The Talk On Racism

   
     After watching the two videos I really found that the "Between the Barack and a Hard Place:Challenging Racism, Privilege, and Denial played a huge role in the various readings we have been doing. From the very beginning of the presentation the speaker made amazing points towards the battle of racism. For instance one that I really enjoyed was when he said the excuse of "Some of my best friends are black...". I really enjoyed this because he mentioned that just because you have friends that are black, it does not mean that racism does not exist. In addition to this idea he mentioned a study that had been conducted where 75% of Americans stated that they had many black friends. And in correlation to the term "many" is the idea of 4 or more. So that would mean that 142 million white people would have at least 4 friends who were black but at the time of the poll there were only about 35 million black people in the country, so this poll would be viewed as very inconclusive.
     In addition to this, the speaker also mentioned that people of color were usually placed in lower ranking classes while children of Caucasian background were usually placed in higher ranking classes despite their academic ability.He also mentioned a study in which 626 white students keep a journal for 6 weeks and were asked to report every sign of racism they saw. And after the six weeks there was a total of 7500 accounts of real racism recorded. ( http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/01/12/reid.race.lessons/) And it is from these different experiences that I can connect this video to Idea's like SCWAMP where whiteness is the prominent factor over other  races.
     Furthermore another thing that I found extremely interesting was a study where a black man and a white man both went to the same doctors with the same symptoms, occupations, and insurance. Yet received different diagnostics and prognostics. And in the case of the white male, there were almost immediate treatments, where as with the black male the treatments were different and seemed to be spread out further. And also when it comes to black students, 14 studies show that they were 2-3 times more likely to be suspended over white kids, even if they committed the same act. These incidents remind me of McIntosh's reading "White Privilege" where people who are white are treated better than people of color.
      In conclusion I feel as though these videos played in perfectly with what we are learning in class. Especially the idea that even though we may not be racist ourselves, by remaining silent we are no better than the ones making the racist remarks. And also the absurd idea that just because we have a black president all racism in the world is gone. For the only way to end racism and inequality is to "befriend the unequal".