Genius Hour Post #11

Today in class I continued work on my annotated bibliography, and talked to Mr. Vinluan about how Mr. Klupcheck could be my expert to interview. So my next step is to finish my annotated bibliography and start coming up with questions for the interview.

Unit 3 Blog Post

1. “Race is a grouping of people who share common biological features that society deems to be important (Textbook Pg.320).” Some features used to determine race are: skin color, facial features, hair type and body shape. While many people think that race and ethnicity are synonymous, they in fact are not. Ethnicity is defined as, “A shared cultural heritage(pg.322).” People with the same ethnicities share religions, common ancestors or have the same language.  An example is my ethnicity is European (German) and my race is Caucasian. Ethnicity is also defined by society in the fact that ethnicity views can change over time, before Catholics and Jews were looked upon as different in the US but today they are seen as common religions in the US. The main difference between race and ethnicity is that race has to do with biological traits and ethnicity has to do with cultural traits.

            The negative effects of socially defining race is that in doing this we create minority “races/groups”. A minority is a race that is subordinated or put aside from the majority of the population. In today’s case, the Caucasian race is seen as the majority and all other races (Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Middle Eastern) are seen as minorities and as shown in “Crash” minorities are assumed to either be criminals or to have low paying under qualified jobs. This is most definitely a stereotype. A stereotype is a common assumption/belief about a certain racial/ethnical group that is not true and is seen as offensive. For example in the movie when Sandra Bullock’s character assumed that the Hispanic man changing her locks, was a gang banger and was going to sell her keys to one of his “hombres” right after he left her house. Or in the video about white names vs. black names, it was shown that there is a stereotype that if a person has a different name like “Tanisha” she is automatically black. This can be harmful because as shown in the “job application study” people with “black” names who are as equally qualified as people with “white” names are much less likely to get the job over the white person. This is because of racism and more specifically implicit biases that are racist. Employers think implicitly that all because a person is black or another minority that they are under qualified for said job. This is because of the stereotypes of minorities that they are all criminals or that they are lazy and don’t work. Now most people don’t explicitly say racist things. They implicitly think them because society engrains these stereotypes into our minds nonstop. This happens through media, for example while doing my TV analysis I found that in almost every scene of tv shows there are racial stereotypes that are being subtly poked fun at, for example Cleveland’s (the black guy on Family Guy) favorite food is fried chicken and grape soda. All of these stereotypes lead to people developing racial biases, which in turn leads to minorities being oppressed and unable to find jobs or improve their lives because no matter where they go they are stereotyped and put down. Which leads to them loosing self-confidence and ultimately the reason that white people stay the majority in society.

2. This unit has really helped my sociological imagination because before this unit I had no idea there was a “war on drugs”, I didn’t really think that cops profiled people due to their race and just in general was not aware of how biased the policing system can be.After reading the " Half of Black Millennials Know of Police Abuse" I was shocked to read that right around 50% of all black millenials know someone who has been abused by the police or themselves have been abused by the police. Compared to only 1/3 of whites, 1/4 of latinos and 28% of Asian Americans, who have had the same experiences. This to me shows that there must be an implicit bias that most cops have which says that blacks are more dangerous/ more likely to be criminals than other races. The reason this bias exist is the war on drugs which the police are currently fighting. I learned about this war in the New Jim Crow articles, the reason that police have these biases is that they assume if you can catch a person who has drugs and put them in jail than you get one criminal off of the street that may commit a bigger crime. I also read that they get to keep any money they find on these criminals that is obtained illegally. The reason they are able to catch these people is that if a person looks suspicious than they are legally allowed to pull that person over and search them. So when a cop pulls over someone for speeding they are allowed to ask to look through the person's car for drugs, if consent is given. This was shown in "Crash" when the African American Couple was pulled over in their car for reasons that had nothing to do with drugs. Then the officers proceeded to pat down the couple and look in their car.

Now you might say how does this affect, you Andrew? The answer is now that I know these biases exist and that there are so many prejudices that exist due to the stereotypes that minorities are criminals. I can go out into the world and try to change my implicit biases towards minorities to be much more accepting of all. Because I know that in the past I have been pretty biased towards other races, because i was not exposed to them before Payton, so now that I go to such a diverse school I should expose my self to other racial groups so i can understand what it is like to live and be discriminated against. I am very lucky in that I am a white middle class male, i have not been racially discriminated against, so this is why I am doing the genius hour project that i am, because i wanted to be exposed to both different racial and different financial group than that I am accustomed with.

3. The only way I see this problem being fixed is if as a country we can stop this vicious cycle of mass incarceration of minorities because as shown in the New Jim Crow by locking up all of these minorities that have minor offenses, we are setting all of these people up to fail, they are unable to get jobs, which then creates stereotypes that they are lazy and don't work when in fact they cant get a job. If they even get a job, they have so many debts to pay off because they went to prison that they have to go back to jail because they couldn't afford their parole fees, which they don't want to do so they go back into the drug business. I feel that if we stop prejudicing and discriminating against minorities in the first place than we will learn to accept them as who they are, which is people who are just as good as we are. In the colorblindness article by Meghan Burke it is said that we can't be colorblind and just ignore the fact that there are other factors that cause racism other than just skin color, we can't just focus on people's skin color, we also have to change the way society sets up those of color. we need to provide minorities with opportunities to get a higher education so they can make more money and get out of poverty, which will than eliminate stereotypes and as said in New Jim Crow than end the war on drugs because if they all have money than they won't resort to selling drugs as their source of income. The way to fix this is to allow for minorities to better them selves the same ways whites are able to in this country, which is by going to college and getting better high paying jobs. We also need to stop what was shown in the "job application test" which is hire who is really qualified no matter their racial background.