Todays podcast was about making assumptions about people, and how Worldview’s shape what we consider right and wrong, shaped by what we think of as normal/familiar. At the beginning of the podcast, Dr. Bezios example of women being told to cover up with their dress codes in schools, businesses, etc, really spoke to my own personal experiences. My high school was very strict about specifically women’s dress code, as we were not allowed to show our collarbone, shoulders, legs (above the knee), could not have colored hair, wear any sort of hats, or certain types of jewelry. Although there were some rules “in place” for the boys, they were not regulated, as many guys walked around my school with tiny shorts on, pants exposing their underwear, tank tops, as well as all sorts of hats and hair colors/styles. When a girl told a teacher/administrator about a guy breaking dress code, we are told to move on or are overreacting, but if any faculty got a glimpse of a girl breaking dress code, we were immediately punished. This assumption that women need to control their own bodies because men can’t (and many other examples) shows how these cultural assumptions and standards can play into implicit bias and even stereotypes. We see in media, around us, and even hear from others that “women dont want to cover up” because they “use their bodies for attention of the opposite sex”, and that is why we would maybe choose to wear a tank top in school, work, or even just out in public. This has now become an assumption of women from some people (especially men), even though most people just want to wear a tank top because they like the top, or if it’s hot outside. 

The other part of the podcast that spoke to my own personal experiences was discussing how laws that are meant to be colorblind can be used to disproportionately affect communities of color, and can affect our words views. More specifically, Dr.Bezios example that “If you were raised in one of the affluent communities, you may have a view of drugs that it is mostly a problem in inner cities/minority populations, and you might know people in wealthy communities that do drugs but might not think of them as the “real problem””, and how american society perpetuates this. This makes me think back to specifically when I went to a mostly white, affluent, middle to high class elementary school, which had little to no diversity. We would have a “be drug free” week each school year to discuss drugs, and everyday during that week we would be shown a video in class about it, showing both why not to do drugs and hearing stories from people who did drugs. From the music, to the visuals, to the people chosen to be in these videos, all that was shown to us was minority populations in inner cities doing drugs, almost trying to stereotypically characterize these people as “thugs” or the “real problem”. Showing this to a bunch of 5th and 6th graders could greatly alter their implicit biases and assumptions about the world around them and certain groups of people. I ended up going to a very diverse middle and high school so I thankfully got to learn about different cultures/experiences and learn about “the real problems” vs the ones shown to me, but this truly shows how american society perpetuates certain assumptions.

I took the Gender/Career IAT test, and the results I received are exactly what I initially expected (which was that I had “little or no automatic association between female and male with career and family). I think this is due to  not only the fact that I strongly believe in gender equality, but that either Male/Female can be successful in the home with family and/or in a career, and both should live their lives how they choose, not determined by their gender. This is my first time ever taking an IAT test, and to be honest I do not know if this is a good way to test implicit bias. This seems more like a memory test (to remember which word is on either side) rather than to see if you are biased one way or the other. For example, when they switched the sides of “family” and “career”, I started getting a few more answers wrong, but this was not due to implicit bias; it was due to the fact that I kept forgetting the words switched sides.

This week’s podcast/readings discussing implicit bias and stereotypes reinforces what I already knew about both of these topics. Especially in my Women Gender and Sexuality Studies courses, these two topics are widely discussed, and how these stereotypes and implicit bias affect the everyday lives of those around us. I find Dr.Bezios’s point so true that no matter what we are looking at or talking about, whether its an ethnic group, our campus culture, or various other  ideas, we inherently create bias in our own heads, even if we don’t mean to, and the only way to curve this and make it better is by exposure to other types of cultures and listening/learning about these cultures.

Hearing Dr.Bezio in the podcast talk about stereotypes of groups of people and the implicit bias’ towards them makes me think  about  my own life experiences. I was privileged enough to never  experience stereotypes based on the color of my skin, and because of the very diverse middle/high school i went to, I did not see as many of these stereotypes come into play; Although I knew it was already present in media and I saw it, I never really saw it in person or experienced as much of it until later in high school and college.

 An area I have experienced implicit bias is the fact that I am Jewish. Although looking at me you might not be able to tell, I am very open when it comes to my religion, as it is a part of my culture and heritage. When I tell people I am Jewish, I am often met with responses such as “you don’t Look jewish”, or “you/your personality doesn’t seem jewish”. This is due to the implicit bias/stereotypes that jews have large/curved noses, or even the assumptions that  Jews control businesses/financial markets or are money hungry, or even the idea that jews agree with everything  that the Israeli government says/are more loyal to Israel than anything else. Sure, this may be true for some people, but is an extreme stereotype that does not apply to the entire group. For those who are open to learning and removing these bias’, I usually try to help educate others, whether its  teaching about jewish history/rituals, or discussing the holidays or letting them try some of our signature food dishes, people being willing to learn and grow truly is a solution to make these stereotypes and implicit bias’ lessen.

I found this week’s podcast about Ethics to be very interesting.. Before listening to this (as well as doing the readings), I knew what relative vs normative thinking meant, but I never thought about it before in the context of cultural relativism, and how this affects both our way of thinking and our society today. Also thinking about the combination of all of our “cultures” and how this affects our normative vs relative ways of thinking was a very interesting point to bring up.

From thinking about this, a point relating to the world around us came to my  mind. Although we have our own ways of thinking and the organizations/”cultures” we choose to be a part of (such as being a part of the UR culture, hobby cultures, school/work culture/etc and how those affect us, cultures such as the culture of where we were born/live, the religion we are born into, etc, affects both our normative and relative ways of thinking, meaning this cultural relativism in certain senses affects each person and their morals/beliefs without even trying.. We become so accustomed to things in our daily lives and the “truths” of our society that we agree with many of them, just because of how we grew up. For example, when in the podcast it was talking about the differences in circumcision  beliefs in  the USA vs other countries, if we are looking at it from the context of the women in other countries want this procedure done, we are so accustomed here to not having this be a normal part of life that we inadvertently judge people, as it goes against many of the USA residents beliefs just because we grew up without it (or it could be religious beliefs, but the same principle applies).

This can also be said for our type of government.. For example, I have a friend from China who is so used to China controlling more individual freedoms that when she came to America, the amount of freedom she felt here almost felt “wrong” and immoral. The same can be said  when we look at other countries’ governments; Although our democracy has so many layers and there are many things many people (including myself) do not agree with, taken from a big picture perspective, most of us in the USA may think that democracy is the best form of government, but this could just be because it is the environment we grew up in and none of us know anything else or have experienced any other type of governmental way of life. Overall, this means that because of the environment we grew up in, although we may grow to resent certain aspects, these factors of life can lead us to become very adapted to the way things are done around us (as they start to align with our own moral way of seeing things, aka our moral way of seeing things are sometimes formed because of our environment)