Kickstarter

Hi there, my name is Seth and I'm the editor of Dingersblog.com.  Since the start of the 2010 season, I've helped run a little project called Scorekeeping: Tracking Subtle Racism in Baseball.

This project was dedicated to taking any instances in which a black, white, latino or asian player was belittled or praised for hustle, or lack thereof, or any other instances that may have a mildly racist connotation.

In previous years, we've kept track in two different ways: the major incidents and the minor incidents.  The major incidents are incidents that are without a doubt in clear view--when a manager or teammate calls out a player for anything mildly racist.  The minor incidents are any incident in which a sports columnist, blogger, player, manager, coach, farm hand, broadcaster, groundskeeper, anonymous fan or sentient television says something with racist undertones.

However fun this was to do, it was completely unscientific.  In the middle of our second year, I was approached by a grad student named Adam who wanted to help in order to make it more scientific.  He came up with a full list of data requirements and lit review and now that we have this going for us, we need 30 people to watch 30 broadcasts for a month.

And this is where Kickstarter comes in.  We need the money to pay for people to cover this.  Our goal is listed at $2,500, which includes the payment for these fine individuals.  After that, we're writing a manuscript detailing our data and analysis.  Then we're mailing off our manuscript to publications.

Any help you can provide us, even if it's just one dollar, is greatly appreciated.  

You can find out more about IATs at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/. 

We've been doing a soft study for the last year and a half at http://dingersblog.com/2010/03/05/scorekeeping-subtle-racism-cliches-and-bad-catchphrases-in-baseball/. Also, please visit http://www.BigBlackKids.com