My new favorite website has been Fmylife.com. I came across this entry:

Today, after class I was chatting with my teacher, a really cool and stylish old black guy. I tell him he reminds me of one of those soul dudes from those 70s movies, right down to the pimp-walk. He tells me he walks that way because he was beaten for drinking out of the wrong fountain as a kid. FML.

This just shows the indirect effects and things we still may not be aware of. I'm glad I got to read Spring's book because it gave me a more historical based understanding for a lot of the things that went on. There are people still out there who experienced a detrimental youth.

Commercials

Since this class started, I have been more aware of and noticing racism or lack thereof in commericals or anything else I watch. I have blogged about some examples in the past. One I particularly remember, and might do my media presentation on is a Safe Auto Insurance commercial. If I recall correctly from when I saw it on tv, it was a cop pulling over cars asking if they had insurance and the people smiling and saying they had that particular type of insurance. They had 3 different cars, and each driver was a different race. One white, one black, and one hispanic I believe. Prior to taking this class, I would have thought nothing of it. But now I am analyzing more and more. The company is obviously trying to be multi-racial in their advertisements and not just predominantly white. It could also show that all races could get that type of insurance and not just feature whites.
Since we had our images lecture this week, I began paying more attention to commericals and examples while watching tv to see what other companies have other races besides white.

ICMS

While abroad in Sydney, I went to the International College of Management. Now that I have taken this class and look back on it, I don't recall seeing one black person that went to my school. In total, I think I saw about 4 or 5 total walking around Sydney that were tourists throughout the 4 months I was there. Our school had a lot of Asians, especially in the hospitality program. I only met a handful of Hispanics, and 1 Middle Eastern. The rest were from Europe, the States, or Australia. I find this very interesting and am surprised I never really realized it until now. I don't notice that there isn't a particular race present, I just notice if a specific person I know of isn't present.
While in Australia, I met so many different cultures and immigrants from around the world. I think I met more non-Australians than Aussies. But now I question why there are so few black people in Australia, and if there is something in their history that I am unaware of.

Aversive Racism

In class tonight we discussed how Eberhardt and Fiske brought up aversive racism. I took Human Resources Management and we studied a lot of cases that pertained to this topic. In was all relevant to rules and business practices. For example, a hospital policy was that all male employees had to be cleanly shaved and no facial hair was allowed. A black person took his employer to court because whenever he shaved closely, his face broke out (something that is common for their race, I don't remember exactly what it's called). The company claimed it was aversive racism and they were not aware that their policy was racist. It came down to the fact if it was a "business necessity". Will people only use the company's services if everyone was clean shaved and didn't have facial hair? Will fewer people use their services if employees had facial hair? Courts claimed that it was not a business necessity. They then changed their policy that employees had to be neatly shaved if they wanted facial hair, and facial hair could only be so long.

In class people were afraid that they may always be racist, but in this case in the work force, the company did not intend to be racist and target black workers in ways it would cause them problems. There are just issues and things we are not aware of unless it personally affects us in a significant way.

True Life

So, I was watching True Life on MTV. They featured this one bi-racial woman who despised the black half of her race. She had a confederate flag hanging proudly from her house was wanted nothing to do with half of her race. In the show, she started going to black neighborhoods and talking to black people to understand who she was and her race. This woman basically just pissed me off so much and made me so angry and confused I had to change the channel. Granted, MTV doesn't always have the best shows and its superior editing skills changes things around, but there was no way editing could change what she was saying and what she displayed in her house. How can someone be half black and not accept it and hate against your own race? It just made zero sense to me.