Journal #1

Journal Entry 1 POSSIBLE DOCUMENTARY SUBJECTS 1. AUTHORITY ON RESPECTABILITY POLITICS a) Dr. Muwakkill 2. Normal Black Male who refuses to live by societal standards a) Jared McSayles b) Frederick Wilkerson c) Christopher Davis 3. Black Male who lives by respectability politics a) Erron? b) SBI student (must locate) 4. Black Female who has natural hair a) classmate in Dr. Muwakkill’s class http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/04/race-relations.aspx - Nevertheless, attitudes toward blacks as a whole will not change overnight simply because of the election of a black president. Attitudes, particularly racial prejudice, which serves a number of psychological and material functions, often have a basic core that is resistant to change—but people are able to incorporate new information and change their attitudes with new experiences. Obama's election offers America unique and profound new racial experiences. What are the key psychological factors that shape racial attitudes, and how ingrained are those attitudes? Can people with deep-seated racial prejudice ever completely change those attitudes? Attitudes develop with the accumulation of experience and associations over time. They are inherently functional—they help us orient ourselves to others and the environment in ways perceived to benefit us. The world would be chaos if we changed our attitudes toward people and objects too easily. Thus, attitudes typically evolve slowly, often becoming more complex and nuanced over time; rapid, wholesale change in attitudes is rare. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119148/ferguson-renews-debate-among-blacks-politics-respectability _ Respectability, in essence, is about policing the behavior in your community to make sure people are behaving “properly,” so as to not attract unwelcome attention from whites—“with ‘properly’ being a normatively white middle class presentation,” says Dawson. - The idea has found one expression or another for well over a century. During the Jim Crow period, according to Dawson, black children were taught by their elders that one had to act a certain way to avoid harassment and lynchings at the hands of whites. “Du Bois wrote about double consciousness, about looking at yourself through the eyes of the other who treats you with contempt,” says Carla Shedd, a sociologist at Columbia. Self flagellation - extreme criticism of oneself