"Between Barack and a Hard Place" Reflection

     In the video of Tim Wise's speech, he talks about the struggles people face with racial stereotyping. We as a culture assume so many things about people that may or may not be true, but we are taught to think and act this way. I know that I was always taught to lock my car doors when going through Providence because it is a poor, predominantly black neighborhood, and that is an example of a stereotype that I was brought up on and an example of indirect racism that I was unaware of until I started to grow older. I have seen direct racism in the forms of comments or jokes, and knew that was wrong, but the indirect racism we do like stereotyping people is just as bad. Wise talks about what he finds the main problem to be with racism nowadays, which includes no one wanting to talk about it. He encounters many people who claim to have an African American friend, so therefore they can not be racist. He then goes on to disprove this claim, defining what he believes to be a friendship. I found this very interesting because it seems people have come to use the term "friend" very loosely. Personally, all of my friends under Wise's definition would be white. I do have acquaintances who are all of different races, but that just fuels what he was talking about.
     One of Wise's points was that we all have racist, homosexual, or even sexist thoughts; it is inevitable. But what we do after those thoughts is crucial. Do we allow them to consume us and become our expectations, or do we realize that we are being racist or having some sort of prejudice thought? He also mentions the fact that if we don't address the problem or talk about it, it can never get better. Racism is still all around us, whether we want to admit to it or not. The cartoon is just a reenactment of the fact that people still are not equal in today's society.
     One part of his speech that really stuck out to me was the fact of people being hired or called for interviews based on the whiteness of their names. At my job, I am part of the hiring team, and one application came through with what Wise would consider a very black name (she was from Nigeria and had a native name). Because no one could pronounce her name, they did not want to call her. In the end, she was called and hired. But during her interview one of the managers asked her if she had an American name to which she was referred to, and she was called that when at the workplace. In this short video, the young man tells his story of changing his name when looking for a job. He went from Jose to Joe, and immediately got better responses despite having the same resume and experiences. It baffles my mind that some people expect someone to go by a different name or may consider not even calling them for an interview because theirs may be hard to pronounce or is not what we consider white. Being a white female with a easily pronounceable, white name, I have never encountered this problem. This is just another example of white privilege that McIntosh described.
     In conclusion, I really liked the video. I found it funny yet very enlightening. My question to the class is have you ever found yourself thinking a racist thought and caught yourself (like Wise and the black airplane pilots)? Do you still have friends that are black/ a different race than your own according to Wise's definition of a friend?

This video is a short clip of Tim Wise talking about white privilege, where it came from and how it affects us. On my blog there is also his film "White Like Me" which expands on that idea.