Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Wrap up with Trepanier

Hey everyone,
So Monday we read the Epilogue of Trepanier’s “Silent Racism”. There was a passage in this reading that I didn’t really appreciate. Trepanier states that “The data in this study demonstrates that the term "nonracist" is a misnomer because all whites are somewhat racist (Trepanier, 130). I didn’t appreciate this statement because I do not feel that ONLY whites are racist. Also, I feel as though the term "nonracist" can be used to describe behavior. I believe that you can describe someone as having a “nonracist behavior”.
I was talking about this reading with my roommate and she presented a very interesting point. In her abnormal psychology class they discussed racism and how racism is evolving into a much more “nonracist” manner. The cases they studied explained that whites have an innate fear response to people of other races. However, over the years, this innate response has been corrected. For example, she explained that if a group of white people were showed pictures of a group of people from a different race, their immediate response is fear and anxiety. However, after the image is processed, signals in their brains send correcting signals that repress the feelings of fear. I thought this was very interesting and was evidence of human instincts attempting to diminish racism. What do you guys think about this? Do you believe this?

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