10 Stereotype Occurrences

1) 2-22-09, 1:00 P.M.
Television.
"Friends", Season2
Scene at the Central Perk coffeehouse where all the women in the circle of friends have female-oriented jobs, like Rachel working at Ralph Lurean, Monica as a head cheff, and Phoebe as a masseuse.
Gender stereotypes.

2) 2-23-09 4:30 P.M.
Print.
Ad in "The Oklahoma Daily" shows a picture of a woman working out with the caption: "Lose weight for Spring Break", targeting women.
Gender stereotypes.

3) 2-24-09 10:30 P.M.
Personal conversation with Patrick Rains, Roommate, about basketball players and how they perform.
Racial assumptions/stereotypes.

4) 2-25-09 4:45 P.M.
Personal conversation with fellow news anchors in the green room, talking about races in comparison to intelligence.
Racial assumptions/stereotypes.

5) 2-27-09 1:46 A.M.
Print
Ad in "Newsweek" depicts a woman playing with a dog advertising a more low-fat form of Soy Milk, again forcing women to think they must lose weight.
Gender stereotypes.

6) 2-26-09 1:30 A.M.
Television
The show "The Fresh Prince of Bell-Air" displays Will Smith's character as the stereotypical urban black man. He lives in a family of rich, sophisticated but because he grew up without these riches, he speaks on a lower level and dances and fools around all the time.
Racial assumptions/ stereotypes

7) 2-21-09 10:00 P.M.
Personal experience
When I was filling up my car in Oklahoma City at night, a black man pulled up in a car next to mine, cracked the window and asked if I could spare a few gallons of gas. Ashamedly, I refused him, being too suspicious of his only cracking the window down a little bit and immediately fearing that he was some kind of gang member,
Racial assumptions/ stereotypes.

8) 2-20-09 7:23 P.M.
Print
The magazine "Men's Health" features an ad of a man blindfolding a woman with the caption "It's better in the dark". It is an ad for a cologne. This implies the sense of the man placing the woman in bondage and forcing her to submit to him byt relinquishing one of her key senses, and possibly the sense that could save her in dangerous situations.
Gender stereotypes.

9) 2-19-09 6:15 P.M.
Class experience
My Shakespeare Tragedy discussion group was trying to come up with different ways to spice up our class presentation of "Othello", and we volunteered the idea of speaking every line in gangster talk, which unforunately has become the stereotypical language of the African-Americans.
Racial assumptions/stereotypes

10) 2-18-09 2:20 P.M.
Billboard
Driving down I-35 towards Norman from Texas, I always see a billboard with two pictures on it, one a picture of a fetus and one a depressed young woman. It's a pro-life billboard, a caption reading something along the lines of: "One Life Lost, One Still Empty". This is making women think they have no choice but to have the baby no matter what happens.
Gender stereotypes. 474

Normally, you wouldn't give images or occurrences like these a second thought. It seems like the same situation that happens with privilege happens here as well. It seems like the norm, the standard way to live, and any deviation from this would be too radical or unwanted.

Without acquiring that extra sense of awareness that this class has provided over the last couple of weeks, I never would have looked for such elements as these in the television shows I watched or the magazines I read. I guess it was that moment in the gas station that I truly realized how much I was suffering from racism.

But is that even the right term? Suffering from it? Or am I choosing to stay where I am in this mindset? I felt genuine fear that night, I was in a notoriously bad neighborhood and I didn't know what else to think. Of course, I can't use that excuse. I walked away from the black man and when I went into the gas station, I never suspected the white man behind the counter to pull a piece on me.

I think that was when I first started believeing in the importance of this class. If I'm going to make a difference in the world as a journalist, habits like these have to be changed in order to preserve the greater good for everyone else.

Extra Credit: Big 12 Schools that do NOT have race-based admissions.

Here's a list of Big 12 Schools that do not have race-based admission.

The University of Kansas Jayhawks:

Nope!!!!

The University of Missouri Tigers:

Uh-uh!!!

Texas Tech Red Raiders:

In the Spanish: No!!!

The University of Baylor Bears:

Negative!!!

The University of Texas A&M Aggies:

I checked and came up with nothing!!!

The Iowa State University Cyclones:

That's a big, fat, no-no!!!

Written Assignment #1

I'll be honest. Before I watched Tim Wise's video, I never even thought of the idea of privilege. I never thought of myself as racially privileged. Rather, I just saw the way my life was lived as the standard, the norm. It may sound selfish, but I'm just being honest.

But as Tim Wise explained, members of my race, of the whites, are the bearers of more privileges than we know exist. Like he said, we can have our voice heard in a group and even sometimes be considered the authority in such a gathering. We can have the confidence of walking into a store and buying anything we want without a second glance. We can drive fancy cars and just have cops peg us as "spoiled little rich kids" as opposed to drug dealers.

The media tends to use this concept to their advantage in an unusually obvious manner. I have seen it in the past. If the story being covered has a setting where the people in the shots are predominantly of the African-American race, who do they send to cover it? Someone who is like them, an African-American correspondent. I can't blame them. After all, as journalists, it's our job to establish a level of comfort with our interviewees in order to get them to open up to us and make the information we receive all that more valuable. The media utilizes privilege in order to get the best story no matter where they are sending their reporters.

I managed to record some privileges that I noticed I have had in the last couple of days:

1) I can walk up to the cashier and pay them with the only cash I had (a fifty dollar bill) and not receive a single question of its authenticity.

2) I can walk up with my camera and microphone to the OU Men's basketball team's practice and be seen as a legitimate journalist and allowed access.

3) I can come to work at OU Nightly knowing that I will be, for the most part, surrounded by members of my same race and held in respectful regard for it.

4) I can sit in any place on campus and eat.

5) I can explain to my boss why I couldn't get away from class to cover storm-stricken areas of Oklahoma without being accused of laziness or complacency.

6) I can loiter about the South Oval in a black leather jacket and sunglasses on without anyone becoming suspicious of what my motives are.

7) I can wear my clothes in any way I choose and not be judged or stereotyped for it.

8) I am admitted into many extracurricular and social groups here on campus with no questions asked.

Just to name a few.

I honestly do not believe society still believes in the one-drop rule. Perhaps they have in the past, and I know this example is probably going to be beaten to death, but with the election of President Obama, all of that changed. When the country first started comprehending the fact that we would have our first African-American president, people began to argue that he wasn't black. Even though Obama did have the blood in him, he also had a white mother. For that, he wasn't seen by many as truly black, but mixed. Nowadays, you can have African-American blood in you, but you won't be seen as black in this country if you have another parent of a different race.

As I have mentioned before, Wise's and Tatum's words served as sort of an awakening for me. I started analyzing myself and the reasons behind my previous ignorance of such a race issue. I began to even wonder if I was just gripped with denial and that I was, in fact, racist because I did not acknowledge it. Everything they told us had been new information to me, information that delivered a swift kick in the butt and told me I need to start thinking bigger and not just within the confines of the OU borders. This information and the proceeding realization led to my sudden awareness that, hey, there really is a problem of race in this country.

But as Wise said, now is not the time for guilt. True, we didn't start this, but that doesn't mean we don't have any responsibility to change it. Tatum and Wise call upon us to use this new-found awareness in order to change our behavior and essentially begin to fix the problem. We have to make the conscious effort to alter the situation towards the better end, and only we can make that decision ourselves.

Speaking as a member of the race that is known best to many for their past oppressive behavior to his felllow man, I do sincerely hope that I am givien the chance to do so someday.

My Thoughts on Tim Rice

I brought this up in my Race, Gender, and the Media class. I've always believed that the mark of a great public speaker is one who can step inside your head and really make you think, not only about yourself, but about the world around you.

I definitely found that criteria in Tim Rice. I just finished watching a fascinating presentation by him not hours ago and I'm still wrapping my mind around it.

Here was a guy who addressed many of the issues that no one with any lick of social sense would have brought up in everyday conversation, and he did it in such a straight-forward manner that his pitch was literally driven into you.

We broke into small groups in class tonight and my group really brought up some interesting thoughts. It's one thing to hear an African-American man giving a speech about race and oppression, but to hear a white man do it is an entirely different ball game.

As a white young man myself, I knew I could have been very defensive having my race called out on so many levels, but the funny thing was I found myself agreeing with nearly everything he talked about. I could have just as easily labeled him as a radical, calling him "over the top" and much too zealous about the topic he was discussing.

Yet at the same time, I knew that there wasn't anything I could think up that could deny his logic nor disprove what he was saying. I even found myself wanting to label him "over the top". I'm not sure why. Maybe because I wanted an excuse not to face the reality of racial oppression still going on today. I even started questioning myself: "Am I just labeling him 'over the top' because I'm in denial?", "Is this my denial talking?", "Am I really racist after all?"

Naturally I didn't have an answer for myself, but he definitely hit me over the side of the head with a fresh dose of perspective. I can only hope for more of these cases as the class progresses, but so far I'm pretty sure they'll come.

What "Nick" Means

Who doesn't want to know what their name means and any significance it holds? The current trend is to Google yourself and see what other people bearing your name are doing, but I wanted to know the history behind me. I wanted to see what juicy tidbits I could dig up about my first name.

My bias aside, the name "Nicholas" is, in fact, a masculine name.

It's taken from the Greek name "Nikolaos" which apparently means "victory of the people" from the Greek nike-"victory" and laos-"people".

I also have my own saint! Saint Nicholas was a bishop in the fourth century from Anatolia who apparently was quite the saviour of the lady-folk.

According to the legend, he saved the daughters of a poor man from lives of prostitution.

Nicholas is the patron-saint of children, not to mention sailors and merchants. But the guy was truly an over-achiever, he didn't stop with kids, vendors, and pirates. He also added Greece and Russia under his belt of priest-hood.

Wait, it gets even better. Saint Nicholas is the basis for the one, the only, the jolly, Mr. Santa Claus himself!!!

The name became so popular, thanks to the fame accompanying the man with the bag, that it was spread far and wide across the Christain world. "Nicholas" also adorned five popes and two Russian czars.

Between the years of 1995 and 2001, the name "Nicholas" enjoyed the honor of being named the sixth most popular boy's name in the United States. It was seventeenth in 2006. But those Canadians couldn't get enough of it, they made it the second most popular Canadian boy's name in 1997 and by 2005 it only fell to ninth.

Ooh, and don't forget that Tropical Storm Nicholas formed on October 13, 2003 and dissipated that November. That sucker packed winds of up to 70 miles per hour!!!

That's all for now, I gotta run to the bookstore and pick up Dickens' Nicholas Nickelby.