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Monthly Archives: March 2010
upcakes
as in, the movie Up!
yum and fun!
strategic colorblindness
Ignoring the obvious does not equal social change or justice. It’s simply a detrimental sweeping under the rug and ignoring of the elephant. I think that the only way to achieve true color blindness, is to work through the complex and intricate web of color consciousness that has been the way of the nation from day one. And to work through it we have to dialogue about it. Honestly.
Seeing race and seeming racist? Whites go out of their way to avoid talking about race
White people – including children as young as 10 — may avoid talking about race so as not to appear prejudiced, according to new research. But that approach often backfires as blacks tend to view this “colorblind” approach as evidence of prejudice, especially when race is clearly relevant. These results are from two separate sets of experiments led by researchers from Tufts University and Harvard Business School. Their findings are reported in the October issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the September issue of Developmental Psychology. Both journals are published by the American Psychological Association.
“Efforts to talk about race are fraught with the potential for misunderstandings,” said the studies’ lead author, Evan Apfelbaum, a PhD candidate at Tufts University. “One way that whites try to appear unbiased is to avoid talking about race altogether, a tendency we refer to as strategic colorblindness.”
In one study, 101 white undergraduate students were paired with either a white or black female partner who pretended to be another participant. The pairs were presented with 30 photographs of faces that varied in race, gender and background color. Each white participant’s objective was to guess which of the photographs the partner was holding by asking as few yes-or-no questions as possible.
Even though asking about the race of the person in the photograph was a sound strategy for completing the task, white participants were far less likely to do so with a black versus a white partner. Moreover, when the black partner was the first one to have a turn asking questions, whether she mentioned race had a dramatic effect. White participants whose black partner asked about race mentioned race on their own turn 95 percent of the time. When the black partner never asked about race, white participants only did so 10 percent of the time.
“There was clear evidence the white participants’ behavior was influenced by the precedent set by their partner, but especially when that partner was black,” said Samuel Sommers, assistant professor at Tufts and co-author of both papers. “Whites are strategically avoiding the topic of race because they’re worried that they’ll look bad if they admit they notice it in other people.”
The researchers also wanted to see how outsiders interpreted such interactions. In another experiment, 74 black and white college students evaluated videos of whites engaging in the photo task. The results showed that whites’ effort to appear colorblind backfired. Black observers rated whites’ avoidance of asking about race as being evidence of prejudice. What’s more, when the researchers showed silent video clips of whites from the study to another group of individuals, those whites who avoided asking about race were judged as less friendly, just on the basis of their nonverbal behavior.
“The findings suggest that when race is clearly relevant, whites who think that it is a wise social strategy to avoid talking about race should think again,” said Apfelbaum.
Even children appear to adopt this strategically colorblind approach. In another set of experiments, 101 white children between the ages of 8 and 11 were asked to perform a similar photo task. The children were told that asking as few yes-or-no questions as possible would mean they would get a higher score on the task.
The results showed that the older children, ages 10 and 11, avoided asking about race more than the younger children, even though this led them to perform less efficiently than their younger counterparts on the task. In a control version where all the faces in the photos were white, the older children outperformed the younger children, as expected. “This result is fascinating because it shows that children as young as 10 feel the need to try to avoid appearing prejudiced, even if doing so leads them to perform poorly on a basic cognitive test,” said Kristin Pauker, a PhD candidate at Tufts and co-author of this study.
The authors associated with both studies said their findings offer several important implications. “Our findings don’t suggest that individuals who avoid talking about race are racists,” Apfelbaum explained. “On the contrary, most are well-intentioned people who earnestly believe that colorblindness is the culturally sensitive way to interact. But, as we’ve shown, bending over backward to avoid even mentioning race sometimes creates more interpersonal problems than it solves.”
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frame-shifting
I think it’s possible to be bicultural, yet monolingual, and still experience an unconscious personality shift when moving between the two cultures.
Are you a different person when you speak a different language?
People who are bicultural and speak two languages may actually shift their personalities when they switch from one language to another, according to new research in the Journal of Consumer Research.
“Language can be a cue that activates different culture-specific frames,” write David Luna (Baruch College), Torsten Ringberg, and Laura A. Peracchio (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee).
The authors studied groups of Hispanic women, all of whom were bilingual, but with varying degrees of cultural identification. They found significant levels of “frame-shifting” (changes in self perception) in bicultural participants-those who participate in both Latino and Anglo culture. While frame-shifting has been studied before, the new research found that biculturals switched frames more quickly and easily than bilingual monoculturals.
The authors found that the women classified themselves as more assertive when they spoke Spanish than when they spoke English. They also had significantly different perceptions of women in ads when the ads were in Spanish versus English. “In the Spanish-language sessions, informants perceived females as more self-sufficient and extroverted,” write the authors.
In one of the studies, a group of bilingual U.S. Hispanic women viewed ads that featured women in different scenarios. The participants saw the ads in one language (English or Spanish) and then, six months later, they viewed the same ads in the other language. Their perceptions of themselves and the women in the ads shifted depending on the language. “One respondent, for example, saw an ad’s main character as a risk-taking, independent woman in the Spanish version of the ad, but as a hopeless, lonely, confused woman in the English version,” write the authors.
The shift in perception seems to happen unconsciously, and may have broad implications for consumer behavior and political choices among biculturals.
David Luna, Torsten Ringberg, and Laura A. Peracchio. “One Individual, Two Identities: Frame-Switching Among Biculturals” Journal of Consumer Research: August 2008.
on dogs
“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring—it was peace.”-Milan Kundera
“I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren’t certain we knew better. They fight for honor at the first challenge, make love with no moral restraint, and they do not for all their marvelous instincts appear to know about death. Being such wonderfully uncomplicated beings, they need us to do their worrying.”-George Bird Evans
Oscar! My new dog!
a rare testament of harmony
This is a fascinating story of interracial marriage, institutional racism, blended families, and mixed race ideology. I am inspired by the courage of conviction this woman maintained in the face of so much opposition. Oh! And… um…. excuse me South Carolina… 1998!?!? Yes, Michigan!
How one woman overcame the racial barriers that divide us
By DAVID LAUDERDALE
Laura Markovich came to Beaufort County in 1965 because it had one of the few places in the South where whites and blacks could gather.
She came from Michigan to attend a religious “summer school” of her Bahá’í World Faith at Penn Center on St. Helena Island.
What unfolded here became a rare testament of harmony in the messy struggle of race relations in America.
At the secluded Penn Center, on sandy soil where the first school for freed slaves was erected in 1862, the young white widow met a tall and striking black widower.
On the surface, the only thing they had in common were children underfoot. Laura had four children, all white, and Elting B. Smalls Sr. of St. Helena had six children, all black.
Three years later, they were married. They lived in the Tom Fripp community on St. Helena and together had four more children.
Laura and Elting Smalls, center, on St. Helena Island with two of her daughters, one of their sons, and two family friends.
It was a life so odd for that era in the Deep South that it demanded hard-to-reach courage, resolve and unity.
Those characteristics — and Laura Smalls’ devotion to her faith, early childhood education and family — were cited Tuesday when a standing-room-only crowd gathered back at that same Penn Center for her funeral. She died Feb. 27 at age 79.
Her children composed a eulogy that makes it sound like they were raised in the world of Ozzie and Harriet:
“Her greatest loves were arts and crafts, playing and teaching children, talking to everyone and anyone, and dancing. You can see this evidenced through her children’s passions….Can’t you yet see her sweet smile?”
‘WEDDED WIFE’
That smile was a triumph of the spirit over harrowing details.
To set the stage, their marriage took place days after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and America’s streets erupted into racial violence. King himself had gathered his troops for retreats at the Penn Center for the same reason the Bahá’ís did. They believed in unity, and this was one place they could find it. Just months before he died, King stood at Penn Center to ring home a point to the antsy civil rights activists: “So I say to you tonight that I have taken a vow. I, Martin Luther King, take thee, nonviolence, to be my wedded wife.”
For Elting Smalls to take Laura Markovich to be his wedded wife was not much easier.
Her faith required written permission from her father, and he didn’t want to give it. It took her three years to get it. Her father never did agree to meet Smalls, a Penn School graduate and career civil service worker at Parris Island Marine Corps Recruit Depot.
And then there was the matter of the law. In June 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned state laws, like South Carolina’s, that banned interracial marriage. But it took South Carolina until 1998 to officially amend the state Constitution to remove what had been ruled a violation of the 14th Amendment. The Smalls wedding was a quiet affair in the home of one of the bride’s closest friends — in Michigan.
Thus a family of whites from up North and a family of black Sea Island Gullahs became one. They lived united, years before integration was forced on the local schools, much less accepted in the home.
BLACK AND PROUD
Sometimes Laura Smalls would take her troupe of white, black and mixed-race children into the historically white waiting room at the doctor’s office, and sometimes into the historically black waiting room, and always let the odd stares fall where they may.
Family members say the white community in town had a stand-offish attitude, but the blacks of St. Helena welcomed them all, as family.
“She didn’t do it to make a statement,” said daughter Lynn Markovich Bryant of Lady’s Island. “She fell in love with Elting and she wasn’t going to let anything stand in her way.”
Bryant gives the world a look at race it rarely sees in her 2002 autobiography, ” ‘I’m Black and I’m Proud,’ Wished the White Girl.”
As a child she was stunned by the ingrained racism she saw in her little classmates. She struggled with white attitudes toward blacks because in her world, there was no racial divide. She chose to attend the predominately black St. Helena Elementary School, where she felt welcomed as a fifth-grader. Today, she has taught there for almost 30 years after finishing second in her class at Beaufort High School, earning a full scholarship to Clemson University, graduating with honors and earning a master’s degree with a 4.0 grade point average.
She sounds like a black person, and she married a black man, joking that she would have had to marry a white for it to have been considered an interracial marriage. Her husband, Wilbert Bryant, teaches at Battery Creek High School.
One day as an adolescent, Lynn Bryant blurted out, “Mama, I hate white people.”
In her book, Bryant writes: “Being a mother to such a multitude of children, this was hardly her first or last problematic situation to resolve. … She ever so warmly and calmly responded as only she could, ‘Well, Lynn don’t you love the Bahá’ís? There are white Bahá’ís.”
EMBRACED
…Smalls was embraced on St. Helena because she was not a white who ignored the natives or said, “My way is better than your way — move over.”
She saw racial progress, her daughter said, but not the level of social interaction that’s necessary for people of different races, cultures and beliefs to quit being so judgmental.
“She taught us that we have more commonality than differences,” Bryant said.
Together, Laura Smalls’ 13 surviving children and stepchildren of all colors wrote: “Our mother did not tell us how to sacrifice and serve others; instead she showed us how to walk the walk.”
mulatto diaries 