Look to the Cookie

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2008/10/doctors-unknowi.html

This should come as no surprise. We all know the propensity of black males to become incarcerated. In fact, 3 times as many black males are in prison than are enrolled in colleges and universities. http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/27/census.prisons.ap/index.html

We all cringe a little bit when we see an intimidating black man walking past us on the street. This fear has been ingrained in us since childhood. I've always said that the black factor adds 2 inches and 40 pounds when measuring up fighters. These statistics also support the classic joke, Why are all black men fast?





The slow ones are in jail.

Now to those of you that say stereotypes are inaccurate and shouldn't be used
1.) You're reading the wrong blog
2.) Don't preach your draft dodging hippie liberal rhetoric when in reality you hold these same racial prejudices
3.) Stop hugging trees and find somebody to stick one in you.

Now the initial link is surprising to some because it's doctors that are favoring whites to blacks and we hold them to a higher standard because of their profession. Trust me when I tell you that it's not that easy to not have these tendencies, or to not see race at all, as Stephen Colbert claims.

Give this survey a try. I first came across it in reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, which was about all sorts of these snap judgments that we make without even realizing that we are doing so.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.html (Click on Race IAT)

The topic of race always reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry and Elaine are in a bakery to get a chocolate bobka for a party that they are going to. While in the bakery, Jerry buys a Black and White cookie and this exchange ensues...

JERRY: Uhm, The thing about eating the Black and White cookie, Elaine, is you want to get some black and some white in each bite. Nothing mixes better than vanilla and chocolate And yet somehow racial harmony eludes us. If people would only look to the cookie all our problems would be solved.

ELAINE: Your views on race relations are fascinating. You really should do an op-ed piece for the Times.

JERRY: Um, um, Look to the cookie Elaine. Look to the cookie.

At this point, Jerry looks to the other end of the bakery and exchanges a head nod with a black man who is also eating a Black and White cookie. It's priceless.

For the record, growing up in Syracuse we always called those cookies Half Moons, which of course would indicate that the white portion was the moon and the black portion was just the dark night sky.