Across America, whites are biased & they don't even know it

[Karma]

Across America, whites are biased & they don't even know it

A cautionary note: The people who have taken the IAT at the Project Implicit website are not a random sample of Americans, either nationally or on a state-by-state basis. Rather, they're people who, for some reason, chose to take an online test measuring their implicit biases -- which may actually mean they are less biased than average. (After all, at least they wanted to know how biased they are.)

"Please keep in mind that this map describes volunteers for the online IAT," says psychologist Anthony Greenwald of the University of Washington, who created the Implicit Association Test in 1995. "These volunteers are younger, more educated, more politically liberal, and more female than the U.S. population as a whole."

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It'll be a REFLEX for some white ppl to dismiss this out of hand just based on the title of the article, but it REALLY IS worth a read w/ an open mind. If we are EVER going to have an honest, productive conversation about race & the problem of racism, we've got to look @ all the aspects of it, whether it's uncomfortable or not.

It's a surprisingly little-discussed factor in the anguishing debates over race and law enforcement that followed the shootings of unarmed black men by white police officers. Such implicit biases -- which, if they were to influence split-second law enforcement decisions, could have life or death consequences -- are measured by psychological tests, most prominently the computerized Implicit Association Test, which has been taken by over two million people online at the website Project Implicit.

 

[Clara Oswald]

It's also not just white people who have bias - it is ALL people. Until we stop pointing fingers at other people and start trying to get to the root of the problem there isn't going to be any change.

 

[Karma]

I agree w/ you about that.

Bias can be held by anyone against anyone else. Some blacks do harbor bias against some whites BUT that does not translate into systemic racism for the whites on the receiving end of it.

I think the underlying point of this article highlighting the IAT is that in America, white bias against blacks is what leads to problems such as police brutality & murder of blacks due to split second decision based on that bias. bias &/or racism against blacks has been at play in everything from gov't policy, housing (specifically 'red lining") practices, voter suppression efforts, employment discrimination; to a lop sided & often rigged legal system.

what also worries me is that we as a whole are not willing to get through all the aspects of this problem b/c there's ALOT to sort through & it's going to require the ppl who are most effected by to be HEARD. We have to all be honest w/ ourselves & each other & once we pull this stuff out, be able to destroy it.

Finger pointing wont solve anything, but when one person tries to point out the pain & damage they've suffered due to ongoing issue of bias &/or racism & they're told "quit playing the race card" or "get over it"...what then?

 

[Prophet]

I once took a photographic racial bias test...and my results actually came back that I PREFER and feel SAFER around African American people! LOL and that I was prejudice against gay people! haha! Im a mess apparently.

 

[Clara Oswald]

That self-hate will get you every time