Study: You may be more racist than you think

[AOII Angel]

Back to the topic...I think everyone has "racist" tendencies. We are evolutionarily made to suspect "other" and prefer "same." We congregate in groups for safety. Unfortunately, we cannot often control our basic tendencies to show preference, but we have also evolved to use reason to overcome our baser instincts. What I find a sad is that society has been able to ingrain a fear of black people into black people themselves. There have been some very interesting studies that black and white people show the same bias against black faces (they had research subjects hit a button to ascribe good vs evil qualities to words, colors then faces...most people would automatically pick evil for black faces.) We still have more work to do to convince people that they should ignore these ingrained beliefs and TRY to be better. Each generation is improving...

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by AOII Angel

Back to the topic...I think everyone has "racist" tendencies. We are evolutionarily made to suspect "other" and prefer "same." We congregate in groups for safety. Unfortunately, we cannot often control our basic tendencies to show preference, but we have also evolved to use reason to overcome our baser instincts. What I find a sad is that society has been able to ingrain a fear of black people into black people themselves. There have been some very interesting studies that black and white people show the same bias against black faces (they had research subjects hit a button to ascribe good vs evil qualities to words, colors then faces...most people would automatically pick evil for black faces.) We still have more work to do to convince people that they should ignore these ingrained beliefs and TRY to be better. Each generation is improving...

Prejudice

Racism

Discrimination

Different constructs.

[LΩVE]

Originally Posted by AOII Angel

Back to the topic...I think everyone has "racist" tendencies. We are evolutionarily made to suspect "other" and prefer "same." We congregate in groups for safety. Unfortunately, we cannot often control our basic tendencies to show preference, but we have also evolved to use reason to overcome our baser instincts. What I find a sad is that society has been able to ingrain a fear of black people into black people themselves. There have been some very interesting studies that black and white people show the same bias against black faces (they had research subjects hit a button to ascribe good vs evil qualities to words, colors then faces...most people would automatically pick evil for black faces.) We still have more work to do to convince people that they should ignore these ingrained beliefs and TRY to be better. Each generation is improving...

I have this feeling, sadly, that in some pockets of populations it won't entirely disappear, at least not in our lifetimes. On the other hand, brushing aside my own personal opinions on the matter, I have heard many people say they truly feel more inspired than ever before because of Obama's election. It is progress that our country was willing to elect someone for their merits and not their skin color.