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Contents contributed and discussions participated by mariakanarakis

mariakanarakis

Chapter 02 - Sociological Imagination - 6 views

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    A review of the sociological imagination and its relationship to radical empathy.
mariakanarakis

When Do People ¬Not Protest Unfairness? The Case of Skin Color Discrimination... - 1 views

  • This is the phenomenon of “colorism” – “the tendency to perceive or behave toward members of a racial category based on the lightness or darkness of their skin tone”
    • mariakanarakis
       
      Colorism: (Definition) It is discrimination towards the more dark pigmented people, which excludes them from social and daily activities. Colorism is found all around the world since people have spread and this is prejudice against the darker skinned humans. 
    • mariakanarakis
       
      This website separates skin discrimination into different sectors so we can see that there's isn't only one place that the discrimination is affecting us. All of the examples which are highlighted in blue are a tool that helps us really understand what this professor is talking about. 
  • lighter-skinned black soldiers in the Union Army of the Civil War were, compared with darker-skinned soldiers, more likely to be skilled workers rather than field hands before entering the service
  • however, is that how people behave and are treated is affected not only by the nominal category of race, but also by the ordinal category of multiple shades of skin tone
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  • This is the
  • Colorism can occur within one’s own community, or across racial and ethnic groups
  • any other “racial” group.
  •  Skin Color Hierarchy in History
  • Our more systematic historical research shows that the importance of skin color on life chances dates back at least to the nineteenth century.
  • it may emerge as an indirect effect of the person’s ability to take advantage of the higher social status that has accrued over many generations to light-skinned African-Americans
  • Skin Color, Education, and Income
  • skin tone within a given race or ethnicity is associated with socioeconomic outcomes.
  • over a quarter of African Americans had earned college degrees.  But light-skinned blacks were more likely to have a college degree than were medium- or dark-skinned blacks; conversely, dark- and medium-skinned members were less likely to have completed high school.
  • In a year when blacks’ averaged about ten years of schooling, there is a gap of almost two years between the schooling of the darkest and lightest African Americans.  Dark-skinned blacks earned less than seven tenths as much as light-skinned blacks – during a year in which black families’ mean income was just over six tenths of that of white families.
  • Being dark-skinned has psychological as well as economic, educational, and temporal costs.
  • “colorism” may be a direct response to the behavior of or, more likely, the appearance of a person standing before the potential employer, judge, or teacher.
  • people who suffer from discrimination may not protest it because they are unaware of their unfair treatment, because they perceive no alternatives, or because they see no means of effective protest. 
  • Light-skinned blacks tend to come from families with relatively high status on these dimensions, so skin tone affects educational attainment indirectly.
  • light- and medium-skinned blacks received shorter sentences for all crimes than the darkest category of blacks.  In every case except property crimes [i.e. for drug, personal, and miscellaneous crimes], the darkest group of blacks received higher sentences, on average, than whites
  • sentences are 2 percent shorter for light-skinned blacks compared with whites, 4 percent longer for medium-skinned blacks, and 2 percent longer for dark-skinned blacks. Those differences seem small, but 4 percent of a 2,560 day sentence (the average length for whites) is over three months of prison time.
  • Skin Color and Political Attitudes or Behaviors:
  • light-skinned African Americans are relatively advantaged in the social and economic arenas,
  • they have a similar advantage as voters and political actors, and that dark-skinned blacks perceive more discrimination.
  • Light-skinned blacks may be slightly more likely to perceive discrimination against other members of their race, and they are a little more likely to participate politically.
  • So why isn’t colorism an issue around which blacks organize politically?
  • What’s the Matter with Kansas?
  • Unenlightened Self-Interest:
  • Public opinion in this instance was ill informed, insensitive to some of the most important implications of the tax cuts, and largely disconnected from
  • a variety of relevant values and material interests
  • light-skinned blacks as roughly analogous to middle-class Americans – certainly not at the top of the distribution, but enjoying enough benefits from the unfair structure that they would be hesitant to disrupt it too much.
  • he implication is that dark-skinned blacks ought to perceive that they are doubly maltreated, that skin color hierarchy is just as unfair as the racial hierarchy within which it nests, and that protest is warranted. 
  • We vote our values; why should we be surprised if they vote theirs?
  • the task is to understand their values on their own terms.
  • Applying this logic to the case of skin color discrimination yields several hypotheses.  Perhaps dark-skinned blacks are aware of their doubly unfair treatment, but choose to ignore it because they too care more about some other political value, such as racial solidarity or individual autonomy.
  • Similarly, light-skinned African Americans may recognize,
  • that “for generations of black people, color and class have been inexorably tied together,” but they too care more about racial solidarity than about either taking advantage of or fighting this internal division. 
  • in short, one form of unfairness may be worth accepting or ignoring publicly for the sake of fighting another, or simply pursuing some unrelated goal.
  • The deeply religious, in short, vote their values, not their interests.
  • Andrea Campbell shows that the elderly mobilize to act jointly on behalf of social security, to the benefit of most but at the expense of the poorest (
  • At the turn of the twentieth century, both black and white media frequently used “mulatto” (and sometimes “quadroon” and “octoroon”) – sometimes favorably, sometimes unfavorably, but to a surprising degree simply as a common and unremarkable descriptor.
  • those descriptors were never used or were terms of opprobrium or shock.
  • one can explain the lack of collective attention to the unfairness of skin tone discrimination by pointing to the dissemination of and allegiance to other, apparently stronger values.
  • Racial nationalists have traditionally been hostile to black feminists or black Marxists who seek to draw attention to unfair practices within the black community
  • they are similarly hostile to any discussion of skin color differentiation because it appears to be a strategy of “divide and conquer.
mariakanarakis

By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race. - Review... - 0 views

  • Leonard Steinhorn (who is white) and Barbara Diggs-Brown (who is black) argue that th
  • fantasy of representational diversity hinders actual racial progress, which they define as black and white integration.
  • see it: America lives an "integration illusion," which they define as "the public acclaim for the progress we have made, the importance of integration symbolism, the overt demonstrations of racial harmony, the rejection of blatant bigotry, the abstract support to neighborhood and school integration - all coupled with a continuing resistance to living, learning, playing and praying together."
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  • By the Color of Our Skin is not a policy book. It aims to describe America's black-white condition, not to point the way to racial harmony
  • Blacks and whites live, learn, work, pray, play, and entertain separately.
  • Desegregation, they say, "means the elimination of discriminatory laws and barriers." Integration, by contrast, is "governed by behavior and choice."
  • "America is desegregating," the authors write. "But we are simply not integrating."
  • One Nation, Indivisible, would point to my friends as examples of America's racial progress.
  • They cite statistics that show residential segregation is receding: 83 percent of blacks and 61 percent of whites have at least one member of the other race in their neighborhood, a huge increase from 30 years ago.
  • They give integration an almost impossibly strict definition. It's not enough for whites to interact with blacks with whom they share space, whether residential, professional, or personal interest. Whites must actively seek out and embrace blacks.
  • American culture doesn't exist apart from black American culture. Some of this integration may be virtual - corporate ads and university brochures, for example.
  • Yet due to centuries of separation, black Americans have developed a culture that is distinct from, even as it exerts a disproportionate influence on, America's white or mainstream culture.
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    This is a good site for my PLN "The Illusion of Skin Colour". Yellow: info Blue: examples Green: statistics Pink: word searches/ definitions
mariakanarakis

By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race. - Review... - 0 views

  • I see America's rhetorical and "virtual" integration, as reflected on TV, as a sign of progress, even while I find the NAACP's threat to force it by lawsuit absurd.
    • mariakanarakis
       
      NAACP: National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People
    • mariakanarakis
       
      This website explains us how skin colour discrimination is viewed from a black person in our society. There is history to the reason that they can't see us (whites) as we are and vice virsa. Blacks really are the ones suffering the most which is something completely wrong and it is called inequality. 
mariakanarakis

By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race. - Review... - 0 views

  • residentially segregated
    • mariakanarakis
       
      Definition: Blacks and Whites don't live in the same areas (ex. neighborhoods). 
  • this is a result of choice, not legal compulsion.
  • "It's not a segregated town. It's just not an integrated town. There's a difference."
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  • Seven in 10 blacks attended schools that were at least 50 percent black in the 1996-97 school year, according to a June 1999 study
  • same study found that nearly four in 10 blacks attended schools at least 90 percent black. The typical white student attended a school that was 81 percent white.
  • Blacks and whites experience myriad pressures that keep them separate, a fact that becomes clear when you attempt to straddle the race line, talk to people who have, or simply read the newspaper.
  • The aversion to whites is so strong that, even in schools where few are present, black students who excel academically are ridiculed for "acting white." This is a serious problem.
  • If black women dare to date interracially, they may receive random threats of violence from black men who encounter them in public.
  • suffered verbal assaults on the streets of every city in which we've lived and some where we haven't. If black men date white women, they too can expect such attacks from blacks. There are strong pressures to stay within the group.
  • black cliques erect insuperable cultural barrier of tastes and behavior that are unintelligible to whites
  • blacks excommunicated for "acting white," whites who adopt black culture are likely to face resistance at home and in their former cultural community. They're labeled "wannabes" and "wiggers."
  • makes developing deep friendships hard
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