Posts tagged african american

knocking down the glorified view of white people

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guerrillamamamedicine:

Bigler ran a study in which children read brief biographies of famous African-Americans. For instance, in a biography of Jackie Robinson, they read that he was the first African-American in the major leagues. But only half read about how he’d previously been relegated to the Negro Leagues, and how he suffered taunts from white fans. Those facts—in five brief sentences were omitted in the version given to the other children. After the two-week history class, the children were surveyed on their racial attitudes. White children who got the full story about historical discrimination had significantly better attitudes toward blacks than those who got the neutered version. Explicitness works. “It also made them feel some guilt,” Bigler adds. “It knocked down their glorified view of white people.” They couldn’t justify in-group superiority.Bigler ran a study in which children read brief biographies of famous African-Americans.

guerrillamamamedicine

The fact that African American patriotism is never simple doesn’t mean it’s in any way halfhearted; to the contrary, complicated relationships tend to be the deepest and strongest. It’s a historical fact that black soldiers and sailors who fought overseas in World War II came home to Southern cities where they had to ride in the back of the bus — and that they were angry that the nation for which they had sacrificed would treat them this way. To some whites, I guess, it may seem logical to be suspicious of black patriotism — to believe that anger must somehow temper love of country. It doesn’t, of course. It never has. Black Americans are just more intimately and acutely aware of some of our nation’s flaws than many white Americans might be. This generalization is less true of my sons than of my parents, and I hope that someday it won’t be true at all. But only in the past half-century has the United States begun to fully extend the rights of citizenship to African Americans — and only in the past year has the idea that a black man might actually be elected president been more than a plot device for movies and television shows. We’re someplace we’ve never been.
Eugene Robinson (July 4, 2008), winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for commentary (via savingpaper)