so. And, for all six, their children dramatically improved their racial attitudes in a single week. Talking about race was clearly key. Reflecting later about the study, Vittrup said, "A lot of parents came to me afterwards and admitted they just didn't know what to say to their kids, and they didn't want the wrong thing coming out of the mouth of their kids."
• The rule still holds true: more diversity translates into more division among students. Those increased opportunities to interact are also, effectively, increased opportunities to reject each other. And that is what's happening.
• the odds of a white high-schooler in America having a best friend of another race is only 8 percent...85 percent of black kids' best friends are also black
• 94 percent of African-American eighth graders reported to Harris-Britt that they'd felt discriminated against in the prior three months.

How did your parents address race when you were a child? What conclusions did you come to on your own? Were your childhood best friends of your race or another? Did your teachers ever address race?

-Alexis

"Good Hair"

Check out the trailer below for Chris Rock's new documentary, "Good Hair."



And some reviews and commentary from Jezebel here.

And an interview Newsweek did with Chris Rock here.

How cool would it be to get a screening on campus?

-Alexis

Ganster's, the Ghetto and Sesame Street

One of my favorite sites is www.sociologicalimages.com

In a recent post about a "gangster" sesame street advertisement, it got me thinking, what does it mean to be ghetto?

Is it good or bad to live in a ghetto? Why?
What is "ghetto" a synonym for?

Do the white people who live in Princeton live in a "ghetto?" Why or why not?

COMBO, COMBO, COMBO

Links to the Prince's coverage of the famed 08 COMBO survey which we are always bringing up at mod meetings:

The article: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/10/01/21600/

Highlights --

• The results indicate that the likelihood of students to describe themselves as “always happy” decreases with their income level. Sixteen percent of upper-class students said they were “always happy,” compared to 7 percent of lower-class students. A majority of students from all backgrounds said they were “usually happy” at the University.
• One of the major findings of the survey was that respondents who classified themselves as lower and lower-middle class were more likely to feel uncomfortable than middle-, upper-middle- and upper-class students in a variety of social contexts, including at fraternity or sorority events, at eating clubs, on athletic teams, during extracurricular activities and at weekend parties in eating clubs and dorm rooms.

The editorial: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/10/03/21639/

A related guest column about diversity and self-segregation on campus: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/02/24/22867/

The full PDF results of the survey: http://open.dailyprincetonian.com/public/COMBO_survey_results.pdf

-Alexis