Race and Racism
gregladen | February 7, 2008Ben Dunlap tells the story of Sandor Teszler, a Hungarian man he met at Wofford College. In telling Teszler's dramatic life story, which arcs from the Holocaust to the American Deep South of the 1950s, Dunlap shares some deep and, ultimately, moving lessons about justice -- and the power of lifelong learning. Sit back and listen.
gregladen | January 25, 2008You can say whatever you think, or believe, or want to think or believe, about the importance of Clinton's whiteness, Obama's blackness. and Edward's southern whiteness. As the primaries move south of the Mason Dixon line, race has become the only issue of importance.
Why do I say this? Because of this new polling data:
QUESTION: If the 2008 South Carolina Democratic primary were held today, which one of the following candidates would get your vote:
WhiteBlack
Obama10%59%
Clinton36%25%
Edwards40%4%
[source]
gregladen | December 22, 2007Gene Expression has the second in a pair of posts on race that is worth a close look. In Why phenotypic races may not disappear, G.E. speaks of the particulate nature of inheritance in relation to culturally defined racial types (that are in turn based on appearance).
There is the idea in the minds of some that interracial relations in the most intimate sense will banish racism or racial consciousness. To me that seems unlikely, though Latin American nations do not exhibit the sort of racism based on ancestry traditional in the United States, they do retain a marked preference for those…
gregladen | December 19, 2007African American children may have reduced verbal ability compared to other children to a degree that is roughly equivalent to missing a year in school, according to a recently published paper. Is this evidence of a racial difference?
The study by Sampson et.al., published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences included more than 200 children aged 6-12 living in Chicago, and followed these children over seven years. The study controlled for poverty, and interestingly, poverty was not found to be a good predictor of differences in verbal ability.
The researchers consider…
gregladen | December 6, 2007Brian Larnder, bless his soul, has written an overview (maybe a book review) of Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement
From Brian:
... the concept of eugenics found a very welcome home among the christian faithful of the day from the late 19th Century through the first few decades of the 20th Century. The American Eugenics society sponsored an annual contest for the best eugenics sermon of the year and apparently many clergymen participated, readily supplying biblical quotations to make the case for eugenics.
AHA! I say! (see)
Go and read Brian's post! He…
gregladen | December 3, 2007I came across this interesting post by PortlyDyke:
Trying to Get White People to Talk About Racism is Like . . . .
. . . . . well, like trying to get white people to talk about Racism.
...
I mention this because I read a wide variety of blogs, and I notice that while a number of my favorite bloggers do write posts on race and racism, there is this interesting thing that happens in comment threads to these posts -- if the blog is not frequented mostly by people of color, the comment threads very often stray from anything remotely touching on race or racism, and quickly become about "oppression…
gregladen | December 3, 2007Sex differences in certain abilities, which have persisted for decades in various psychological tests, are now widely believed to be the result of conditioning that is in turn shaped by cultural factors. This applies to math abilities, spatial skills, and a range of other activities. Neural plasticity is key, and widely misunderstood or ignored. (Indeed, this is at the heart of the race discussion. Some people really want genes to "cause" different levels or kinds of intelligence, but are unable to explain how a few thousand genes wire up a few billion neurons ... but that is the subject…
gregladen | December 1, 2007
Rosa Parks refuses to move to back of the bus (Montgomery, AL), this day in history, 1953
gregladen | November 17, 2007According to research just out from the University of Nottingham, lowering the differential between high and low incomes can have a more positive effect on child wellbeing than simply growing the economy in countries that are already wealthy.
From the press release:
Poorer children fare less well than richer ones in each society. But a recent UNICEF report detailing 40 indicators of child wellbeing, said children in the UK and the USA fared worse than in any of the other rich countries.
The new research examines whether the damage is done by being poor, or by being poorer than others.
To…
gregladen | November 13, 2007(Santa Barbara, Calif.) - A team of political scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of New Mexico, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Notre Dame has completed a groundbreaking survey that explores how race and gender is changing the political landscape of the United States. The scholars presented their findings today at a press conference at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
The Gender and Multicultural Leadership Project is, to date, the most comprehensive multiracial, multi-office national survey…
gregladen | November 6, 2007It seems that with every new Halloween there is a new opportunity for some appalling racist act or another. Locally, we had such an event at Hamline University, and nationally, where else: The Bush Administration.
The Hamline event ... and my source here is Minnesota Public Radio, something I heard in the car ... involved a Halloween party in which several college boys dressed up in black face as primitive savages. They and the girls who helped them are in significant trouble. I heard about this while driving Julia (seventh grade) to school. She objected: She did not understand the…
gregladen | November 6, 2007Obviously, I have to work this both into tonight's talk in Grand Rapids, and blog about it:
Gene governs IQ boost from breastfeeding from PhysOrg.com
The known association between breast feeding and slightly higher IQ in children has been shown to relate to a particular gene in the babies, according to a report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
[...]
But for now, I'll just say this...
By way of cautionary notes. It is being said that this is evidence of intelligence being the result of "nature and nurture" interacting. This is because there is a gene that…
gregladen | November 5, 2007I'm off for two days to the Great White North, Grand Rapids, where I'll give a talk tomorrow night for the area Library Association on the topic of Race and Racism. If you are in the vicinity, please stop by and visit!
I'll be "at the lake" for the day prior, taking a few more winterizing steps for the cabin (mainly rescuing the latex from the oncoming winter) and writing highly controversial yet amusing and informative blog stuff.