Nature vs. Nurture
(or rather)
 Nature via Nurture in regards to Preconceived Notions and Racial Stereotypes

An analysis of the quotes referenced in the following articles:

Blink in Black and White by Malcolm Gladwell

"The giant computer that is our unconscious silently crunches all the data it can from the experiences we've had, the people we've met, the lessons we've learned, the books we've read, the movies we've seen, and so on, and it forms an opinion. That's what is coming out in the IAT. The disturbing thing about the test is that it shows that our unconscious attitudes may be utterly incompatible with our stated conscious values" (Gladwell, 354)

and

See Baby Discriminate by Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman

"Children naturally try to categorize everything, and the attribute they rely on is that which is the most clearly visible. We might imagine that we're creating color-blind environments for children, but differences in skin color or hair or weight are like differences in gender - they're plainly visible (Bronson & Merryman, 358)

     One of the most obvious and deleterious behaviors that every human being takes part in is racial stereotyping. Whether they believe it or not, there are different aspects in one's life where categories play a major part, and these two articles accurately address and bolster this argument. The perpetual debate regarding Nature vs. Nurture with regards to this topic is also a heavily studied concept, as it attempts to bolster the contention that humans aren't inherent bigots...

      

      With regards to the "Nurture" side of the debate, the first article looks at this topic from an interesting psychological standpoint, addressing the influence of the unconscious on one's conscious choices. The article delves into the details of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and the fascinating results that it yields. One of Gladwell's main points, as seen in the quote above, is that our biases are largely based on the associations that we make in our lives based on our various life experiences, and whether we claim to be unbiased, our unconscious conditioned responses will show our true colors. The second article takes a look at both sides of the Nature and Nurture debate. This article describes many different observations and studies that have been conducted in an attempt to understand the point at which children develop their racial stereotypes. The article discusses the fact that even from a young age, (6 months old), children are more likely to react differently to things that seem unfamiliar to them, (i.e. a baby is more likely to be caught staring intently and curiously at another baby of a different racial background). One of the most salient points made, as shown in the quote above, that certainly relates to children's future stereotypes, is that children inherently categorize things that are noticeably different. They often do this as a learning process for themselves, being that it allows them to identify and group things together. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because there are no negative connotations or associations that are made with any of these categorizations, but it is in the nurture side of the debate, where we find the true birthing of one's stereotypes. There are studies described in the article that touch upon the fact that parental involvement regarding conversations about race have a strong influence on the child's upbringing. In one experiment, parents who actively conversed about race, and how there shouldn't be any negative associations made with it, had major impacts on their children's racial beliefs in the future. On the other hand, other parents who felt uncomfortable speaking with their children about issues of race, and felt that ambiguous comments such as "Everybody is equal" should suffice, had children that had more negative associations regarding race. Even though humans have a natural tendency to categorize, it is our environment that has a major influence on how we think of those categories...

     Both of these articles were really eye-opening for me, due to the fact that I had never heard of the IAT before, and I truly never thought about racial stereotyping occurring at a young age, until now. While reading the first article, I thoroughly enjoyed taking the sample tests, as I found it immensely intriguing to see the difficulty level keep increasing with each test. Due to the preconceived notions that I have that were conditioned from societal beliefs, it was in fact interesting to see how I would answer the associations on the test slower when trying to combat my unconscious impulse with moral reasoning. I am a person that remembers many things in my life with the help of associations, and I've always thought of it as a talent and a good thing. It certainly can be at times, but when it comes to associations involving race - based on the movies, shows, and advertisements I've seen, and the conversations I've overheard - it is truly difficult to differentiate between that almost seemingly inherent impulse and how I really (morally) feel about someone or something. The second article was very interesting to me as well, for many reasons. Firstly, I was astounded with the fact that many parents refused to take the time to speak to their children about something as important as race - because they were uncomfortable - that's utterly ridiculous! As the article shows, parents have a major influence on their child's behavior and beliefs, and not taking the time to ensure that their child is aware of racial differences and the moral obligation they have as a human to ensure that all people are treated equally is a major injustice to their child and society as a whole...Secondly, due to the fact that as a child, I never saw anyone as less than me due to their skin color, (I was the "rare" caucasian child that had friends that were Indian and "Black"), I guess I didn't have biases at the time. Growing up in a rather diverse area of the country, I had the privilege of being part of the cliche "melting pot" - or rather "salad bowl", as they like to call it now (more of an amalgamation of different people with different aspects rather than a coalescence of all people into one kind of being). Looking back in retrospect now, I do believe that I was in fact part of the culture of students that (due to the increased diversity, observed more division among my friends), as the article discussed. There were many different ethnicities in my high school, but there was one instance that I recall that really blows my mind now thinking about it...

      My friends and I were walking into the cafeteria for lunch one day, and it dawned on me, every table in the entire room was categorized in some way, not by routine, but by association and familiarity. There were of course, class divisions that took place - some freshman sitting in the corner trying to "find their place", and some seniors by the door eager to get to their cars and escape, but there were often further subcategories as well. The only time that class would be irrelevant was when the students found others of similar racial categories. But I digress...as my friends and I walked in (all being caucasian), we went to sit at the table near the food line, that (unbeknownst to us freshman at the time) was typically occupied by the "Black" students that would cut class and sit there most of the day. When we went to sit at the empty table, one of the caucasian lunch monitors mentioned something to us discreetly as she walked by..."I would get up and move if I were you" - We all replied with a quick "Why?" And her response was simple - "Firstly, that group of kids doesn't let anybody sit here, especially white freshman, and second, if you sit here, and the administrators come through, they may think you're part of their group, and you'll get on the administrations' bad side"... At the time we simply thought, no problem, and got up. When doing so however, we never thought "oh, we definitely don't want to be associated with "them"". But at the same time, we did move because we didn't want to be associated with them - we had impulsively responded to the understanding that "black" delinquent students could spell trouble for us...We never even realized all of the associations that took place during that quick encounter, most of which did nothing but place a specific minority group in a place lower than ourselves, and we were only freshman...

      As I said before, these articles show the important role that our environment plays in our societal views of race. With regards to the Nature vs. Nurture debate, there is one aspect that we do have some control over...our environment. In my opinion, we definitely need to alter the way we think as a society and be more comfortable to have conversations revolving around issues of race, otherwise we are going to be living in a world that is filled with bigots holding many negative preconceived notions, not because humans are inherently bad, but because they've been conditioned based on our negative views within society. 

What is sex? What is gender?

An analysis of sex and gender using quotes from the two articles below:

The Gendered Society by Michael S. Kimmel

"If gender varies across cultures, over historical time, among men and women within any one culture, and over the life course, can we really speak to masculinity and femininity as though they were constant, universal essences, common to all women and to all men? If not gender, must be seen as an ever-changing fluid assemblage of meanings and behaviors. In that sense, we must speak of masculinities and femininities, and thus recognize the different definitions of masculinity and femininity that we construct. By pluralizing the terms, we acknowledge that masculinity and femininity mean different things to different groups of people at different times" (Kimmel, 118)

and

Where's the Rulebook for Sex Verification by Alice Dreger

"Sex is so messy that in the end, these doctors are not going to be able to run a test that will answer the question. Science can and will inform their decision, but they are going to have to decide which of the dozens of characteristics of sex matter to them" (Dreger, 124)

      Going along with the perpetual problem that humans have this desire to categorize everything, gender and sex always cause strong debate. The first article describes the many predispositions that humans are faced with regarding the thought of gender in society. Delving into the fact that men and women are regarded as being "interplanetary" beings, Professor Kimmel truly shows the strict divide that we have created between the two genders. By referring to each other as the "opposite" sex, we really are creating a line that should not be crossed without consequences. He also touches upon the "biological determinism" and "differential socialization", (nature and nurture) aspects of gender construction. He talks about the fact that yes, there may be differences biologically between men and women from birth, but that they're not as radically different that we should deem them opposites. The article goes on to describe how immediately from birth, we are treated differently, and ultimately given ideas on how we should be or act in order to fit into the mold. He also opens up the reader's mind to the inevitable truth that throughout history, only women have been studied based on their gender, whereas masculinity studies are seldom seen. He discusses the fact that within society, a man's actions are never researched for correlations related to his gender, but instead other factors, whereas a women's actions may be looked into regarding hormonal imbalances, female socialization, and femininity. We learn that, as a society, we never bring masculinity to the foreground, but instead focus on the characteristics of femininity and being a women. Very similar to the idea of "whiteness as an unmarked category", we act as if gender should only be applied to women, leaving men unaware of the impact of their gender on different aspects of their lives. The article really shows that fish truly are the last to discover the ocean...The main points that the article describes are that men and women are not that different, yet society arbitrarily dictates what are appropriate characteristics for a man and a woman, even though there are many different perspectives depending on geography, sexual orientation, etc., and thus an unspoken set of guidelines, or rulebook, has been conditioned into our thought process. 

      This idea directly connects to the second article, in which Professor Dreger discusses the trepidation one can feel when being labeled one gender or another, and how we have constructed an illegitimate "rulebook" for the "game of sex". Just as in the aforementioned article, this article describes how "sex" was simply described by basing it on the natural biology. She delves further into the debacle however to describe that the biological intricacies can in fact be very abnormal. Professor Dreger goes on to describe how simply looking at a person's chromosomes is certainly not at all an accurate representation of their biological sex due to the many abnormalities that can and do often occur relating to hormones, genes, or organs. The main point that the author makes in her article describes how in order to make a decision on one particular person's sex, the doctors may be influenced by their scientific findings, yet their decision will ultimately be made based on their subjective choices of what characteristics are salient. Even though there may be many difficulties in making these decisions, we will always subjectively decide based on our own beliefs, and categorize based on what we believe to be important...

      These two articles really opened up my eyes to the truth about is sex and gender. Having been a psychology major, I was aware of the biological differences, and some of the preconditioned psychosocial constructs, but these two articles enlightened me to think about sex and gender much differently. Regarding the first article, I found it amazingly interesting to realize that as a society, we do in fact tend to look at things from a feminine perspective, and seldom research the masculine influences. As a male, I was amazed to sit back and introspectively analyze the fact that I didn't even realize this contention! I truly was a fish in the water, until I read this! In addition, while reading the article, there were many moments where I was truly intrigued by the in-your-face facts that are so easily overlooked. One of them was that as a society we do truly refer to the other as the "opposite", inherently making it impossible to have overlapping traits. Another was that we never look at the differences among men and among women, but due to the "opposite" belief, we think that the only comparison we can make is between the two. Fascinating! The only conjecture that I would contest in this article is seen in part of the quote I stated above. I understand his idea that it may be necessary to pluralize in order to understand that there are many differences influenced by different situations, yet I feel that by having the terms still be categorically different, still having the words "masculine" and "feminine" as the root, doesn't assuage the turmoil, but instead just adds to the ambiguity of it all. I feel that he may have found a potential solution to his problem of not addressing the differences among men and among women, but those terms do nothing for the differences between, in fact they make the lists of each longer, just drawing a bigger line between them. Don't get me wrong, I loved the article, but that was the only part that I was unsure about...

      The second article also made me realize how difficult it is to truly categorize a human being. The past articles I've read have addressed the difficulties of labeling based on race and ethnicity, yet gender is just as complicated. After hearing about all of the overlapping characteristics and biological predispositions that a person can have, and then hearing the story of the South African runner, it is an amazingly arduous task to try to assign a category, yet for some reason we feel that must do it...A concept I still don't understand. What bothers me about this concept is that even with moderately identifiable scientific evidence, humans will use their own opinions to ultimately decide...I guess I will just have to keep reading to find out how subjective we can be as a society...and maybe the other aspects of my life that I've overlooked...

      These two articles really reminded me of several different occurrences in my life recently. The first being an exercise that I did with my class discussing the idea of multicultural leadership, and the second being a quick reminder of gender roles as I was shopping for Father's Day cards.

 

      One powerful exercise that I did with my class was a role-play exercise in which my two Teacher's Assistants acted out a scene as I narrated. One was male, and one was female, and the exercise entailed the man walking into the room first, followed by the woman, the man sat on a chair and put his feet up on the table, the woman sat on the floor, the man took a sip of water, nodded, then the woman drank her water, and then the man ate a cookie, nodded again, and then the woman ate her cookie. After the demonstration I asked the class what they thought, and as expected, based on my preconceived notions of what Western society thinks that scene depicted, I got a litany of words describing how misogynistic the male character was, and how terrible he treated her. My favorite reaction was when one of the female students just stood up, and with a grotesque look on her face exclaimed, "disgusting"... After I obtained the list of words, I told them the truth about the scene, describing that this was a culture where women and the earth are valued, men walk in front of women to sacrifice themselves for them, they cannot touch the earth directly as women can, being that the men are not worthy, and the men test food and drinks before the women in case they are poisoned...The class was floored, and they looked at me and then the list of words, and just said, "Oh, that's not what we thought", or "I would have never thought of that"...The entire time I was reading the first article, I thought of that exercise, and how we have constructed what society should look like. My class didn't see a powerful woman kneeling on the floor, but instead a servant, and they didn't see an unworthy man protecting that women in power, but instead a "misogynistic pig", as one student also stated. 

      The other instance in my life that related to these articles of what "gender" is occurred last night, while shopping for Father's Day cards. I was looking at the cards, and truly enjoying the fact that I had never been looking at them from a diversity perspective until this class. The cards ranged from alcoholic beverage jokes, to half-naked women, to motorcycles, to golfing, to hunting or fishing, to handy-work. While perusing, I looked at my girlfriend and said, "Sweetheart, look at all these cards - golf clubs, tools, fish, deer - what has society come to that people think this is what is manly or representative of a father" - she just looked at me and said, "Yeah, that's how it is, plus it's Walmart hun..." In addition, the back of the store had a bin that said "Movies for Dad - Cheap! $2.49!" - and what did the movies encompass - Horror films, martial arts films, westerns, crazy intense action sequence films, the bond movies, and movies with half naked women on the cover... I think it's really interesting to see how we just overlook all of these little nuances that society presents to us, and just accept them as they are. I personally wouldn't have wanted any of those cards or gifts if I was a father, I truly would have loved the one card that said, "Hey, you know all that stuff you do... I see it, I appreciate it, and I love you more than you know". Society really has a hold on us, and if we don't change or at least attempt to influence the change, we're going to just keep having these same issues...

      The more articles I read for this class, the more I feel that we are truly ignorant as a society, and it fascinates me, because in a world where our intellectual ability is literally infinite, we focus on learning so many things besides those aspects that truly effect all of us everyday. This is why I am so excited to co-teach a class on Social Justice and Diversity this coming fall to college students, because I have the chance to hopefully influence the minds of future generations, with the hopeful intention of having some impact on issues of diversity...

Thanks for reading again!