Like many students on campus, I feel that the refusal of the board to rename the buildings on campus named after slave owners is not only wrong but shows where their true priorities lie. As a university we are lucky to be in a position where money is no object, or at least does not have to be a main factor in most of our decisions. Despite this, it seems that most controversial acts are done in the name of sparing our institution the loss of donor and alumni support.

Furthermore, another argument made in support of this inaction is that of preserving history in its truest sense. I believe here many parallels can be drawn to the removal of confederate statues over this past year. There is a vast difference between acknowledging our troubled history and proudly displaying it as if it is not troubled. My favorite example to use in this argument is that of Germany’s difficult past. In that country, it is illegal to deny that the Holocaust took place and there are many museums and historical sites that detail the tragic things that happened there. There are not, however, any large statues of Hitler on city streets in affluent neighborhoods. I think the best solution would be to have a small plaque or display in each building for the history of Freeman and Ryland so the history can be taught, while changing the names of the buildings so the problematic history is not being displayed proudly.

For my Implicit Associations test I took the age test. My results were that I prefer young people to older people by 30%. I was slightly surprised by this result because my maternal grandparents played a large role in raising me, however I am not too surprised because it is only by 30% and not a large number. It also makes some sense because the college environment we live in fosters a bit of age biases since the people we interact with the most here are our peers within a three year age range and the usually older professors can sometimes be seen as a negative presence of authority.

This week’s podcast came at an interesting time for me as I just did a presentation in my French class on the topic of culture. More specifically, I broke it down into adoptive culture and original culture with original culture being your ethnic heritage or family practices and adoptive culture being the customs that you currently practice or that belong to the country you live in if it is not your native country. I think it is an important facet when considering implicit bias because the cultures in which one grows up heavily dictates what one sees as normal in the world. If your culture has specific norms, for example, it can be strange to see people of other cultures performing actions that your culture does not see as normal.

On that same point, I think Dr. Bezio’s point about media and implicit bias was super compelling. I had already known that representation in the media was important for a feeling of inclusion or having role models that look like oneself but I never thought to take it that psychological step forward. The fact that our minds cannot separate movies from reality and therefore thinks that’s how the world is supposed to be makes stereotypes even more dangerous. If our brains get tricked into thinking harmful stereotypes about specific groups then that makes the levels of implicit bias higher in every person who views that piece of media. This makes our awareness of our implicit bias even more important to consider before publishing something.

The podcast on ethics relates broadly to the world of business and economics. In my microeconomics class we talked about normative statements regarding economies and the definition is nearly the same. Normative statements in economics make a value judgement on how something should or should not be. I can see why this is valuable in critical thinking and arguments, because as humans most arguments we first subconsciously evaluate morally. Essentially, in both cases we are judging, as humans do, whether we think something is good or bad before evaluating the evidence.

Furthermore, I find the topic of cultural relativism interesting because it can be seen in the real world every day. The school’s dining hall has vegetarian options not only for vegetarians but also for students who are part of religions that find it morally wrong to eat pork. Meanwhile, these students may be sitting tables away from a student who is currently eating pork. This difference in ideology, however, does not usually cause disagreements in the same way bigger differences do. Additionally, it reminds me of evolutionary processes talked about in leadership and the social sciences. Humans evolving and innovating in different environments caused the differing ideologies that now constitute cultural relativism.