The predominating media sentiment according to Ransby was that of 'blaming the victim,' or blaming the impoverished residents for being insufficiently prepared for the disaster. Ransby suggests that the fortitude shown by residents, even in the absence of aid, was often considerable, considering their meager resources. Residents were blamed for their poverty, rather than sympathized with. Ransby's essay made me think critically about the coverage of the event I witnessed:

The different "isms" such as sexism, heterosexism, and racism are creating very real schisms -- in our minds, and between people. The chasms of communication that are created by hatred and misunderstanding are socially constructed. They can be socially deconstructed too. Such rifts occur between groups of people and between whole cultures. In some pockets of the United States, social conservatism threatens to erase the social progress made since the

S. Supreme Court decisions on the issue, such as its judgment upon the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions policy. Even stereotypes such as the idea that "Blacks are strongly associated with criminality," still have a pervasive hold as was denoted in one recent study where "when exposed to crime-relevant objects," perceivers visually attended more "to Black faces more so than White faces. Alternatively, the mere presence of a Black face

Race Racial division/separation on campus in environment Students in the focus group described the campus environment at Landgrant University as being welcoming overall, but difficult to find meaningful connections with other students. Segregation is too harsh of a term to use in this case, but it is clear some of the students at the university feel that people stick with their own racial groups when making friends. This has created a trend

Race/Ethnicity or Sex/Gender as Socially Constructed Categories Sociological ethnicity and race theories have been dictated by the social construct metaphor, which indicates that these theories are ideological groups that serve to conceal the actual social structural principles. The above notion is a problematical one as it ignores the context wherein ethnicity and race function as bases of social significance as well as working material exclusion principles (Smaje, 1997). While gender and

Gender Stereotypes and the Ontogenetically Adaptive Role of Feedback Preferences Introduction & Theory It is acknowledged that feedback is an integral part of the learning process and that different types of feedback are suited to different types of situations (e.g., Spector, 2000). The current research examines how gender stereotypes affect working adults' feedback preferences in the context of training. Based on Social Role theory (Eagly, 1987), this paper theorizes why these preferences