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Thursday, June 28, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION
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I
asked my big sister and
former Division I collegiate
soccer player if her school
treated her the same as her male
counterparts.
Her
response:
“Students and fellow athletes
do not treat me the same. They
made comments about women’s
sports being less important.”
My sister is putting in the same
amount
of
work,
sacrificing
the same amount of time and
working through many of the
same issues that all college
athletes face and it seems like
she gets no respect. This attitude
toward women’s sports creates
an almost hypocritical view of
athleticism as “less-than” solely
because the athlete is female.
What qualifies men’s sports as
holding any kind of importance?
How can the same exact thing
be any less significant simply
because women are doing it?
Women’s sports are not less
important. Women are not less
important. Let’s remember that
countless female athletes are
putting in the same amount,
if not more work as their male
counterparts. Not to mention the
fact that male athletes should
be the first to support female
athletes. They know just how
much work has to be put in,
just how much time has to be
sacrificed and how grueling the
life of a collegiate or professional
athlete can be. Male athletes
should not be the first to put
their female counterparts down.
Rather, they should be the first to
be fighting for equality, fighting
for justice.
I then asked one of my best
friends, a Division I men’s college
basketball player, if he ever feels
like he’s given advantages over
his female counterparts. “No,”
he replied. “The only difference
is the popularity of the sport.
That’s not them getting treated
differently, it’s just the way the
world works.” Just the way the
world works. Women just don’t get
the respect they deserve. That’s
just how it works. Female athletes
are constantly given consolation
prizes for competing in what’s
seen as a men’s world. Just the
way the world works. Now I know
that my friend doesn’t really think
female athletes deserve less than
male athletes. I know because I
spent four years of high school
playing basketball alongside him
and I know he respects me as an
athlete. I also know he respects
the women’s team at his college
as well, but sometimes that can be
harder to tell.
There have been countless
times when I have been hanging
out with my guy friends and
we decide to play basketball.
Without fail, I am picked last.
I know it might sound petty –
complaining about being picked
last – but that’s not the point. The
point is that of the group in which
I end up playing these pick-up
games, I am the only person
who actually played basketball.
I played for my entire life on
competitive club teams and high
school varsity. None of them
played past fifth grade. But I am
a girl, so I’m picked last – always.
That’s the issue that is ignored.
Because that’s just how the world
works. My friends aren’t really
sexist, they don’t truly believe that
I am lesser than them. Simply, they
have been conditioned to feel this
is acceptable.
Young boys are raised in a world
that believes men are stronger,
faster and more athletic than
women, and whether they mean
to or not, they end up perpetuating
these ideas through their own
actions. We need to start to
recognize the kind of embedded
sexism that is constantly faced by
female athletes. People need to see
that saying “that’s just how it is”
is not an answer and is a cop out
for not addressing a real issue that
needs to be fixed.
Passive
acceptance
of
inequalities
is
no
longer
acceptable.
It
is
time
male
athletes step up and speak up
about the issues female athletes
are facing. And just to leave you
with a statistic that highlights
this
inequity,
Forbes
just
released their list of the Top 100
Highest Paid Athletes and not a
single one was a woman. Not one.
This can no longer be “just the
way the world works.” We need
change, we need progress and we
need it now.
FARID ALSABEH | COLUMN
EMMA CHANG
Editorial Page Editor
EMMA RICHTER
Managing Editor
Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz
Samantha Goldstein
Elena Hubbell
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram
Jeremy Kaplan
Sarah Khan
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland
Anu Roy-Chaudhury
Alex Satola
Ali Safawi
Ashley Zhang
Sam Weinberger
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board.
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
ASIF BECHER
Editor in Chief
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
MARLEE BURRIDGE| COLUMN
Speak up for female athletes
Marlee Burridge can be reached at
marleebu@umich.edu.
The science behind implicit bias
T
he
April
arrest
of
two
black
men
at
a
Philadelphia
Starbucks
has reignited public discourse on
the topic of racial discrimination.
Arguments proposed by the most
vocal critics of the incident, who
have charged the coffee chain
with racism, portray it as the
latest scene of a systemic white
supremacy that has terrorized
minorities for decades. In a post-
Jim Crow America, the question
must be asked: How could such
a widespread manifestation of
racism persist in our society?
The consensus has been, as
far as Starbucks’ perception is
concerned,
that
unconscious
profiling is the culprit.
The idea that motivations
can exist beneath the level of
conscious knowledge is hardly
a new idea; this was precisely
the scandalous observation that
set a prude Viennese aristocracy
on fire in the days of Sigmund
Freud. Marked as it is by racial
tension, our current era takes
as the object of scandal not
implicit sexual attitudes but
racial ones. As it applies to the
Starbucks arrests, the argument
states that even if the barista
harbored no explicit prejudice
against African-Americans, she
was nonetheless motivated by
an unconscious bias to call the
police when the men declined to
order anything. The assumption
here is that race played a
decisive role in the events that
unfolded, that the arrest would
not have been made if the men
were white.
The
Implicit
Association
Test has emerged as the most
prominent assessment for the
kind of implicit bias that has
been implicated in the Starbucks
incident. For those unfamiliar
with the test, I encourage you to
try it — it doesn’t take more than
20 minutes, and the firsthand
experience will be a far better
explanation than what follows.
In the relevant version of the
test, there are two parts. one
is when there are two buttons:
“white and good adjectives” and
“Black and bad adjectives,” and
the other is when the two buttons
are “Black and good adjectives”
and “white and bad adjectives.”.
The finding of this simple test is
similar to others in psychometry
— the practice of timing mental
processes — in that the speed
of our categorization changes
significantly based on another
parameter. In this case, that
other parameter is the face
we see prior to the word: It
consistently takes people longer
to identify positive words, and
shorter
to
identify
negative
words, when Black and good
are the same button, because of
implicit bias.
Perusing other versions of the
assessment, it was startling to
consider just how many identity
groups may be affected by the
phenomenon
of
unconscious
bias. Age, weight, and physical
disability among athletes were
some
of
the
most
striking
examples outside the typical race
or sex considerations, all three
of which have been associated
with the classic IAT finding
of delayed response time. The
diversity of subgroups present
in the assessment is a testament
not
only
to
the
potential
ubiquity of implicit bias, but
to
the
rising
sociocultural
movement
that
is
bringing
this issue to the forefront.
The floodgates holding back
the
uncomfortable
topic
of
unconscious
marginalization
have been opened.
As far as strictly scientific
evidence is concerned, the IAT
is still as close as we can get to
quantifying the phenomenon of
implicit bias. But even this has
been scrutinized by scientists
wary of the test, a skepticism
that has slowly but surely been
extending into the field of
social psychology at large. Some
psychologists
maintain
that
the results of this assessment
suffer from low replicability,
and that the test itself fails
to live up to quality-control
standards. Moreover, the IAT
seems completely inept at doing
what it’s designed to do: actually
predict potential acts of bias.
Despite these criticisms — if
only for the sake of argument —
I’ll assume that these results are
valid and consistent. Where do
we go from there?
It’s
my
belief
that
the
psychometric approach outlined
by the IAT is not a rigorous
method of demonstrating that
unconscious racism exists per
se. This position was largely
influenced by my own experience
taking the test. Within a few
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