Entry 3_Thang Tran: Critical thinking : Identifying Bias

Critical thinking Task 3: Identifying Bias

These are picked from current news and history records.

1. Muslim women are being scapegoated

http://mg.co.za/article/2011-04-12-muslim-women-are-being-scapegoated

France voted a law to ban the niqab – the veil that Muslim women wear in public (some places call the “burka”). Muslim women are watched in public spaces like supermarket, playground, etc. People look at them and their children in a different way; accuse them of provoking other people. This is considered scapegoating because the Muslim women were strongly discriminated against and unreasonably blamed for their existence.

(More info is provided later)

2. The prejudice of native citizens against immigrants

This picture concerns Capitalism and one of the hottest issues these days – unemployment. The big guy (represents the native blue-collar workers) is blaming the poor small guy (who represents the immigrant labor). The ugly truth is that developed countries are attracting more and more immigrants from under-developed countries. Native workers blame immigrant workers for stealing their jobs while they don’t know they have been exploited by capitalism (represented as the wealthy man). This bigotry is considered “scapegoating” because the native workers keep the bad persistent impression of immigrants in their mind and start to blame on them.

3. The Tulsa race riot 1921

The Tulsa race riot in 1921 is one of the darkest and costliest incidents in American history. Tulsa is a booming city in the booming state of Oklahoma, where a lot of people came here for “the dark gold” – oil. The oil industry here throve during 1920s, the most prosperous area was Greenwood. However, after the riots, Greenwood was completely destroyed. The picture above illustrates a black man burned to death. This is an extremely strong discrimination among American society at the time.