your opinion
Read each paragraph and give me your opinion do you agree do you disagree with those 4 paragraphs one for each part and if you agree or disagree why or why not SOC
1.My experience with the test did not go as well as I though/envisioned it to go. Good qualities were parried with the white faces and bad with the black. I am also right handed with far better motor skills with that hand, which helped me push the I key whenever it came up on the screen faster than I could push the E key. Being able to push one key faster than the other, do to being right hand dominant probably messed up the ending results of my score and is one of the reason why I think this test is very bias. A white male or black male could have taken this test that grew up in a predominately all white or all black community and attend a school that didn’t have very many different cultures and answered all the questions depending on those experiences incorrectly. Does that mean the white male and black male are racist because they haven’t experienced contact with different cultures? I personally do not think so, I think it has to do with a person’s background, who or what they came into contact with growing up. There doesn’t have to be a side that we have to pick, and I don’t think a test like the IAT can depict that. When Blumer talks about groups having different feelings than the overall group they belong to, I think that all comes full circle. I explained how these different groups were raised and what kind of environment the group had grown up in or what different cultures people come into contact with growing up has a major effect on why racism could play a part in that groups social setting.
2.My thoughts and merits on the limitations of using the IAT to measure my implicit race preferences or biases is neutral. I am neutral in the testing because throughout the test you are only given two difference races. I am a mixture of several different races. However, I identify more with my African American side. With this test, I agree with the results but at the same time I disagree with the results. The reason that I agree because naturally you lean more to the race you are a part of versus. I disagree because you I feel that you cannot be considered bias or racist based upon a test due the you are referring to people you know nothing about and depending on the word(s), everyone may have a different meaning for that word. I personally lean toward African Americans more because of the way I grew up. My father is considered African American to the public and my mother is considering Caucasian to the public. Growing up my mother’s family disowned me and my father’s family accepted me. I do not know people on my mother’s side simply because I am considered African American. Now the crazy thing about the situation at hand is that if you were to look at me, I appear as a Caucasian, blond hair, light skin and blue eyes. So naturally I lean towards African American because they did not deny me at the door as my mother’s family did. Also, I understand that I tend to have a bias that I do not always notice at the time but it’s almost as if it’s a natural defense. With when I am places I do not share my race. Therefore no one can judge me on my race but only for what they think I am. That way I stay neutral. I do not know what you are and you do not know what I am. We can only assume what one another is based on skin complexion. Putting my IAT experience with the context of Bulmer’s idea, I think he means just as I stated above, you have different feelings to things based on what you experienced growing up. Prejudice is a reaction to a perceived challenge to group position because if you have been put down by one group of people your entire life you tend to become prejudice of them even if you are blind to it.
3.The negative and positive labels placed on children and adults becoming self-fulfilling prophecies, or part of the “vicious cycle” shows that Gunnar Myrdal vicious cycle by placing a group into an inferior status then showing how prejudice/racism leads to discrimination of a race. That type of Contact situation affected the children’s learning (Healey & O’Brien, 2015). This shows you that prejudice is a learned behavior and reinforced by adults, school, social interactions and how they are raised. In the experiment, you saw that some of the children have changed possibly their views possibly due to the experiment that they were placed in while in school. The blue eyes and brown eyes exercise revealed about the Sioux prayer Elliott mentioned “Help me not judge a person until I have walked in his shoes”? This showed you that you should not judge others. It shows you how it feels to be judged by others and the feeling you feel when judged for your differences. Just imagine going through this all your life because you are a different color. It’s not a good feeling. This exact experiment could be used in the workplace, classroom to reduce prejudice and discrimination the same way as it was for the children. This learner has watched this experiment several times prior to the class and the question that always stick out to me is how have the participants changed in the future. What this learner found interesting about this video was how the children were after years has passed. This is a good video and should be taught in classes and in workplaces all over.
4.After watching the film, A Class Divided the negative labels that were placed on the people caused them to fulfill the theorized negative actions that they claimed those people would exhibit. It breaded more hate and more anger. This is exactly what years of discrimination has done to the minorities. The positive effects of the experiment in the children and adults is the awareness of the issue. This experiment shows them how a discriminated person feels. In the several years of experiments done on the children in Iowa, then film mentioned that Stanford University said that the children’s brains were changed and their test scores stayed higher for the rest of the year. The Sioux prayer mentioned by the teacher in the film, “help me not judge a person until I have walked in his shoes.” This exercise shows the participant exactly what it is like to be judged by others. Do not judge others. This was a small test of what people go through on a daily bases for years. These test were done in the 70’s and 80’s they knew then how to address discrimination, how to change the views of discrimination. I was born 1981. This was never taught in school and I know that my children have not done anything like this in their school. So my question is why not? If this is such a powerful leaning tool why is not being used to teach others about discrimination. Why are we not correcting the issues when we know of possible solutions to the problem?
