I thought these articles were really interesting. In the first article it talks about how women are surprised that they have the women=family and men=career bias. I talked about that in my response paragraph to the implicit association test that we had to take cause I was genuinely surprised. I thought it was really interesting how it wasn’t just me that was surprised by that result. I was a little but confused by the section that was telling us how to change our implicit associations because they didn’t really give a solution. I know that these implicit biases are the result of cultural norms but I feel like there has to be a way to change them in order to create a society that is not focused around white people. I thought it was really interesting when they gave the example of that woman who donated equally to her college and to an African American college fund and how that did not get rid of the mindbug it just neutralized the issue.

I took the test about women and careers. It showed that I have an implicit association to put men and work and women to home life. I was surprised by these results because I don’t think that women have to be homemakers and men have to work. I felt while I was taking the test that the test itself was associating certain things with men and when you said something different it would say it was wrong. In the end, it said that it was time-based which made more sense but I was still surprised that I had that implicit association seeing as I am a woman with goals for myself and my career.

I thought these readings were really interesting. I have always found the idea of moral arguments fascinating. These articles, the first one specifically, showed me some things about moral issues that I didn’t know before. I did not know that there were so many different kinds of moral arguments. I just think its really interesting how scientific it makes moral arguments. Their methods take some of the moral emotions out of the arguments. When people talk about moral issues often times it results in an extremely emotional conversation instead of a rational, calm argument. This article helps negate that issue a little bit. By calling It action A it makes it sound more scientific and less like an emotional issue. I thought the second article was also interesting to read. I’ve never heard of optical allusions and stuff like that being called mind bugs and I thought was a new way for me to look at stuff like that.

I went to the race talks in with Dr. Crutcher THC. They were really fascinating to hear everyone’s stories and different experiences. Though I  am personally a white student and these acts don’t immediately impact me, they still shook me to my core. The fact that people on this campus had the audacity to write those actually astounds and disgusts me. I was really moved while listening to all of the stories because I realized that I have so much to learn. As a white person, I need to be an ally, and that doesn’t mean just not committing racist acts myself but standing up and speaking out. I have to learn how to be a better ally to people of color and how to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. Hearing the anger and the disappointment in the stories really helped me realize that this is not just a person of color problem, this is a campus-wide problem that we all must do our part in because that is the only way that anything will ever change on this campus. All I can hope for at this moment in time is that I learn how to be better and that every other white person on this campus learns how to be better so that we can support the people on this campus who are fighting for change. 

This ties into what we are talking about in class not only because we talked about these events, but also because when we think of leaders we often think of white men. Throughout my leadership and the humanities course we often came back to the same issue of societal norms. As a country we have decided that the quintessential leader is a tall, white, goodlooking, man. Which is detrimental to everyone who does not fit that mold. I want to use the advantage that I was born with to learn about and try to support people who were not born with the same advantages. I’m not sure how to do that and I am just starting to learn but I believe that if everyone just tries to learn about different experiences and use that knowledge to become an ally, then the United States may become a better place for people of color because right now we are not doing good enough.