How Black Americans See Discrimination

What percentage of black Americans believe racism and discrimination against black folks exists in America?

Pice a number between 1 and 100 and read on.

We asked black Americans whether they believe discrimination against black Americans exists in the U.S. today.

How many do you think responded “it exists”?

92%.

Of the 802 black Americans we asked, almost all said they believe discrimination against black Americans exists today.

One of the paradoxes of racial discrimination is the way it can remain obscured even to the people to whom it’s happening. Here’s an example: In an ambitious, novel studyconducted by the Urban Institute a few years ago, researchers sent actors with similar financial credentials to the same real estate or rental offices to ask about buying or renting a home or apartment. In the end, no matter where they were sent, the actors of color were shown fewer homes and offered fewer discounts on rent or mortgages than those who were white.

The results even surprised some of the actors of color; they felt they had been treated politely — even warmly — by the very real estate agents who told them they had no properties available to show them but who then told the white actors something different. The full scope of the disparate treatment often becomes clear only in the aggregate, once the camera zooms out.

And yet obscured as the picture may be, black Americans take the existence of discrimination as a fact of life. That’s according to a new study conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which asked black respondents how they felt about discrimination in their lives and in American society more broadly.

Almost all of the black people who responded — 92 percent — said they felt that discrimination against African-Americans exists in America today. At least half said they had personally experienced racial discrimination in being paid equally or promoted at work, when they applied for jobs or in their encounters with police.

Overall, African Americans report extensive experiences of discrimination, across a range of
situations. In the context of institutional forms of discrimination, half or more of African
Americans say they have personally been discriminated against because they are Black when
interacting with police (50%), when applying to jobs (56%), and when it comes to being paid
equally or considered for promotion (57%).

Additionally, 60% of African Americans say they or a family member have been unfairly
stopped or treated by the police because they are Black, and 45% say the court system has treated
them unfairly because they are Black. Blacks living in suburban areas are more likely than those
in urban areas to report being unfairly stopped or treated by police and being threatened or
harassed because they are Black.

In the context of individual discrimination, a majority of African Americans have personally
experienced racial slurs (51%) and people making negative assumptions or insensitive or
offensive comments about their race (52%). Four in ten African Americans say people have
acted afraid of them because of their race, and 42% have experienced racial violence. Higher
income Black Americans are more likely to report these experiences.

African Americans also report efforts to avoid potential discrimination or to minimize their
potential interactions with police. Nearly a third (31%) say they have avoided calling the police,
and 22% say they have avoided medical care, even when in need, both for fear of discrimination.
Similarly, 27% of Black Americans say they have avoided doing things they might normally,
such as using a car or participating in social events, to avoid potentially interacting with police

But within that near-consensus, the respondents reported having different kinds of experiences with discrimination, which varied considerably depending on things like gender, age and where they lived.

Take, for example, the question of whether discrimination that was the result of individual bias was a bigger problem than discrimination embedded into laws and government. Among the folks who said that discrimination existed, exactly half of all respondents felt the discrimination that black people face from individual people was a bigger cause for concern. But younger people were more likely to say they felt that institutional discrimination was a bigger concern.

There was also a city-rural divide here, with people who lived in urban areas more likely to see this discrimination as driven by institutional factors as opposed to individual bias than those who lived in rural areas…

There were some stark differences in the way people in different income brackets said they experienced discrimination. Just about 2 in 3 people who earned more than $75,000 a year said that someone has referred to them or black people with racial slurs; less than half of all people who made less than $25,000 said the same. The same trend was true when respondents were asked whether someone acted afraid of them because of their race: Fifty-five percent of people who made more than $75,000 a year or more said this was true, compared with 33 percent of those who made less than $25,000 a year….More…

 

 

New Study – Adult Perceptions of Black Girls

Interesting study. Adults are likely to see black girls as more mature then they are, and in less need of support and nurturing…

Not sure why this is a surprise, as it seems that some of our sick population has a hard time seeing black children as even human.

 

Adults view black girls as ‘less innocent,’ new report says

When compared with their white peers, young black girls are viewed less as children and more like adults, according to a new research report.

Adults in the United States tend to view black girls as “less innocent” and more grown up than white girls, according to the report, which published by Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty and Inequality on Tuesday.

Based on those findings, the research suggests that adults may perceive that black girls need less nurturing and protection than white girls, which could influence how black girls are treated in the education or juvenile justice systems.

“If our public systems, such as schools and the juvenile justice system, view black girls as older and less innocent, they may be targeted for unfair treatment in ways that effectively erase their childhood,” said Rebecca Epstein, lead author of the report and executive director of the Center on Poverty and Inequality.

She added that disparities in how black girls are viewed emerge as early as age 5, when some children are still in preschool.

“Our finding that adultification begins as young as the age of 5 was particularly sobering. That means that adults may even see little girls in kindergarten differently, needing less nurturing and support than their white peers,” Epstein said.

“Yet at the same time, the more general confirmation that black girls are adultified was not surprising. Scholars and researchers have observed this phenomenon for years,” she said. “Many experts have observed that stereotypes of black women, especially the stereotype of the ‘angry black woman,’ are projected onto black girls, and that black girls’ behavior is often interpreted as threatening to adults’ authority, which effectively adultifies black girls in harmful ways.”…More...

 

Science Finds Caual Link Between Brain Damage and Trupazoidism!

Now we know what Trumpazoids fly into firs of mouth lathering rage at the merest mention of truth!

At least Football Players come by their brain damage honestly.

Chumphism is a religion.

Study finds link between brain damage and religious fundamentalism

A new study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness—a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.

Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge. On the other hand, religious beliefs are not usually updated in response to new evidence or scientific explanations, and are therefore strongly associated with conservatism. They are fixed and rigid, which helps promote predictability and coherence to the rules of society among individuals within the group.

Religious fundamentalism refers to an ideology that emphasizes traditional religious texts and rituals and discourages progressive thinking about religion and social issues. Fundamentalist groups generally oppose anything that questions or challenges their beliefs or way of life. For this reason, they are often aggressive towards anyone who does not share their specific set of supernatural beliefs, and towards science, as these things are seen as existential threats to their entire worldview.

Since religious beliefs play a massive role in driving and influencing human behavior throughout the world, it is important to understand the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism from a psychological and neurological perspective.

To investigate the cognitive and neural systems involved in religious fundamentalism, a team of researchers—led by Jordan Grafman of Northwestern University—conducted a study that utilized data from Vietnam War Veterans that had been gathered previously. The vets were specifically chosen because a large number of them had damage to brain areas suspected of playing a critical role in functions related to religious fundamentalism. CT scans were analyzed comparing 119 vets with brain trauma to 30 healthy vets with no damage, and a survey that assessed religious fundamentalism was administered. While the majority of participants were Christians of some kind, 32.5% did not specify a particular religion.

Based on previous research, the experimenters predicted that the prefrontal cortex would play a role in religious fundamentalism, since this region is known to be associated with something called ‘cognitive flexibility’. This term refers to the brain’s ability to easily switch from thinking about one concept to another, and to think about multiple things simultaneously. Cognitive flexibility allows organisms to update beliefs in light of new evidence, and this trait likely emerged because of the obvious survival advantage such a skill provides. It is a crucial mental characteristic for adapting to new environments because it allows individuals to make more accurate predictions about the world under new and changing conditions.

Brain imaging research has shown that a major neural region associated with cognitive flexibility is the prefrontal cortex—specifically two areas known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Additionally, the vmPFC was of interest to the researchers because past studies have revealed its connection to fundamentalist-type beliefs. For example, one study showed individuals with vmPFC lesions rated radical political statements as more moderate than people with normal brains, while another showed a direct connection between vmPFC damage and religious fundamentalism. For these reasons, in the present study, researchers looked at patients with lesions in both the vmPFC and the dlPFC, and searched for correlations between damage in these areas and responses to religious fundamentalism questionnaires.

According to Dr. Grafman and his team, since religious fundamentalism involves a strict adherence to a rigid set of beliefs, cognitive flexibility and open mindedness present a challenge for fundamentalists. As such, they predicted that participants with lesions to either the vmPFC or the dlPFC would score low on measures of cognitive flexibility and trait openness and high on measures of religious fundamentalism.

The results showed that, as expected, damage to the vmPFC and dlPFC was associated with religious fundamentalism. Further tests revealed that this increase in religious fundamentalism was caused by a reduction in cognitive flexibility and openness resulting from the prefrontal cortex impairment. Cognitive flexibility was assessed using a standard psychological card sorting test that involved categorizing cards with words and images according to rules. Openness was measured using a widely-used personality survey known as the NEO Personality Inventory. The data suggests that damage to the vmPFC indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by suppressing both cognitive flexibility and openness.

These findings are important because they suggest that impaired functioning in the prefrontal cortex—whether from brain trauma, a psychological disorder, a drug or alcohol addiction, or simply a particular genetic profile—can make an individual susceptible to religious fundamentalism. And perhaps in other cases, extreme religious indoctrination harms the development or proper functioning of the prefrontal regions in a way that hinders cognitive flexibility and openness.

The authors emphasize that cognitive flexibility and openness aren’t the only things that make brains vulnerable to religious fundamentalism. In fact, their analyses showed that these factors only accounted for a fifth of the variation in fundamentalism scores. Uncovering those additional causes, which could be anything from genetic predispositions to social influences, is a future research project that the researchers believe will occupy investigators for many decades to come, given how complex and widespread religious fundamentalism is and will likely continue to be for some time.

By investigating the cognitive and neural underpinnings of religious fundamentalism, we can better understand how the phenomenon is represented in the connectivity of the brain, which could allow us to someday inoculate against rigid or radical belief systems through various kinds of mental and cognitive exercises.

 

Murder Numbers Explode in Stand Your Ground States

So called “Stand Your Ground” laws are nothing more than a license and incentive to commit murder.With the massive rise in hate crimes propelled by the Chumph’s hate speech and election – we can expect a lot more gunfire on the nation’s street corners. The reason the NRA was such a staunch supporter of the Chumph – is you can sell more guns as Americans kill each other on the streets in an internal war.

Trayvon Martin’s murder was enabled by Florida Laws.

Spike in murders seen after Florida ‘stand your ground’ self-defense law: study

Florida saw a significant spike in murders after enacting a “Stand Your Ground” law allowing people to use lethal force in self-defense in public or on private property, international researchers said Monday.

The southern state’s 24 percent rise in homicide from 2005 to 2014 stood in sharp contrast to nationwide homicide rates, which have been declining since the 1990s, according to research published in a special issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine.

“This study highlights how Stand Your Ground is likely to be a cause of the rise in Florida murders, and provides crucial information which may influence future decision-making that affects wellbeing in the US and abroad,” said co-author Antonio Gasparrini of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Florida in 2005 became the first US state to broaden protections for those who use firearms for self-defense. A number of other states have since followed suit.

Before 2005, Florida state law said people could use firearms or other lethal force against home intruders if they believed they faced an imminent threat of death or serious injury.

The 2005 law, signed by then governor Jeb Bush, extended the law to provide individuals with immunity “for using lethal force to defend themselves in public places, as well as on private property.”

Homicides linked to firearms rose 31 percent from 2005 to 2014, researchers found, compared to the previous sampling period from 1999-2004.

Overall, homicides in Florida for the decade after 2005 rose 24 percent, the study found.

The nightclub shooting in Orlando, where 49 people were killed — making it the worst mass shooting in modern US history — happened in June 2016 and was not included in the study.

“The findings are strong evidence that… this change to the law in Florida led to deaths that otherwise would not have occurred,” said study co-author Douglas Wiebe at the University of Pennsylvania.

“We need to think about the implications of these findings and Florida should consider reversing this decision that appears to have increased the use of lethal force.”

All demographic groups were affected by the increases in homicide rates.

The largest proportional rises were seen in the 20-34 age group (which went up by 31 percent) and among the white population (which rose by 28 percent), the study said.

A 20 percent increase in homicides was found among African-Americans.

For comparison, researchers looked at homicide rates in four other states — New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Virginia — that had not enacted a Stand Your Ground law over the same period of time and found no increase in homicide rates.

Suicide rates in Florida were also unchanged, suggesting that other events such as the global financial crisis of 2007-9 was not the major factor associated with the rise in homicides in Florida….More Here…

 

Black Folks and Uber/Lyft/Flywheel

Massive discrimination by Uber et al drivers.

Black people can’t get Uber drivers to pick them up, and women have drivers who want to pick them up too much

A new study published Monday by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology finds that racial and gender discrimination are rampant among Uber, Lyft, and Flywheel drivers.

 The study, which studied the behavior of UberX, Lyft, and Flywheel drivers in Seattle and Boston, appeared on the National Bureau of Economic Research’s website. It involved nearly 1,500 rides across both cities.

It found that male customers with names that sounded African-American were more than twice as likely to have their rides canceled by the drivers than their white counterparts (11.2 percent to 4.5 percent), while women with African-American names were nearly twice as likely to experience that outcome than white women (8.4 percent to 5.4 percent). In areas with low population densities, the cancellation rate for African Americans skyrocketed to 15.7 percent —three times that of white males.

Similarly, black customers in Seattle could expect to wait an average of 8 percent longer than white customers in terms of overall time. Women in Boston were driven an average of 6 percent further than men. Both women and African-Americans in general had to face slightly longer and often more expensive rides as a result of drivers either choosing longer routes or simply taking more time during the ride itself.

Many of the female students in Boston also reported that drivers tended to take up more time forcing conversation with them, with the researcher observing that the motive “appears to be a combination of profiteering and flirting to a captive audience.” Even though the routes were pre-planned to not exceed a mile or two (and thus limit the study’s cost), male drivers frequently took female drivers on much longer rides, with one participant recalling a driver going through the same intersection three time during a single trip.

“It seems to be a few bad actors,” explained Stephen M. Zoepf, the executive director for the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford and one of the study’s authors. “A few drivers were taking routes that were five-times as long as they should be.”

While the especially creepy behavior seems to be limited to a handful of drivers, though, the overall pattern of sexist and racist discrimination is quite prevalent. It is clear that Uber, Lyft, and Flywheel need to find ways of guaranteeing that their companies don’t become yet one more haven for white male privilege.

 

Police Criminality – 3 Officers a Day are Arrested for Crimes

We know from reporting that began by Pew Research, that Police Officers commit on the average of 7-8 crimes a day, although the majority of these are minor. For the first time, a study has been done which tracks serious crimes, requiring a legal response of something beyond just administrative punishment. That study has revealed that the nation’s 765,000 Police Officers commit about 1,100 crimes a year for which they are arrested. The real number is likely an order of magnitude greater, as the likelihood of an officer being arrested by his fellow officers, or convicted by complicit local prosecutors is orders of magnitude lower than the civilian population. Many are allowed to resign, and just move to another jurisdiction. When the case does make it to the arrest stage, the actual conviction rate is higher than for the civilian population. I would suggest that is because of the hesitancy to arrest unless the case is iron clad.

Study finds police officers arrested 1,100 times per year, or 3 per day, nationwide

So far this month, two New York City police commanders have been arrested on corruption allegations, an officer in Killeen, Tex., was accused of sexually assaulting a female driver, a Philadelphia police officer was charged with extortion of a drug dealer, and an officer in Hono­lulu was accused of raping a 14-year-old girl.

Such sporadic news accounts of police officers being arrested led one group of researchers to a question: How much crime do police officers commit?  No one was keeping track, much as no one was tracking how often police officers shoot and kill civilians, although both may involve use of police power and abuse of public trust.

Now there is an answer: Police officers are arrested about 1,100 times a year, or roughly three officers charged every day, according to a new national study. The most common crimes were simple assault, drunken driving and aggravated assault, and significant numbers of sex crimes were also found. About 72 percent of officers charged are convicted, more than 40 percent of the crimes are committed on duty, and nearly 95 percent of the officers charged are men.

The study is thought to be the first-ever nationwide look at police crime, and was conducted by researchers at Bowling Green State University through a grant from the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice. The research covered seven years, 2005 to 2011, and sought to quantify not only the prevalence of police officers arrested across the country, but also how law enforcement agencies discipline officers who are arrested and how officer arrests might correlate with other forms of misconduct.

For example, the study found that 22 percent of the officers arrested had been named as defendants in a federal civil rights lawsuit at some point in their careers, unrelated to their arrest case. The authors suggest that police agencies analyzing such suits “could potentially lead to new and improved mechanisms to identify and mitigate various forms of police misconduct.”

In the seven years of the study, the researchers compiled 6,724 cases, or about 960 cases per year, involving about 792 officers per year — 674 officers were arrested more than once. But the study has continued beyond 2011, and lead researcher Philip M. Stinson at Bowling Green said the number of cases now averages about 1,100 arrests per year.

“Police crimes are not uncommon,” Stinson concluded. “Our data directly contradicts some of the prevailing assumptions and the proposition that only a small group of rotten apples perpetrate the vast majority of police crime.” Although nearly 60 percent of the crimes “occurred when the officer was technically off-duty,” Stinson wrote, “a significant portion of these so-called off-duty crimes also lies within the context of police work and the perpetrator’s role as a police officer, including instances where off-duty officers flash a badge, an official weapon, or otherwise use their power, authority, and the respect afforded to them as a means to commit crime.”…Read the Rest Here…

 

Juvenile Incarceration

The above pic is from a series called “Juvenile in Justice”. They don’t say what this particular kid did to get in that cell – but some of the other pictures are of juveniles who have committed extremely violent crimes.

Worth a look.

 

Dying for a Hot Dog?

At the rates these scientists are discussing, eating red meat is more harmful than smoking… And a lot of folks out there just thought it was swine!

Time to kill the grill?

All red meat is bad for you, new study says

Eating red meat — any amount and any type — appears to significantly increase the risk of premature death, according to a long-range study that examined the eating habits and health of more than 110,000 adults for more than 20 years.

For instance, adding just one 3-ounce serving of unprocessed red meat — picture a piece of steak no bigger than a deck of cards — to one’s daily diet was associated with a 13% greater chance of dying during the course of the study.

Even worse, adding an extra daily serving of processed red meat, such as a hot dog or two slices of bacon, was linked to a 20% higher risk of death during the study.

“Any red meat you eat contributes to the risk,” said An Pan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and lead author of the study, published onlineMonday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Crunching data from thousands of questionnaires that asked people how frequently they ate a variety of foods, the researchers also discovered that replacing red meat with other foods seemed to reduce mortality risk for study participants.

Eating a serving of nuts instead of beef or pork was associated with a 19% lower risk of dying during the study. The team said choosing poultry or whole grains as a substitute was linked with a 14% reduction in mortality risk; low-fat dairy or legumes, 10%; and fish, 7%.

Previous studies had associated red meat consumption with diabetes, heart disease and cancer, all of which can be fatal. Scientists aren’t sure exactly what makes red meat so dangerous, but the suspects include the iron and saturated fat in beef, pork and lamb, the nitrates used to preserve them, and the chemicals created by high-temperature cooking.

The Harvard researchers hypothesized that eating red meat would also be linked to an overall risk of death from any cause, Pan said. And the results suggest they were right: Among the 37,698 men and 83,644 women who were tracked, as meat consumption increased, so did mortality risk.

In separate analyses of processed and unprocessed meats, the group found that both types appear to hasten death. Pan said that at the outset, he and his colleagues had thought it likely that only processed meat posed a health danger.

 

A Cure for the Common Conservative?

Looks like the cure for conservatism will actually beat a cure for cancer… Yup – “There’s a pill for that!”

Blood pressure drug ‘reduces in-built racism’

A common heart disease drug may have the unusual side-effect of combating racism, a new study suggests.

The beta-blocker drug can reduce ‘subconscious’ racism, the Oxford University study found.

Researchers found that people who took propranolol scored significantly lower on a standard test used to detect subconscious racial attitudes, than those who took a placebo.

Propranolol is most often used to reduce high blood pressure by lowering the heart rate, as well as angina and irregular heartbeat. It is also used to manage the physical symptoms of anxiety, and control migraine.

It is thought to work by blocking activation of the peripheral ‘autonomic’ nervous system, and in areas of the brain involved with formulating emotional responses, including fear, called the amygdalae.

The researchers believe propranolol reduces racial bias because such subconscious thoughts are triggered by that autonomic nervous system.

Their small study took 36 white student volunteers, gave half a single 40mg dose of propranolol and half a placebo, and asked them all to undertake the Implicit Association Test – designed to test “subtle and spontaneous biased behaviour” – two hours later.

The test requires participants to visually sort particular words like ‘joy’ ,’evil’, ‘happy’ and ‘glorious’, as well as black and white faces, into the correct categories.

Sylvia Terbeck, lead author of the study, published in the journalPsychopharmacology, said: “Our results offer new evidence about the processes in the brain that shape implicit racial bias.

“Implicit racial bias can occur even in people with a sincere belief in equality.

“Given the key role that such implicit attitudes appear to play in discrimination against other ethnic groups, and the widespread use of propranolol for medical purposes, our findings are also of considerable ethical interest.”

Professor Julian Savulescu, of the university’s Faculty of Philosophy, and a co-author of the study, said: “Such research raises the tantalising possibility that our unconscious racial attitudes could be modulated using drugs, a possibility that requires careful ethical analysis.

 

BBC – Booty Will Affect Your Mind…And Hers!

OK Playas, that phat booty may be making you lose your mind…

but it is making her lose hers.

Making you lose you mind… And Hers!

Big hips ‘impair’ women’s memory, a study finds

Although carrying excess weight anywhere appears to impair older women’s brains, carrying it on the hips may make matters worse, they say.

The Northwestern Medicine team found “apple-shaped” women fared better than “pears” on cognitive tests.

But depositing fat around the waist increases the risk of cancer, diabetes and heart disease, experts warn.

They said the findings, in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, highlighted the importance of maintaining a healthy weight for both body and mind.

Some of the health risks associated with obesity, such as vascular disease and inflammation, may explain why people who are overweight appear to be at higher risk of dementia.

However, the latest study suggests a bit of extra fat around the waist may actually protect brain functioning.

Spare tyre

The researchers believe belly fat makes more of the female hormone oestrogen that naturally dips after the menopause.

Oestrogen is thought to help protect the brain from cognitive decline.

The study involved 8,745 post-menopausal women aged 65 to 79.

These women were asked to complete a memory test that doctors use to judge brain function. They were also weighed and measured, then scored on an obesity scale known as Body Mass Index or BMI. Over two-thirds of the women were overweight or obese.

The researchers found that for every one point increase in a woman’s BMI, her memory score dropped by one point.

And pear-shaped women – those with smaller waists but bigger hips – scored particularly poorly.

The researchers say this is likely to be related to the type of fat deposited around the hips versus the waist.

Scientists already know different kinds of fat release different hormones and have varying effects on insulin resistance, lipids and blood pressure.

Lead researcher Dr Diana Kerwin said: “We need to find out if one kind of fat is more detrimental than the other, and how it affects brain function.

“The fat may contribute to the formation of plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease or a restricted blood flow to the brain.”

Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said: “The pear-shape is incredibly common, and while this study doesn’t explain fully the link between body shape and brain function, it surely makes the case for watching the scales.

 

Growth in Number of Interracial Marriages Slows

Until 1967, when a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia struck down the last of the anti-miscegenation laws in this country, interracial marriage had been illegal in 16 states and was widely considered a social taboo. The folowing diagram is from a PEW Research Study done in 2002/3 illustrating the attitudes of different age groups –

Interracial marriage still rising, but not as fast

WASHINGTON (AP) — Melting pot or racial divide? The growth of interracial marriages is slowing among U.S.-born Hispanics and Asians. Still, blacks are substantially more likely than before to marry whites.

The number of interracial marriages in the U.S. has risen 20 percent since 2000 to about 4.5 million, according to the latest census figures. While still growing, that number is a marked drop-off from the 65 percent increase between 1990 and 2000.

About 8 percent of U.S. marriages are mixed-race, up from 7 percent in 2000.

The latest trend belies notions of the U.S. as a post-racial, assimilated society. Demographers cite a steady flow of recent immigration that has given Hispanics and Asians more ethnically similar partners to choose from while creating some social distance from whites due to cultural and language differences.

White wariness toward a rapidly growing U.S. minority population also may be contributing to racial divisions, experts said.

 

Mother Brought to Tears By Child’s Racial Attitudes in CNN Test

This is a revision of a study first performed nearly 20 years ago with dolls. The new study shows that the children’s attitudes still remain nearly the same.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Kids’ test answers on race brings mother to tears

A 5-year-old girl in Georgia is being asked a series of questions in her school library. The girl, who is white, is looking at pictures of five cartoons of girls, all identical except for skin color ranging from light to dark.

When asked who the smart child is, she points to a light-skinned doll. When asked who the mean child is she points to a dark-skinned doll. She says a white child is good because “I think she looks like me”, and says the black child is ugly because “she’s a lot darker.”

As she answers her mother watches, and gently weeps.

Her daughter is taking part in a new CNN pilot study on children’s attitudes on race and her answers actually reflect one of the major findings of the study, that white children have an overwhelming bias toward white, and that black children also have a bias toward white but not nearly as strong as the bias shown by the white children.

Full coverage: Kids on race

Renowned child psychologist and University of Chicago professor Margaret Beale Spencer, a leading researcher in the field of child development, was hired as a consultant by CNN. She designed the pilot study and used a team of three psychologists to implement it: two testers to execute the study and a statistician to help analyze the results.

Full doll study results

more about “Mother Brought to Tears By Child’s Ra…“, posted with vodpod

 

CDC Admits Report on Black Women With STDs – “Inaccurate”

Hat tip – NewsOne and The Root

CDC’s shocking report last month that nearly half of all black women were infected with Herpes turns out to have a few problems. It appears that the data group utilized in the survey was limited to one economic strata, with a high incidence of drug use. Ergo, what the study did was to select 890 poor black women from an urban environment instead of selecting a representative sample across economic lines.

The second issue is that the study only looked at exposure to the virus, which doesn’t necessarily mean that the women in the study would develop the disease. As such, there wasn’t a count of women who actually had developed Herpes.

Sometimes "Random Selection" Isn't So Random

Behind the Herpes Numbers

The March reports of sky-high levels of the genital herpes virus among black women set off a firestorm of disbelief and recrimination. The numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gave many black women an all-too-familiar feeling: shock, concern and an overwhelming sense of fatigue in the face of yet another study bringing bad news and fear.

African-American men and women often seem to be under siege when it comes to the ongoing flood of research trumpeting our higher rates of nearly everything, including sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). No doubt, disparities exist, but in this case, it’s reasonable to take a step back from the anger and take a closer look at what the statistics are really telling us.