Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Race: The Power of Illusion and Race Sorting

I was just reading my email from Teaching Tolerance, an offshoot of The Southern Poverty Law Center trying to raise awareness of racial/ethnic issues and decreasing the conflict related to them.  In the newsletter there was a link to a PBS site called "Race: The Power of an Illusion, a video from 2003."  The main activity I was directed to was to look at pictures and sort the faces into racial categories.  Wow.  

Let's just say I was not successful.  Nor are most people.  It's a real eye-opening activity that can be done by a person on under five minutes and could be a great beginner to a social psychology unit or a mini-unit on race, ethnicity and/or prejudice/discrimination.  Great for sociology as well.


posted by Chuck Schallhorn

1 comment:

Richard Keefe said...

Ironically, despite the Southern Poverty Law Center's "awareness of racial/ethnic issues," NOT ONE of the SPLC's top executives is a minority.

Despite being located LITERALLY in the back yard of Dr. King's home church in Montgomery, the SPLC has NEVER hired a person of color to a highly paid position of authority in its entire 40 year history.

http://wp.me/pCLYZ-67

Even Teaching Tolerance has been led by "whites only" for 19 of its 20 years.

It's time the SPLC started practicing what it preaches.