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

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