Snippets about: Race
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The Perils of Secretive Social Engineering
"Social engineering takes on a very different face, however, when the engineers go about their business in secret. There is far too much of this second, hidden kind of manipulation going on. If we are to protect the integrity of our institutions, we need to be made aware of the games being played below the surface."
Section: 2, Chapter: 5
Book: Revenge of the Tipping Point
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Black Women Bear The Brunt - Racism As A Pregnancy Risk Factor
Black women suffer disproportionately high rates of miscarriage, stillbirth, and maternal death compared to white women. Social inequities, chronic stress, and medical discrimination create physical circumstances that make healthy births more difficult:
- Lack of access to quality prenatal care
- Untreated conditions like fibroids or hypertension going into pregnancy
- Providers not believing reports of pain or warning signs
- Hospitals without adequate resources/training to handle emergencies
- Expectation that Black women be "strong" and not complain
- Lifelong impacts of racism on health increasing pregnancy risks
Section: 2, Chapter: 8
Book: I'm Sorry for My Loss
Author: Rebecca Little, Colleen Long
Critical Mass Of Minorities Eliminates Achievement Gaps
Research on elementary school test scores reveals a striking pattern. In classrooms with few minority students, a persistent achievement gap exists, with black students scoring significantly lower than white peers. But in classrooms where black students make up over 25% of the class, the achievement gap disappears entirely - with black students performing just as well as whites. A "critical mass" of minority students seems to eliminate the harms of tokenism and marginalization on performance.
Section: 2, Chapter: 4
Book: Revenge of the Tipping Point
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
The Racialization Of Tuberculosis
We see the profound shift from an inherited disease of intellect to a contracted disease of filth in the racialization of tuberculosis. As late as 1880, white American physicians still argued that consumption did not occur among Black Americans, who, it was claimed, lacked the intellectual superiority and calm temperament to be affected by the White Plague. But after Koch identified Mycobacterium tuberculosis in 1882, all that changed.
Racialized medicine no longer maintained that high rates of consumption among white people was a sign of white superiority; instead, racialized medicine maintained that high rates of consumption among Black people was a sign of white superiority. One white doctor's 1896 treatise asserted that African Americans were disproportionately dying of tuberculosis due to their smaller chest capacity and increased rate of respiration.
Section: 3, Chapter: 9
Book: Everything is Tuberculosis
Author: John Green
Dealing With Racism In Our Daily Lives Is A Major Factor In Our Health
"Dealing with racism in our daily lives is a major factor in our health and well-being. The experience of racism makes Black people sick, whether it's mental and emotional health or even physical health." - Jamila Taylor, reproductive rights advocate
Many of the Black women interviewed spoke of how the cumulative stress of racism, on top of the trauma of pregnancy loss, felt like a double burden. Some hesitated to become pregnant at all, afraid they wouldn't survive the experience in a medical system stacked against them. Their losses were also more likely to be dismissed or met with stereotypes about their ability to handle hardship. As one woman put it: "The checklist doesn't exist...you can't be safe if you are a Black birthing person."
Section: 2, Chapter: 8
Book: I'm Sorry for My Loss
Author: Rebecca Little, Colleen Long
A Disease Of Civilization?
As Frank M. Snowden observes in Epidemics and Society, white physicians in Europe and the U.S. generally agreed that consumption was, as some eighteenth-century observers put it, a disease of civilization. Everyone knew that rural communities were less vulnerable to consumption. But in a highly racialized social order, conceiving of phthisis as a "civilized" disease also meant that it could not be a disease of uncivilized people, which furthered the racialization of consumption.
In Europe and the U.S., most white doctors believed that phthisis—as it was inherited by those with great sensitivity and intelligence—could only affect white people, and it was sometimes known as "The White Man's Plague." One American doctor, for instance, called it, "a disease of the master race not of the slave race." This phenomenon extended to all colonial empires. Many European colonialists believed that TB did not exist in South Asia or Africa, even though physicians working in colonized communities knew otherwise.
Section: 2, Chapter: 7
Book: Everything is Tuberculosis
Author: John Green
A Brief History of Jewish Quotas
In the 1920s, Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell was disturbed by the growing numbers of Jewish students earning admission on academic merit. He proposed capping Jewish enrollment at 15% - high enough to avoid charges of overt discrimination, but safely below the "tipping point" where Jews might undermine Harvard's WASP cultural majority.
To achieve this quota without explicitly barring Jews, Lowell pushed for evaluating applicants on subjective traits like "character" and "leadership," as well as legacy status, geographic diversity, and athletic talent. Lowell's vision of favoring "well-rounded" applicants over pure scholastic achievers remains the template for elite college admissions today.
As one historian put it, Lowell "bequeathed to us the peculiar admissions process that we now take for granted." His policies for social engineering became so embedded, we forgot they were engineered at all.
Section: 2, Chapter: 5
Book: Revenge of the Tipping Point
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
