Poll: A Social Experiment?

In My Humble Opinion
121

1 Will Smith
2 Jeff Bridges
3 JLo
4 Lucy Liu

122
  1. Richard Pryor
  2. Charlize Theron
  3. George Lopez
    4)Vanessa Mae
123
  1. Oprah
  2. Brad Pitt
  3. Jennifer Lopez
  4. Sandra Oh
124

Wow, you must really think little of black women if 1% equals “overrepresented” in your mind.

My hypothesis was that black women are under-represented, and the numbers seem to bear that out. Have you looked at the numbers?

125
  1. Name a black celebrity-Tiger Woods
  2. Name a white celebrity-Tiger Woods
  3. Name a hispanic celebrity-Juan Valdez
  4. Name an Asian celebrity-Tiger Woods
126

Now what about the 50 who responded to the poll? I’ll bet at least 45 are white. Do you think that may have an influence on the results. Maybe 50 of each, white, black, hispanic, and asian would show a marked difference. It would be interesting to compare the groups. (but probably imposible to conduct such a survey here. But you could try)

127
  1. Name a black celebrity

Bill Cosby

  1. Name a white celebrity

Steve Carrell

  1. Name a hispanic celebrity

*Salma Hayek
*
4. Name an Asian celebrity

*Sandra Oh
*

128
  1. Bill Cosby
  2. Martha Stewart
  3. J Lo
  4. Jet Li
129

Oprah Winfrey
Paris Hilton
Carlos Mencia
George Takei

130

I think what **Švejk ** meant is that if among the population there is 1 black female celebrity for each 100 black male celebrities, then statistically, they should be mentioned 1% of the time; in your informal poll, they received higher than 1% of the mentions, and therefore would be statistically over-represented. She pulled the number out of the air as an example.

I also think that the kind of people whom people remember has to do with a lot more than their actual numbers within a population. There are many, many choices for female white celebrities, more than enough for each of us and a few thousand others to have all said somebody different; yet several of us said “Paris Hilton”. So, while I think that black female celebrities almost certainly ARE under-represented in society, gauging this by asking people to name someone who has made an impression on them (Good OR bad! Gaaaaaak!) is not the best way to get an accurate reflection.

Also you have to look at how often a given subgroup gets in the news; which is a reflection of additional cultural bias, and has a substantial impact on who people will immediately think of. God knows there are a lot more eminent black women than you will ever see in the news media.

131

:rolleyes:

Wow, you must really understand very little of the concept of statistical representation if you misread my posts like that.

What I wrote earlier and the *hypothetical *numbers I pulled out of my *ass *(you’ll notice that the sentence you quoted starts with an if-clause) as an example say nothing whatsoever about what I think about black women. It says nothing about what I think of anyone, really. The point I was trying to make, as Brujaja pointed out, is that any statement about how well a sample represents a population needs to be based on the distribution in the population.

In this little analysis here, your population is black celebrities. You have offered no numbers regarding the distribution of gender over this population, you simply assume that they’re distributed equally (50 % black women, 50 % black men). It is conceivable that this is not the case, that’s all I’m trying to say, and if, indeed, the distribution* is *different, and that is reflected in your numbers, than there’s no over- or under representation.

ETA

technically, i’m a he :wink:

132

How about this: my hypothesis is that there are more black male celebrities than black female celebrities.

(on edit) And the proportion is more unbalanced than for any other race.

133

I’d like to test that theory further

134

I’m trying to think how we can test Contrapuntal’s theory without naming every god damned female black celebrity we know, but I cain’t.

So, should we?
Halle Berry
Oprah Winfrey
Alfre Woodard
CCH Pounder
Gabrielle Union
Beyonce Knowles
Star Jones
Rosario Dawson
Robin Roberts
Regina King
Tichina Arnold
Marianne Jean-Baptiste
Khandi Alexander
Marsha Thompson

that’s off the top pf my head. Add more, please.

135
  1. Name a black celebrity Denzel Washington
  2. Name a white celebrity Edward Norton
  3. Name a hispanic celebrity Cheech Marin
  4. Name an Asian celebrity Chow Yun-fat
136

I find it interesting that so many responders apologize for their white celebrity choice. (Including me: I have no idea why Edward Norton popped into my mind.) I have an idea why that might be–do you?

137
  1. Will Smith
  2. Robert Downey, Jr.
  3. Jennifer Lopez
  4. Chow Yun-Fat
138
  1. Chirs Rock
  2. Jerry Seinfeld
  3. George Lopez
  4. Margaret Cho
139

I suspect it’s because the first white celebrity who springs to mind may very well be somebody who is famous because or in spite of being obnoxious – like my response of Paris Hilton. Black celebrities can’t afford to be too obnoxious – it’s hard enough to overcome cultural bias as it is.

140

Lucky I didn’t put down my second choice of Flavor Flav.

But otherwise, yeah, that’s kind of what I thought too.