This week’s reading and discussion focused on Psychology, race, racism and the rise of neuroscience. On account of having two distinct themes (race and neuroscience), I will briefly summarize my understanding and explain my train of thought on both topics. Firstly, I will discuss the relation between psychology and racism before briefly concluding with the importance of sciences in Psychology. An interesting component involving race and psychology is that racism did not even existed before the 1930s. In fact, races formed an evolutionary hierarchy with the Europeans at the top and indigenous at the bottom (Richard, 2010). A doctrine now called “Scientific Racism” (Richard, 2010). By looking back at history, Psychology has been a huge promoter
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As an undergraduate student who is fairly curious about a variety of opinions, I have heard about many movements including feminism and “black lives matter”. I promote and believe in both movements, as equality should be an innate right but overtly and covertly. However, I feel that the message of these movements are not well understood by everyone. Going back to power, I feel that the division of people is one of the ways that has been used to control a population since centuries. This major issue arises in political ideologies, equality movements or any other doctrine that divide people in different groups. Psychology has been used for a long time to “scientifically” show race differences so that people could identify themselves to a certain group and compete against the others. Gender is another topic that underwent similar discrimination as race in most culture and in the scientific literature. There are still many studies focusing on gender differences and I believe that it is still the case for race differences. This class made me realized that you can’t believe everything that is written in scientific journal article. You need to form an opinion based on both empirical evidence and the sociocultural context you are living
As an undergraduate student who is fairly curious about a variety of opinions, I have heard about many movements including feminism and “black lives matter”. I promote and believe in both movements, as equality should be an innate right but overtly and covertly. However, I feel that the message of these movements are not well understood by everyone. Going back to power, I feel that the division of people is one of the ways that has been used to control a population since centuries. This major issue arises in political ideologies, equality movements or any other doctrine that divide people in different groups. Psychology has been used for a long time to “scientifically” show race differences so that people could identify themselves to a certain group and compete against the others. Gender is another topic that underwent similar discrimination as race in most culture and in the scientific literature. There are still many studies focusing on gender differences and I believe that it is still the case for race differences. This class made me realized that you can’t believe everything that is written in scientific journal article. You need to form an opinion based on both empirical evidence and the sociocultural context you are living