Using Google as a tool for social reflection, Part 1 “Why are…”
Thanks to Elie who commented on a previous post, I was introduced to Gdumb.com which uses the auto-suggest feature in the search bar as an indicator of some of the most ridiculous search queries you could imagine. Elie’s own post about it explores three partial queries: “Why is Israel…”, “Why are Jews…”, and “Aliyah is… .” The results are very interesting and a transparent* indicator of the attitudes and questions that people have.
* As transparent as Google is.
This being a site about mixed identity, the next obvious extension was to try plugging in queries containing racial identifiers.
Before we jump whole hog into this, I think there are some things to consider:
- Whose queries are these? I have no idea from which regions Google takes its samples
- Google censors its queries, so queries using racist epithets are censored from the auto-suggest
- The questions about certain prejudices and what demeaning racial terms mean bolsters the observation that prejudices are really passed down, they are learned behaviors and attitudes
There are probably some more things that will bubble up eventually, but for now, here are the results:
Why are mixed…
Why are chinese people…
Why are black people…
Why are mexicans…
Why are jamaicans…
Why are australians…
Why are italians…
Why are vietnamese…
Why are koreans…
Why are french people…
Why are indians…
Categorised as: Feeling White
it’s definitely interesting, but yeah, I don’t know if it’s locale specific or what. still entertaining. go stereotypes!
I’ve seen the gdumb.com before, it’s very funny. I’ve a site called baiduben.com, it’s about the suggestions of baidu, know as the Chinese google. You can check it, if you know Chinese, it will be helpful.
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