No real shock here, but a new study in the journal, Science says many people unconsciously have racist attitudes, even though they see themselves smart and level-headed.
But Kerry Kawakami, associate professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, Ontario,
and lead author of the study, realized "People are willing to tolerate racism and not stand up against it."
Here's the breakdown:
The study divided 120 non-black people into the roles of "experiencers" and "forecasters." The "experiencers" were placed in a room with a white person and a black person, who played out pre-arranged scenarios for the experiment. The scenarios began when the black role-player bumped the white role-player's knee when leaving the room.
In the first scenario, the white person did not comment afterwards. In the "moderate" case, the white person said, "Typical, I hate it when black people do that," after the black person left the room. In the "extreme" case, the white person remarked, "Clumsy n****r."
Interesting...
The "forecasters," meanwhile, predicted how they would feel in these situations. Experiencers reported little distress in all three scenarios, much less than the forecasters did in the moderate and severe situations.
Immediately afterwards, the participants were asked to choose either the black person or the white person as a partner for an anagram test. More than half of experiencers chose the white partner -- regardless of the severity of the comment that person made earlier. As for the forecasters, less than half chose the white partner when a comment was made, but most chose the white person when no comment was made.
"Some people might think that they're very egalitarian and they don't have to deal with their prejudices, and that's not related to them at all, when in actual fact they may hold these hidden biases," Kawakami said.
Wow...I'm surprised with this study. But I would love to see how we are towards other races. I am curious to see a different format for once. Still interesting info though.
2 comments:
Come the fuck on people, it's 2009....Racism is OLD!!!! Damn....
I agree with some willing to tolerate it and some differ....:)
I don't really think the numbers would be much different, if the study came from a Black perspective, though the rationale might be a different.
In any case it is a interesting study. Not too surprising though. I think one of the misconceptions we have, especially in the northeast where I am, is that the only kind of racism is the old George Wallace kind and not the covert kind of racism which is really much more acceptable.
I often say that the KKK's style of racism is easy kind to deal with, because that's just hate right there; however, the covert kind, the kind that doesn't really seem bad, is much harder.
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