Everyone's A Little Bit Racist

When I told D that I am a little racist, he looked at me strangely. I know most people would deny that they have prejudices, let alone admitting they are racist. However, I believe each and everyone of us are a little racist. Go on, admit it. No, not racist in the sense you are into hate crime or anything, however, we consciously or unconsciously have our prejudices about others. Our unconscious attitude may be 180 degrees different than our conscious values. It is because our surrounding influenced the way we think & feel which are important in things like prejudice and discrimination.

Remember about the dolls experiment? It shows that as young as 4-5 years old, children have (racial) biased thoughts. In most societies lighter skinned is considered as more beautiful or simply better. You don't choose to make positive associations to lighter skinned, but you see it everywhere that groups is 'reflecting' good things. It is sad, but real.

At Harvard Uni, Anthony Greenwald, Mahzarin Banaji, and Brian Nozek created the Implicit Association Test (AIT) which is based on observation. We are forever making connections of ideas in our mind. Sarah - Female, John - Male, Laundry - Family, Merchant-Career. How about putting words into categories? It feels uneasy for me to put a word like 'Laundry' into 'Family' category when 'Family' was paired with 'Female' or when I put 'Merchant' into 'Career' when 'Career' was paired with 'Male'. But it took me a while when the categories were reversed.

According to the study, our attitude toward things like gender & race is not straight forward. On conscious level, we operate deliberately in accordance with our values. However, our unconsciousness, the one that AIT measured, reflects our automatics associations before we've even had time to think. The formation of it came from the experiences we've had, people we've met, books we've read. This can also predict how we act in certain situations. If you have a strong preference towards white people, chances are you are behaving differently in the presence of black person. You might not be aware of it, but you'll probably smile less, keeping more distance, hesitate. And those unconscious behaviors do matter. That person will pick up your behavior and feels uncertain about himself, which in turn give you the wrong impression about him. Imagine if it happened on interview. The chance of that person getting that job is just diminish.

Interestingly, even though I think I am a little racist, my AIT result suggest I have little to no automatic preference between European American and African American. I was surprised, I thought with all those Hollywood movies I've been watching, living in the predominantly white neighborhood, my result would suggest a moderate automatic preference for white.