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 …
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 – …
I was out at a city park today to play some racquetball. While taking a break, I noticed four guys playing handball nearby. They were playing a hard-fought game. But wait a minute! What is that tobacco-y smell? Why, it's tobacco! Two of the handball players were smoking cigarettes (the coffin nails were actually in…
We all know about war: male-dominated animal species -- from humans to bighorn sheep -- settle their disputes with combat. But bonobos -- a matriarchal primate species -- settle their disputes with sex. Of course, humans sometimes do this too -- it's called make-up sex -- but bonobos use it for…