Racism - what does color blind mean?

Newsweek

At the Children's Research Lab at the University of Texas, a database is kept on thousands of families in the Austin area who have volunteered to be available for scholarly research. In 2006 Birgitte Vittrup recruited from the database about a hundred families, all of whom were Caucasian with a child 5 to 7 years old.

The goal of Vittrup's study was to learn if typical children's videos with multicultural storylines have any beneficial effect on children's racial attitudes. Her first step was to give the children a Racial Attitude Measure, which asked such questions as:

How many White people are nice?
(Almost all) (A lot) (Some) (Not many) (None)

How many Black people are nice?
(Almost all) (A lot) (Some) (Not many) (None)

During the test, the descriptive adjective "nice" was replaced with more than 20 other adjectives, like "dishonest," "pretty," "curious," and "snobby."

Vittrup sent a third of the families home with multiculturally themed videos for a week, such as an episode of Sesame Street in which characters visit an African-American family's home, and an episode of Little Bill, where the entire neighborhood comes together to clean the local park.

In truth, Vittrup didn't expect that children's racial attitudes would change very much just from watching these videos. Prior research had shown that multicultural curricula in schools have far less impact than we intend them to—largely because the implicit message "We're all friends" is too vague for young children to understand that it refers to skin color. [...]

At last - Peaceful Shabbos demonstration

JPost

Violent demonstrations staged by Jerusalem's haredi community in recent weeks were scaled back Friday and Saturday, due in part to last week's orders from the Eda Haredit against blocking roads, throwing rocks, spitting or taking protests beyond the religious neighborhoods.

While several cars and individuals that passed near religious neighborhoods were peppered with stones and water bottles from a gathering of about 2,500 haredim, there were no violent confrontations with police.

"In general things were relatively quiet in comparison to other weekends," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told The Jerusalem Post Saturday night.[...]

R' Slifkin's review of Chaim Be’Emunasom

This is the lastest round in the debate concerning Science & Religion a.k.a the Slikin Issue. My publishing this is not an endorsement of the views expressed - on either side. I am willing to publish civil comments that deal with the substance of the issue. Comments that say nothing more than "kofer" or "rasha" will be discarded. Even though Rabbi Tropper has claimed that I am R' Slifkin's major supporter - it is simply not true. I am quite willing to publish the critique of this critique. I was undecided about publishing this but commentator Stanley's ready use of the word kofer served as a timely reminded that violent demonstrations in Jerusalem are not the only serious issue we must deal with.

A no holds barred opponent of R' Slikin here - R' Raphael Bearmant and here
ChaimBEmunasam-1

Intermarriage & racism/ Ask Moses

R Tovia Singer at Auschwitz

Obama's energy guru's problematic statements

Washington Post .Wall Street Journal Just resigned - Washington Post

White House officials offered tepid support Friday for Van Jones, the administration's embattled energy efficiency guru, who has issued two public apologies this week, one for signing a petition that questioned whether Bush administration officials "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

Earlier, Jones said he was "clearly inappropriate" in using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.

The apologies did little to quell objections from Republicans, several of whom demanded Friday further action against Jones. Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.) called on the adviser to resign or be fired, saying in a statement, "His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate." [...]

Wrongly convicted convicts paid $80g/ year

AP

Thomas McGowan's journey from prison to prosperity is about to culminate in $1.8 million, and he knows just how to spend it: on a house with three bedrooms, stainless steel kitchen appliances and a washer and dryer.

"I'll let my girlfriend pick out the rest," said McGowan, who was exonerated last year based on DNA evidence after spending nearly 23 years in prison for rape and robbery.

He and other exonerees in Texas, which leads the nation in freeing the wrongly convicted, soon will become instant millionaires under a new state law that took effect this week.

Exonerees will get $80,000 for each year they spent behind bars. The compensation also includes lifetime annuity payments that for most of the wrongly convicted are worth between $40,000 and $50,000 a year — making it by far the nation's most generous package.[...