Economic decisions drive human decision making more than we like to admit. We are not often driven and motivated by causes that are larger than ourselves, and at the end of the day, we fall back on economic decisions and can’t seem to escape questions about money, about possessions, and about whether we as individuals … Continue reading What Moves us to Action
Tag: Racism
How President Obama was Viewed as ‘Other’
To understand the politics of race and who is and is not considered fully American in today's politics and society, it is important to understand the way in which President Obama was perceived as something non-American during his time in office. The President was constantly portrayed as not quite American, and the “birther” conspiracy summed … Continue reading How President Obama was Viewed as ‘Other’
Translating Symbolic Racism
What does racism look like when it is not overt and outwardly displayed? In Obama’s Race Michael Tesler and David Sears look beyond what people say and use survey data with carefully designed questions to try to look inside the mind of average people. Sears and Tesler are able to judge people’s affect, or their emotional … Continue reading Translating Symbolic Racism
Equality in the Abstract
Michael Tesler and Divid Sears in their book Obama’s Race connect historical attitudes about race in the United States to the current political and social climate of our country. Tesler and Sears write about current racial attitudes among white people who seem to be supportive of diversity, but fail to maintain such support in real world … Continue reading Equality in the Abstract
A Common View
Michael Tesler and David Sears pull together a lot of research about race and politics in their book Obama’s Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America. The authors look at the role that race has played in elections in the history of the United States and compare historical racial attitudes to contemporary … Continue reading A Common View
The Onset of the Civil War
I heard recently in a podcast that the North won the Civil War, but the South won the culture war that followed. How we remember the civil war and think about the people who fought on both sides of the war is complex, and there is no easy way to remember and truly understand the … Continue reading The Onset of the Civil War
Exoneration
In the United States we love labels. We fully embrace the part of our brain that wants to categorize and classify everything around us, and when it comes to people we search for the right label to apply to every person to help us understand who they are, what they believe, and what they are … Continue reading Exoneration
Music, Fear, Culture
Ta-Nehisi Coats discussed growing up in America as a black man in his book Between the World and Me and two of the ideas he continually returned to were fear and not having control of ones body as a black man. Coats described the way that fear made its way into his daily life and manifested … Continue reading Music, Fear, Culture
Acknowledging our True Selves
Colin Wright is a huge proponent of self awareness and ideas relating to self awareness. He advocates for recognizing ways in which our actions and ideas are shaped by our limited perspectives, draws attention to the parts of us we hide from ourselves and others, and he challenges us to rethink our goals and desires … Continue reading Acknowledging our True Selves