ASSIGNMENT:
Read the following, and then:
Find something on the Internet that might bother a person in as many as possible of each of the above groups.  Reflect on whether or not (you feel) they SHOULD be bothered.
If you think it should NOT bother them, try to imagine it was about a group you ARE a member of.

Then, reflect on in what ways a Web page designer should be aware of such issues.
When I was growing up, no one could get this riddle:
A boy and his father went for a drive.
There was an accident.
The father was killed; the boy was wounded.
The surgeon at the emergency room said:
“I can’t operate; this boy is my son.”
What is the situation?
(It is not necessary to assume foster care, adoption, Roman Catholic priesthood, or anything other than the biological relationships.)

In Vermont, blacks are stopped more often than whites by state troopers.
Blacks are more likely to get a ticket.  
Blacks are more likely to have their car searched.
Blacks are more likely to be charged with a crime.
If charges with a crime, they are more likely to be convicted.
If convicted, they are more likely to be sent to jail.
If sent to jail, they are more likely to be sent to the prison for Vermont’s overflow prison population, which is in Mississippi.
(Each fact was reported in VT Digger during the 2019-2020 school year.)

A colleague of mine is a runner.
If he runs in sweat pants and T shirt, people who see him call the police.
If he runs in military uniform, no one calls the police.
He is a professor on a large campus.
Why do people call the police on him?

A school board ruled that hair accents used by students may only be of a color that is a natural color of human hair.  Who objected, and why?

An MIT graduate student was doing some research on facial recognition.
The student downloaded the software, but could not get it to work.
Any guesses as to why not?

Do you have privilege because?
	white, male, straight, Christian, born in USA, fluent speaker of English?
Do you get picked on because?
	glasses, not athletic, fat, skinny, short, tall....

VTC’s committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion holds workshops on 
Microaggressions, unconscious bias, stereotypes/profiling and other topics.

If interested, try: 
https://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=are-you-racist-quiz

OK, so there is racism, or at least racial insensitivity, in the world.
(Are you surprised?)

But on the Internet, you do not have to show your face.
Is there racism on the Internet?

https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2015/12/online-racial-discrimination
Apparently, there is. Three of the items imply the speaker knows your ethnic group; four do not.  

Children who want to be grow up to be X, but do not see anyone who is X who looks like them, wonder if people who look like them are able to be X.
And, too often, the answer is that it is harder for some groups to achieve certain goals than others.

No woman has ever been President of the United States.
There was a candidate in 1872. Hillary Clinton was the only female candidate to come close to winning.
Until Barrack Obama, no African American had been elected to President of the United States.  
Until John F Kennedy, no Roman Catholic had ever been elected President of the United States.  Joseph Biden is the second.
There has still been no Jewish President, although Vermont’s Bernie Sanders wanted the job.
Some Presidents may have been Deist, or not very active, but basically all Presidents have come from one form or another of Christian background.
(Eight are described as Deist or Unitarian, neither of which believe in the Trinity.)

Obviously, the vast majority of Presidents have been male, white, and from a Christian background, usually Protestant.  Less than half of our country identifies as both white and Christian.  That means white male protestants are less than a quarter of our population, but the vast majority of our Presidents, historically.

Although there are increasing numbers, only 12% of nurses (R.N.) are male.
The percentage of doctors who are women is now around 53-55%, but the stereotype of a doctor is still male, and many patients, even women, prefer a male doctor to a female doctor.  Why?
Around ¼ of public-school teachers are men.

Look around the classroom.  Why are there so few women?  Part of it is, young girls are often discouraged from studying math and science.  

Think of all the computer games you have played.
How many of them have promoted stereotypes?
(Black men are criminals, women are sex objects, etc.)

There are more racial groups in the world than ‘black’ and ‘white’, and way more ways to discriminate against, or be insensitive to, groups.

I have seen in textbooks, on the Internet, and in classrooms:
Comments that are insensitive to a person/people because of:
Race
gender 
orientation (LGBTQ)
religious belief
national origin
command of English
height
weight
criminal record
age

I am pretty sure that there are good, decent people here on Randolph campus, who are in each of the above groups.  I have personally witnessed insensitive comments to or about VTC students in 7 of the ten categories above.

For reflection:
What kind of things might bother people in each of the above groups, that can be found on the Internet?

ASSIGNMENT:
Find something on the Internet that might bother a person in as many as possible of each of the above groups.  Reflect on whether or not (you feel) they SHOULD be bothered.
If you think it should NOT bother them, try to imagine it was about a group you ARE a member of.

Then, reflect on in what ways a Web page designer should be aware of such issues.

Here’s some of the ideas I came up with.
Too many of these are from personal experience.

Pictures of doctors are predominately male, even though there are now more female doctors than male doctors.
Pictures of nurses are predominately female.
Lots of pictures of doctors:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=doctors&atb=v343-1&iax=images&ia=images
Lots of pictures of nurses:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nurses+pictures&atb=v343-1&iax=images&ia=images
If you see a woman at a clinic, many assume she must be a nurse.

Heroes in movies and games are more likely to have pink skin.
PEOPLE in movies and games are more likely to be attractive, fit, and (relatively) young.
Women in movies are less likely to be the star.

Criminals in movies and games are more likely to speak with a foreign accent.

Many forms on the Internet allow only two options:
Male female

Dating sites on the Internet assume you are heterosexual/straight.

AI programs are often trained by examples that are not diverse.
This has led to problems, such as facial recognition algorithms do not work on black women, President Obama is classified as white by many algorithms.  Some of these problems would have been avoided if ‘training examples’ had been more diverse.
https://carpenterwellington.com/post/artificial-intelligence-implicit-bias-diversity-dilemma/