A project of Professor Charles Green and Race in America students at Hope College. "Racial justice is the path to racial progress."
An international research team has been studying racial bias in children—how it develops and how it can be addressed. We have known for a long time that babies and young children look longer at things they like, and not so long at things they don’t like. Pretty straightforward, right? More recently, we learned that when …
Continue reading “Segregation means that the similar is also the familiar”
#BlackLivesMatter has become a national force in the year since Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri. Businesses are scrambling to adapt to the new work force, and the new customer base. “Social justice” is the subject of sermons and studies in churches, synagogues, and mosques around the country. And 51% of likely American voters want …
Back in the ‘80s, there was a lot of concern about the coarsening of U.S. culture, especially in entertainment, including the use of violent, crudely sexual, and misogynistic lyrics in both heavy metal and rap music. At the time, heavy metal was considered a genre mostly for young White men, and rap a genre mostly …
I was talking with a physician recently, a specialist, really good at his work and a darn nice guy. He asked me about a book I was reading on health disparities by race and class and then commented, “That’s really interesting, but come to think of it, all my patients are White.” He’s been practicing …
We had friends over the other evening. I excused myself a bit early from an afternoon gathering, saying, “It’s my experience that when you have people over, they expect a clean house and a decent meal. I need to go work on that.” Yesterday afternoon, about 50 Hope College folk gathered for a webinar on …
There are lots of stories, and a lot of research, about people who are adept in two different cultures. There can be a cost to that—knowing two or more ways of being can make it difficult to feel completely at home in either place. But there are advantages, too, to being able to move in …
I spent my adolescence and young adulthood in Tennessee, but I’m no expert on Southern history or culture. With all the talk about the Confederate battle flag in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Charleston on June 17, however, I do have one small observation that might be helpful. In the New York Times …
One of the very first things researchers need to do is define their terms, to develop “operational definitions” of the things they are studying. When it comes to race, however, very few researchers have taken the time to do that very difficult, but very important, task. Maya Sen and Omar Wasow have made that much …
So many responses to the tragic shooting in Charleston on June 17. A surprising number of them thoughtful, by the usual standards of public discourse on race. Kudos, first, to South Carolina Gov. Nicki Haley, a Republican, who in the wake of the Charleston shootings, suggested that the state move the Confederate battle flag off …
The Supreme Court ruled yesterday, 5 – 4, that Texas can ban the use of Confederate flags on its license plates. Clarence Thomas surprised many observers by casting the deciding vote. Wednesday night, nine people were gunned down in an AME church in Charleston by a young White man who hates Black people. At the …