WWotD - 9 March 2012

Again, I cry malarkey.

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2012/03/does_rock_music_make_people_ra.php

First of all, every article I found about this study ultimately quote a The Daily Mail [UK] article. I could find nothing pointing me to the actual UMinn study. That's  terrible journalism, IMO. They even recycle the quote from the article (*shakes head*).

Second, I find the premise and hypothesis of this study to be obtuse at best, racist at worst. Why were white people the only ones asked to distribute money? Their n consists of 138 white Univ. of Minnesota students (gender, age and HH incomes percentages are unspecified, their majors aren't specified, and the years that they collected the data aren't specified either)..that's not even close to capturing enough different types of white people to make any statistically significant determinations. Plus, the fact that "Rural and Agricultural Studies" is considered the "white" group may be viable in Minnesota...but the same may not true in Mississippi (see last page of this link) or New Mexico (see last page of this link). I'm also not clear why they thought to test only "rock", "pop" and "supremacist rock"... but didn't test anything like Tejano, Reggae, Rap or Arabic music (forgive me for not being acquainted with the genres of Arabic music)... to see whether other types of music would skew the bias toward one of the three other racial types.

Third, let me say that anyone who thinks that rock music is "white people music" need only listen to this:



or this:

pre·dis·pose

 verb \ˌprē-di-ˈspōz\

Definition of PREDISPOSE

transitive verb

1

: to dispose in advance <a good teacher predisposes children to learn>

2

: to make susceptible <malnutrition predisposes one to disease>
from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/predisposed