NY Times columnist Charles M. Blow explored the topic of implicit predjudice in his column on last Friday.
This article and Blow's opinions should resonate with you at this point in the course.
Please read the article and be prepared to discuss in class on Wednesday. This is your only HW!
Table 1
ReplyDeleteThis table consisted of about six boys and two girls, who are all seniors and all good friends. They sit together because they’re friends and because they’re white. One of the girls in the group does not always sit with this group because she likes a variety and likes to eat with different groups of friends if she can. Sometimes she sits with this group and sometimes she sits with a different group of her friends. The rest of the group always sits together, and always sits in the same spot, on the left side of the cafe at the end of one of the long tables, not booths. The students in the group all share a lot in common, they get the same types of grades (honor roll if not all A’s), each one of them lives in the same neighborhood as at least one other person at the table, they take similar classes, the majority of the students’ hair color is brown, they all have the same sexual orientation, and the majority of them are Jewish.
Table 2
This table consisted of only boys, who are all seniors, and all best friends. They say that they sit together because they are best friends but usually they don’t sit in the café because usually they go out to lunch. They all play sports, a variety of football, baseball and lacrosse. Their main focus in high school is probably girls, they all like girls a lot. They also share grades and classes in common. Since they usually don’t eat in the café it doesn’t matter where they sit, but they do usually sit together.
Table 3
This table consisted of all girls, who are all seniors. The table is a booth at the end center of the café. They don’t always sit in the same place, they pick whichever table they can find, but they do always sit together. Their common interests are each other, they also take the same classes, and all of them get good grades, taking honors classes mostly. Some of them live in the same neighborhood but not all of them. They also all have the same lunches.
From collecting this data there was only one table that really brought race into a factor of who they sit with, and even with that table they didn’t sit together because they were white but they were conscious of the fact that they always sit with other white people. The majority of the reasons people sat together were because they were best friends, spend time together outside of school, and have the same extracurricular interests. The majority of the people I interviewed also always sat together, and in the same spot. There was only one person who admitted she liked to sit with a variety of different people, because she has different groups of friends. I did notice that although table 1 claimed to be sitting together because they are all white, two of the boys in the group are Asian and although Table 2 didn’t bring race into account in any way, they were not sitting in the area of the café where the majority of black students sit, and there were two dark skinned boys in that group and two light skinned boys. I think if you look at the café in general you do notice the dark skinned students sitting in one section and all of the light skinned students spread out in the rest of the café, however if I were to continue talking to more tables and look closely at race and the different races of each of the students, I would learn that races are spread out all over the café.