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"

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.

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?

Adrian Piper Video

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6756190809617046211&hl=en

This might be a good prompt for groups sometime this year. It's a video of this woman saying how statistically speaking, almost all of us are technically black in that we've had some black relative in our ancestry. It's definitely thought provoking and I think would be good fodder for discussion.

-Elizabeth Cooper