race
edyong | December 17, 2009Those of us who have been on the receiving end of racial abuse know all too well that words can hurt. But they're also the tip of the iceberg. According to a study of popular US television, we're exposed to the spectre of racial bias on a regular basis, all without a single word being uttered.
When scenes are muted, body language and facial expressions are enough to convey more negative attitudes towards black characters compared to white ones. This bias is so subtle that we're largely unable to consciously identify it, yet so powerful that it can sway our own predispositions. In some ways…
razib | December 17, 2009Apropos of my skepticism of Census projections of 2050 demographic balances, there's a new paper out on Argentina which is relevant. Here's Wikipedia on Argentina's self-conception:
As with other areas of new settlement such as Canada, Australia and the United States, Argentina is considered a country of immigrants. Most Argentines are descended from colonial-era settlers and of the 19th and 20th century immigrants from Europe, and 86.4% of Argentina's population self-identify as European descent. An estimated 8% of the population is mestizo, and a further 4% of Argentines were of Arab or…
razib | December 5, 2009About six months ago I had a post up on the Cape Coloureds of South Africa. As a reminder, the Cape Coloureds are a mixed-race population who are the plural majority in the southwestern Cape region of South Africa. Like the white Boers they are a mostly Afrikaans speaking population who are adherents of Reformed Christianity. After the collapse of white racial supremacy many white Afrikaners have argued that it is natural and logical to form a cultural alliance with the Cape Coloureds because of the affinity of language and faith (Afrikaans speaking Coloureds outnumber Afrikaans speaking…
razib | November 24, 2009A new paper in PLoS ONE, Evaluation of Group Genetic Ancestry of Populations from Philadelphia and Dakar in the Context of Sex-Biased Admixture in the Americas, doesn't add much to what we know. They looked at a several hundred individuals who are self-identified as African American and European American, as well as 49 Senegalese from Dakar. Additionally, they reanalyzed data from Latin America from whites and blacks in Brazil, as well as a group of mixed Cubans. They found what you might expect to find, African and Native ancestry shows a female bias, European ancestry shows a male bias.
But…
edyong | November 23, 2009In the early days of the last US elections, Hillary Clinton's campaign was accused of deliberately darkening Barack Obama's skin in a TV ad. The implication was that by highlighting Obama's "blackness", Clinton's camp was trying to exploit negative associations that voters might have with darker skin. But you don't need editing software to do that - a fascinating new study suggest that people literally change the way they see a mixed-race politician, depending on whether the candidate represents their own political views.
Liberal American students tend to think that lighter photos of Barack…
emjohnson | November 23, 2009
David Rovics sings his song remembering the hundreds of Irish recruits in the US invasion of Mexico in 1846 that turned on their commanders and fought on the side of Mexico. While this event is little known in American history, what is even less known is that some of the soldiers in John O'Reilly's battalion were former slaves who escaped from their owners in the US army to fight alongside the Irish and Mexican San Patricios.
As James Callaghan wrote in American Heritage magazine:
Mexican sources state that O'Reilly quickly recruited forty Irishmen and four esclavos negros--slaves brought…
emjohnson | November 9, 2009
Seattle-based hip hop artist Gabriel Teodros performs his song Third World Wide that connects the issues that affect people of color in the US with those struggling against injustice around the world. As if to emphasize the point that racism is far from over, during his recent trip to England to perform at the University of Kent, he was detained by UK Customs officials and denied entry to the country on highly suspicious grounds:
I got detained, fingerprinted, arrested, for the first time in my life. I was in the holding room for 8 hours before being told that i'm getting sent back to the…
emjohnson | November 2, 2009Caught your attention, didn't it? Mine too. This morning I came across Steve Silberman's twitter headline pointing out that when people typed "I Am Extremely" into the Google search bar, one of the top suggestions was "Terrified of Chinese People." Fascinated to see what fools these mortals be, I clicked the link only to discover an article on Christwire that was actually able to claim that they were terrified of a racial group but that this didn't mean they were racist. Confused? You're not alone. Just take a quick look at some of the extremely confused statements that attracted nearly…
emjohnson | November 2, 2009As Jawaharlal Nehru wrote of his native land but as a stranger in the process of discovery, "India is a geographical and economic entity, a cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by invisible threads." These invisible threads were the spiritual beliefs of the people, the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita and the Manu Smriti. The sacred Ganges was a symbol of India's life blood, as much for the Indian people as for the British colonialists, that, as Rudyard Kipling described in his story "The Bridge Builders," was a natural force that needed to be conquered if the…
emjohnson | October 29, 2009Last night Jon Stewart hosted the Israel/Palestine peace activists Anna Baltzer and Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. The angry response from the Pro-Israel crowd resulted in a backlash against the show for even having the discussion (including the show's first heckler in eleven years).
Baltzer, an American-Jewish author, has put out a public letter asking that people contact The Daily Show thanking them for hosting the discussion as a way to counter the angry response they've received so far.
Last night Dr. Barghouti and I were on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart talking about Palestine.
The show was…
emjohnson | October 6, 2009Aldous Huxley wrote in his Collected Essays that, "Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know." In Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World, Stanford historian Londa Schiebinger highlights the role that such intentional ignorance played in the dissemination of knowledge (and the lack thereof). Whether this ignorance is of local plants and languages--because of the early scientific tradition of naming species only after revered European naturalists--or whether it is of the abortifacients that women would use to terminate an…
razib | September 8, 2009Update: Author comments below.
PLoS ONE has an interesting paper out, Genetic Ancestry, Social Classification, and Racial Inequalities in Blood Pressure in Southeastern Puerto Rico. They're exploring the topic of African ancestry and hypertension, which seems to have a positive correlation, but where there is dispute as to whether that correlation is driven only by genes, or environment, or a combination. Puerto Rico is characterized by a wide range in admixture between Europeans & Africans (with a minor but significant amount of Amerindian). Additionally, because most variance in…
edyong | September 6, 2009This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science.
Everybody, apparently, needs good neighbours, but in many parts of the world, your neighbours can be your worst enemy. In the past century, more than 100 million people have lost their lives to violent conflicts. Most of these were fought between groups of people living physically side by side, but separated by culture or ethnicity.
Now, May Lim and colleagues from the New England Complex Systems Institute have developed a mathematical model that can predict where such conflicts by looking at how…
emjohnson | September 3, 2009
Inexplicably, a UFO appears over one of Earth's remote cities. Hovering a few hundred meters above the terrified citizens, a government mission to board the craft is executed only to find the strange beings living in disease and desperation. A decision is made to save their lives and relocate the aliens to the city's outskirts. In that moment, what seemed to be a compassionate action develops into an outdoor prison reminiscent of the worst crimes of colonialism. Imprisoned, literally in the shanty town that is created for them and figuratively within a society that shuns them, the…
edyong | September 1, 2009A common problem afflicting modern psychology is that it's mainly based on experiments with middle-class white people, often from North America or Europe. Open up the field of inquiry to other cultures, social circles or ethnic groups and different trends come to the fore.
Take the effects of a baby-face. Decades of studies have found that rounded, smooth, young-looking faces engender trust and sympathy. People adorned with such youthful looks tend to be treated with more sensitivity and patience, receive more lenient sentences, and make better spokespeople during PR crises. But these…
emjohnson | August 28, 2009An op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times discusses the legacy of the murder that became a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement:
Fifty-four years ago today, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy visiting family in Mississippi, was abducted, mutilated and slain after he allegedly whistled at a white woman. Several days later, his horribly disfigured body was fished out of the Tallahatchie River. Many such tragedies had previously happened to black Americans and then been ignored.
At Till's funeral his mother insisted that the boy's coffin remain open so that mourners could witness the…
emjohnson | August 17, 2009According to a press release put out today by the organization Color of Change, the campaign to encourage companies to pull their advertising revenue from Glenn Beck's FOXNews show earned some major new signatories:
Eight more Glenn Beck advertisers, including Wal-Mart - the world's largest retailer - have confirmed to ColorOfChange.org that they pulled their ads from the controversial Fox News Channel broadcaster's eponymous show. Allergan (maker of Restasis), Ally Bank (a unit of GMAC Financial Services), Best Buy, Broadview Security, CVS, Re-Bath, Travelocity and Wal-Mart join the dozen…
emjohnson | August 5, 2009However, Orly Taitz does have one thing absolutely right. "Who cares about Ann Coulter?"