Let’s talk Sports. Key and Peele[1],
two comedians from Comedy Central, have a great skit demonstrating problematic
commentary often seen in sports commentary. The two pose as sports commentators
featuring another white commentator who is giving his opinion about different
athletic ability for multiple players. Key and Peele, as the main commentators,
begin to notice a pattern. In an attempt to demonstrate this, they continue to
name more players, some black and some white, and asked the featured
commentator to describe their athletic abilities. For the white athletes, they
are described through their keen ability to demonstrate a highly strategic on
the field. While black athletes are described a having gifts that were giving
to them. One of the funniest (saddest) side-by-side comparisons, for example,
is when describing the New England Patriots’ defensive end Rob Ninkovich. The
commentator looks deeply in the camera and says he’s a “tactical master mind.”
However, when describing the cornerback for the New York Jets, Darrelle Revis,
the commentator perks up and says he has “magical powers [that] he learned from
his grandma.” In you’re curious, which you should be, Russell Wilsons, which
was Key’s character’s ace in the whole, is a “hybrid.” To clarify, he’s got
brains, he’s got gift, thus he is a hybrid. (Insert hand motion in video)
Obviously this is satire, but any
avid ESPN view can recognize that these sorts of comments do actually occur
through the discussion of athletes and their bodies, but the underlying theme
is a demonstration on an implicit bias held by the featured guest. Implicit bias
is defined by the holy grail of universal knowledge, Stanford University[2],
as “a positive or negative mental attitude towards
a person, thing, or group that a person holds at an unconscious level. In
contrast, an explicit bias is an
attitude that somebody is consciously aware of having.” This is becoming
increasingly important in the “new era” of race that we are entering. Now that
we have all of these markers that construct the US identity as being pasted
most of the “older ways” we would enact racism through policies and in social
settings, we’re still having to address issues of race that are assumed to have
been gotten rid of.
How bad is
it, Harry? Well let’s let these social experiments speak for themselves. The
famous Doll Test first became famous in the 1930s when Mamie Clark tested a
number of children asking them simple distinguishing questions to differentiate
a black doll and a white doll. Since then, this experiment has been performed
numerous times with different children from different regions. Still, after all
of the changes society has made, black dolls are picked out as being ugly, bad,
and less smart. In this video[3],
you can see children from different races and ethnicities singling out black
doll as the dolls with negative characteristics. Every time that I watch this
video, I’m saddened a little more by the reality that little black boys and
girls se reflections of themselves as being negative.
Implicit
Bias also affects our ideas about beauty and what the standards are. For women,
hair is a centralized part of the body that can have a large part of the
identity and how one expresses their femininity. Obviously, that’s a huge
overstatement, but to put is simply for man women hair is huge! The natural
hair debate is took a new swing in the last five years. The Tyra Banks Show[4]
took on this controversial issue with a group of young girls to dive into the
bias toward straighter hair. This issue and debate has moved forward a lot
since this show, and had even resulted in what is now known as the “natural
hair movement.” However, it is important to be aware of the struggle for people
who have coarser hair have and question why we as a society have decided that
their hair is less attractive.
Using a
gender example. Always took a right turn away from their usual lies about how
happy a women’s period can be and decided get with a real issue concerning
women’s bodies(sorry about the shade, but who the hell has happy periods). The
#LikeAGirl[5]
commercial aired during the
Will there
ever be an end to the Implicit Bias? Who knows. But in the meantime,
questioning why we’ve built such socially constructed concepts of beauty,
intelligence and good natured human beings based on symbols of their bodies
will hopefully prevent us from passing them unknowingly.
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