| Author |
Message |
    
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 3036
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 02, 2008 - 06:58 pm: | 
|
In September of 2000, the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Idaho were both embarrassed when they were forced to admit that they had doctored promotional photographs to make their campuses look diverse. In both cases, non-white faces were added to real student photographs of all-white groups.
At the universities involved, officials insisted that they meant well, but just about everyone agreed that Photoshop diversity isn’t the real thing. But what if photos, even real photos of real live students, convey a false impression?
A sociologist at Augsburg College, together with an undergraduate, recently studied the viewbooks of hundreds of four-year colleges and universities, selected at random. The research team counted the racially identifiable student photographs and also gathered data on the actual make-up of the student bodies.
The findings: Black students made up an average of 7.9 percent of students at the colleges studied, but 12.4 percent of those in viewbooks. Asian students are also more likely to be found in viewbooks than on campus, making up 3.3 percent of real students on average and 5.1 percent of portrayed students. The researchers acknowledge that appearance does not always tell the story of race and ethnicity, and say that they only counted clearly identifiable photos, and feel less confident about figures for Latino students. But they report relatively few students whose appearance suggested that they might be Latino, which is striking given the growth in the Latino student body. (A total of 371 colleges were studied, and historically black colleges were excluded; the findings were recently presented at the meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society.)
Looked at another way, he found that more than 75 percent of colleges appeared to overrepresent black students in viewbooks....
http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/02/viewbooks |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 3037
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 02, 2008 - 07:00 pm: |
|
I laughed out loud when I read this. I know several Black people who appeared multiple times in their college/university promotional materials. In different poses, different clothes, different locations around campus, etc. If you didn't know them personally you'd have to look really closely to tell that it was the same handful of students on virtually every page. LOL |
Ferociouskitty
Veteran Poster
Username: Ferociouskitty
Post Number: 306
Registered: 02-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 02, 2008 - 11:39 pm: |
|
LOL...When I was applying to colleges, the University of Miami sent me brochures and a video. The same, lone black guy (he was built like a football player) appeared in all the materials. They could have at least changed his outfit! |
|
Email This Page