I know there are multiple charts here, but I like the way that they all work together and show the changes that have occurred in the world over the past 200 years. The reason I find this so intriguing and worth taking a look at is because it is positive. There are so many things that need changing in the world, and a lot of those issues are prevalent today, but it is sometimes nice to take a step back, without ignoring what still needs to change, and see how far we have come over our relatively recent history. In all six of the categories shown in the chart, things have gotten better gradually with the negatives decreasing and positives increasing. Interestingly, the two places with major dips in progress are democracy and literacy, both occurring at the time of World War II. I think it is so cool to look at charts like these and see the way major events affect specific parts of society and progress. I would like to see these charts up through 2020 as well to see how things change with respect to the pandemic. These six topics might not change much, but it will be interesting to see the lasting effects of the pandemic on other categories, like mental health, trust in government, etc.

What is also a positive about this chart is the lack of bias there is. The only end goal in these statistics is to educate people and help them better understand the world we are living in. In comparison to other charts that might be aimed at advertising to try to get people to feel a certain way about a product, group, or individual, this one does not have an ulterior motive, which makes the facts that much more believable and the source that much more trustworthy. In this globalized and media-driven world, we are constantly flooded with opinions, ideas, and information, and it can get tedious and difficult to sift through it all to find the sources and information that are trustworthy and worth looking into. When there is information like this one from the World Bank it is a refreshing change from the people and businesses who are trying to convince us to believe what they believe.

I find it ridiculous that the change made by the university after all of this talk was to just add Mitchell’s name to Freeman’s and then not change Ryland at all. I honestly just don’t see the logic. I feel like at that point, you’re better off doing nothing – this was just done as a way to show the students and the community that they are trying to make a change, but it feels so forced and not genuine at all. As we talked about in class, the problem is partly stemming from the fact that alumni and donors are threatening to withdraw donations to the school if the names of the buildings are changed. It always comes back to money. The school will make decisions based first and foremost on what will bring in the most money, even if that means negatively affecting the students’ and faculty’s wellbeing and sense of belonging at the university. In my opinion, not that I know anything, UR would be much better off losing some donors while making positive change rather than keeping those donors and hurting its community. And to be completely honest, if we’re still talking money, I think a decision to change the names of the buildings and a decision to improve inclusion at UR would bring in more money from alumni in the future because right now, with the decisions being made, I bet a lot of the students who graduate from here will be hesitant to donate back.

This podcast is really important in understanding that we need to open our eyes and our minds to other perspectives and try to push back against the things we think we know. Because, honestly, I’ve learned over the past few years that a lot of the things I was taught or believed to be true based on my past experiences really just are not true. This is especially true in terms of drug use and its users. Growing up, from health classes in school or just from remarks made by adults, I believed drugs to be created by the devil himself. We would watch videos of people who overdosed on drugs and/or lost their friends and families because of it, and they would be painted in the darkest light. I am not implying I’ve learned that drugs aren’t bad – I know they are when you abuse them, but we were only shown the most extreme cases of drug use, and I assumed everyone who used drugs, including weed, was a bad person. And then I grew up and realized that was obviously not the case. Some of the most successful people I know and some of my favorite people do drugs, and that’s not a great thing, but the way drugs are used and who they are used by is very different from what I thought the case would be.

The problem is not who uses the drugs, it is how we perceive the different types of people who use drugs. The unfortunate and common belief and bias is that drugs are “classy if you’re rich and trashy if you’re poor”, and this just perpetuates the discrimination and divide we see and experience in this country. The narratives we are told about drugs create certain assumptions that are dangerous and detrimental to those we label as “bad” in terms of their drug us. In the podcast Dr. Bezio talks about how if you were raised in an affluent community, you probably were taught, and therefore assume, that drugs belong in the inner cities. That was the case for me, and then I got to high school and obviously learned pretty quickly that was not the case. Even though I know what I learned to be an incorrect representation, I would put money on the fact that I still have a bias about drugs being bad if they are used by certain people over others, and that is something I need to change.

I took the Religion IAT and it just involved three religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. My results were that I have a moderate automatic preference for Judaism over Islam. I am not very surprised at all by these results because out of all of the biases I have, I don’t think religion is a strong one of mine. However, obviously, as we’ve read and heard, this does not mean much because we have implicit biases without thinking about them and we just pass snap judgments without maybe even meaning to. Anyway, I was also not very surprised that, given that there had to be a preference, I have a preference for Judaism over Islam because I am friends with a lot of Jewish people but I do not think any of my friends or even anyone in my schools growing up were Muslim. Because of my environment and the religions I have been exposed to and associate certain people in my life with, it makes sense why my preference leans toward Judaism. I do wish the test included more religions to see what my preference would be because just doing the test between two religions feels too general. Even though I am not surprised by the results of the test, I don’t see how the test I took could determine this automatic preference of mine. All the test had me do was give an immediate response whether something belonged to Islam or Judaism or whether it is something good or bad. When I made a mistake, it was because I was tired of clicking not because of something else, so I would like to take another test to see if there is a better way to determine this implicit bias.

Whenever I learn something new or see a different perspective about bias or culture or race, I always feel bad for not having that perspective before. That is how I felt while listening to the podcast where Dr. Bezio talks about how “white culture” is the default culture in the United States. We don’t have a “white culture” because everything in mainstream American culture, unless noted otherwise, is “white culture”. When food, movies, books, clothing, etc. are advertised to the public, white people are the expected audience. Things need to be directly advertised or highlighted as being for people of a particular culture if it is for someone other than white Americans. This isn’t something I have explicitly thought about or noticed before, and that makes me feel bad because now looking out on American society, it becomes clear that this is the case. Just like with everything, if I have the privilege of not having to recognize these things, I need to do a better job at educating myself so I can learn them.

I watched a TED talk the other day in honor of Black History Month, and the woman who gave the talk spoke about the lack of representation of black change-makers in history books and in education. She spoke about black inventors, authors, poets, and musicians who have made incredible contributions to society but who are not being recognized in the classroom. And that is where change needs to stem from. If kids are taught about all of the people involved in great discoveries, like the invention of the lightbulb, they would see that it doesn’t matter what you look like – anyone can make a difference. But, right now, history textbooks and school curriculum leave out the contributions made by black men and women, so young boys and girls are only seeing white people do good in general and black people do good only when they are being oppressed. There is a difference in this narrative here, and it needs to change if we want to make change.

In the discussion of religion in the podcast, Dr. Bezio talks about how each individual religion believes they know the universal Truth. According to Google, there are 4,200 religions, which means there are 4,200 believed truths about moral rights and wrongs, and probably thousands more from an individual basis. I find it crazy that there are this many religions all claiming to know the Truth. Honestly, it shows me that we really don’t know anything. Every individual human being looks at the facts of life that have been presented to them in a variety of ways, and looks to something greater to ground them and help them understand it. This often comes about in religion, but it also takes the form of individual made-up beliefs. (To be fair, all of the religions, although extensive and detailed, are made-up as well. It just depends on how many people follow it and agree with its beliefs.) The normative paradigm, as discussed in the podcast, is that there is a universal truth and we are getting closer to that truth everyday, but we can never be certain if we have achieved it. I find it very hard to believe, given that logic, that there is a universal truth. And, even if there is, what is the point in trying to find it if you’ll never actually find it? (Or you might find it, but you won’t know you found it?) I guess it just seems kind of pointless to me — why try to find something you’ll never know if you found? And then, let’s say for argument’s sake that for some reason it becomes absolutely crystal clear that the universal truth has been found, then what? Would that change the way we go about our daily lives and rebrand how we feel about right and wrong?

After listening to the part of the podcast about the feelings behind female and male circumcision and the ethnocentrism of westerners and the WHO in naming female circumcision “Female genital mutilation”, I was curious and started to look up some other cultural practices that may seem “weird” coming from my culture. One I found was endocannibalism, which is the ritual of consuming the flesh of a member of one’s tribe after they have died. This ritual is done to ensure the souls of the dead find their way to paradise. Without the context and the reasoning behind the practice, it seems bad in our eyes, however when you put yourself in these tribe members’ shoes, it becomes harder to see the bad in the practice. It is important to know that beliefs are strong and the emotions that go along with them are stronger. We may never understand a certain belief we do not hold, but we should accept that our beliefs are not the only beliefs. This is an easy transition, in my mind, into the state of affairs in America today. We are at a point in time where this country is more divided than it has been in decades, and I think that is a result of individuals’ inability to recognize their belief is not the only belief to be had. We have completely erased the forum for open debate in any aspect of American society by creating a cancel culture and shaming people for holding their own beliefs. Modern American society is one of letting people have their opinions, unless those opinions differ from your opinion, and it is sad. Just like with cultural practices, including female circumcision, we would be doing ourselves and our world a favor if we tried to see things from someone else’s point of view.