White Americans did NOT elect Obama.

This myth won’t die:

But not everyone buys that script. Mona Charen, a conservative columnist for the National Review, challenges that view with this question: If more white Americans feel like an embattled minority, why did they elect President Barack Obama?

“Did they become racist after electing the first black president?” she asks.

Charen says the United States today is “incredibly tolerant and open.”

White Americans did not elect Obama. Most White Americans (55%) voted for McCain. Obama was elected by most Americans of color and a minority (43%) of White Americans.

Yes, the numbers can and do work like that.

Myths about Girls, Math, and Science

Top 5 Myths About Girls, Math and Science (LiveScience 2007):

Myth 1: From the time they start school, most girls are less interested in science than boys are.

Reality: In elementary school about as many girls as boys have positive attitudes toward science. A recent study of fourth graders showed that 66 percent of girls and 68 percent of boys reported liking science. But something else starts happening in elementary school. By second grade, when students (both boys and girls) are asked to draw a scientist, most portray a white male in a lab coat. Any woman scientist they draw looks severe and not very happy. The persistence of the stereotypes start to turn girls off, and by eighth grade, boys are twice as interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) careers as girls are. The female attrition continues throughout high school, college and even the work force. Women with STEM higher education degrees are twice as likely to leave a scientific or engineering job as men with comparable STEM degrees.

[…]

Myth 3: Science and math teachers are no longer biased toward their male students.

Reality: In fact, biases are persistent, and teachers often interact more with boys than with girls in science and math. A teacher will often help a boy do an experiment by explaining how to do it, while when a girl asks for assistance the teacher will often simply do the experiment, leaving the girl to watch rather than do. Research shows that when teachers are deliberate about taking steps to involve the female students, everyone winds up benefiting. This may mean making sure everyone in the class is called on over the course of a particular lesson, or asking a question and waiting 10 seconds before calling on anyone. Good math and science teachers also recognize that when instruction is inquiry-based and hands-on, and students engage in problem solving as cooperative teams, both boys and girls are motivated to pursue STEM activities, education and careers.

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Related post:

• Scientists are “normal” people, children discover by Restructure!

The Myth of “Special Rights”

dentedbluemercedes writes:

Recent years have seen a regression with regards to the concept of human rights. Most often, this push-back is in response to legislation that would protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and / or trans people, and is often accompanied by claims of infringement on freedom of speech, and / or that human rights legislation grants “special rights” to protected classes.

[…]

Of course, when categories are included in rights legislation, they are meant to work both ways. For example, sexual orientation ideally protects one from discrimination because they’re straight as much as it protects them because they’re gay. The intent is simply that orientation should not be the basis of decisions on hiring and firing, availability of residences and resources, or whether or not to do violence on someone. If it seems to protect a specific subset of that, that’s because that kind of discrimination in its extreme form is almost exclusively levelled at that subset. And if such a disparity exists, then it illustrates exactly why the legislation is necessary in the first place.

Link: The Myth of “Special Rights”

The Myth of White Male Geek Rationality

People who consider themselves fully rational individuals are ignorant about basic psychology and their own minds.

It is easy for white men in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields to perceive themselves as more rational than other groups, because our society associates rationality with whites, men, and STEM professionals. When white men in STEM fields believe in this stereotype, they might assume that bias is more common in non-white people, women, and people in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. After all, these other groups seem to want to discuss bias more often, and unexamined associative “reasoning” would link bias to those who bring up the topic of bias. Under logical scrutiny, however, it does not follow that the act of thinking about bias makes one more biased.

Green Red Blue
Purple Blue Purple

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Blue Purple Red
Green Purple Green

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the Stroop effect refers to the fact that naming the color of the first set of words is easier and quicker than the second.

A basic tenet of contemporary psychology is that mental activity can be unconscious. Unconscious simply refers to any mental activity that is “not conscious”, and it is not equivalent to the unscientific New Age concept of the Subconscious. A good example of unconscious mental activity interfering with conscious intentions is the Stroop effect (right). If you try to name the colours of the colour words aloud, the first set of colours will be easier to name than the second set of colours, because you unconsciously read the words. This means that you do not have full control over your thoughts and behaviour, and your willpower or logical reasoning cannot overcome the unconscious cultural bias of being able to read in English. Of course, there are other unconscious cultural biases aside from English literacy bias.

White American culture is General Tso’s Chicken and Chop Suey.

Finally, somebody summarized the myths that non-Chinese Americans have about Chinese food. Most of what White Americans consider “Chinese food” is mostly eaten by white people, and would be more accurately described as “American food” (and perhaps even “white people food”).

Jennifer 8. Lee has a great video on TED Talks titled, Who was General Tso? and other mysteries of American Chinese food.