Graduation with Leadership Distinction in Research
Identifying Social Blind Spots
The foundation of society, especially within the United States, rests on the necessity of finding the solution to a problem. The desire to solve a problem was the driving force behind the establishment of the United States itself, and also the creation of things like the government, social security, health insurance, or even things as simple as brushing your teeth. Charity organizations are created to work towards solving a problem. Federal institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Internal Revenue Service are too. However, in order to solve a problem, the source of the problem must first be identified.
Often, problems arise from neglect or mistreatment in a specific area. While I was in my Sociology 101 course, one of our assignments was to write a position paper describing our view of a particular issue in society. I chose to write about the state of addiction in the United States, which spawned from seeing many of those around me falling victim to its perils and my rapidly increasing feelings of disenchanment with intervention tactics. Using empirical data and personal experiences, I discussed overdose rates, addiction as a physiological disease, and the likelihood of relapse following traditional rehabilitation programs. This was the first instance in which I was able to apply critical thinking and utilize the theoretical framework given to me within the sociology course. Each problem that I discovered within my research seemed to derive from the same issue: neglecting to dig deeper into the source fueling the problem. It seemed indisputable that there were substantial gaps in how addiction was being treated. Outdated methods were still being used to battle the issue even though overdose and incarceration rates continued to rise. To me, the blind spot had clearly been determined.
Following writing this essay, I became certified to administer Narcan/Naloxone, which immediately reverses opiate overdoses
Following my experience in writing that paper, it seemed like every day in the news a new and devastating thing was happening to a group of people. The neglect to uncover the fuel of the problem was not unique to the issue of addiction. To me, addiction seemed to transcend all identity groups, as I had come from a middle-class, educated white family that was still plagued with the struggles of addiction. Yet, upon further introspection, I saw that although addiction could affect any person regardless of status, it did disproportionately affect those in minority groups. Within the tidbits of information I heard on the news, I found that those affected shared a common denominator - whether it be race, gender, religion, class, or sexual orientation. I saw issues like those in Flint, Michigan, where a poor town with a majority black population was being heavily impacted by lead poisoning. I saw statistics from the CDC stating that homosexual black men were the group currently enduring the highest HIV infection rates. I saw the homicide rate in my home city of Baltimore climb to an all-time high, where the 326 out of 344 murders in 2015 were of members of minority ethnic and economic groups. It became clear that while the failure to identify societal blind spots did impact privileged members of society like myself, it impacted minority groups substantially more.
I wondered to myself if there was a better way to examine the state of society in order to explain these problems, to figure out how and where to target attention, and to prevent issues like these from happening in the first place. I then realized that many of the concepts discussed in my sociology courses explained the prevalence of these issues and provided framework for how to identify them. After completing my Elementary Statistics for Sociologists course, I was armed with the ability to understand the previously ominous statistics which supported my observations by giving proof in numerical form. Following my Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality course, I became familiar with concepts like white privilege, which opened my eyes to issues that I had never thought to examine before and allowed me to develop an understanding of previously unknown inequities occuring around me.
Fortunately, during this time I was volunteering in USC Union's PALM Lab working with another student, Tammy Wilburn Warr. Her research examined the impact of implicit bias in the workplace. The experiment produced results which discussed a participant's percieved fairness of a task given to an individual who, through context clues, presented to the reader as being a particular gender and race. Through observing and collaborating on her research, my suspicions had been confirmed in at least one context, the workplace.
Photo of the title slide shown at the beginning of the workshop at the South Carolina Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy's Summer Institute 2015
During the summer of 2015, I attended the South Carolina Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy's Summer Institute. One of the workshops I participated in, titled "But Some of My Best Friends Are Black! More Honest Talk About Race in America", expanded my understanding of blind spots in regard to how we treat people of different races than oneself, how we go forward in combatting racism, and how to reevaluate our behavior. One of the topics we focused on was racially-based jokes collected from the internet. Using an electronic audience response system, we were prompted with different jokes and asked to respond with our opinion anonymously. In doing this exercise it became evident to me that even simple jokes were perpetuating blind spots. Jokes regarding white people were often lighthearted and rarely surpassed insulting typical physical characteristics of white people, while the jokes regarding black people not only insulted physical characteristics, but also personality, intelligence, trustworthiness and self-worth.
Clearly, my in-classroom learning gave me a fabulous foundation of knowledge which prepared me to understand the concepts that I was partaking in during my out-of-the-classroom enrichment experiences. Another workshop I attended during the conference was titled "Sex, Contraception and Childbearing in Rural Communities," which discussed the results of a study titled Sex in the (Non) City: Teen Childbearing in Rural America. Alison Stewart Ng and Kelleen Kaye from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy presented comprehensive research that looked at the teen pregnancy and birth trends in rural communities. The following semester, I was enrolled in a Developmental Psychology course in which I was able to combine this information with my own insight and other existing data to elaborate on teen pregnancy's effect on psychological development. It seemed that in a great majority of cases, teen pregnancy and births were much higher in rural areas than in metropolitan or suburban areas. They concluded some of the factors contributing to that were a lack of a positive recreational outlet, lack of access to contraceptives, lack of health services, lack of secondary education opporunities, and poverty. After seeing this evidence produced and first-hand observing the reality of teen pregnancy in the county which I was living, it appeared that the entire rural population of the United States appeared to be eclipsed by a massive blind spot. In cases where organizations had identified areas that were extremely impacted by this issue, the attention given helped lead to a sharp decline in teen pregnancies and births. But before any action could be taken to change the situation, the blind spot had to be identified. When the blind spot had been identified, it substantially improved the situation, which in turn improved the lives of those within the community.
By taking the time to identify exact areas of neglect, time and effort can be applied much more efficiently to solving a situation and effectuating positive growth. While these blind spots may not always be blatantly evident, it is vital to dig deeper until they are found. In some cases, locating these blind spots may be uncomfortable or may challenge our usual ways of thinking. Some uncomfortable truths may be revealed, but the benefit of doing so greatly outweighs this.