A Continuation...

First of all Katie posed an interesting question that I would like to address. She mentioned that diversity comes mainly from WSU's athletic department in that many athletes are those of color. Katie wondered if WSU was to blame, which I felt was a fair question. However, I decided that WSU, while participating somewhat in the stereotypes that athletes are students of color mainly, the problem arises long before that. I mean, I think various societal factors fit in when looking that the reasons behind the large amount of athletes of color. Throughout elementary school, middle and beyond it is reinforced that athletes are often of color, especially black. Even I, who hardly knows sports at all, know a few famous athletes and they are nearly all black: Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Muhammed Ali, etc. The only white ones I can think of are Babe Ruth, Michael Phelps, Reiner Klimke... anyways, you get the point. So yeah, it really seems like one of two things are going on here: 1.) People of color, namely, Black individuals have better athletic abilities or, 2.) Stereotypes cause a skewed perspective within our society that causes everyone to believe Black individuals are better at sports and thus are reflected. I am prone to believe that 2 is correct, especially from hearing about a test some psychologists did a while back. I can't remember the numbers completely now, but I learned about it in my Chicana Studies class that these scientists did a few tests on white groups of people vs other groups of people. The one most pertinent was between two groups of white people and two groups of black people, same numbers and genders, to determine whether stereotypes played a role. They interviewed all of them, but in one group of white and black people they made sure to bring up their race (just kind of nonchalantly ask about it, sort of imbedded within the other questions) while in the others they didn't. Then, they had them all play golf and this is where is gets interesting--in the groups where they mentioned the race of those being interviewed, the black people did like eight strokes better than the white people, but in the groups where they didn't mention their races the scores were nearly identical. This was further tested based on white women and Asian women while doing math tests and white people and black people on some academic testing too.

So, with that said, I will return to Katies inquiry. Because these tests further bolster the idea that stereotypes play a vastly bigger role on individual talent often times than actual skill, I believe that more than WSU is at work in building these stereotypes here. They are brought up within all people and with them come expectations. People expect people to be a certain way based on their looks. Jessica wrote earlier that "to reduce everyone within a social group to one quality is dangerous" and I completely agree--yet it is happening constantly.

At the tutoring session, I expected the students we were going to help were going to be less skilled at writing based on two levels: 1.) That they aren't English majors and it's just for a GenEd class and 2.) Because they were athletes. Both can be factors for being a little clumsy at writing--if you don't like it, if you haven't practiced a lot and also if you don't have much time, as Sarah mentioned. So I guess I made fair judgments but still carried the stereotypes of race with me (and it was actually kind of manifested--many who came in were those of color). So that brings up another issue actually: because stereotypes are in place, they are often reflected (if you are told you are made for something or are really good at it for a long enough, or vice versa, if will be unconsciously reflected by you.) and thus encourage these stereotypes.

So that gets me to an interesting point... that is, I'm now a little less clear on my stance. I mean, is it because of stereotypes that black people seem to be better at sports or is it because they are actually good at sports that the stereotype persists? I remember I was chatting with a friend once and he made a point that black people were bred through slavery to be physically better, thus more are better athletically than white people. I couldn't really completely disregard this, since it might be partially true that only the strong survived while enslaved, and it made me wonder. What do you guys think about this argument?