Is this what people mean when they say they don't see skin color?

[alexandraerin]

karnythia recently linked to a news article about people studying the effects of television on racial biases. There was an old bit on SNL's Weekend Update when I was growing up, where Norm Macdonald would read a headline about a recent medical study and then announce that it and other news could be read in the pages of the medical journal "DUH!As others

Comments

[heliophobe]

I'm just going to nod and agree. You have a really good way of putting things.

[moofable]

"We judge the cleanliness and "professionalism" of people's hair based on the way white folks' hair looks when it's well-cared for. We have a similar rubric for judging the professionalism of people's names."

We really seem to have a similar rubric for judging everything.

A black person can't listen to rap with out being called a gangster. A Hispanic person can't listen to Manic Hispanic without being called a cholo.

And the way people talk is also a big thing. If someone doesn't speak in a completely white manner (both accent and dialect)then something is not right with them. If I spoke in the dialect or accent of where I am from lots of people (most, but not all, of them white) would be looking at me like I am mentally challenged or a gangster. Though, in fairness, they aren't all that likely to go with gangster because I'm far too pale.

[stormcaller3801]

Talk is a big thing in a much more broad fashion. For instance, let's take Left 4 Dead 2, and look at the two white characters in that: Nick and Ellis. Nick, per his character description and behavior, is the gangster type character- as in Miami Vice, Mafioso style gangster, with a white suit, slick hair, and constantly annoyed expression. He speaks without a recognizable accent. And he's generally considered very competent- if not the sort of guy you'd want to cross. Ellis, by comparison, is the group idiot. He's constantly saying things and ends up in situations in the opening trailer where he's naive, incompetent, absentminded, or just flat out stupid. And he's got a thick Southern drawl

[alexandraerin]

no accent

See also: "mainstream people".

Having "no accent" is like having "normal hair" or listening to "normal music". There are accents associated with groups of white people (or with regions that are populated by large numbers of white people), but what you're calling "no accent" is how white people talk in the middle of the country. Yes, someone from the south might have to work to lose their accent (or at least make it more "telegenic") to get a broadcast career whether they're white or not, but you're still talking about a case where the standard is white.

[caret_mox]

Don't we have standardized English grammar and pronunciation? Wouldn't that be the "normal" American English? I admit I judge others on their grammar, and I can't find anything racist in that.

As someone from the "Deep" South I have to agree with the poster before you. I've met aerospace engineers with "hick" accents who have to learn to speak normal when dealing with people outside the South to prove their competency.

[caudelac]

Gonna go ahead and flat out agree with this post. I was, in fact, just having this discussion with my dad last night.

One Will Smith does not a Post-Racial Media make.

[inever]

The people in power will always fight change that insists on taking their power away in the hopes of making things not merely tolerable, but equal. The language may change as us lower value folks resist, but the song remains the same "Don't go gettin uppity on me there nigger, woman, child, spic, chink, faggot".

"Freedom is never given to anybody!" MLK (the man who preached "brotherhood" to the Christian black masses) Even within the downtrodden bits of society there is a pecking order.

It's sad really.

[vox_vocis_causa]

I tend to agree, I wholeheartedly agree with your central premise. The one objection I have relates to the video, this is not the best example of systemic racism, HP tends to make crappy products that have been insufficiently tested, this is a fine example of that

[alexandraerin]

You nailed why I used this as the example... because it's so easy to dismiss. Here you are giving an example of system racism a pass for being a result of stupidity (not thinking) rather than malice (a deliberate choice). Sorry, Hanlon's razor is not a system for sorting the magnitude or importance of problems, nor determining what is excusable. It's merely a warning against attributing malice.

You will note I have not attributed malice. I'm using the HP product as an example of how systemic racism works and the results it can produce, in conjunction with the broader issue of how racially biased (and racially biasing) media gets put out when everyone we collectively listen to agrees that racism is bad. I'm specifically excluding malice as a possibility here

No offense but...

[prav_us]

For something like a webcam (a cheap consumer item), they probably tested it under optimal conditions until everything worked. Then they grabbed two guys at random from the testing team and had them test other scenarios. In all likely hood, one of them was not African American (12.4% of the population) and was light skinned enough that the system worked fine

Re: No offense but...

[alexandraerin]

If you didn't have the "No offense but..." at the top, I'd assume you were posting in support of me. What you describe about how it probably happened is exactly how I envision it happening. The only quibble is that I don't think that "About twelve and a half percent of the population times two equals about 25%" means there's a 25% chance that one of the two testers would be African-American.

It's not your math that I'm questioning, it's the assumption that 12.4% of the population means that any slice of our population will yield somewhere around that same representation. If that were a safe assumption, then I wouldn't have made this post in the first place. It would be a funny odd quirk of fate that this happenstance slipped through rather than a symptom of something bigger and more troubling.