Dirty Dancing, Patrick Swayze and race...

It was on tv the other night - Dirty Dancing with Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. I must have seen that movie five times when it first came out in 1987 and loved it back then. Although I could watch Patrick dance for hours, especially with his shirt off.....it was interesting to watch the movie again 23 years later. (Note to self....watch Ghost again next time it's on tv. Loved the pottery scene with Demi Moore.)

One thing that really stood out for me was the fact that there was only one couple of African heritage in the movie, and of course, they only danced with each other. Well, and I guess that back in '87 the movie makers couldn't possibly have black people dancing with white people, could they? And perhaps I'm wrong on this point, it seemed that the "visibly" Hispanic couples only danced with each other too. Very bizarre compared to movies today.

And then I found this interesting article on labelling. How dangerous it is to label someone as black, rich or smart, because it can determine what we actually "see".

Jennifer Eberhardt, a social psychologist at Stanford, and her colleagues showed white college students a pictures of a man who was racially ambiguous--he could have plausibly fallen into the "white" category or the "black" category. For half the students, the face was described as belonging to a white man, and for the other half it was described as belonging to a black man. In one task, the experimenter asked the students to spend four minutes drawing the face as it sat on the screen in front of them. Although all the students were looking at the same face, those who tended to believe that race is an entrenched human characteristic drew faces that matched the stereotype associated with the label (see a sample below). The racial labels formed a lens through with the students saw the man, and they were incapable of perceiving him independently of that label.

And the situation is the same for labelling someone rich or poor. Here's the link to the full article if you'd like to read it. www.psychologytoday.com/blog/alternative-truths/201005/why-its-dangerous-label-people