Does your organization allow such comments to pass as “harmless”.

If so, your fate may be similar to Sony Records.  Contact us.

Here is a link to the article that include the song lyrics: Natural Hair Song By Tiririca Deemed Racist, Sony Music Ordered To Pay $1.2 Million

A recent court decision found Wells Fargo guilty of pushing African American and Latino applicants into loans that they knew were unsound. All applicants were deemed worthy of receiving a normal loan, but were made to feel that the loans suggested by the Wells Fargo agents were better and that they “the applicant” would be much smarter and better off following the agent’s suggestion.

Applicants were made to feel that they were being helped while in fact they were being discriminated against.

This is the kind of discrimination that CCODE addresses in its training.

Sources:

Justice Dept. Fights Bias in Lending

Have you ever judged someone or been judged based on your culture or ethnicity? Have you ever stereotyped others just because you intended to reduce the overload of information and simplify your understanding of a group of people? There is a certain chance that regardless of your racial, sexual or religious identity, you have sub-divided people according to their language, behavior, customs, and ideologies. There is even a higher chance that you have been categorized by those who think of themselves as the “right” type of people based on their own cultural understandings.William Sumner has described ethnocentrism as the “the technical name for this view of things in which ones own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it” (Sumner, 1906).

Our society is filled with stories of racism and our communities are segregated by discrimination. Although there is considerable evidence that stereotypes can have considerable truth and stereotyping is seen as a strategy of successive approximations towards valuable generalizations in an environment of restricted information, both ethnocentrism and stereotyping can lead to racism. Race and racism continue to be major factors in the politics of many nations; therefore we need to understand such elements of political psychology.

Dr. Sadigh and his guest, Dr. Jerome Rabow, will examine the theories that predict people who place a high value on their own group will tend to scorn outsiders and seriously damage the healthy relationships of being inclusive and non-judgmental.

About My Guest: Dr. Jerome Rabow received his Ph.D in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and started teaching at UCLA in 1965 in the Sociology Dept. where he is a Professor Emeritus. He continues to teach in the Honors College and is also a lecturer in Sociology at CSUN for nine years.

Dr. Rabow is the President and Founder of CCODE (The Center for the Celebration of Diversity through Education), a diversity training organization working in the private and public sectors. He is a Licensed MFT for 35 years and practices at Encino and Century City. He has also co-authored the popular Tutoring Matters (Everything you always wanted to know about tutoring) published by Temple University Press.

Click the play button to listen: rabow-btr-15Dec2011.mp3

Source: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/drdaniel/2011/12/16/political-psychology-of-streotyping-and-ethnocentrism

Have you ever been subjected to discrimination? Did you ever judge someone because of his/her race or ethnicity? The chances are that regardless of your racial, sexual or religious identity, you have been both discriminated against and also in position of discriminating against others. In a world of inequities and increasing financial distance among nations, can we claim that racism does not exist?

Our college campuses are filled with stories of racism and our communities are painted by the brush of discrimination. Join in and learn about the different dynamics of racism as Dr. Sadigh and his guest, Dr. Jerome Rabow, will examine cultural stereotyping, race relations, and other diversity issues. Dr. Rabow’s “Voices of Pain and Voices of Hope” published by Kendall Hunt and its third edition is a brilliant window to today’s unfair practices of shaming, degrading, and devaluing.

About My Guest: Dr. Jerome Rabow received his Ph.D in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He started teaching at UCLA in 1965 in the Sociology Dept. where he is a Professor Emeritus and continues to teach in the Honors College. He has also been a lecturer in Sociology at CSUN for nine years. Dr. Rabow is the co-author of the popular Tutoring Matters (Everything you always wanted to know about tutoring) published by Temple University Press. He is a Licensed MFT for 35 years and practices at Encino and Century City. Dr. Rabow is the President and Founder of CCODE (The Center for the Celebration of Diversity through Education), a diversity training organization working in the private and public sectors.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger doesn’t get it because she doesn’t understand that there is a difference when outsiders use words that are pejorative and when insiders use those same words. Dr. Laura might laugh at a joke that a Jewish comic makes, about Jews being stingy but she might be offended if a non-Jew makes the same joke. I believe, she would be offended if a non-Jew used the word “kike”, let alone went on rant saying “kike, kike, kike”. If Dr. Schlesinger was hurt or offended, I would hope that no one would say to her that she is too sensitive or to religious. Just as people have different degrees of melanin; Jews have different degrees of religiosity. Would she like to be told that she has too much “Jewishness”?

Words have histories. Words can harm, they can hurt, and can be used to perpetuate myths, stereotypes and un-truths. If men use the B_____ word or the C___ word amongst themselves they are perpetuating sexism without necessarily inflicting pain or fear since, women may not be in their presence. If men used those words to describe Dr. Schlessinger, she would probably be offended, and rightly so. Very few women would say she’s being too sensitive. And if women used those two words to refer to each other, they would be using the words that men have used for years to humiliate and belittle women. When women use those words however, they are rarely used in conjunction with physical abuse and are not likely to create fear. When men use these words in front of women to describe them, the reaction would probably be one of fear and terror. The B—- and C—- words have been used in conjunction with punching, beating, raping and the killing of women. Women, when they use that word would not likely punch, beat and kill other women. The N word has been used by white parents to prevent their children from going to schools or befriending African Americans. The N word has been used by police to belittle torture, beat and shoot African Americans. The N word has been used by teachers and councilors to diminish the aspirations of their students. The N word has been used by whites to murder and hang African Americans.  Dr. Schlessinger, as a woman and as a Jew but, mostly as an American should be aware of different worlds and realities that men and women, whites and people of color, heterosexuals and gays and lesbians live in. Their worlds are real. Dr. Schessinger needs to get real. She needs to learn about these other worlds and not impose her reality as if it is the only one that matters.

The fact that we have a bi-racial president is indeed a sign of progress in race relations. The fact that so many Americans still believe that our president is not a citizen, that he is a traitor and, that he is trying to do away with our Constitution and Bill of Rights, indicates that racism is still alive and flourishing. Dr. Schlessinger has contributed to the perpetuation and reality of racism in America in 2010.

Dr. Rabow is a Prof. Emeritus, UCLA; Lect. CSUN, a psychotherapist and  founder of CCODE, a diversity training organization.