quote of the day

“The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.”

Will Durant

How Kids Learn Prejudices & Stereotypes

Q&A: How Kids Learn Prejudices, Stereotypes

How do children respond to stereotypes about race, religion and gender? A child-development expert looks at contradictions in kids’ behavior.

Newsweek WEB EXCLUSIVE

By Anna Kuchment

Updated: 11:05 a.m. MT Feb 26, 2007

Feb. 26, 2007 – Child-development experts have spent years studying geekdom: what it is that makes one child more likely to be rejected by another. But University of Maryland professor Melanie Killen took a different approach. Instead of focusing on social deficits, Killen, associate director of the Center for Children, Relationships and Culture, focused on another category of rejection—when children are excluded because of gender, race or ethnicity rather than their behavior. Killen calls it “group membership.” Her study, “Children’s Social and Moral Reasoning About Exclusion,” published in this month’s issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, shows that kids become aware of group membership from at least the time they’re in preschool. But, while kids universally feel that it’s unfair to reject someone based exclusively on their gender, race or religion, there are some situations in which they do so anyway. Killen spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Anna Kuchment about why that’s the case. Excerpts:

Anna Nicole who??

Fuck Anna Nicole Smith. Honestly, does anyone give a shit about this woman aside from the supposed 4 fathers of her child. It’s really amazing how much TV time has been spent on a woman that has contributed less to society than my thumb. Just further proof that sex and smut sell in this country.

Diversity is Dead.

Most of us would disagree with this statement. But this is exactly what the upper echelon wants…confusion and disagreement. (The upper echelon being the filthy rich and powerful in this world)

For most of us, the term diversity almost immediately conjures up visions of people, but not just people, different-looking people…people of different races. All this does is focus on race. And the term “race” is one of the most socially-constructed, loaded terms in the world…and especially in the U.S.

on consciousness and sensuousness

Is it possible that sensuousness, as a way of processing information, combined with the limited use of our brains is a way of survival? why do we, as a species have to have religion and morals in life…why has religion and spirituality evolved in such a strong way with the human species - for survival? maybe it is in humans’ general best interest (as far as survival is concerned) for the masses to use less of their brain. We certainly haven’t evolved to the point where we are capable of using more of our brain on a consistent basis…We hardly use any of it now.

Maybe we’re not as intelligent as we think we are.