http://euraktiva.stumbleupon.com/review/19860857/

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:46:03 -0700

Bebo

http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MyProfile=Y

open with one of my favorite Nasheed

http://euraktiva.stumbleupon.com/review/19860744/

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:42:59 -0700

VOX

http://euraktiva.vox.com/

http://euraktiva.stumbleupon.com/review/19860539/

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:38:00 -0700

Friendster

http://friendfeed.com/euraktiva

http://euraktiva.stumbleupon.com/review/19859988/

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:24:25 -0700

International Crisis Group

http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm

http://euraktiva.stumbleupon.com/review/19859869/

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:21:07 -0700

Where to Find Open Data on the Web

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/where_to_find_open_data_on_the.php

http://euraktiva.stumbleupon.com/review/19759686/

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:55:48 -0700

What Is the Human Cost of Racism?
By Carmen Van Kerckhove - April 3, 2008, 1:37PM

As I follow the discussion we're having here at TPMCafe, I keep thinking about The Mother Teresa Effect, a concept based on her quote: "If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will."

Jae Ran Kim explains:

In 2004, Carnegie Mellon University conducted an experiment to see if this quote held true in real life. They gave participants five $1 bills to participate in a fictional survey, then presented half of the participants with a fact sheet about starving children in Africa along with an envelope for a donation. The other half of the participants received the same envelope, but instead of a fact sheet, they were given a photo of a young girl named Rokia and a paragraph about how her life would benefit from the participant's donation.

As you might expect, those with the picture of Rokia gave more than twice as much as those with just the fact sheet.

The researchers tried the experiment again, this time giving one group the fact sheet and the story about Rokia and the other group just the story about Rokia. Again, those with just the story of Rokia donated more than the group with both the story and the facts.

In other words, not only are we more likely to do something to help an individual than an abstract problem, the inclusion of factual evidence actually reduces our ability to empathize and take action.

Am I advocating that we throw all our facts and statistics out the window? No, of course not. What I'm arguing is that there is power in the specificity of the personal narrative and we should make use of it in our anti-racist efforts.

When I think back on how my own views about race have evolved over my lifetime, I realize that some of the most profound shifts in my thinking resulted not from reading theoretical treatises, but from learning about specific individuals' experiences.

Before I read Jonathan Kozol's book Amazing Grace: Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, for example, I was a staunch believer in rugged individualism. It was Kozol's unflinchingly vivid portraits of the day-to-day experiences of black and Latino children in Mott Haven that made me realize just how self-righteous and privileged I was to believe we were all on a level playing field.

We can (and should) talk all day long about employment discrimination, racial disparities in sentencing, redlining, disproportionate healthcare, voter suppression, segregation in public schools, the prison-industrial complex, and more.

But by solely discussing racism in such aggregate and abstract terms, I worry that we will lose sight of the real reason all of this matters. Racism is a problem not merely because it represents some abstract sense of societal injustice. It's a problem because of the hurt, pain, anger, and suffering it causes to individual human beings.

When I think about discrimination in the workplace, I think about a Pakistani-American man I know whose colleagues at an internet start-up told him they didn't want to leave him in the office alone in case he blew up the building.

When I think about the impact of racist stereotypes in the media, I think about the black children in Kiri Davis's short film A Girl Like Me, and how 15 out of 21 of them chose the white doll over the black doll in her recreation of Kenneth B. Clark's doll test.

When I think about Eurocentrism in our education system, I think of an Afro-Latino man I know whose third-grade teacher told him that Africans lived like monkeys until the white man brought them to America and saved them from their own wretchedness.

If we want to mobilize people to take action against racism, facts and statistics are not enough. We need to put a human face on these issues.

* print
* share

PERMALINK | RECOMMEND THIS (4)

StumbleUpon | euraktiva's blog posts

http://euraktiva.stumbleupon.com/review/19860857/

http://euraktiva.stumbleupon.com/review/19860744/

http://euraktiva.stumbleupon.com/review/19860539/

http://euraktiva.stumbleupon.com/review/19859988/

http://euraktiva.stumbleupon.com/review/19859869/

http://euraktiva.stumbleupon.com/review/19759686/