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Offline DannyB II

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The Authentic Self: How Do You Know If You're 'Really' Racis
« on: October 11, 2010, 10:03:05 PM »
Son of Serbia, pay attention; this is for you. My present to your socio-educational bank.

http://healthland.time.com/2010/10/11/s ... or-sexist/

The Authentic Self: How Do You Know If You're 'Really' Racist or Sexist?

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2010/10/11/s ... z126YErHsI

Related topics: implicit association test, implicit bias, Mental Health, Psychology, racism, Son of Serbia, sexism

In a world of constant scrutiny and infinite memory, what once might have been a fleeting moment of lost control can easily become a life-shattering scandal. Just ask Rick Sanchez, the CNN anchor who was recently fired, after making comments during a satellite radio interview that many considered to be anti-Semitic.

The Cuban-American journalist has since apologized for his remarks, and suggested that exhaustion from overwork was to blame for his inappropriate comments. He described the statements that got him fired as wrong, careless and offensive — and as an uncharacteristic misstep, the result of a transient state of extreme emotion and fatigue rather than a reflection of any deep-seated biased beliefs. (More on Time.com: How Not to Feel Lonely in a Crowd)

The argument is an interesting one, and one that psychologists have pondered for years. Who is the authentic self — the rude or bigoted person who may come out when we're drunk or enraged or exhausted? Or the person we are the other 99% of time, when sobriety allows us to tamp down our unsavory impulses?

Recent advances in research offer new insight into long-standing questions about the authentic self. One such technique known as the Implicit Association Test (IAT) was developed in the mid-1990s by a Yale student and her advisor. Back then, although psychologists knew that people's self-accounts of their own motivations and beliefs were incomplete, there was no way to measure unconscious processing. "It became clear that we needed to think about alternative ways of understanding the mind because people don't always say what they think and even more, people don't know what they think," says Mahzarin Banaji, who co-created the IAT and is now a professor of psychology at Harvard.

The IAT — which involves categorizing words and faces — is based on the simple premise that harder tasks take longer to do. So, for example, if a person is slower at pairing positive attributes with African Americans than with whites, it would suggest that he or she has an implicit bias against blacks. The test has been adapted to measure virtually every type of bias, including race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and even tendency toward suicide. (More on Time.com: 'It Gets Better': Wisdom From Grown-Up Gays and Lesbians to Bullied Kids)

By themselves, these unconscious associations are perhaps interesting but not especially useful. Data suggest that about 88% of white Americans and a startling 48% of African Americans show a bias in favor of whites on this test, but that doesn't mean all respondents who show implicit bias engage in actual discrimination. Indeed, it doesn't even mean that all respondents who show implicit bias actually harbor bias; they may simply be reflecting cultural knowledge of stereotypes or mere familiarity.

But regardless of the nature of the unconscious bias, in many cases it does affect behavior. "Some [implicit bias], at least, is coming from living in a world that's unequal and a world that's racially stratified. Those correlations are there and they're real and they influence how we think. That can in turn influence perception and action," says Jennifer Eberhardt, an associate professor of psychology at Stanford.

In April a study published in the journal Psychological Science found that faster associations on the IAT between self and death predicted suicide attempts better than known risk factors like depression. People with high levels of such associations were six times more likely to attempt suicide within six months than people who did not exhibit the same bias.

In a 2007 study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, doctors with high implicit bias against blacks were less likely to recommend clot-busting drugs to treat heart disease in hypothetical scenarios with black patients. Meanwhile, real-world research finds that doctors are twice as likely to recommend these potentially life-saving drugs to white patients than black patients, so it's possible that bias could partly account for the difference. (More on Time.com: Were You Born This (Un)Happy, or Did You Marry Into It?)

The effects are even measurable in election results, according to author and journalist Shankar Vedantam, whose book, The Hidden Brain, explores unconscious motivations. "If you look at Congressional districts, if you tell me what the unconscious racial biases are, I will generally be able to tell you whether they will elect a Republican or a Democrat," he says. Although the effect of unconscious bias isn't huge, in close races it can make a difference.

But do the results of the IAT really mean that most whites and nearly half of all blacks are "really" racists in their hearts? "I stay away from the words 'true' and 'real.' But the question is a good one: when Michael Richards loses it, I do think it is showing us a side of him that he is otherwise better able to keep under wraps," says Banaji, referring to the Seinfeld actor and comedian, who in an infamous 2006 episode unleashed racial slurs against black members of his audience in a comedy club. "I don't think it is deception. I think we all have these things in our heads to some extent and we are just good at controlling them."

Banaji, who is Indian, says she was surprised to find that the IAT revealed her own bias against people of color.

A fascinating series of studies shows how easy it can be to lose grip on that self-control. For example, as people age, their ability to inhibit impulses is reduced, a loss of control that may be associated with an increased expression of racism. In one study, elderly participants whose mental focus was purposefully disrupted by a laboratory distraction task were found to be more likely to make biased remarks. Interestingly, however, providing rapid fuel to the brain decreases the expression of bias:  in another study, adults who drank lemonade containing real sugar expressed fewer homophobic sentiments than those who were given Splenda-sweetened lemonade.*

This is no argument for drinking full-sugar beverages, but it does suggest that transient states — like, say, drunkenness or hunger — can affect a person's self-control. Basically, more brain power can mean less prejudice.

A person's attitude toward bias may help reduce it as well. Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford, and her colleagues recently published a study illustrating why some people confront racism and others do not. Dweck found that those who believed racism was a permanent characteristic ("that person is a racist") were four times less likely to confront research assistants who made racist statements than those who saw racism as changeable ("that person just acted in a racist manner"). (More on Time.com: "Mompetition": Why You Just Can't Make Mom Friends).

"People who believe that personality is malleable, that you can really influence other people are the ones who [speak up]. They understood that this might be a person with misconceptions who needed education. They kept an open mind," says Dweck.

That attitude applies to people's own behavior as well. "People who think prejudice is fixed really seek to avoid interracial situations because they think if it comes out of them, it will show that they're permanently prejudiced," says Dweck.

Further, Dweck's study found that it's relatively easy to get people to change their views about the changeability of racism, at least in the short term. After researchers asked participants to read a report emphasizing studies showing that people can change, they were 20% to 25% more likely to say they would confront prejudice.

But the question remains, who is the authentic you? Although overt racism and sexism are no longer socially acceptable, that doesn't mean people have stopped harboring the underlying prejudices. They will make mistakes and let things "leak out" they shouldn't say, says Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, an assistant professor of psychology at Columbia. "Does that make them racist? My perspective is that it's more complicated, to label someone as racist or not or sexist or not is not really productive," she says. "It's not that there's a private self that's real and a public self that is a facade."

Rather, as Purdie-Vaughns sees it, we have two systems operating in our brains, one slow and deliberate, which we show publicly, and one that probably evolved to help us make rapid choices, which often reflects culturally acquired information and tends to cause less thoughtful behavior. (More on Time.com: Psychology vs. Psychiatry: What's the Difference, and Which Is Better?)
Quote
Fortunately, a large body of research shows that simply acting in a way that reflects particular values can strengthen belief in those values. If we want our "real" selves and our ideal selves to line up, we have to behave in a more egalitarian fashion — even if at first that means simply pretending not to be carrying the heavy, disturbing and uncomfortable cultural baggage that we are.

Son of Serbia, you are fortunate I still like you, that I am willing to teach you lessons. Please pay extra attention to this paragraph above and take heed. The power of your mind, your real self (the one you displayed all day today, boo!) and the ideal self (the one I carry for you, Yeah!) let them meld, behave in a more egalitarian fashion. Fake it till you make it.
[/b]

If you'd like to get your own results on the IAT and possibly participate in research on it, click here.


Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2010/10/11/s ... z126YYeFLG
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Offline DannyB II

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Re: The Authentic Self: How Do You Know If You're 'Really' R
« Reply #1 on: October 12, 2010, 04:49:32 PM »
This post should not be past over lightly. There are several here who need to address these issues and I felt by posting this they could gain some insight. Please don't be afraid let your fears become public, you are not alone.[/b]
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Offline psy

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Re: The Authentic Self: How Do You Know If You're 'Really' R
« Reply #2 on: October 13, 2010, 08:31:44 PM »
A simple "bump" will do, Danny.  Quoting the same post again and again makes it very difficult for the thread to follow.

Thanks.
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Offline DannyB II

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Re: The Authentic Self: How Do You Know If You're 'Really' R
« Reply #3 on: October 13, 2010, 09:22:50 PM »
Quote from: "psy"
A simple "bump" will do, Danny.  Quoting the same post again and again makes it very difficult for the thread to follow.

Thanks.

I think this was done accidentally.
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Offline Eliscu2

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Re: The Authentic Self: How Do You Know If You're 'Really' R
« Reply #4 on: October 16, 2010, 10:50:50 AM »
http://http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-10-15/anti-defamation-league-list-tars-human-rights-groups/?om_rid=NsfbIe&om_mid=_BMuag3B8VNp4s$

The Anti-Defamation League has a new list out tarring human-rights activists in the name of protecting Israel. Michelle Goldberg on how the group is only disgracing itself.

The Anti-Defamation League, the premier American organization devoted to monitoring and combating anti-Semitism, has long had a dark side. No one has done better work investigating and exposing neo-Nazi and white Supremacist groups in the United States. I’ve spoken at several ADL meetings about my own reporting on Christian nationalism. But the ADL has also shown itself willing to smear human-rights activists when it thinks Israel’s interests demand it. It is in this context that the organization’s misguided new report on the “top 10 anti-Israel groups in America,” which includes Jewish Voice for Peace and the Council on American Islamic Relations, has to be understood.

 :blabla:  click the link...I am having a bad day too lazy to copy and paste...
 ::unhappy::
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Offline Ursus

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A Jewish Group's Shameful Smear
« Reply #5 on: October 17, 2010, 09:45:47 PM »
The Daily Beast
October 15, 2010 | 12:48pm

A Jewish Group's Shameful Smear

by Michelle Goldberg

The Anti-Defamation League has a new list out tarring human-rights activists in the name of protecting Israel. Michelle Goldberg on how the group is only disgracing itself.

The Anti-Defamation League, the premier American organization devoted to monitoring and combating anti-Semitism, has long had a dark side. No one has done better work investigating and exposing neo-Nazi and white Supremacist groups in the United States. I've spoken at several ADL meetings about my own reporting on Christian nationalism. But the ADL has also shown itself willing to smear human-rights activists when it thinks Israel's interests demand it. It is in this context that the organization's misguided new report on the "top 10 anti-Israel groups in America," which includes Jewish Voice for Peace and the Council on American Islamic Relations, has to be understood.

In the 1980s, at a time when Israel maintained close ties with South Africa, the ADL went on the attack against Nelson Mandela's African National Congress. As Sasha Polakow-Suransky reported in his recent book The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, ADL National Director Nathan Perlmutter co-authored an article implying that the ANC was "totalitarian, anti-humane, anti-democratic, anti-Israel and anti-American." The ADL sent spies into the American anti-apartheid movement, as well as other movements critical of right-wing American foreign policy. Eventually, the organization was surveilling much of the American left. In 1993, a California police raid on the offices of the ADL and one of its investigators yielded files on Greenpeace, the NAACP, Act Up, New Jewish Agenda, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and several Democratic politicians, among hundreds of others. The ADL eventually settled a class-action lawsuit brought by several of its targets.

The ADL's absurd new report doesn't rise to the level of such escapades; there is no skullduggery here, just stupidity. But the impulse to smear Israel's legitimate critics is much the same. To be sure, there are groups on the list that deserve harsh criticism: the anti-war group ANSWER, for example, has an awful record of conflating Zionism and Nazism, and of supporting the most reactionary forces in the Islamic world, from Saddam Hussein to Hezbollah.

But Jewish Voice for Peace? This is a group with a rabbinical council chaired by respected Jewish clergy and an advisory board that includes luminaries like award-winning author Adam Hochschild, playwright Tony Kushner and Democratic messaging guru George Lakoff. Oren Segal, the director of the ADL's center on extremism, justifies the group's inclusion partly on the grounds that it provides cover to other, anti-Zionist organizations. Jewish Voice for Peace, he says, has "propaganda value. Some of these other groups use the fact that they're there to kind of shield themselves from criticism that they're anti-Jewish." This is clearly guilt by association.


Students for Justice in Palestine organized a march on the UCSD campus to protest Israel's blockade of a Turkish ship bringing aid to Palestinians isolated in Gaza. (Newscom)

The ADL's list also includes The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a coalition that aims "to change those U.S. policies that sustain Israel's 40-year occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and deny equal rights for all." Among its member organizations are the American Friends Service Committee-Iowa, Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East, and the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions-USA.

    The reason young people's views are changing isn't because of sinister organizations. It's because, given current Israeli policy, an unequivocal defense of the country requires ever more heroic feats of denial and rationalization.[/list]

    The Council on American Islamic Relations made the list even though, according to spokesperson Ibrahim Hooper, it has no official position on the Middle East conflict "other than to say there should be a just and comprehensive resolution based on the interests of all parties." Though the ADL says that CAIR has "a long record of anti-Israel rhetoric, which has, at times, crossed the line into anti-Semitism," some of the examples it gives are laughable. For instance, the ADL informs us, "In response to the Israeli Navy's raid of a flotilla of ships heading to Gaza in May 2010, the executive director of CAIR-Chicago accused Israel of a 'failure to apply Jewish values.' " If this is one of the worst quotes the ADL can rustle up, it gives one faith in the strength of American interfaith relations.

    Perhaps the most interesting thing about the ADL's list is the desperation it betrays. Israel is now a country whose own social-affairs minister warns of "a whiff of fascism" in national politics. The New York Times documents brazen acts of theft and vandalism by extremist West Bank settlers, while Israeli intransigence on settlements is doing much to derail the current, ill-starred peace process. Last week, the Israeli government jailed the Palestinian non-violent activist Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a man whose supporters include Archbishop Desmond Tutu. On Friday, a new poll in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth found that 36 percent of Israeli Jews want to deny Israeli Arabs the right to vote. Israel is currently headed in a very frightening direction.

    My most recent trip to the West Bank was a few days ago; there, it's harrowingly clear how settlement expansion is killing hope for a two-state solution, how Israel is systematically making liberal Zionism an oxymoron. Among younger American Jews, identification with Israel is collapsing, and for obvious reasons. One 2007 study found that among non-Orthodox Jews under 35, only 54 percent are "comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state." At campuses like U.C. Berkeley, young Jewish activists, outraged by Israel's policies, are joining groups like Students for Justice in Palestine—another member of the ADL's top 10.

    The ADL recognizes that it is losing the propaganda war. One reason it put out the list right now, Segal says, is that students are returning to campuses where there's been an uptick in anti-Israel activism. "Online activism, as well as what's happening on college campuses, are seeping into the younger generation," he says.

    But the reason young people's views are changing isn't because of sinister organizations. It's because, given current Israeli policy, an unequivocal defense of the country requires ever more heroic feats of denial and rationalization. It requires great barrages of defamation, against Jimmy Carter, against once-revered South African jurist Richard Goldstone, against Desmond Tutu, against J-Street, the pro-Israel, pro-peace Washington group, and now, against groups like Jewish Voice for Peace. "This defense of Israel right or wrong makes them not have a moral compass," Sydney Levy, campaign director of Jewish Voice for Peace, says of the ADL. "They cannot distinguish right from wrong. All they can do is defend Israel blindly." George Orwell famously said, "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." To refuse to see it requires a constant struggle as well.

    Michelle Goldberg is a journalist and author based in New York. Her first book, the New York Times bestseller "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism" delved into some of the reddest precincts of the United States to expose the ascendant politico-religious fundamentalism dominating the Republican Party. It was a finalist for the 2007 New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. Goldberg's second book, "The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World," explored the international battle over reproductive rights, and argued that the liberation of women is key to solving the planet's most urgent problems. It won 2008's J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award and the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Book Prize. Goldberg has reported from countries including Uganda, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, India and Argentina, and her work has appeared in Glamour, Rolling Stone, The Nation, New York, The Guardian (UK) and The New Republic among many other publications. Her third book, about the world-traveling adventuress, actress and yoga evangelist Indra Devi, will be published by Knopf in 2012.


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