7. Do We Take Race Into Account When Deciding Whether Or Not To Try To Stop Child Abuse In Public?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w34zsEWNys One final experiment dealing with children now as YouTubes OckTV looks at potential racial differences in child abuse, by comparing the reactions of members of the public to white parents abusing their white child with their reactions to black parents abusing their black child. The video shows that when the people acting as the white parents pretend to abuse their child in public, members of the public were generally pretty quick to step in and protect the child. This however wasnt the case in the black family situation, where nobody really seemed to step in. The videos take home message is that child abuse is colour blind and that all abuse, regardless of race is wrong a message Im sure we can all agree with. What the experiment does well It highlights the potential problems with people not helping a child being abused and also suggests that race might influence whether or not the child receives assistance in instances of public abuse. Possible Flaws The main concern with the validity of this experiment comes when you consider the areas the two parts of the experiment take place. Without knowing where exactly the filming took place I can only speculate on this, but it looked like the situations involving the white family took place in much nicer areas than those involving the black family. Perhaps therefore the video only highlights differences between child abuse in these areas rather than anything to do with race. Whilst I dont doubt that there could well be issues regarding racism in child abuse situations, I feel that the fact that the videos makers appear to have tried to influence the outcome of their experiment in this way only serves to undermine, rather than highlight their message. Additional Note Was it just me or did the guy acting as the white dad in the video seem to be enjoying getting to kick the crap out of his little brother in the name of science a little bit too much!
Kevin Latimer
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Sports betting enthusiast whose main interests are rugby, football and MMA. Also a huge WWE fan and a self diagnosed TV & movies addict, with a particular love of anything Marvel or Dan Harmon related.
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