"The Syndics of the Amsterdam Drapers' Guild" (1662) by Rembrandt van Rijn
According to Grant, "we tend to interact with people who share [the same stereotypes]" and the result is that it "makes [the stereotypes] even more extreme" (127).
Given this "group polarization" tendency, should schools make an effort to recruit students who represent a diverse array of experiences and world views in order to uproot harmful stereotypes?
Should financial institutions? Health care services? What about law enforcement services?
What reasons might be given to oppose that kind of campaign?
I can not decide if I agree with Grant or not. I agree that we tend to spend time with people who share our interests or work closely with us. For example, I am a band kid, and as a result I spend a LOT of time with band kids. This is not on purpose, they are just close by and we have something in common. Is there a band kid stereotype? Yes, but big groups of people, in my experience, fail to meet the band kid stereotype. I believe that people are more diverse than stereotypes thrown at them. Keeping this in mind, I do believe that if people really want to believe the stereotype that they will force it on a group of people making it, the stereotype, more extreme. there are examples of this all over the country. When a white woman clutches her purse when passing by a black person. When female doctors are immediately thought to be nurses. These are harmful stereotypes that are not always true, but people force it upon groups of people. I do believe that schools, health care services, etc. should be working on diversity, but they should not make that their only purpose. In my first semester my EQ1 class had a discussion about how schools will lower their requirements so that more P.O.C. get into the program. In my opinion, this shows that the schools are simply trying to meet a requirement.
ReplyDeleteLibby Revel
Libby, I hadn’t even considered your point about how schools, financial institutions, health care services, and law enforcement services will include more diverse populations just to meet a requirement. I would love to see diversity inclusion happen, but I don’t want it to happen because it’s enforced. I would like to see these different services do it because they want to and because they think it’s the right thing to do. One of your points that I somewhat disagreed with was your being on the fence about Grant’s opinion about group polarization. I think people generally like to be around people that share their opinions, which is totally normal! However, I think that if you surround yourself with people who think the same as you, your beliefs become even stronger. So I would say I agree with Grant more than you do. I totally understand what you were saying, though!
DeleteI believe that groups including school groups, companies, etcetera should shoot for diversity of experiences. Groups that have this complexity often think differently and come up with multiple solutions to fix problems as they have different past experiences and different ways of looking at a certain scenario. In EQ one and two this was evident as there were people of different socio-economic classes, political parties, school experiences, etcetera and there were great discussions and more thought out and complex ways of solving the questions in those classes. While diversity of experience is important it should also not be the only deciding factor as qualifications should take the priority over experiences. In EQ one there was a scenario in which we had to choose applicants for a leadership board and there were people with good grades and leadership roles who were an obvious pick for the positions but there were also people with lower grades who had more diverse experiences. The arguments for both are valid but it all boils down to diversity or qualification for the position and you would not want a preschool teacher being in an engineering group just for the sake of diversity of experience.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the notion that stereotyping can harm diverse group thinking. And if the primary function of education is to prepare you to enter society, then I can see how having students from different backgrounds would be beneficial. However, I'm hesitant to say that schools should be responsible for prioritizing diversity. When you place one metric front and center, you have to push other metrics to the margins. If diversity is being prioritized, emphasis on test scores, student happiness, or course content has to be lessened. The same can also be applied to hiring practices in fields with significant gender or ethnic disparities, although I think there may be other factors that play into that as well. To me, it's not immediately apparent that meeting a diversity quota is the most important thing to strive for.
ReplyDeleteOn pages 126-128, the notion made by Grant may be accurate; however, I would have to do some more research into what causes an individual to interact with others in society. Anyways, that's beside the main topic I will attempt to address. The first question that presented itself to me while reading was: Is group polarization necessarily harmful? This question's answer will vary heavily based on your worldview, how you see the world. I will not engage the idea of which worldview is correct in this comment, although I would be interested in having this meaningful conversation with whoever wishes; I will be making truth claims based on my worldview. First, the individual should be valued above the group. Second, you will scream at me if you did not pay careful attention to my wording, that humans are social creatures and need to be a part of a group. I'm glad we agree. Humans are, in fact, social creatures. But my point is that before we are social creatures, we are individuals. After all, the individual is what makes up the group. Having clarified, I realized the question (Is group polarization necessarily harmful?) was foolish. It's not the polarization that makes a group dangerous, but rather the ideologies that the group is controlled by. I'm referring to any and all ideologies, as they substitute true thinking, which can be very dangerous if not manifested consciously. I now get to the idea of diversity.
ReplyDeleteThe question is: should schools make an effort to recruit students who represent a diverse array of experiences and world views to uproot harmful stereotypes? In some way, I have already given my answer. There is no point at which it is justifiable to favor one individual over another based on the word "diversity," which is impossible to define. Diverse in what way? Who decides when something is diverse? Who decides when something is diverse enough? I have asked these questions to many and am still awaiting the answers. I wrote longer than I intended to, so I will summarize my final thoughts in a single sentence. Individuals should be considered into an organization, not because of their worldview or experiences, but because they are decent human beings and perhaps a little more.
-Noah Watkins
I think stereotypes can lead to problems of course because you are not taking into account the real person just your view of them. But forced diversity can lead to more problems and greater polarization in some situations I think which would not fix the streotyper's view. So while diversity can be good I think forced diversity defeats the purpose of bringing people of different opinions closer together.
ReplyDeleteReading what Grant had to say about how stereotypes are more extreme because they group themselves with similar people was very interesting to me. I had never really wondered why stereotypes are so amplified. It would be very beneficial if there was a way to spread diversity and lessen stereotypes, however it would be very difficult to do so. People would essentially have to agree to be around other people who are different from them. Stereotypes shouldn’t be labeled so negative. In my opinion, they are just ways to describe why people hang around similar people. In addition, these people aren’t just what comes from stereotypes. For example, I am on the baseball team here, so I am always around other baseball guys. Even though I’m always around guys from my team, I also have a wide variety of friends, meaning it doesn’t matter what they are interested in. Stereotypes have made it to where a person’s charisma can sometimes go unseen. It should always be encouraged for any business or team to diversify, whether it’s a cubicle office or a police force.
ReplyDeleteI would like to look at this from a scientific point of view. In my Environmental Science class, I learned that the healthiest ecosystems are those that have greater biodiversity. Having increased diversity increases the opportunity for positive mutations and evolution. Issues occur when a population is pushed through a bottleneck and different genes and traits are decreased or removed entirely. This is also the reason (at least from a biological standpoint, there are also other issues here) why inbreeding is a bad idea. Drawing from and recycling in a smaller genepool increases the chance of harmful mutations and rare, recessive disorders. (Look up King Carlos II of Spain and the Habsburg Jaw if you want to know more.) All that being said, I think diversity of experience is very important in a classroom setting. It allows more voices to be heard, more ideas to be made, and more minds to rethink. This is a healthy setting and allows for great progress. However, as other honorables pointed out, diversity for diversity’s sake might not be the most important. I wouldn’t want to be stuck with a professor that doesn’t know how to teach, just to hit a diversity quota.
ReplyDelete-Michael Draper