Check out the map below. It is a map of the Linguistic Geography of the Mainland United States (a higher resolution version is available here): Imagine that there is some loony person who would argue that the dialect he speaks is the one true, objectively superior dialect and that all other dialects are inferior…
If someone asked you how deeply you subscribe to biases- based on race, age, sex, sexual orientation, or religion- what would you say? The more open-minded of us usually try to avoid prejudice at all costs, to the extent that we reject our natural tendency to generalize. But even if we don’t accept it, society exposes us to a barrage of prejudiced perspectives on a daily basis.
How many times do you see a black criminal at large on the local news? How often do household cleaning product commercials center on women? How does the teenage character behave on prime-time sitcoms? These small, frequent examples spread a variety of stereotypes, and impact the way we perceive others, even if we feel loath to recognize such bias.
Since most people don’t want to admit upholding prejudice, Harvard psychologists devised the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The IAT tests whether an individual has a preference for certain ideals of gender, race, and other categories, all of which indicate bias. The test works like this:
Below I’ve provided a list of words, and four categories. The IAT asks you to group the words provided into one of two columns. Each column represents two categories- in this case, Male & Career, and Women & Family. Go down the list and tap the appropriate column on your screen for each word as quickly as you can without making any mistakes:
You probably found that test fairly simple. Now try it with two of the …
Providing jobs for homeless people. We’d pretty much all agree that it is a fine thing to do. It hadn’t occurred to me before to complain about the jobs that might be offered, although I have complained that pay and benefits for many jobs are inadequate. A recent “news story” made me take notice. The story is here but you have to register to look at it. I’ve reprinted it below so you won’t need to:
Homeless Shelter Residents get Jobs at Collection Agency
August 28, 2006 – by Mike Bevel, CollectionIndustry.com
A Washington state-based collection agency owner is pairing up with a faith-based homeless shelter to provide jobs for homeless people in the area.
Wayne Garlington is the owner of Accounts Receivable Inc., and sits on the board of Open House Ministries – both based in Vancouver, WA. He is currently employing five women to work as collection agents.
Garlington said he has been pleased with their performance. “They’re not being handed something,” he told the the Columbian News. “They really want to work.”
The jobs not only give the women benefits, they also allow for them to increase their income through bonuses. The company collects on overdue accounts for the city of Vancouver and Clark Public Utilities, among others.
Garlington decided to try out the idea after hearing about a similar plan being carried out by a collection agency on the East Coast.
A ‘faith-based’ homeless shelter, why isn’t that an oxymoron? If you really had faith, would …
I can’t think of a dumber investment policy than to have our states spend three times more on average per prisoner than per pupil… We don’t really have a money problem in America, but a profound values problem and a profound priorities problem.
Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, during her lecture “Stand Up for Children Now,” on April 19, 2006 at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.
Americans spend $60 billion a year to imprison 2.2 million people. This statistic compelled me to pull out my calculator. The result was shocking. In the United States we spend more than $27,000 per prisoner per year. Is this effective? Other than the violence, crowding, beatings by “goon squads,” rapes, riots, and high rates of recidivism, that is, is it effective? There are many reasons to be concerned. Here’s the main reason indicated by the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons:
What happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and prisons. We must create safe and productive conditions of confinement not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it influences the safety, health, and prosperity of us all.
What might be more effective method of using our limited social resources than putting millions of people in prison? How about investing more in the training and education of disadvantaged children? This is not just an idealistic platitude. In the June 30, 2006 issue of Science (www.sciencemag.org – …
Erich and I have previously mentioned Christian selection bias -- the practice of crediting "God" with prayers that are "answered" while ignoring the many examples of prayers that are not (also known as confirmation bias) -- but today I saw, for the first time, an explicit call for this bias among Christians. …