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Psychology | Wiley | Resources on Race Name: right16573500Before we can adequately explore the psychology of race today, we must first understand what “race” means, from genetic, sociological, historical, and psychological lenses. This PBS documentary will help provide us with the context necessary to have informative and constructive conversations on how race influences our mental processes, behavior, and larger society. This first episode of RACE: The Power of an Illusion, demonstrates how scientific findings – including genetics – have toppled our assumption that humans come bundled into distinct groups. This episode follows a dozen students who sequence and compare their own DNA. The results surprise the students – and the viewer – when they discover their closest genetic matches are as likely to be with people from other “races” as their own. Much of the program is devoted to understanding why. One by one, our myths and misconceptions about racial differences are taken apart. A key idea of this episode is that the way we group people into “races” lacks a genetic basis. But just because scientists say “race” is not biological doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. Rather, race has been extremely relevant as an important social, historical, and psychological idea. Complete the prompts below as you watch the video:[fill-in] We have this notion that “_______________” is biological/genetic; that there are clear cut distinct categories of people. BUT genetics tells us that is NOT the case. We can’t find _________ genetic markers that are unique to just one “race.” [add-in throughout video] The video will track the experiences of students in a DNA workshop; their story will be told from beginning to end. When they began the workshop, what were their assumptions? What were some of the results of the workshop? Take notes below:[fill-in] Genetic variation among humans is extremely _______________. Look alike penguins have ____x the amount of genetic difference than humans.The video will discuss how race has been studied and dealt with for the past 200 years. Take notes below on the “science” and history that is discussed. Note: This segment will go on for about 15 minutes. Be sure to get down the key ideas. [fill-in] The best way to understand the genetic differences that we find in human populations is that populations differ by distance, and it's a continuous change from one group to another. . . If we were to only look at people in the tropics and people in Norway, we'd come to the conclusion that there's a group of people who have light skin and there's a group of people who have dark skin. But if we were to walk from the tropics to Norway, what we would see is a _______________________________ in skin tone. And at ______ point along that trip would we be able to say, "Oh, this is the place in which we go from the dark race to the light race.[fill-in] If human variation were to map along racial lines, people of one “race” would be more __________________ to one another than those in another, but that’s not the case. . . Any two individuals _______________ a so-called race may be as different genetically from one another as an individual in another so-called race.Experts explain that geography is the best explanation for the existing commonalities in certain genes, rather than the idea of “race.” How does the sickle cell trait help to illustrate this point?What is meant by the following statement: Race as biology simply doesn’t work, but what is important is that race is a very salient social and historical concept. . . We live in racial smog. [Post-viewing questions] What would you describe as the purpose of the film? What was your reaction to the film? What questions remain?422275024828500left16129000Actively read this flyer from the producers of the film. Then respond to the question that follows:RACE - The Power of an Illusion - Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Race Our eyes tell us that people look different. No one has trouble distinguishing a Czech from a Chinese, but what do those differences mean? Are they biological? Has race always been with us? How does race affect people today? There’s less – and more – to race than meets the eye: Race is a modern idea. Ancient societies, like the Greeks, did not divide people according to physical distinctions, but according to religion, status, class, even language. The English language didn’t even have the word ‘race’ until it turns up in 1508 in a poem by William Dunbar referring to a line of kings.Race has no genetic basis. Not one characteristic, trait or even one gene distinguishes all the members of one so-called race from all the members of another so-called race.Human subspecies don’t exist. Unlike many animals, modern humans simply haven’t been around long enough or isolated enough to evolve into separate subspecies or races. Despite surface appearances, we are one of the most similar of all species. Skin color really is only skin deep. Most traits are inherited independently from one another. The genes influencing skin color have nothing to do with the genes influencing hair form, eye shape, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability or forms of intelligence. Knowing someone’s skin color doesn’t necessarily tell you anything else about him or her.Most variation is within, not between, "races." Of the small amount of total human variation, 85% exists within any local population, be they Italians, Kurds, Koreans or Cherokees. About 94% can be found within any continent. That means two random Koreans may be as genetically different as a Korean and an Italian.Slavery predates race. Throughout much of human history, societies have enslaved others, often as a result of conquest or war, even debt, but not because of physical characteristics or a belief in natural inferiority. Due to a unique set of historical circumstances, ours was the first slave system where all the slaves shared similar physical characteristics.Race and freedom evolved together. The U.S. was founded on the radical new principle that "All men are created equal." But our early economy was based largely on slavery. How could this anomaly be rationalized? The new idea of race helped explain why some people could be denied the rights and freedoms that others took for granted.Race justified social inequalities as natural. As the race idea evolved, white superiority became "common sense" in America. It justified not only slavery but also the extermination of Indians, exclusion of Asian immigrants, and the taking of Mexican lands by a nation that professed a belief in democracy. Racial practices were institutionalized within American government, laws, and society. Race isn’t biological, but racism is still real. Race is a powerful social idea that gives people different access to opportunities and resources. Our government and social institutions have created advantages that disproportionately channel wealth, power, and resources to white people. This affects everyone, whether we are aware of it or not.Colorblindness will not end racism. Pretending race doesn’t exist is not the same as creating equality. Race is more than stereotypes and individual prejudice. To combat racism, we need to identify and remedy social policies and institutional practices that advantage some groups at the expense of others.Copyright (c) California Newsreel, 2003 Which two items do you see as the most essential when trying to understand the concept of “race”? Explain.right7620000Extracts from The Psychology of Racism, by Psychologist Steve Taylor, 2018Racism is a sign of a lack of psychological maturity and integration.Racism has been (and unfortunately still is) such a prominent feature of so many human societies that it might be tempting to think of it as somehow "natural" or "innate."?And indeed, this is the conclusion that some evolutionary psychologists have come to. Evolutionary psychology tries to account for present-day human traits in terms of the survival benefit they might have had to our ancestors. If a trait has survived and become prevalent, then the genes associated with it must have been "selected"?by evolution. According to this logic, racism is prevalent, because it was beneficial for early human beings to deprive other groups of resources. It would have done our ancestors no good to be altruistic and allow other groups to share their resources; that would have just decreased their own chances of survival. But if they could subjugate and oppress other groups, this would increase their own access to resources. In these terms, according to Pascal Boyer, racism is "a consequence of highly efficient economic strategies,"?enabling us to "keep members of other groups in a lower-status position, with distinctly worse benefits."?Another related idea is that to see one’s own group as special or superior would have helped us to survive by enhancing group cohesion.?How do some evolutionary psychologists explain racism? However, like so many of the "just so"?stories put forward in the name of evolutionary psychology, these ideas are extremely dubious. First of all,?anthropologists who have studied contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes (who follow the same lifestyle as prehistoric human beings and can therefore be seen as representative of our species’ ancient past) report that they do not generally behave with this kind of hostility towards other groups. They don’t tend to see other tribes in their vicinity as competitors for the same food sources and try to subjugate them, or restrict their access to resources. Contemporary hunter-gatherer groups are fairly fluid, with a changing membership. Different groups interact with each other a lot, regularly visiting each other, making marriage alliances, and sometimes switching members. This is not the kind of behavior that we would associate with racism. Significantly, hunter-gatherer groups don’t tend to be territorial. They don’t have a possessive attitude toward particular pieces of land or food resources. As the anthropologists Burch and Ellanna put it, "both social and spatial boundaries among hunter-gatherers are extremely flexible with regard to membership and geographic extent." There is archaeological evidence for this lack of concern for territory too. Anthropologist Jonathan Haas writes of prehistoric North America, for instance:?"The archaeological record gives no evidence of territorial behavior on the part of any of these first hunters and gatherers. Rather, they seem to have developed a very open network of communication and interaction that spread across the continent." Again, this is not the kind of behavior which would fit with an "innate" racism.?Why does the author oppose the notion that racism is “innate”? An alternative view is that racism (and xenophobia of all kinds) does not have a genetic or evolutionary basis, but is primarily a psychological trait —?more specifically, a psychological defense mechanism generated by feelings of insecurity and anxiety. There is some evidence for this view from the psychological theory of "terror management."?Research has shown that when people are given reminders of their own mortality, they feel a sense of anxiety and insecurity, which they respond to by becoming more prone to status-seeking, materialism, greed, prejudice, and aggression. They are more likely to conform to culturally accepted attitudes?and to identify with their national or ethnic groups. According to Terror Management Theory, the motivation of these behaviors is to enhance one’s sense of significance or value in the face of death, or to gain a sense of security or belonging, as a way of protecting oneself against the threat of mortality. In my view, racism is a similar response to a more general sense of insignificance, unease, or?inadequacy. What do you make of the author’s view that racism (he’s talking more in the realm of the explicit kind) may be a psychological defense mechanism?It is possible to identify stages of racism, moving towards more extreme versions of racism, but beginning with a potentially harmless stage of group identification... Firstly, if a person feels insecure or lacking in identity,?they may have a desire to affiliate themselves with a group?in order to strengthen their sense of identity and find a sense of belonging. Being part of something bigger than themselves?and sharing a common cause with the other members of their group?makes them feel more complete and significant. There is nothing wrong with this in and of itself. Why shouldn’t we take pride in our national or religious identity (or even our identity as fans of soccer or baseball clubs), and feel a sense of brotherhood (or sisterhood) with?others who share our identity? However, this group identity may lead to a second stage: enmity towards other groups. In order to further strengthen their sense of identity, members of a group may develop hostile feelings toward other groups. The group may become more defined and cohesive in its otherness to —?and in its conflict with —?other groups.?This leads members of a group to withdraw empathy from members of other groups, limiting their concern and compassion to their fellows. They may act benevolently towards members of their own group, but be cruel and heartless to anyone outside it. (This helps explain why some of the most brutal individuals in history,?such as Adolf Hitler,?sometimes reportedly acted kindly to the people around them.) This is closely to related to the homogenization of individuals belonging to other groups. This means that people are no longer perceived in terms of their individual personalities or behavior, but in terms of generalized prejudices and assumptions about the group as?a whole.?And finally —?moving into the most dangerous and destructive extreme of racism —?people may project their own psychological flaws and their own personal failings onto another group, as a strategy of avoiding responsibility and blame. Other groups become?scapegoats, and consequently?are liable to punished,?even attacked or murdered, in revenge for their alleged crimes. Individuals with strong narcissistic and paranoid personality traits are especially prone to this strategy, since they are unable to admit to any personal faults, and are especially likely to demonize others.Create a spectrum or visual representation below that outlines what the psychologist suggests about the escalation from group identity to dangerous racism:In other words, racism —?and xenophobia of any kind —?is a symptom of psychological?ill-health. It is a sign of a lack of psychological integration, a lack of self-esteem and inner security.?Psychologically healthy people?with a stable sense of self and?strong?inner security?are not racist, because they have no need to strengthen their sense of self through group identity. They have no need to define themselves in distinction to —?and in conflict with —?others. Xenophobia is not the only possible response to insecurity or a sense of lacking, of course;?taking drugs,?drinking heavily, and?becoming obsessively materialistic or ambitious?may be other responses. And psychologically healthy people don't need to resort to racism in the same way that they don’t need to resort to taking drugs.?What do you make of the author’s argument that psychologically healthy people are not racist?Extracts from New Evidence That Racism Isn’t ‘Natural,’ by best-selling science author, Robert Wright, 2012There's never been good reason to believe that human beings are naturally racist. After all, in the environment of human evolution--which didn't feature, for example, jet travel to other continents--there would have been virtually no encounters between groups that had different skin colors or other conspicuous physical differences. So it's not as if the human lineage could have plausibly developed, by evolutionary adaptation, an instinctive reaction to members of different races. Nonetheless, people who want to argue that racism is natural have tried to buttress their position with evidence that racism is in some sense biological. For example: studies have found that when whites see black faces there is increased activity in the amygdala, a brain structure associated with emotion and, specifically, with the detection of threats. Well, whatever power that kind of argument ever had--which wasn't much, since the fact that a psychological reaction has a biological correlate doesn't tell you whether the reaction is innate--it has even less power now. In a paper in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Eva Telzer of UCLA and three other psychologists report that they've performed these amygdala studies--which had previously been done on adults--on children. And they found something interesting: the racial sensitivity of the amygdala doesn't kick in until around age 14. What's more: once it kicks in, it doesn't kick in equally for everybody. The more racially diverse your peer group, the less strong the amygdala effect. At really high levels of diversity, the effect disappeared entirely. The authors of the study write that ''these findings suggest that neural biases to race are not innate and that race is a social construction, learned over time.'' I'm not a blank slater; I don't believe that we're born innocent, and only develop a dark side after bad tendencies are engrained by evil capitalists, or evil patriarchs, or evil warmongers, or evil whatevers. I think that, though we're not naturally racist, we're naturally "groupist." Evolution seems to have inclined us to readily define whole groups of people as the enemy, after which we can find their suffering, even death, very easy to countenance and even facilitate. But when it comes to defining this enemy--defining the "out group"--people are very flexible. The out group can be defined by its language, its religion, its skin color, its jersey color. It all depends on which group we consider (rightly or wrongly) in some sense threatening to our interests. It's in this sense that race is a "social construct." It's not a category that's inherently correlated with our patterns of fear or mistrust or hatred, though, obviously, it can become one. So it's within our power to construct a society in which race isn't a meaningful construct. What do this author and the previous author agree on?right21653500Summarize what the psychologists found out about race through their amygdala studies: 231140052705000 ................
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