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shadowkatHalf watching a fascinating episode of 20/20 entitled Race and Sex: What we can and cannot say. Didn't plan on it. Just left the tv on after Men in Trees out of laziness. The entire episode examines how we create and continue to reinforce social stereotypes and how those stereotypes, while not true, are reinforced and can hurt our ability to achieve and interact with others. How we may not even realize we have them or think that way.
1. Unconscious biases - they had an experiment where people unconsciously would hit a key demonstrating they had a biasis. When later questioned regarding these biasis, volunteers claimed they didn't have these biasis and you can't tell just by what button they pushed. The reporter shows us the test, which has a picture and a word beneathe it and asks the volunteer to push a response to it. The results are meant to hit the unconscious - showing prejudices and biases the volunteers may not realize they have. Awareness of these prejudices can help them overcome them.
2. Tests. A study is done with a bunch of students and flash cards. The kids with brown eyes are told they are not as smart as the kids with blue eyes. Then the teacher does a test with flashcards - asking the students to tell her what she is holding up, read the word. The kids with blue eyes instantly perform better. Another testing experiment is conducted with black students - they are told that they are doing a puzzel not a test with a time limit. They perform better when they think it is a puzzel then when they think it is a test. Why? They've been told over and over that they can't do well on tests. Black students don't test well. It's not true, but they believe it.
3. Sports. Blacks aren't necessarily better athelets than Whites. It is based on other factors - cultural motivations, personal drives, and environmental drives not genetics or a physical differences. Yet, the players and individual blacks believe that blacks are physically more adept because of slavery. But academics who did fact-checking state this is unlikely, since slaves weren't necessarily bred and it's more likely the result of thousands of years of evolution. In Kenya - they run everywhere, they walk more. Maybe it's how your body is made - one guy mentions his femur is longer that's why he runs faster. So the researchers go to KEnya - and figure that they do dominate in faster running. One expert - says it is cultural. One - physical. And another says - it is all in your head, you assume the stereotype is true. But if you look closely there are always exceptions.
As the reporter states: All asians are short - but what about a star basketball player who happens to be Asian and is 7 feet tall? There are exceptions. Too many for the stereotypes to hold water.
3. Gay stereotypes. What are the gay stereotypes? That you know more about fashion and design, that you are into great hair. If you are a gay man you prefer fashion and if you are a lesbian you prefer sports and the military. Because fashion is feminine trait, and sports is a masculain trait. But there are exceptions. I know quite a few. My boss was not gay yet in some ways very butch, while my ex-roommate is very feminine and very gay. Same with men - I knew a guy in college who was very masculain, and gay. While one of my great uncles was very straight and very feminine. You can't tell by external traits.
Expert one: "Sexual orientation is something you are born with and gay men tend to be more feminine. So if you are ballet dancer and male you are gay. Or a hairdresser and male - gay."
Commentator who interviews a number of people and tests them: "But there are exceptions, dozens of them. The problem with stereotyping is you don't take into the consideration the exceptions.
"Typical straight man would for instance have as much sex as he wanted, it's not just gay mean who want lots of sex. Women hinder the straight man from doing it." (Not true, this is a generalization. I know at least three men who do not feel the need to have a lot of sex with a lot of partners, and I know at least three women who do like to have sex with tons of partners. I also know men and women who are gay who are one or the other. The generalization falls apart. People are individuals. But for some reason we like the generalization - it simplifies things.)
Expert: "Denied stereotype means you have to disbelieve what is in front of your eyes. And it is okay to be a feminine man or a masculain woman, does not necessarily mean you are gay."
Reporter: "The dictionary term Stereotype is an oversimplified opinion or observation, it can also be an excuse - a way of justifying hatred."
The program then shows a former racist and white supremicist on the lecture circuit with a gay community telling his story. The former white supremicist explains why he changed his life. The reporter, John Stossel asks - "why did you decide to hang out with these guys, they are gay?"
The former white supremicist: "Why not? They are great people. Being gay should not matter. I was screwing up my life with violence. In prison twice. In pain. I learned to become tolerant and changed my outlook and am much happier now."
The book is by John Stossel: "Myths Lies and Downright Stupidity". Which concerns the negative effects of racial stereotyping.
Fascinating and timely for me. These dang self-improvement books are confusing me. Why? Ah. Generalizations. Lots and lots of generalizations. If you are this - then you probably do that or feel like this. And I think, but what if I don't feel this way? It's as if they are attempting to fit me into this little box. Here's the walls, here's what you do, what you should consider, and how it works. Hence the reason I'm not too crazy about self-improvement books.
The Feel the Fear one - made me laugh today. It had one paragraph about how you should stop watching all news for a month and just read self-improvement books, listen to inspiring tapes and discuss those with friends and family instead of world events, focus on the positive and notice how happy you are. (I wrote in the margin: Ah. This is why the majority of people in the US voted for George W. Bush. Explains a lot.) It does say you should go back to the news eventually.
Yep, you guessed it. Information overload. Which means I'm starting to blabber and not make much sense.
Oh on the political front - Bill Clinton had this to say about Iraq in that article I wrote about earlier, entitled The Wanderer:
" Clinton had told me that the Bush Administration's plan for post-invasion Iraq 'was the sort of thing two students of international relations could have thrown together in forty-five minutes. They were arrogant. They thought it would be easy and they thought there would be no terrorism, that everyone would be on thier side.'"
"I think first of all you've got to remind people that we didn't get into this mess overnight - and we're not going to get out of it overnight, that we might decide that it's a lost cause and we just have to with-draw in an expeditiious fashion," he said. "But that whether you were for or against the original action, it would be better if it did not end in calamity and chaos, mass killing within Iraq, more terrorist bases there. And I think you have to say that this is a national-security issue - and I say that because I don't think we should have done it until after the U.N. inspections were over, until we had secured Afghanistan, and we had a consensus in the world community. I never thought Saddam presented any kind of a terrorist threat. But once you break these eggs you've got to kind of make an omelette. And we've just got to be straight about that. And, if it is obvious that there is nothing positive that can come from our committed involvement there, then we have to say we'd be prepared to say we'll come home - but we're not there yet. Seventy per cent of those people did vote. They voted to set up this government. And most of them, if left to their own devices without the people with the guns in the middle, would find some way to make some sort of decent go of it."
Earlier regarding 9/11 - he had this to say:
Many of Clinton's sentences begin with 'When I was President' or 'During our Administration,' but he does not often begin with, for instance, 'If I were President.' And yet when I asked him once whether he ever wished he were unhindered by the Twenty-second Amendment, he hesitated.
[*Note: The Twenty-Second Amendment ensure that no president of the US can stick around for more than two terms. All States in the US have something similar in their laws and constitution - entitled term limits. The Mayor of New York - gets no more than two terms. Same deal with the Governor. This was put into place with Franklin Delanor Roosevelt who was the first and only president to win four terms, most of them abided by George Washington's refusal to serve more than two. After FDR they created the amendment.
Few Presidents attempted to serve for more than two terms. Ulysses S. Grant sought a third term in office after serving from 1869 to 1877, but his party failed to nominate him. Theodore Roosevelt, who served from 1901 to 1909, sought to be elected in 1912 (non-consecutively) for a second time—he had succeeded to the presidency on William McKinley's assassination and already been elected in 1904 to a full term himself—but he lost to Woodrow Wilson. In 1940 Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the first person to be elected President three times, with supporters citing the war in Europe as a reason for breaking with precedent. In the 1944 election, during World War II, he won a fourth term, but died in office the following year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Hey - I actually did a little fact-checking before posting. Everyone applaud. Quietly please.]
"9/11 - I wish that I'd been there," Clinton said. He had been in Australia that day to give a speech. "I wish I'd been there beforehand, you know, when the F.B.I. and the C.I.A finally said we agree that bin Laden did the Cole. We could have gone after Afghanistan. And in the aftermath I'd have liked to have been there."
Clinton remains sensitive to accusations that he was too hesistant or distracted in the pursuit of Osama bin Laden - recently, he attacked an ABC docudrama for suggesting that his Administration, given the chance, had failed to fire on bin Laden - and so I asked him what he would have done in Bush's place.
"I would have gone into Afghanistan, as quick as I could, just as President Bush did," he said, "and I would have demanded that Saddam open himself up to inspections, because the UN records indicated that there were unaccounted-for chemical and biological materials. I personally never saw any intelligence on the Al Qaeda connection or the nuclear issue, except that he had some people in labs fooling around with it."
This actually fits with a speech I heard Clinton give around Christmas Time at a panel regarding the Clinton Presidency. He stated very clearly that he supported Bush's decision to go into Afghanistan and to pressure Saddam. He even supported our continued involvement in Iraq - stating that we can't just jump out now that we are in it.
Also, after reading the 9/11 Commission Report - I can see why they did not invade Afghanistan during Clinton's administration. They had enough trouble getting support going into Bosnia and Somalia, not to mention ignoring Rwanda - which made Bosnia look like a picnic in comparison. Over 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda. Think about that for a minute.
From wiki: "The Rwandan Genocide was the massacre of an estimated 800,000 to 1,071,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda, mostly carried out by two extremist Hutu militia groups, the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi, during a period of 100 days from April 6th through mid-July 1994."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwanda_genocide
Clinton has not forgiven himself for not coming to their aid. And is the only world leader, according to the article, who came and apologized.
At any rate - in order to invade Afghanistan - without having the World come down on our heads or Congress, Clinton would have needed proof and a consensus from the FBI and CIA regarding the USS Cole.
Also, if you remember, the US did not go in by their lonesome, we had help from the French, UN, Russia, and the UK. If we'd gone in back then - we'd have looked a bit like the Soviet Union did when they invaded Afghanistan way back in the 1970's. Not many people remember it - I do, because people blasted Carter for boycotting the Olympics in the Soviet Union at the time - the boycott was because of Afghanistan.
I do agree with the invasion of Afghanistan. I do *not* agree with the US government's decision to invade Iraq. Never thought that was a good idea. Thought at the time - ghod are we nuts? This is Vietnam all over again, except much worse since we won't be able to pull out and it will last forever.
Everyone told me I was wrong - no, no, it's more like WWII (yeah right, have you read any history lately? That's like saying an apple is the same as a coconut because they both come from trees. Sure Saddam was a sadistic monster, but so are a lot of other rulers, whom the US happens to be supporting. He was not in league with bin Laden - the two men hated each other, the only thing they had in common is they also hated the US, but not as much as they hated each other. All we accomplished by invading Iraq is give Bin Laden exactly what he wanted. Played right into the terrorists hands.) Or no no, my friend Wales who was equally against the war said - it won't last that long, we'll get out in two years. Sigh. Has anyone but me studied the Vietnam and Korean Wars? Hello. We are stuck.
Clinton is absolutely right about Iraq. You can't invade a country, kick out the old regime, then abandon it to chaos and the terrorist cells occupying it because you are in over your head. You have to clean up your mess. If you pull out - you look weak to your enemy, etc. What you need to do is ensure the people working for a democracy get it. In short, Bush's little plan of going in, winning, then going out - was niave. And makes me wonder if he's read any history other than the St. James Bible.
Iraq is a mess. I have no clue how we can get out of it without looking like a big dumb bully with a stick up our ass. Which unfortunately, we already do. Thank you, President Bush.
Oh, sort of off-topic, funny story on the ABC 9/11 film. Momster after talking to me - went online and signed a petition boycotting the ABC film via moveon.org - which she's a member of. She leaves the internet, goes into her bedroom and finds my Dad watching the thing. Momster: "You're watching the ABC film on 9/11?"
Dad:"Uh yeah, missed the first night."
Mom:"You realize I'm boycotting that. I signed a petition. Turn it off now! Watch football, I don't care."
Dad (sheepishly): "Okay, okay..."
Me to Momster over the phone: "Well at least Dad will know where they've fabricated things, he read the actual 9/11 report."
LOL!!! Dissension within my own family.
[As an aside, methinks I may be posting too much on my lj again and should take a breather. Back could certainly use the break. Maybe some DVDs, a film, working on novel, and reading is in order.]
1. Unconscious biases - they had an experiment where people unconsciously would hit a key demonstrating they had a biasis. When later questioned regarding these biasis, volunteers claimed they didn't have these biasis and you can't tell just by what button they pushed. The reporter shows us the test, which has a picture and a word beneathe it and asks the volunteer to push a response to it. The results are meant to hit the unconscious - showing prejudices and biases the volunteers may not realize they have. Awareness of these prejudices can help them overcome them.
2. Tests. A study is done with a bunch of students and flash cards. The kids with brown eyes are told they are not as smart as the kids with blue eyes. Then the teacher does a test with flashcards - asking the students to tell her what she is holding up, read the word. The kids with blue eyes instantly perform better. Another testing experiment is conducted with black students - they are told that they are doing a puzzel not a test with a time limit. They perform better when they think it is a puzzel then when they think it is a test. Why? They've been told over and over that they can't do well on tests. Black students don't test well. It's not true, but they believe it.
3. Sports. Blacks aren't necessarily better athelets than Whites. It is based on other factors - cultural motivations, personal drives, and environmental drives not genetics or a physical differences. Yet, the players and individual blacks believe that blacks are physically more adept because of slavery. But academics who did fact-checking state this is unlikely, since slaves weren't necessarily bred and it's more likely the result of thousands of years of evolution. In Kenya - they run everywhere, they walk more. Maybe it's how your body is made - one guy mentions his femur is longer that's why he runs faster. So the researchers go to KEnya - and figure that they do dominate in faster running. One expert - says it is cultural. One - physical. And another says - it is all in your head, you assume the stereotype is true. But if you look closely there are always exceptions.
As the reporter states: All asians are short - but what about a star basketball player who happens to be Asian and is 7 feet tall? There are exceptions. Too many for the stereotypes to hold water.
3. Gay stereotypes. What are the gay stereotypes? That you know more about fashion and design, that you are into great hair. If you are a gay man you prefer fashion and if you are a lesbian you prefer sports and the military. Because fashion is feminine trait, and sports is a masculain trait. But there are exceptions. I know quite a few. My boss was not gay yet in some ways very butch, while my ex-roommate is very feminine and very gay. Same with men - I knew a guy in college who was very masculain, and gay. While one of my great uncles was very straight and very feminine. You can't tell by external traits.
Expert one: "Sexual orientation is something you are born with and gay men tend to be more feminine. So if you are ballet dancer and male you are gay. Or a hairdresser and male - gay."
Commentator who interviews a number of people and tests them: "But there are exceptions, dozens of them. The problem with stereotyping is you don't take into the consideration the exceptions.
"Typical straight man would for instance have as much sex as he wanted, it's not just gay mean who want lots of sex. Women hinder the straight man from doing it." (Not true, this is a generalization. I know at least three men who do not feel the need to have a lot of sex with a lot of partners, and I know at least three women who do like to have sex with tons of partners. I also know men and women who are gay who are one or the other. The generalization falls apart. People are individuals. But for some reason we like the generalization - it simplifies things.)
Expert: "Denied stereotype means you have to disbelieve what is in front of your eyes. And it is okay to be a feminine man or a masculain woman, does not necessarily mean you are gay."
Reporter: "The dictionary term Stereotype is an oversimplified opinion or observation, it can also be an excuse - a way of justifying hatred."
The program then shows a former racist and white supremicist on the lecture circuit with a gay community telling his story. The former white supremicist explains why he changed his life. The reporter, John Stossel asks - "why did you decide to hang out with these guys, they are gay?"
The former white supremicist: "Why not? They are great people. Being gay should not matter. I was screwing up my life with violence. In prison twice. In pain. I learned to become tolerant and changed my outlook and am much happier now."
The book is by John Stossel: "Myths Lies and Downright Stupidity". Which concerns the negative effects of racial stereotyping.
Fascinating and timely for me. These dang self-improvement books are confusing me. Why? Ah. Generalizations. Lots and lots of generalizations. If you are this - then you probably do that or feel like this. And I think, but what if I don't feel this way? It's as if they are attempting to fit me into this little box. Here's the walls, here's what you do, what you should consider, and how it works. Hence the reason I'm not too crazy about self-improvement books.
The Feel the Fear one - made me laugh today. It had one paragraph about how you should stop watching all news for a month and just read self-improvement books, listen to inspiring tapes and discuss those with friends and family instead of world events, focus on the positive and notice how happy you are. (I wrote in the margin: Ah. This is why the majority of people in the US voted for George W. Bush. Explains a lot.) It does say you should go back to the news eventually.
Yep, you guessed it. Information overload. Which means I'm starting to blabber and not make much sense.
Oh on the political front - Bill Clinton had this to say about Iraq in that article I wrote about earlier, entitled The Wanderer:
" Clinton had told me that the Bush Administration's plan for post-invasion Iraq 'was the sort of thing two students of international relations could have thrown together in forty-five minutes. They were arrogant. They thought it would be easy and they thought there would be no terrorism, that everyone would be on thier side.'"
"I think first of all you've got to remind people that we didn't get into this mess overnight - and we're not going to get out of it overnight, that we might decide that it's a lost cause and we just have to with-draw in an expeditiious fashion," he said. "But that whether you were for or against the original action, it would be better if it did not end in calamity and chaos, mass killing within Iraq, more terrorist bases there. And I think you have to say that this is a national-security issue - and I say that because I don't think we should have done it until after the U.N. inspections were over, until we had secured Afghanistan, and we had a consensus in the world community. I never thought Saddam presented any kind of a terrorist threat. But once you break these eggs you've got to kind of make an omelette. And we've just got to be straight about that. And, if it is obvious that there is nothing positive that can come from our committed involvement there, then we have to say we'd be prepared to say we'll come home - but we're not there yet. Seventy per cent of those people did vote. They voted to set up this government. And most of them, if left to their own devices without the people with the guns in the middle, would find some way to make some sort of decent go of it."
Earlier regarding 9/11 - he had this to say:
Many of Clinton's sentences begin with 'When I was President' or 'During our Administration,' but he does not often begin with, for instance, 'If I were President.' And yet when I asked him once whether he ever wished he were unhindered by the Twenty-second Amendment, he hesitated.
[*Note: The Twenty-Second Amendment ensure that no president of the US can stick around for more than two terms. All States in the US have something similar in their laws and constitution - entitled term limits. The Mayor of New York - gets no more than two terms. Same deal with the Governor. This was put into place with Franklin Delanor Roosevelt who was the first and only president to win four terms, most of them abided by George Washington's refusal to serve more than two. After FDR they created the amendment.
Few Presidents attempted to serve for more than two terms. Ulysses S. Grant sought a third term in office after serving from 1869 to 1877, but his party failed to nominate him. Theodore Roosevelt, who served from 1901 to 1909, sought to be elected in 1912 (non-consecutively) for a second time—he had succeeded to the presidency on William McKinley's assassination and already been elected in 1904 to a full term himself—but he lost to Woodrow Wilson. In 1940 Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the first person to be elected President three times, with supporters citing the war in Europe as a reason for breaking with precedent. In the 1944 election, during World War II, he won a fourth term, but died in office the following year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Hey - I actually did a little fact-checking before posting. Everyone applaud. Quietly please.]
"9/11 - I wish that I'd been there," Clinton said. He had been in Australia that day to give a speech. "I wish I'd been there beforehand, you know, when the F.B.I. and the C.I.A finally said we agree that bin Laden did the Cole. We could have gone after Afghanistan. And in the aftermath I'd have liked to have been there."
Clinton remains sensitive to accusations that he was too hesistant or distracted in the pursuit of Osama bin Laden - recently, he attacked an ABC docudrama for suggesting that his Administration, given the chance, had failed to fire on bin Laden - and so I asked him what he would have done in Bush's place.
"I would have gone into Afghanistan, as quick as I could, just as President Bush did," he said, "and I would have demanded that Saddam open himself up to inspections, because the UN records indicated that there were unaccounted-for chemical and biological materials. I personally never saw any intelligence on the Al Qaeda connection or the nuclear issue, except that he had some people in labs fooling around with it."
This actually fits with a speech I heard Clinton give around Christmas Time at a panel regarding the Clinton Presidency. He stated very clearly that he supported Bush's decision to go into Afghanistan and to pressure Saddam. He even supported our continued involvement in Iraq - stating that we can't just jump out now that we are in it.
Also, after reading the 9/11 Commission Report - I can see why they did not invade Afghanistan during Clinton's administration. They had enough trouble getting support going into Bosnia and Somalia, not to mention ignoring Rwanda - which made Bosnia look like a picnic in comparison. Over 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda. Think about that for a minute.
From wiki: "The Rwandan Genocide was the massacre of an estimated 800,000 to 1,071,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda, mostly carried out by two extremist Hutu militia groups, the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi, during a period of 100 days from April 6th through mid-July 1994."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwanda_genocide
Clinton has not forgiven himself for not coming to their aid. And is the only world leader, according to the article, who came and apologized.
At any rate - in order to invade Afghanistan - without having the World come down on our heads or Congress, Clinton would have needed proof and a consensus from the FBI and CIA regarding the USS Cole.
Also, if you remember, the US did not go in by their lonesome, we had help from the French, UN, Russia, and the UK. If we'd gone in back then - we'd have looked a bit like the Soviet Union did when they invaded Afghanistan way back in the 1970's. Not many people remember it - I do, because people blasted Carter for boycotting the Olympics in the Soviet Union at the time - the boycott was because of Afghanistan.
I do agree with the invasion of Afghanistan. I do *not* agree with the US government's decision to invade Iraq. Never thought that was a good idea. Thought at the time - ghod are we nuts? This is Vietnam all over again, except much worse since we won't be able to pull out and it will last forever.
Everyone told me I was wrong - no, no, it's more like WWII (yeah right, have you read any history lately? That's like saying an apple is the same as a coconut because they both come from trees. Sure Saddam was a sadistic monster, but so are a lot of other rulers, whom the US happens to be supporting. He was not in league with bin Laden - the two men hated each other, the only thing they had in common is they also hated the US, but not as much as they hated each other. All we accomplished by invading Iraq is give Bin Laden exactly what he wanted. Played right into the terrorists hands.) Or no no, my friend Wales who was equally against the war said - it won't last that long, we'll get out in two years. Sigh. Has anyone but me studied the Vietnam and Korean Wars? Hello. We are stuck.
Clinton is absolutely right about Iraq. You can't invade a country, kick out the old regime, then abandon it to chaos and the terrorist cells occupying it because you are in over your head. You have to clean up your mess. If you pull out - you look weak to your enemy, etc. What you need to do is ensure the people working for a democracy get it. In short, Bush's little plan of going in, winning, then going out - was niave. And makes me wonder if he's read any history other than the St. James Bible.
Iraq is a mess. I have no clue how we can get out of it without looking like a big dumb bully with a stick up our ass. Which unfortunately, we already do. Thank you, President Bush.
Oh, sort of off-topic, funny story on the ABC 9/11 film. Momster after talking to me - went online and signed a petition boycotting the ABC film via moveon.org - which she's a member of. She leaves the internet, goes into her bedroom and finds my Dad watching the thing. Momster: "You're watching the ABC film on 9/11?"
Dad:"Uh yeah, missed the first night."
Mom:"You realize I'm boycotting that. I signed a petition. Turn it off now! Watch football, I don't care."
Dad (sheepishly): "Okay, okay..."
Me to Momster over the phone: "Well at least Dad will know where they've fabricated things, he read the actual 9/11 report."
LOL!!! Dissension within my own family.
[As an aside, methinks I may be posting too much on my lj again and should take a breather. Back could certainly use the break. Maybe some DVDs, a film, working on novel, and reading is in order.]
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Date: 2006-09-16 05:36 pm (UTC)