Posted on 09/17/2014 10:12:23 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
America is pushing forward in a post-racial society, blind to skin color. That's the conventional wisdom.
But the research of Jennifer Eberhardt, the Bay Area's newest and only recipient of the famed MacArthur fellowship, the "genius grants," has proved otherwise.
She has found that skin color prejudices the perceptions of jurors, police officers and even the ordinary student who volunteers in research at Stanford University.
Black people, especially those with very dark skin and kinky hair, are more likely to be linked to crime, handed stiffer punishments or even sentenced to death than lighter-appearing individuals, according to her research.
Eberhardt is among two dozen scientists, scholars, artists and civic-minded people to reap the $625,000 windfall, announced Wednesday morning by the MacArthur Foundation.
Other 2014 winners include an engineer who is unraveling the effects of soot on climate and human health, a computer scientist fueling a revolution in cryptography, a poet who is translating modern Arab poetry into English and an artist transforming a long-neglected neighborhood in Houston into an arts and community venue.
The fellowships, awarded to those with a record of tenacity, imagination and risk-taking, are meant to encourage creative development into fresh new fields. Like Eberhardt's current study of footage from Oakland police officers' "body camera" videos..
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
“Maybe the Nobel people should think of doing the same.”
Exactly! It seems sometimes as if they are straining to come up with winners, and that dilutes the value of those awards that were truly earned. Let them skip a year or two here and there.
I know, tho, at least in the US, that foundations must, by law, spend a given % of their assets (5% , I think) to maintain the foundation’s tax benefits.
On that basis alone they should be 50% of the death row population, but they are only 43%.
Next!
Nothing new. In the Black-sploitation movies of the 1970s and 80s, the badder the villain the blacker he was, unless he was white.
There is nothing at all genius about being a whiny-ass.
The linked story does not do the lady any favors. It sounds as if it is written by a completely clueless liberal who is shocked that people draw inferences based on strong correlations, some of them socioeconoic and ethnic in nature. The obvious “hello, Captain Obvious” rejoinders will occur to anyone here. But I confess to wondering if the MacArthur folks really set the bar that low. The correlates of race and crime, and the issues surrounding stereotyping, have been debated exhaustively for 50 years now. Surely a MacArthur prize wasn’t handed out for noticing what any high school sophomore would unearth in a social studies research project. Surely?
Oh, the funding initially came from the extremely wealthy MacArthurs. Rockefellers have their own foundation(s).
BUT lefties are attracted to foundations just as they are to academia and the media. So, most people who work for foundations, and/or serve as directors, tend to be of the left.
I think it’s possible the MacArthurs were somewhat to the left themselves, maybe old timey liberals. Both began life very poor, so may have tended to liberal social programs. Not sure.
The best response to this foolishness is to suggest that she is proposing another “Return to Africa” movement, for blacks who feel oppressed in America. Similar to the ideas of Marcus Garvey and many others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey
And, to insure equity, the vast number of blacks incarcerated in US prisons should be encouraged to leave as well, on condition that they could never return. This alone could save American taxpayers so much money that the one way emigration could be paid for all, as “reparations”.
/dripping with sarcasm
In this case the word “genius” should always be in quotations.
Sounds like the “genius grants” were invented after someone saw the movie Dinner for Schmucks.
Us idiots can't begin to comprehend her wisdom *
It reminds me of how we are also supposed to be intimidated because the scammers that tell us global warming is real are “scientists”
This research "genius" needs to go talk to Holder's FBI. They are the ones keeping the records that show this isn't a prejudice, but a factual association.
The MacArthur Foundation comes from MacArthur Park, and Ms. Eberhardt was able to conclusively prove that that ‘someone’ who left the cake out in the rain was a racist.
Maybe the fact that they commit more crime is just a “perception” too?
In professional circles, one finds an increased likelihood of affirmative action promotion and decreased competence. Just my opinion, but the linkage seems obvious to me and checking it out is only natural and prudent.
MacArthur Foundation is probably worried that they haven’t given 12% of their awards to black people. LOL
It's the idea that they're giving themselves awards for it now that gets me.
-PJ
You must have missed the lesson of Ferguson.
Walking down the street AFTER committing a crime is not fleeing the scene of a crime anymore.
If you're not caught in the actual act, but are caught leaving the scene after the act, you are considered to have not been doing anything wrong when being apprehended by police.
-PJ
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