confidential and anonymous

I am a graduate student in psychology. Maybe I already said that--maybe not. Anyhow, I was in class last night listening to a presentation in my research methods class. We had to do an assignment where we had to develop a measure and then give a brief presentation. One group chose to make their measure about couple satisfaction, and the students in our class made up the bulk of the sample.

Pretty interesting survey: it asked about shared interests, values, household labor, sex, hobbies, etc.

At the end of the survey I noticed that one of their demographic questions was race. I was hestitant to fill it out because I _knew_ that they were probably not going to have a racially diverse sample (I am the only person of color in my class,) and my concern was that if I indicated my race, the survey would no longer be anonymous, and they would have pretty detailed information about my level of satisfaction in my relationship.

I thought about it and decided that I wasn't going to check "white" because I was not white. But I was concerned enough that when I turned this survey in I made a point to say to one of the group members, "Make sure that you get some other 'African-American' respondents because I don't want it to be obvious what survey is mine." She assured me that they would.

Lo and behold, when they are presenting to the class they have gotten no other African-American respondents, so my results are availalable for everyone in class to see. So much for "confidential and anonymous."

Now is the part where I say: I don't think these women are racist dumbasses who did this intentionally. I know both of them: they're friendly people.

However, I think what they did was extremely irresponsible. It was very short sighted of them not to realize that if they had a demographic group of only one person, it is pretty pointless to present the results. First, because it has absolutely no statistical significance. Second, because the results are no longer confidential if the respondent is easily identified by others.

It also makes me upset, because I went through the trouble of bringing my concerns to one of the members, only to have her basically lie to me. It's like, "If you're not going to have a racially diverse sample, don't tell me that you are. That's just rude."

So I debated sending them both an email saying that I thought it was irresponsible, but decided against it because I thought they would immediately become defensive, and I didn't feel like dealing with it.

So instead I write about it on my blog, for who knows who in the universe to find it and read about it.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Ghetto Fabulous

I am watching American Justice (if you haven't figured it out, I watch a lot of tv--Tivo is a wonderful thing.)
So I'm watching American Justice about the Central Park Jogger case from the late 80's. First: did you know that all the people that were orginally convicted were set free because someone else confessed? So much for that whole "wilding" theory...

Anyway, I'm watching it and there's some white woman talking about crime in NY in the 80's. There was a lot more than there is now, and she says, "There was a concern that the ghetto crime would spill over into the white neighborhoods." What? Let's think about this critically, people: What is she saying with this statement?

White people don't live in ghettos
White people don't live in neighborhoods with crime
ghetto=non-white----> non white people do not live in low crime neighborhoods

Now, she seems to have enough savvy not to say, "There's was a concern that black/Latino crime would spread into white neighborhoods." No no no, that would be racist. But she can substitute the eupehmism, "ghetto" and we think nothing of it.
I'd also like to point out that this woman works for the Columbia Journalism School, responsible for shaping the young minds of the future media. Whoo hoo!