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"The launch -- the last scheduled one in darkness for NASA's fading shuttle program -- helped set a record for the most women in space at the same time. Three women are aboard Discovery, and another is already at the space station, making for an unprecedented foursome."

Author Tim Wise does an excellent job describing the state of racism in America (both before the age of Obama and during his 2008 presidential campaign). Wise's book is broken down into two main parts, or essays as he describes it. The first is an overview of racism and discrimination in America, citing both explicit and subtle forms of racism within the realms of employment and income, housing, education, criminal justice and law, health care, and even going into great detail of the inequality demonstrated during hurricane Katrina in 2006 and the 2008 presidential campaign. This portion of the book was mainly aimed at getting across the point that racism in America is still going strong, despite the fact that statistics show that most white Americans believe Obama's election as our president signals the end of racism in our country. Wise argues that although the election of a black man to our highest ranking position is a big step in the right direction, it does not mean that white people view black people on the same level they may see the president (he uses the analogy of Bill Cosby and the Cosby Show in terms of how white people view him differently because he does not fit the stereotype-consistent role of the "black man in America". Wise also spends a good portion of this part of the book criticizing Obama for his failure to address racism in a more direct fashion, stating that Obama has often side-stepped the issue of race in America and what needs to be done to promote more equality within the realms I mentioned above. My question regarding the first part of the book is: Is it really Obama's task to focus more of this effort on racism in America because he is our first black president? Because of the fact that he is our first black president, does it just come with the territory, whereas presidents before him were not "expected" to tackle this issue because they were old white men?

The second essay of the book focuses on what needs to be done to help alleviate modern racism (or racism 2.0, as Wise refers to it). In particular, Wise focuses on what white America needs to do in order to help promote equality in our country. He mentions five main goals for white America: 1) Take personal responsibility addressing racism and white privilege. 2) Listen to black people regarding racism. 3) Stop the denial of our disturbing history dealing with race. 4) Connect with anti-racist white culture to help promote understanding. 5) Speak up! - When you see racism, no matter how subtle, take action and make a difference.

Overall, I thought this book was a well organized argument for how racism is still a very big issue in our country and it can be seen where ever we go. Wise definitely did an excellent job getting the point across about how Obama's election to president does not mean racism is ending, it is simply not what it used to be....racism has evolved. Wise point out several instances of racism and discrimination in the book that relate to many concepts we have discussed in class, including stereotype threat, ingroup/outgroup biases, situational factors that bring out hidden prejudices, and institutional and modern racism. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a good overview of where America stands in our battle against racism and discrimination.

The New York Times article "Bias Called Persistent Hurdle for Women in Sciences" describes the report by the American Association of University Women that addresses the underpresentation of women in scientific fields such as math and technology.

The report talks about the factors that may influence this underpresentation, including the controversial issue of innate differences. When discussing the differences in male and female brains, the leading author of the report, Catherine Hill, said: "None of the research convincingly links those differences to specific skills, so we don't know what they mean in terms of mathematical abilities."

Thus, the report also focused on the cultural factors that influence this phenomenon, with findings such as this: "One study of postdoctoral applicants, for example, found that women had to publish 3 more papers in prestigious journals, or 20 more in less-known publications, to be judged as productive as male applicants."

Cultural stereotypes affect the performance of women, as the findings in stereotype threat research suggest, and therefore, prevention of that effect becomes important. The authors of the report searched for ways in which women can be encouraged to enter scientific fields, finding things such as teaching girls that math is not a static ability, teaching special courses for women entering the fields, and teaching girls about stereotype threat and its effect on performance.

Although the report indicates that the number of women in scientific fields is growing, equality has not been achieved: "But even as women earn a growing share of the doctorates in the STEM fields, the university women's report found, they do not show up, a decade later, in a proportionate number of tenured faculty positions."

For the New York Times Article, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/science/22women.html

For the full report (Why so Few?) click here: http://www.aauw.org/research/whysofew.cfm

This is a clip from Family Guy from an episode where Peter's boss is sexually harassing him at work. When he tries to bring it up to his family, they say that a man can't be sexually harassed.

Here's an article that was on MSNBC's page: http://www.thegrio.com/opinion/the-state-of-black-america-unemployed.php

Some of the statistics here are pretty bad. "African-Americans are twice as likely as whites to be unemployed, and in some areas of the country, nearly one in four young black men are out of work." The recession has affected some people more than others. What can be done to alleviate this problem?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/howard-stern-gabourey-sid_n_492102.html

Howard Stern unleashed a vicious attack on Gabourey Sidibe on his Sirius satellite show on Monday.

"There's the most enormous, fat black chick I've ever seen. She is enormous. Everyone's pretending she's a part of show business and she's never going to be in another movie," he said. "She should have gotten the Best Actress award because she's never going to have another shot. What movie is she gonna be in?"

Another article on body image/weight:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/fashion/16DIARY.html


This is report on a runway model that has lost work because of her weight, despite the fact that she is a size 4, which is still considered skinny to most people. What kind of message does something like this send not only to aspiring models, but young women in general? Also, why is it that an issue like this exists when it would seem that most people understand that runway models don't look like most people? I know there are some modeling agencies that support healthier, fuller bodies, but why isn't there more of a push for average looking models when most people (I'd assume, anyway) would accept them just the same if not more than "super"models?