Worries about discrimination and racism are at the heart of efforts to get Virginia Governor Ralph Northam to resign from office. But did you know there's a connection to bullying in all this? More on this later, but first the controversy. Northam's 1984 med school yearbook page shows a picture of a person in blackface and another wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood . . . next to different pictures of the then doctor-governor-to be. Discrimination and racism. Northam's many critics feel that 1) … [Read more...]
Understanding White Privilege – its sociological origins.
July 22, 2018 By Leave a Comment
In an effort at understanding white privilege from an historical perspective, I wrote a post back in January. In this post, I'm into understanding white privilege from a sociological perspective. For a variety of reasons, one engaging perspective of this sort by sociologist Alan G. Johnson starts off with the notion that the British were instrumental in the development of the idea of racial superiority. According to Johnson's perspective, the British were not the first to believe that … [Read more...]
Scary NFLer—victim of bullying, discrimination, or mental illness?
March 10, 2018 By Leave a Comment
I'm disturbed and saddened that discrimination and/or mental illness has taken a serious toll on a bullying victim I've featured in prior posts. Ex-NFLer Jonathan Martin graduated from Harvard-Westlake prep school in L.A. and then Stanford. He joined the Miami Dolphins in 2012. But during his 2nd year with Miami, he became the center of a scandal involving harassment and bullying on the part of his teammates Richie Incognito and Mike Pouncey. Hero, villain, or fool? Things … [Read more...]
Explaining White Privilege – visiting its historic origins.
January 31, 2018 By Leave a Comment
Whether you agree with the concept of white privilege or not, it's worth explaining white privilege. Or trying to. To do this, I'll start by taking a look at the origins of the concept. By the way, I agree with the concept as a tool to understand unconscious biases in whites. But I disagree with using it to beat up on whites and lay guilt trips on them. Much of the guilt lays with people who set up social systems centuries ago in the US and even earlier in the case of slavery. Explaining white … [Read more...]
White economic privilege impacts crim justice system.
November 25, 2017 By Leave a Comment
White privilege statistics. I've been writing a memoir of late about how four murders seriously changed my career as a criminologist. So, how do white privilege statistics come into play? Well, among the many reasons the murders changed my worldview was the fact that the crim justice system treated the killers well. They were all white and given remarkably light sentences in comparison to black killers who committed similar crimes. This was back in the late 1960s and 1970s, … [Read more...]
Cyberbullying: non-obvious reasons kids of color targeted more.
August 28, 2017 By Leave a Comment
Cyberbullying may result from family or societal biases, beliefs, and distortions being unconsciously absorbed by children,then passed on to kids of color. But, there are other reasons than racism and ethnocentrism that explain the high rate of cyberbulling directed at kids of color. Janaroohartvshares some ideas here: Why do kids get bullied? In most cases, the reason is because they are different from others. As a kid, you usually become a target for harassment because of your ethnicity, … [Read more...]
Kids charged as felons for bullying: Racism?
January 14, 2017 By Leave a Comment
Back in May of 2016 about 100 parents, seniors and clergy marched in protest in Clayton, Missouri (near Ferguson). They didn't like an impending law that they felt would create a “school-to-prison pipeline.” They said that the soon-to-be enacted law that charges bullying as a felony targets young people of color.Bullying and racism.The protestors called for an end to out-of-school suspensions for students in every school district in their area. Their protest may've resulted in three St. … [Read more...]
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