For this week's topic, we're talking about prejudice and bias. We watched a TED Talk featuring Dr. Paul Bloom again and he mentioned that prejudice is frequently natural, sensible, and virtuous. In my opinion, I always thought of prejudice as people being ignorant because they come from preconceived notions of some or something. But I get Dr. Bloom's perspective where without prejudice we wouldn't have something to intervene with when something goes wrong. He then goes on to quote a famous philosopher, William Hazlitt, that said, "Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room; nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, now what to feel in any relation of life." Again, I see this point of view but I just don't agree with it. I could see how it could be beneficial but I just think going about life through this perspective isn't good.
Dr. Bloom starts to cite data from recorded experiments done before the 2008 presidential election that people voted for white people to be more American when compared to Barack Obama. One comparison with Barack Obama was the British prime minister, Tony Blair, and without knowing his background people voted for him instead of Obama. In another study in 2015, they tested people's racial biases by putting on eBay baseball cards to sell but one had pictures of a white hand holding the cards and the other sale had a black hand holding the cards up. Results showed that the sale with the black hand got much fewer offers than the sale with the white hand holding up the baseball cards. The last example Dr. Bloom showed was comparing two African American prisoners, but he said that the male who was much darker was voted to most likely commit a crime. I also think this is where colorism stems. Colorism is basically assuming things about someone who has a darker complexion within their own race.
This video expands my understanding of the nature and source of prejudice by thinking that some people may live life with constant prejudices judging people right off the bat as being cautious. But me personally, it gives off being closed-minded, ignorant, and a bit racist if you do judge based off of race or skin color.
Implicit Bias Test
For the Implicit Bias test, I took the one about favoring old people or young people. My results showed that I favored young people over old people. I had a feeling this was going to be my result because I feel like I can relate to young people more and I never really grew up with an older family member in my household so I am not used to them.
No comments:
Post a Comment