Saturday, October 8, 2011

Freshman Seminar 10-9

This week’s freshman seminar class featured a guest speaker whos name I do not remember. She is a familiar face from around campus though. Her topic was about how black people are misrepresented in statistics and stereotypes. Three key points from the lecture were the facts that only eleven percent of principals in the United States are black, black males do better than black females on the SAT, and the fact that black 12th graders are less likely to do drugs.

The first point that stuck with me is that 11 % of principals in America are black. I was surprised and disappointed by how little the percentage of principals that are black are. It makes sense though. Throughout my public school career, I never had a black principal. On the other hand, while 11 percent may not be many, I feel that it’s a significant amount. I expect that number to increase in the future.

The second point that stuck out to me was that black males do better on the SAT test than white males. This was surprising because they are more females attending Howard than males. This statistic is quite interesting but is never spoken about. You always hear about how more black males are in prison than college, or other degrading statistics. I think if information like this was publicized, it would help reverse some of the negative stereotypes that black males face.

The last point that caught my attention was that black 12th graders were less likely to do drugs than any other race. I was not surprised by this statistics, but rather my classmates’ reactions. I believed this to be true because a good portion of my black friends in high school never did drugs including myself. A lot of my friends from other races did drugs though. I think the classes reaction showed one of the negative stereotypes about us blacks that we also play into.

This week’s freshman seminar class relates to other because it described problems in the black community and what we can do to fix them just like the other classes.

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