The Indiana Daily Student Magazine | Volume 10, Issue 1 | Fall 2015
The color issue The color issue The color issue The color issue The color issue The color issue The color issue The color The color issue The colorissue issue A different view Life with colorblindness | page 12
Colorism in the black community How a social media trend revives a historical prejudice | page 18 Tips for when you have the blues | page 4 How did IU become the Cream and Crimson? | page 6
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VOLUME 10, ISSUE 1 | TABLE OF CONTENTS | FALL 2015
Color
Social
Inside this INside
EDITOR’S NOTE When we thought about stories that could fit in “the Color Issue,” we filled a white board with ideas. Of course, not all of them made it into this issue. Race, chemistry and IU history are just three of the things we explore through color in print. How does your brain see color and could it be tricking you? What does it feel like to live everyday knowing the world you see is colored just a little bit differently than the world everyone around you sees? We tried our best to answer some of these questions. For more of our color content, be sure to check our website. Thanks for reading.
CHEMICAL BURNS A chemistry professor shows us a rainbow of elements. | page 10
FEATURES
22 A BREAK FRO M THE N O RM
18 ALL THE SHADES I N BETWEEN
8 THE GLO RY O F O LD I U
12 ANNA HYZY— EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
TAKE AN O THER LO O K
DEPARTMENTS
Pink is for girls. Blue is for boys. Target’s done gendering toys. How an experience growing up with light skin affects identity as a black person How did IU end up with it’s iconic cream and crimson? What’s it like to live with colorblindness?
Oct 13, 2015 Vol. 10, Issue 1 inside.idsnews.com Inside magazine, the newest enterprise of the Office of Student Media, Indiana University at Bloomington, is published twice an academic semester: October and November, and February and April. Inside magazine operates as a self-supporting enterprise within the broader scope of the Indiana Daily Student. Inside magazine operates as a designated public forum, and reader comments and contribution are welcome. Normally, the Inside magazine editor will be responsible for final content decisions, with the IDS editor-in-chief involved in rare instances. All editorial and advertising content is subject to our policies, rates, and procedures. Readers are entitled to a single copy of this magazine. The taking of multiple copies of this publication may constitute as theft of property and is subject to prosecution.
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
3 W H IC H B R EW S T O C H O O S E IN B - T OW N
16 H OW - T O S U P P O R TMIN O R IT IES
2 S EC R ET MEA N IN G S
4 H OW T O FIG H T O FF T H E B LU ES
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It can be trickier than it seems if you’re not part of the minority group. What’s the psychology behind what colors remind us of?
A LO O K IN S ID E B LAC K IU
9 YO U R B R A IN O N C O LO R
We asked an expert how best to take care of yourself at school. It means different things to different people, we got the scoop. How does your brain process color?
VISIT INSIDE.IDSNEWS.COM FOR MORE
Anna Hyzy Mercer Suppiger WEB EDITOR Alex Daily PHOTO EDITOR Haley Ward EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Feyi Alufohai DESIGN ASSISTANT
You can learn a lot about a beer from it’s color. Time to study-up.
Indiana Daily Student EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Janica Kaneshiro MANAGING EDITORS Suzanne Grossman and Grace Palmieri
ADVERTISING ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE
MANAGING EDITOR OF FEATURES
DISTRIBUTION MANAGER
Roger Hartwell CREATIVE/MARKETING MANAGER
Ashley VanArsdale
Alison Graham
Dan Davis
MANAGING EDITOR OF PRESENTATION
IU STUDENT MEDIA DIRECTOR
Michael Williams
Ron Johnson NEWSROOM 812-855-0760 BUSINESS OFFICE 812-855-0763 FAX 812-855-8009 COVER
DESIGN BY ANNA HYZY
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How do
C O LO R S affect marketing? bold energy intense
fun friendly ambition
clarity lively optimistic
fresh growth natural
trust security intelligence
wise power creative Graphic by Alex Ritter
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eight shades of
Four Local Breweries Show Us Their Colors Graphic by Mercer T. Suppiger
( clockwise from top ) Local Lager
Wheat Ale
3 Floyds Cherron
Falkor White IPA
The Tap
Upland
Quaff ON!
Upland
Bartenders serve this crisp lager whenever a patron requests a beer similar to Bud Light or Miller Light. Plus it’s low calorie.
Rooftop IPA Bloomington Brewing Co. Gold medalist from the 2013 Indiana Brewers Cup. A hop bomb with a bold, bitter finale.
A Belgian style white beer, brewed with orange peels. Tradition calls for this ale to be unfiltered, creating a cloudy brew. Try if you like Blue Moon.
Cherries picked in Michigan give this drink its rich red color, as well as a very sweet cherry taste. The sweetest on this list, in fact. Though Quaff ON! serves it, this beer is brewed by Three Floyds in Munster, Ind.
Ruby Bloom Amber
Busted Knuckle Quaff ON!
Bloomington Brewing Co. A smooth ale with a hint of sweetness. Brewed with caramel malts that give it a rich-red amber color.
Rich, bold, and smooth, this porter is perfect for beer lovers looking to expand their horizons. Try if you like Guinness.
Spicy and tropical, with tastes of grapefruit, lemon, passionfruit, and pine. Perfect for IPA lovers who want to take hoppines to the next level.
Tipsy Cow The Tap If beer and coffee had a baby, it would be named Tipsy Cow. Chocolate and espresso flavors waft from this delicious, aromatic brew.
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WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU’RE FEELING
BLUE BY ALEX DAILY
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ometimes the best way to overcome any negative feelings is simply learning how to manage them. Through the IU Health Center’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), students are allotted two free sessions per semester. CAPS also provides self-help resources to help students cope while at school.
Depression “Students often begin to feel down, but don’t immediately fight it,” Dr. Nancy Stockton, Director of CAPS , said. “The best thing they can do is accept the feelings and nudge themselves into doing small things to make themselves feel better.” Stockton recommends eating a balanced diet, getting as much sleep as possible and exercise. “Having proper nutrition and a good night’s sleep allows patients to handle their stress and depression better,” she said. Anxiety “Recognize the signs of a panic attack coming and
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work on managing that stress before it gets out of control,” Stockton said. She recommends simple things designed to calm the student down, such as counting to ten, taking deep breaths, doing some kind of physical activity or listening to music. Anger Management Similar to anxiety, Stockton said students should focus on strategies to pass time to avoid doing anything impulsive. The part of the brain involved with emotions and impulse control, the frontal lobe, is not fully developed until age 25. “Catch yourself before the explosion starts by doing small things like taking a walk or counting to three before responding,” she said. Stockton said as part of a research experiment, students were asked to participate in gratitude exercises. “It was all about learning to be grateful and focus on the positive things in the patient’s life rather than the negatives,” she said. “I’ve started to encourage current patients to adopt this
exercise in everyday life.” However, Stockton said students should not hesitate to reach out to CAPS professionals. CAPS-Now allows students to be seen within 48 hours of contacting CAPS for a 30-minute assessment. Appointments may be scheduled with a CAPS counselor at 812-855-5711. In addition to counseling sessions, CAPS also offers free workshops with topics ranging from relaxation techniques, thinking happily and learning to reduce anxiety and negative emotional states. “If thinking patterns are routinely negative, it might be good to start thinking about how to learn more techniques to manage whatever is bothering the student, or to speak with a counselor,” Stockton said. Dr. Joanna Chambers, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry in IU School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry, said finding the right doctor and feeling comfortable sharing and being honest is the most integral
when undergoing treatment. However, for some, therapy and counseling are not enough. “It is always the patient’s decision whether or not to go on medication, or if he or she finds useful,” she said. “I see my job as an educator, to explain how the medication can help, as well as the risks and side effects.” For Chambers, part of this education includes combating the stigma associated with taking medication for mental illnesses. “Stigmas come about when people aren’t educated about the topic, which is certainly true when it comes to mental health,” she said. “Patients should not make
the decision about how to pursue treatment based on non-facts like stigmas and fears not grounded in real evidence.” Chambers said the process of receiving treatment varies greatly on the patient’s diagnosis, symptoms and history. She said she often tries to use medication’s side effects to the patient’s advantage. “Typically patients with depression or anxiety have trouble sleeping and don’t eat as often as they should, so a medication with a drowsy effect for example can actually help the patient recover,” she said. However, Chambers said the primary goal of the medication is to treat the patient’s specific symptoms as directly as
possible. “Depression and anxiety, and really all mental illnesses, limits the patient’s perspective on their problems and their outlooks on them,” she said. “The medication dampens down the symptoms and patients begin to see their problems as more manageable.” Chambers said medication often takes up to eight weeks to be therapeutic, which can often feel frustrating for patients. “I always tell patients not to underestimate the power of therapy,” she said. “Medication is good, but both together is more effective than either one alone, and trying to get better with only medication can be challenging.”
PHOTO BY HALEY WARD
See where your bus is in real time
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Anthony Thompson’s jersey from 1986-1989
Jersey from Cam Cameron era
Harold Mauro’s jersey from 1967
Damon Bailey’s jersey from 1993
Track jersey from the 1930s
Antwaan Randle El’s helmet from 1998-2001
A football jersey from 1945
Current jersey for Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell
Jim Wisman’s jersey from 1976
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Receiver helmet from the 1940s
Helmet from the 1940s
Creating the cream and crimson Basketball player, Dean Barnhart’s letter sweater from 1909.
By Paige Hutson
We will fight for the cream and crimson For the glory of old IU Russell P. Harker’s tribute to IU, “Indiana, Our Indiana,” was first performed at a basketball game in November 1912. Since then, students have been rah-rahing with our school fight song, chanting our official colors with pride. Director of University Archives and Records Management Dina Kellams said she feels an immense sense of connection when she sees our colors outside of Bloomington. “When I’m out elsewhere and I see our stripes or cream and crimson, it does kind of give me warm fuzzies, that IU is everywhere,” Kellams said. “Whenever I see it, it makes me feel a little bit closer to home. Our beloved cream and crimson have become an advertisement for the University, and in many ways, unifies every student and alumni as one. Cream and crimson makes Bloomington home. So how did the famous colors come to be? The concept of school spirit in correlation with color has been of high priority to IU since the mid 1880s. The colors of the University before the establishment of our current
Don Schlundt’s jersey from 1954
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colors were crimson and black, while individual class ranks had their own colors, according to an article published in The Indiana Student, an old monthly magazine. The senior class was cream and gold, while the junior class was orange and white. The original fraternities also had their own colors. IU’s legendary cream and crimson began after debating what colors to put on a Commencement number of The Student in 1888. In Nov. 13, 1903, an unnamed IU alumna recounted her interpretation of the establishment of the cream and crimson to the Indiana Daily Student. “The next question that confronted us was the colors to be used in decorating the binding of the volume,” the alumna said. “Before that time there had been no official University colors, so the class of [18]88, 39 in number, met to decide what Indiana’s future colors should be.” According to this article, the class chose cream and crimson “without a dissenting vote.” IU’s famous colors made their debut with the production of the Commencement issue of The Student. “Indiana University: Midwestern Pioneer” explained that at the time the class of 1888 was trying to decide the official colors, The Student said the colors of the university were crimson and black. Cream and crimson were chosen by the class of 1888 to confront the problem of multiple colors. Crimson and black were the school colors, and the senior class’ colors were cream and gold. In order to eliminate confusion, they combined the two color groupings for the binding and introduced the cream and crimson. An article posted in the IDS on March 5, 1898 advised all IU students to wear their cream and crimson at a debate between IU and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. IU’s colors were recorded in the College Sports Map and copyrighted in 1949 as being cream and crimson. Our nickname was officially the Fighting Hoosiers. Although cream and crimson were always our official colors, the athletic department oversaw several color changes to the uniforms through the years. Football: 1940s Dark crimson uniforms & black uniforms with black helmets. Crimson helmets were used on the ends for the quarterback to locate them easier. 1950s Lighter crimson uniforms (except some blue jerseys in late 1950s) 1960s “True crimson” uniforms under
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Jim Wisman’s jersey from 1976 (left) from the Bob Knight era features a bright, scarlet red, and current jersey for Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell (right) features IU crimson.
Coach John Pont 1973-1982 Lighter scarlet uniforms with black outlines around the numbers and on the sleeves during Coach Lee Corso era. 1983 (Coach Sam Wyche)- cream and scarlet 1984-1996 Darker crimson again-uniforms were “stock cardinal” under Coach Mallory. 1997-2001 (Cam Cameron era) Red jerseys with black helmets and the oval IU logo. The block “I” on the side of the helmet used for throwback games or as an alternate helmet now, was on the side from 1967-1982 and 1984-1996. Basketball: 1940s and 1950s Lighter red Late 1960s Dark crimson, almost burgundy 1971-2000 (Bobby Knight era) Scarlet red All Sports: 2002-2003 Consolidated logo and color with Nike’s Cardinal color 2004 Adidas & Victory Red The switch to black football helmets in 1997 generated a lot of response, according to Assistant Athletic Director for Team Purchasing & Licensing Marty Clark. He said black was a very prominent color in sports at the time and was showing up somewhere in many team jerseys.
“We were all over the board,” Clark said of the 1990s. “There wasn’t a whole lot of consistency. Basketball was wearing red. Wrestling team was wearing a burgundy darker color. We were having different logos within the department.” In 2002, the new athletic director, Michael McNeely, made the decision to revert back to the original cream and crimson colors, along with a new logo and mascot, for all athletic uniforms, according to an IDS article printed Jan. 15, 2002. The purpose was for full brand identification to unify all athletic teams. “We incorporated one logo for the whole department and one color,” Clark said. “Their contract at that time was with Nike, and Nike’s version of crimson was a little bit darker, more of a burgundy color and the actual color was called cardinal. That contract lasted for two years and then it was the switch to Adidas, and Adidas’ color was a little bit lighter, but it’s still crimson. It’s called victory red.” Dina Kellams was an undergraduate student when the uniforms changed to red and black. She recalled student atmosphere during this time as disagreeable and unpleased. Students like Kellams’ roommate weren’t happy because these colors were not IU. Black wasn’t tradition, according to Kellams. “The cream and crimson is tradition,” Kellams said. “Once they were adopted, the students and alums just really latched on to them and I think they’re really important to convey the message of Hoosierdom.”
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Color illusions Graphic by Alex Ritter
The following studies focus on color interaction and relativity as the means of changing how we see that color. Caution: your eyes may deceive you
3 colors look like 4 The middle strips look like two different colors in each illustration, but they’re actually the same color.
refresh your style 1145 S. College Mall Road 812-333-4442 PlatosClosetBloomingtonIN.com @platosclosetbloomington
3 colors look like 2 The middle strips take the identity of each ground color, but they’re actually the same color.
4 colors look like 3 The middle strips end up looking like the same color, but they’re actually two different colors.
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LIGHTING IT UP
PHOTOS BY ANDREW WILLIAMS 10
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By Liz Meuser
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cience. Unless your college educational experience has been devoted to cramming for biology exams, chemistry labs or trying not to doze off in a physics lecture, most people’s scientific knowledge goes as far as watching Bill Nye the Science Guy videos. INSIDE recently sat down with Jonathan Karty, Associate Scientist and Director of the Mass Spectrometry Facility in the chemistry department at IU, for a chemical demonstration on the various flame colors of elements. Karty conducted a standard Flame Test demonstration, igniting petri dishes of different element salts with alcohol to display their colorful flames. “Think of it as a flambé at a restaurant,” Karty said. According to Karty, the element’s flame is a result of hot atoms cooling off by emitting light. “When you heat elements up, they vaporize and get what we call excited,” Karty said. “They have to get rid of that heat somehow, and atoms can’t do it very easily, so they emit light.” When the elements become white hot and begin to cool down, the energy levels of their electrons correspond with very specific colors. The main purpose of such a technique is to analyze and detect the presence of metal ions, a function that is prevalent to many fields of research. Here are a few areas where the evaluation of colored flames is applicable to everyday life:
What’s in your water? Water companies test water resources for poisonous metals using a process similar to a flame test known as “Flame Emission.” “They’ll take some water, spray it into a hot gas flame and record the spectrum being given off,” Karty said “And each metal, lead, mercury, cadmium, the things you don’t want in your water will give off a unique color.” Water treatment companies do this regularly to make sure drinking water sources are safe. Written in the stars “This concept of visual spectroscopy allows astronomers to identify the elements in stars and
Elements: Here are some of the elements burned in the demonstration
Copper: dark bluish-green. (This is also Karty’s personal favorite flame color.)
Strontium: bright red
“Think of it as a flambé at a restaurant.” JONATHAN KARTY
Potassium: soft lilac
on planets,” said Karty. With the help of visible flames, astronomers are able to determine what metals are in a star’s atmosphere based upon the colors they see in its spectrum. Ignite the light The same idea goes for popular light spectacles such as sparklers and fireworks, where the light emitted from heated atoms create an array of colorful flames. “In a firework, you’ll have gunpowder burning white hot, and they’ll put these salts into it to get the various colors that you see,” said Karty.
Sodium: intense yellow
Lithium: vibrant fuchsia red known as carmine.
Note: The theme of this year’s National Chemistry Week, beginning Oct. 18, is also color. Each IU science department will put on shows and conduct tours for the community.
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Life Less Colored A look at the reality of colorblindness. By Jack Evans
I
t’s not that Allie Wineland couldn’t see the pattern. It was right there, just a few feet away from her, a system of interlocking circles and puckered diamonds crawling over the upholsteries of the chairs in the Learning Commons in the Herman B Wells Library’s West Tower.
PHOTOS BY HALEY WARD
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Life Less Colored A look at the reality of colorblindness. By Jack Evans
I
t’s not that Allie Wineland couldn’t see the pattern. It was right there, just a few feet away from her, a system of interlocking circles and puckered diamonds crawling over the upholsteries of the chairs in the Learning Commons in the Herman B Wells Library’s West Tower.
PHOTOS BY HALEY WARD
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he chairs over there – they’re two different colors, and I can see the pattern, but it’s so faint,” the freshman said. “I know there’s a pattern, but I couldn’t be like … for me it’s like two different shades of red.” Wineland is colorblind, and there are multiple degrees of separation between the “actual” colors on the chairs – maroon and a gold-orange color – and what she called red, which most of the world might call a sort of muddied yellow. Somewhere in between the two realities, she had a mix of intuition and logic by association, a result of 18 years of red-green colorblindness, telling her the colors on the chair were red or something near it. She’s far from alone in her color blindness. While it’s far more common in men than women, it still affects a substantial chunk of the world’s population: the National Eye Institute estimates 8 percent of men and 0.5 percent of women with Northern European ancestry have redgreen colorblindness, the ailment’s most common variety. “When people find out you’re colorblind, there’s also one person wherever you’re talking that day who either is colorblind or knows somebody directly that’s colorblind,” she said. “You have secret bonds with other colorblind people.” Colorblindness runs in Wineland’s family: her father has it, as does her grandmother and uncle on her mother’s
side. That’s generally the case with colorblindness, as it’s passed down genetically. For the condition to manifest, it has to appear in all present X chromosomes; because anatomically female humans have two X chromosomes, they’re far less likely to be born colorblind. But because people on both sides of her family have colorblindness – and because her grandmother’s colorblindness made her mother a “carrier” – Wineland’s odds of being colorblind were higher. “That’s what kind of freaks people out,” she said. “They’re like, ‘That’s magic.’ I’m like, ‘It’s genetics.’” By this point, Wineland said, her colorblindness has become as much of a joke as anything among her immediate family – after all, they all grew up either colorblind or with a colorblind person in their immediate family. When Wineland was young and her family played board games, her father used the yellow game pieces because he could see them. These days, she sometimes has to call her sister, Abbie, a junior at Ball State, for fashion advice, because she can’t always tell what pieces match. Occasionally they’ll run into a particularly comical situation, like when they called in a Verizon rep because their newly-arrived cable box wasn’t working. The culprit: her dad’s inability to distinguish between the colors of two cords and their proper destinations. The rep switched the cords and left.
“They’re like, ‘That’s magic.’ I’m like, ‘It’s genetics.’”
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Are you colorblind? Inside each circle is the number 29. If you disagree, consult your eye doctor. Graphic by Alex Ritter
Then there’s the humor inherent in the medical side of the equation: “The funniest thing is that when you go to the eye doctor, you have to take the colorblindness test, even if you’re already colorblind,” she said. “There was one point – it was maybe 10 years ago – my dad goes, ‘Listen. I’m 46 years old. I know I’m colorblind. I’m not going to take this test.’ I think it would be interesting if they someday came up with some sort of surgery to fix the cones – I think that’d be cool, but I also don’t know if I’d want it.” Any other annoyances, Wineland said, are fairly inconsequential: missing out on color-related symbolism, as she did in a high school film literature class; buying plenty of black clothes, because at least those are easy to match; getting beaten at “FIFA Soccer” video games because she can’t distinguish the red icon over a player’s head from the green grass of the field. In fact, modern technology in general has trouble meshing with colorblindness. Green traffic lights appear bright
white to her, as do green computer icons – to her, the Facetime icon on her computer screen looks like a white box with a barely-perceptible white camera silhouette in the center. Natural features, like grass on the other hand, look more “vibrant” – she still doesn’t see organic greens as others do, but she said it’s easier to recognize them as such without other context clues. And while colorblindness may make it harder for her to edit photos on her computer or complement someone’s shirt with complete certainty of its shade, Wineland said there may be a reason many people don’t know the specifics of colorblindness: it’s just not a particularly debilitating condition. “It’s like living with – if you had like no pinky, you’d be able to get used to it. It might be weird to everybody else, but like, it’s not going to hinder a lot of things. Of course, a pinky is probably more necessary than seeing a bunch of colors. [It’s] like your appendix. I like that analogy better.”
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GUIDE TO HELPING MINORITY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS BY FEYI ALUFOHAI
Ever find yourself wanting to help in a social movement although it does not affect you directly? You want to help a particular demographic although you are not a part of it. We live in an age where social media is the modern activist’s tool. Twitter is a vocal weapon. Minority movements have gained dominance through platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The term ‘minority’ does not only apply to minority in numbers; it also means the minority in representation. A group can be the majority in size, but their voices and views are suppressed by the dominant narrative, which can be smaller in size but hold greater power and presence. How do you support a movement when the movement does not relate to you? The go-to way of thinking is, ‘It does not affect me so I do nothing,’ but you can do something. In other words, this is how to be an ally if you are a person of privilege. To be a person of privilege varies in numerous ways, although, in this scenario, it means having an unjust benefit or advantage solely based on the individual’s identity, which can include social status, citizenship, race, gender, religion or sexual orientation. Depending on the identity criteria some can be more privileged than others. When you embody a characteristic that is perceived as more favorable to society than another and that characteristic gives
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you an unearned advantage, you are considered privileged. Now the question is, ‘How can I help?’ and ‘What do I do?’ 1. Understand your position Once you understand you have an unfair advantage, use it to help others. If the discussion is about the oppressed and the oppressed are the only group shining a light on the issue, their voices fade into the background and the discourse only stays among that demographic. Using your voice to support a movement expands the narrative and brings diversity within the topic. Once your voice is heard, the voices of many may follow. 2. Research, research and more research Wanting to help and speaking out is important, but knowing what you are speaking out about is even more so. Take the viral hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. During the earlier development of this trending topic, most people did not understand that the phrase was meant to show police brutality towards the black community. The hashtag #AllLivesMatter started due to a lack of understanding of the message behind
what #BlackLivesMatter really meant. #BlackLivesMatter was meant to show that all lives are not being taken, nor being treated as less than human or constantly seen as criminals. #BlackLivesMatter started to show that black lives matter, too. The black community and black lives should be treated and represented equally like all other lives. Doing your research on an issue or a movement through social media posts and by reading articles can safe you from voicing an ignorant claim and help you be an ally to those who are not in your position. 3. Speak, act and do The final and most important aspect of helping is to speak up. It is one thing to want to help but another to actually help. Lending a helping hand in conversation and not being afraid to inform others is extremely important. Simple acts of posting an informative article, retweeting empowering words and being a supportive voice in conversations can go a long way. Remember that as an ally, you are supporting those whose voices are not being heard, but you do not speak for them. You only uplift, encourage and amplify what they are saying.
What is Black IU to you? By Arriel Vinson
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there. I just like seeing black people around on campus to be honest.� Souleymane Diallo, sophomore
Black IU is a community of IU’s black students, who mostly know each other by name if nothing else. They are usually the students who say “Hi� when they see another black face on campus, and they are also the students who spread themselves thin to be involved in multiple organizations. But what is Black IU to these students?
“One thing I will say about Black IU is it’s a community, and when things are going on, we do stick together and we can come together and create something that’s really uplifting and home-y, in a sense. That’s why I joined BSU, the Black Student Union, and I felt like it was my home away from home and I really learned some new things and met some new people.� Matthew Fields, sophomore
ith the small percentage of black students at IU—4 percent to be exact—the phrase/community “Black IU� has been coined.
Small and familiar “I feel like since there is a smaller percentage of black people on campus, it gives us the opportunity to be closer. Of course, sometimes it’s kind of cliqued up, but I guess every school can be like that. I like it. The events, when black people actually go, they be pretty turnt up. It be a lot of people
“I think Black IU is starting to become more of a close-knit family. I think that the organizations are trying to work together this year as opposed to past years to bring that community. And I definitely think that we are doing better with that by definitely supporting each other and things of that
nature, and also talking a lot more.� Aja Morrow, senior Small and divided “I think it’s kind of small. I think it’s a little bit divided. I’ve only been here for two semesters, but I’ve lived in Bloomington my whole life and it just seems like they’re very to themselves. There definitely are groups that you can be a part of, but it’s just hard to branch out when you haven’t been here so long. I think it just depends on who you are and how involved you are.� Erin Carter, junior Not familiar with Black IU yet? Here are some organizations you may want to join: Black Student Union at Indiana University Freshman Action Team Epiphany Modeling Troupe African Students’ Association IU NAACP
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PHOTOS BY HALEY WARD
Just a shade different By Lexia Banks
M
y family loves to tell stories from my childhood, like I imagine most do. There are the typical “You and your cousin used to bite each other on the back” and “You always cried when strangers tried to touch you.” Normal stuff. But there’s one that sticks out from the others, one that makes me pause while my family laughs. When I was a baby, my aunt would lather me in sunscreen whenever we were about to go outside. This sounds like she was just trying to protect my skin. Normal. Respectable. My family laughs, and then my grandma takes a breath to say, “Because she didn’t want you to get too dark.” I am biracial, half-black and half-white, raised solely by my mother’s all-white family. As a child, the color of my skin was explained as “she drank too much chocolate milk” and compared to a chocolate and vanilla swirl ice cream cone. Trivial but innocent answers to the questions of white children who wanted to know why their cousin looked so different. I can laugh at these stories, but I just can’t bring
myself to crack a smile about the sunscreen. Regardless of her intentions, my aunt was playing into a centuries-old mindset that in the end would do me more harm than good. The favorability of lighter skin in people of color dates back to the days of slavery. In her study, “’If you’re Light you’re Alright’ Light Skin Color as Social Capital for Women of Color,” Margaret L. Hunter said the darkness of one’s skin tone was used to decide what duties slaves were given. “Slave owners used skin color as a basis to divide enslaved Africans for work chores and to create distrust and animosity among them, minimizing chances for revolt,” Hunter said. “These colonial value systems are forced on the colonized and often internalized by them.” This study was published in 2002, but hasn’t lost its relevance. Colorism has continued to divide people of color and, in recent years, has expanded into our social media through the hashtags “Team Lightskin” and “Team Darkskin.” Through this social media trend, young people of color stepped into opposing groups, the #lightskins against the #darkskins and boasted their superiority over the other through Tweets and Instagram captions. “I do believe there are some people who don’t realize it’s self-hate,” IU junior Alexis Burr said.
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Burr was raised around colorism. She was the lightest person on her mother’s side of the family. She remembers hearing things like “‘She’s lighter so she does better in school. She’s lighter so you can’t hurt her.’” She said she doesn’t notice the hashtags as much anymore but hated them while they were trending. “I think our generation … I think we’re more open to change,” she said. “We have more access to information so it shouldn’t have been a thing. But people don’t put effort into learning our history or where they come from.” History definitely has an effect on the way people of color view themselves, but there could also be a scientific reason behind all of this. Brett Richardson, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at IU, is studying the “Other Race Effect.” “This phenomena shows up as faster and more accurate responses for within race (also, within group) face stimuli as opposed to out of group face stimuli,” he said in an email. Richardson said the data isn’t conclusive. Patterns have varied across experiments and he hasn’t specifically looked into in-group variations, but “the data would suggest that there is a preference (in terms of task difficulty in tasks like categorization into like groups or passive viewing) for within group.” This means bias can be the result of mere numbers. If there are more light-skinned people than we, as a society, will prefer light-skinned people. If you look at racial representation in media, this makes perfect sense. According to the University of California at Los Angeles’s “2015 Hollywood Diversity Report: Flipping the Script,” minorities made up 16.7 percent of lead roles in the 174 films analyzed for 2013. In the 2012-13 TV season, minorities made up 6.5 percent of leading roles in broadcast scripted programs. We barely see racial minorities and when we do there are too many problems with the quality of their character. All I see is the “sassy black woman” and the “gangster black man,” just there for a laugh or to allow some more privileged character to don their white savior role. But all these characters do is feed back into the stereotypes – stereotypes that affect colorism. Stereotypes that praise light-skinned people as the beautiful ones with potential to succeed and brushing dark-skinned people off as lost causes. Ugly, unintelligent, inferior. The perpetuation of skin color hierarchies have to end. The lightness of my skin doesn’t make me better than any other black person. I should not fear getting darker in the summer as though I will magically lose brain cells and my value to society. We have too much knowledge at our fingertips to continue abiding by a society that embraces the same mentality as men who sold human beings like animals. We have come too far to think the same way as the men who held whips against our ancestors. Light or dark, we are black and every one of us can be beautiful, intelligent and successful.
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“We have too much knowledge at our fingertips to continue abiding by a society that embraces the same mentality as men who sold human beings like animals � INSIDE.IDSNEWS.COM z
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Gender neutralized By Carley Lanich
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Books, toys and clothes are all gendered for even the youngest children. In Target’s toy aisles? Not anymore.
Jennifer Maher’s 6-year-old son, Jack, doesn’t read yet, but he does know his colors. He knows what a Barbie doll is and he knows what colors are typically associated with the toy. “My son, with me as a mother, won’t even go down the pink aisle,” Maher said. “We won’t even turn there.” Maher, a gender studies professor at IU, said she often offers to take her son down the pink aisle when shopping for toys. “No, that’s girls,” Jack typically answers. According to Maher, her son’s response is an example of how children are frequently slotted into various gender norms. She said beginning at an early age, children are exposed to typecast toys meant to prepare young boys and girls for the future roles in society. Toy vacuum cleaners, kitchen sets and baby dolls are generally marketed for girls, where as toys like baseballs and toy cars are geared toward little boys. Maher said she believes gender norming in this sense has begun even sooner for kids than in the past. “When I was little, you couldn’t buy princess costumes,” Maher said. “Not as a given. There would maybe be at Halloween a couple of things, but now they’re everywhere. They’re ubiquitous.” However, after recent customer complaints, Target stores nationwide took an unprecedented step in addressing changing attitudes on gender norms. In early August, Target announced plans to remove gender-based labels in specific departments throughout their stores, specifically the toy department. Signage on the end of aisles that once designated boys and girls toys, now simply describe what type of toys can be found. Pink and blue decor has been replaced with neutral colors. Angie Hayes, a store team leader at Target’s Bloomington location, said that before the switch she was directed to focus attention on color schemes when working within the toy department. While none of the colored wall backers
contained written distinctions between boys’ and girls’ toys, Hayes said she thought the pink and blue backing paper allowed for assumptions to be drawn easily. “I don’t personally have a problem if it is gender specific,” Hayes said. “Sometimes I make those assumptions in my own mind that a Barbie is for a girl because I don’t really think of a boy as playing with a Barbie, but sometimes they do. I think anybody can play with whatever they want to.” Despite having received mixed responses on the corporate level, Hayes said she likes the change and that she has not received any overwhelmingly positive or negative feedback in her own store. “It was just kind of like business as usual,” Hayes said. “Just the people being open to it, it just helps me understand the community a little bit.” She said the changes have not affected sales at the Bloomington Target, and that it had been four years since colored backing paper in the store’s toy section had been replaced. “I think it’s here to stay,” Hayes said. “I think the way that things are transitioning in the world, I think that’s kind of the way that we’re moving so I don’t really see a reason that we would need to go back.” Maher said she hasn’t seen any other stores nationwide make a change similar to Target’s, but that the store’s new gender-neutral design is similar to that of Scandinavian culture where more primary colors are used. “It’s certainly cool,” Maher said. “It would be nice to take a boy and say these are all just toys. Pick from whatever you want, but I still don’t know how much it will change the world. It’s still about shopping.” Maher said she is skeptical of what impact it may make on a global scale and while she thinks Target is making a good step, she doubts it will have any effect on her own son. “I’m not necessarily sure it’s going to change his mind, because it’s so endemic,” Maher said. “It’s so in the water. When Jack was two he probably would have been more gender neutral. It happens in school. It happens around their peers. It’s not so much going to occur in a store.”
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