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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
 Posted - 09/15/2011 : 09:31:36
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Gwen Dewar of parentingscience.com posts about the stereotype threat, or how stereotypes put many at a disadvantage even when no one is actively discriminating against them: read the article.
In one compelling experiment, Ryan Brown and Eric Day tested the effects of stereotype threat on African-American undergraduates.
The researchers randomly divided students into groups and gave them an IQ test. But each group got a different set of instructions.
Some students were told they were taking a test.
Other students were told that the questions were “puzzles” to solve and that they’d be asked for their opinions about them later.
The different spin mattered a lot.
When the African-American students believed they were taking a test–IQ or otherwise–they scored lower than European-American students did.
But when the students believed they were merely working on puzzles, the pressure was off and everything changed:
African-Americans performed just as well as the European-Americans did. |
I would have voted for whatever Democrat was running in the last presidential election against McCain/Palin, but this sort of stuff is really why I was excited to vote for Obama. His politics are way too moderate for me, and I was no more impressed with him in primary debates than most of the other Dem candidates. But at the time I was working with inner city black youth, and I've witnessed first hand just how incredibly self-conscious they are about race. Having a black president, especially one who came out of the working class and who has a successful black wife, certainly doesn't solve the problem of negative stereotypes, but I'm rather convinced it helps things move in a positive direction.
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"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Gwen Dewar on How Stereotypes Help Kids Fail
