(originally posted April 2nd, 2006)<\/p>\n
The recent story of sexual assault at Duke University highlights one of the major reasons why racism needs to be addressed. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the part about the alleged assault as much as the perception of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153haves\u00e2\u20ac\u009d versus \u00e2\u20ac\u0153nots\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in a community where the cost of going to the university in a year is about $3,000 more than what most households make, and where those going to the university don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come close to the make up of the people living in the community.<\/p>\n
Perceptions do matter when it comes to race, as much as we wish they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, and it was evidenced well in an ABC show on 20\/20 about 3 weeks ago where several \u00e2\u20ac\u0153skits\u00e2\u20ac\u009d were put on showing confrontations. People reacted differently when they saw kids picking on another kid based on how those kids were dressed. <\/p>\n
People reacted differently when they saw a white couple arguing than a black couple, and even much different than a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153known\u00e2\u20ac\u009d married couple. And they reacted differently when they thought they were in the privacy of one person who was making racially insensitive comments without realizing they were being filmed.<\/p>\n
There is always a struggle when it comes to how people of different races reacts to similar stimulus. As much as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve enjoyed all the Harry Potter movies, I always find myself being shocked whenever I see a face that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not white; and obviously I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get shocked often. Or the Star Wars movies, where, from what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m remembering, we had Samuel Jackson and Billy Dee Williams and only the voice of James Earl Jones. <\/p>\n
I often see slights that I mention to someone white, who then says that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m being paranoid because they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t notice it, which they wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t particularly unless it was brought to their attention while they participated somewhat (remember my post about being an invisible man<\/a>?). Incidences happen all the time, whether one is looking for it or not, and it all depends upon the perception of the person viewing the scene as to whether apparent racism is noticed or not.<\/p>\n To me, it comes down to two things. One, not being afraid to have a dialogue and acknowledging that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s there. Two, being alert and paying attention, because if you open your eyes and your feelings every once in awhile, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll realize that the world isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t as safe a place for everyone as you may believe it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (originally posted April 2nd, 2006) The recent story of sexual assault at Duke University highlights one of the major reasons why racism needs to be addressed. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the part about the alleged assault as much as the perception of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153haves\u00e2\u20ac\u009d versus \u00e2\u20ac\u0153nots\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in a community where the cost of going to the university in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1079,1080,46],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diversity","tag-colleges","tag-perceptions","tag-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}