Just Wondered/Michelle Obama's Thesis ?s

[Charade]

Here is the link to the link of the thesis.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8642.html

I knew it wouldn't take long for it to appear. I'm downloading it now (taking a LONG time (maybe lots of other people are downloading it too)).

 

[smartestnumber5]

You'd have to actually produce the studies, rather than just talk in vague terms about them and then claim that they are obvious instances of unconscious racism/sexism.

Let me rephrase the last paragraph:
(Assuming these studies are well-designed and have been confirmed with similar studies and that I have described them accurately and thus have accurately captured the phenomena they describe)....Aren't these phenomena likely instances of unconscious racism/sexism?

I'm not so interested in anyone accepting what the studies say; my point rather is that it is ridiculous to proclaim there is no such thing as "unconscious racism" when there is a very large active body of peer reviewed research being conducted on just that issue. This is exactly why I think (guess) they don't want to release Michelle Obama's thesis. Because it says plausible things (that are probably supported by the studies listed below), but things which the general public thinks they "know" are not true. (That's just a guess, of course. I really have no idea why they're doing what they're doing.)


If you're interested in actual studies though:

"Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal" (written by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan--economists at the University of Chicago). The abstract states:

We perform a field experiment to measure racial discrimination in the labor market. We respond with fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. To manipulate perception of race, each resume is assigned either a very African American sounding name or a very White sounding name. The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. We also find that race affects the benefits of a better resume. For White names, a higher quality resume elicits 30 percent more callbacks whereas for African Americans, it elicits a far smaller increase. Applicants living in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks but, interestingly, this effect does not differ by race. The amount of discrimination is uniform across occupations and industries. Federal contractors and employers who list Equal Opportunity Employer' in their ad discriminate as much as other employers. We find little evidence that our results are driven by employers inferring something other than race, such as social class, from the names. These results suggest that racial discrimination is still a prominent feature of the labor market.

Full paper: http://www.povertyactionlab.com/papers/bertrand_mullainathan.pdf


"Implicit Discrimination" (same authors). In this paper the authors of the resume study argue, essentially, that their results and those of several other studies that find differential treatment of blacks and whites are best understood in terms of implicit (i.e. unconcious) racism. http://www.aeaweb.org/annual_mtg_papers/2005/0107_1015_1101.pdf


M. A. Paludi and W. D. Bauer, ``Goldberg Revisited: What's in an Author's Name,'' Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 9 (1983) pp. 387-390. Abstract: Three hundred college students (150 female, 150 male) were asked to evaluate an academic article in the field of politics, psychology of women, or education (judged masculine, feminine, and neutral, respectively) that was written by either a male, a female, or an author with a sexually ambiguous name. The results indicated that ratings of the articles were differentially perceived and evaluated according to the name of the author. An article written by a male was valued more positively than if the author was not male. Furthermore, subjects' bias against women was stronger when they believed that sexually neutral authors were female. Available (you might need to access through a library that has a subscription) http://www.springerlink.com/content/q41102g51461x50t/



Here is an entire bibliography on bias in hiring in academia: http://dynamic.uoregon.edu/~jjf/chillyclimate.html#ReportsHiringandEval (Surely all of the bias cannot be conscious can it? )



"The Impact of Gender on the Review of the Curricula Vitae of Job Applicants and Tenure Candidates: A National Empirical Study" Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, Oct, 1999 by Rhea E. Steinpreis, Dawn Ritzke, Katie A. Anders Abstract:

The purpose of this study was to determine some of the factors that influence outside reviewers and search committee members when they are reviewing curricula vitae, particularly with respect to the gender of the name on the vitae. The participants in this study were 238 male and female academic psychologists who listed a university address in the 1997 Directory of the American Psychological Association. They were each sent one of four versions of a curriculum vitae (i.e., female job applicant, male job applicant, female tenure candidate, and male tenure candidate), along with a questionnaire and a self-addressed stamped envelope. All the curricula vitae actually came from a real-life scientist at two different stages in her career, but the names were changed to traditional male and female names. Although an exclusively between-groups design was used to avoid sparking gender-conscious responding the results indicate that the participants were clearly able to distinguish between the qualifications of the job a pplicants versus the tenure candidates, as evidenced by suggesting higher starting salaries, increased likelihood of offering the tenure candidates a job, granting them tenure, and greater respect for their teaching, research, and service records. Both men and women were more likely to vote to hire a male job applicant than a female job applicant with an identical record. Similarly, both sexes reported that the male job applicant had done adequate teaching, research, and service experience compared to the female job applicant with an identical record. In contrast, when men and women examined the highly competitive curriculum vitae of the real-life scientist who had gotten early tenure, they were equally likely to tenure the male and female tenure candidates and there was no difference in their ratings of their teaching, research, and service experience. There was no significant main effect for the quality of the institu-tion or professional rank on selectivity in hiring and tenuring decisions. The results of this study indicate a gender bias for both men and women in preference for male job applicants.

How could the sexist biases here be anything but unconscious?
Full article: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2294/is_1999_Oct/ai_59426455

The most commonly studied phenomenon using "implicit association tests" (tests that are designed to measure a reaction that is so quick that it could not have been intentional/thought out/concious) is racism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_Test , https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

There are more where those came from.

ETA: I don't see the difference btw unintentional/unconcious. These studies seem to cover both.

 

[Charade]

I agree. Transparency is the word of the year!

Well no, that would be CHANGE!!!

 

[need_a_Disney_fix]

I knew it wouldn't take long for it to appear. I'm downloading it now (taking a LONG time (maybe lots of other people are downloading it too)).

John, I found it on Drudge.

BTW, I am no longer following this thread cuz its getting way too deep for my simple mind. Therefore, carry on and EVERYONE PLAY NICE!!!!!!

 

[wvrevy]

Do you think something like this would really make a difference to people already inclined to think that way?? I think they risk more by not disclosing it now, rather than putting the date of release as the day after the election. It will raise doubt in reasonable people's minds.

Sadly, yes, I do. I think Barack has won over a lot of people in this country with his personality, and that includes throughout the South (and I include my home state, here). Something like this - if written from a certain point of view and when taken out of context - could easily bring back some of that unease.

Maybe I've just been exposed to too many ignorant rednecks in my life living in the hills of Appalachia, but I know for a fact that racism is still alive and well in places around this country, but these people make "exceptions" when they find a black person they feel they can admire (think: Colin Powell). But if something came out from 20 years ago that his wife believed all whites were at the least unintentionally racist (not saying that's what's in the thesis...again, I haven't read it. Just giving an example of something that could be in there)....yes, I think that a certain segment of the population would turn on him because of it.

 

[Charade]

Let me rephrase the last paragraph:
(Assuming these studies are well-designed and have been confirmed with similar studies and that I have described them accurately and thus have accurately captured the phenomena they describe)....Aren't these phenomena likely instances of unconscious racism/sexism?

I'm not so interested in anyone accepting what the studies say; my point rather is that it is ridiculous to proclaim there is no such thing as "unconscious racism" when there is a very large active body of peer reviewed research being conducted on just that issue. This is exactly why I think (guess) they don't want to release Michelle Obama's thesis. Because it says plausible things (that are probably supported by the studies listed below), but things which the general public thinks they "know" are not true. (That's just a guess, of course. I really have no idea why they're doing what they're doing.)


If you're interested in actual studies though:

"Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal" (written by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan--economists at the University of Chicago). The abstract states: Full paper: http://www.povertyactionlab.com/papers/bertrand_mullainathan.pdf


"Implicit Discrimination" (same authors). In this paper the authors of the resume study argue, essentially, that their results and those of several other studies that find differential treatment of blacks and whites are best understood in terms of implicit (i.e. unconcious) racism. http://www.aeaweb.org/annual_mtg_papers/2005/0107_1015_1101.pdf


M. A. Paludi and W. D. Bauer, ``Goldberg Revisited: What's in an Author's Name,'' Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 9 (1983) pp. 387-390. Abstract: Three hundred college students (150 female, 150 male) were asked to evaluate an academic article in the field of politics, psychology of women, or education (judged masculine, feminine, and neutral, respectively) that was written by either a male, a female, or an author with a sexually ambiguous name. The results indicated that ratings of the articles were differentially perceived and evaluated according to the name of the author. An article written by a male was valued more positively than if the author was not male. Furthermore, subjects' bias against women was stronger when they believed that sexually neutral authors were female. Available (you might need to access through a library that has a subscription) http://www.springerlink.com/content/q41102g51461x50t/



Here is an entire bibliography on bias in hiring in academia: http://dynamic.uoregon.edu/~jjf/chillyclimate.html#ReportsHiringandEval (Surely all of the bias cannot be conscious can it? )



"The Impact of Gender on the Review of the Curricula Vitae of Job Applicants and Tenure Candidates: A National Empirical Study" Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, Oct, 1999 by Rhea E. Steinpreis, Dawn Ritzke, Katie A. Anders Abstract: How could the sexist biases here be anything but unconscious?
Full article: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2294/is_1999_Oct/ai_59426455

The most commonly studied phenomenon using "implicit association tests" (tests that are designed to measure a reaction that is so quick that it could not have been intentional/thought out/concious) is racism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_Test , https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

There are more where those came from.

Did they do a reverse study? Or did they just focus on the unconcious unfairness to black people (with traditionally non-white names)?

 

[fivefordisney]

My thoughts exactly!

Man...if only there'd been this kind of outrage when Bush refused to release his own "military" records...or Cheney's Energy Task Force records...or, well, the dozens of other times this administration has refused to allow the public to know just about anything about just about anything.

So, a 20 year old black female college student wrote a paper at Harvard about intentional and unintentional racism she experienced while on campus at the overwhelmingly white school?



I'm shocked! Shocked to find gambling in this establishment!!!

 

[SwedishMeatball]

Sadly, yes, I do. I think Barack has won over a lot of people in this country with his personality, and that includes throughout the South (and I include my home state, here). Something like this - if written from a certain point of view and when taken out of context - could easily bring back some of that unease.

Maybe I've just been exposed to too many ignorant rednecks in my life living in the hills of Appalachia, but I know for a fact that racism is still alive and well in places around this country, but these people make "exceptions" when they find a black person they feel they can admire (think: Colin Powell). But if something came out from 20 years ago that his wife believed all whites were at the least unintentionally racist (not saying that's what's in the thesis...again, I haven't read it. Just giving an example of something that could be in there)....yes, I think that a certain segment of the population would turn on him because of it.

I can see that. Do you think those sort of people would outnumber the ones who might shy away from being turned off by the secrecy aspect??

 

[wvrevy]

I can see that. Do you think those sort of people would outnumber the ones who might shy away from being turned off by the secrecy aspect??

That's a good question, and the reason I think campaign managers go grey at an early age. My opinion...if it were closer to the election when this became an issue, I think it would. But this far out...I think Barack would win a lot of them back, which is why I would have preferred the campaign just release it and get it over with.

 

[smartestnumber5]

Did they do a reverse study? Or did they just focus on the unconcious unfairness to black people (with traditionally non-white names)?

You must be a quick reader if you got through all of that in 9 minutes!

What do you mean by a reverse study? They resume study was such that they answered job ads in Boston and Chicago by sending resumes with "white sounding names" and "black sound names"--so they tested both white and black sounding names in their study. Their abstract says they find "significant evidence of racial discrimination"--the white-named resumes received 50% more callbacks than the black named resumes. A person with a white sounding name can expect 1 call back per 10 applications while a person with a black sounding name can expect 1 call back per 15 applications. In terms of increasing the chances of a callback, having a white sounding name on a resume is equal to 8 years of experience (page 10).

By "reverse" do you mean checking to see if a black employee would discriminate against "white sounding" names? As far as I can tell, they didn't check (I don't think they could have known the make up of the employers). In the CV study on gender, though, they sent out identical CVs to PhD psychologists (men and women) and changed the names to male or female. The CVs with the male name were rated better regardless of the gender of the person reading them. So women did not discriminate against men, in fact women discriminated against other women to just the same degree that men did (page 7).

 

[Charade]

You must be a quick reader if you got through all of that in 9 minutes!

What do you mean by a reverse study? They resume study was such that they answered job ads in Boston and Chicago by sending resumes with "white sounding names" and "black sound names"--so they tested both white and black sounding names in their study. Their abstract says they find "significant evidence of racial discrimination"--the white-named resumes received 50% more callbacks than the black named resumes. A person with a white sounding name can expect 1 call back per 10 applications while a person with a black sounding name can expect 1 call back per 15 applications. In terms of increasing the chances of a callback, having a white sounding name on a resume is equal to 8 years of experience (page 10).

By "reverse" do you mean checking to see if a black employee would discriminate against "white sounding" names? As far as I can tell, they didn't check (I don't think they could have known the make up of the employers). In the CV study on gender, though, they sent out identical CVs to PhD psychologists (men and women) and changed the names to male or female. The CVs with the male name were rated better regardless of the gender of the person reading them. So women did not discriminate against men, in fact women discriminated against other women to just the same degree that men did (page 7).

Yes..

 

[DISUNC]

Why is Michelle Obama's thesis (written in 1985), "Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community" not being released until the day after the election? I am an Independent, not sure for whom I will vote come November, but since it appears Ms. Obama is the Senator's number one advisor, I think this thesis should be shared to let us know more about her. JMHO, of course, and I am open to reasons this should not be open for discussion until after the elections.

Edited to add: Found it on the internet today and glad I had the chance to read it.

Ya think thats something. You should read my college thesis. "Kingsboro Community College Educated Limeys and the Dis Community"

WHOO HOO...So HOT...It would fry the Circuitry of the DisBoards servers, and we would be down till Mid November!