This document summarizes research on implicit or unconscious bias and racism. It discusses early studies from the 1940s that found evidence of internalized racism, even in black children. Modern tests like the Implicit Association Test continue to show widespread implicit biases across races. Studies have found that identical resumes or patients receive different treatment based solely on race. The conclusion calls for openly discussing implicit bias to address institutional racism without apportioning blame, and to move past denial and become aware of destructive biases that affect society.
Cognitive schemas can result in stereotypes and contribute to prejudice.
Stereotypes Stereotypes are beliefs about people based on their membership in a particular group. Stereotypes can be positive, negative, or neutral. Stereotypes based on gender, ethnicity, or occupation are common in many societies.
Then Prejudice has been discussed
Some Guidelines for Working in Groups on Sensitive Topics: The Homicides of B...Jane Gilgun
The recent grand jury decisions not to indict the homicides of black men by while police officers have created a nation-wide storm of concern and protests. This powerpoint provides some guidelines for doing group work with people who share these concerns. The ideas in the presentation are meant to stimulate creativity and action.
Cognitive schemas can result in stereotypes and contribute to prejudice.
Stereotypes Stereotypes are beliefs about people based on their membership in a particular group. Stereotypes can be positive, negative, or neutral. Stereotypes based on gender, ethnicity, or occupation are common in many societies.
Then Prejudice has been discussed
Some Guidelines for Working in Groups on Sensitive Topics: The Homicides of B...Jane Gilgun
The recent grand jury decisions not to indict the homicides of black men by while police officers have created a nation-wide storm of concern and protests. This powerpoint provides some guidelines for doing group work with people who share these concerns. The ideas in the presentation are meant to stimulate creativity and action.
Southwest Florida Attorneys Amanda Barritt and Shannon Puopolo of Henderson Franklin provided a spring legislative update and practical information for Community Associations on such issues as gate security, homeowner bankruptcy, collections, new electronic voting rules and pet accommodations (Note that the Proposed Legislation did not pass)
Racism: We White People are the Dangerous OnesJane Gilgun
It's way past time that white people see that we are dangerous to Afican Americans and other people of color. In this powerpoint, I share the idea that white people are the dangerous ones and I provide ways to change racist beliefs and practices that make us dangerous. We define who they are and we act on our definitions. If we define them as inferior, we act as if they are and don't believe they deserve the rights and privileges we have. If we view them as dangerous, we are afraid of them. We may avoid them, talk about them behind their backs, bully then, beat them, or kill them. We are the dangerous ones.
Racism: We White People are the Dangerous OnesJane Gilgun
We project beliefs and images about race onto others. These beliefs are often outside of our awareness. These beliefs become activated in a variety of situations. We construct others based on our beliefs and images and not on who they actually are. We may see others as dangerous when they are not. We are the dangerous ones. Our beliefs and images bring great harm to others. This powerpoint shows contemporary understandings of racism, how to become aware of our racism, and how to change racist beliefs, images, and practices.
1 Hour Session delivered to 3rd and 4th graders at Friends Academy in North Dartmouth, MA. We started off the session with an exercise - imagine a police officer, a doctor, a nurse, a criminal, a fire fighter, a family, a teacher, a basketball player, a boy, a girl, and more. Afterward, we compared similarities and differences. To our surprise, almost all of us had imagined the same family: a mother, father, and children who look like them. Almost all of us had imagined male police officers, fire fighters, and criminals. Almost all of us had imagined female teachers, nurses, and nannies. Several of us drew girls in skirts. Several of us imagined criminals in dark colors. Several of us imagined only White people. Several of us imagined only able-bodied people (no wheelchairs, glasses, etc.). And we did it all without having been told to imagine this way. After comparing, we pondered what would an alien species, whose only exposure to humans was in the form of these pictures, assume about the human race. We then extended the metaphor into the fact that we were, at one point, naive to all these messages in our very beginnings - we WERE aliens to this way of thinking at one point. We then analyzed where we got these messages. Clearly, everyone knew that men can be nurses, children do not always look like their parents, crimes can be committed by people in business clothes, etc. And yet, here we were, so clear on what society has taught us who these people are. We learned about the cycle of oppression, where stereotypes can become prejudice, then discrimination, then oppression, then internalized oppression/dominance. We learned about isms (racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ageism, ableism, etc.), where prejudice plus the power to enforce it can result in systemic unfairness to groups of people. We then learned to identify situations where stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, and isms might be at work. Finally, we discussed ways we can interrupt the cycle of oppression so that we, the people around us, and future generations can get beyond societal messages of what we should believe about one another.
Because there was a lot of dense material in this mini-lecture, I presented it as a SlideShare to make it visually more appealing and to break up the information a little.
Chapter 4Understanding Racism, Prejudice, and White Privilege4-WilheminaRossi174
Chapter: 4
Understanding Racism, Prejudice, and White Privilege4-1Defining and Contextualizing Racism
4-1
Hoyt Jr. (2012) defines racism as “a particular form of prejudice defined by preconceived erroneous beliefs about race and members of racial groups.” It is supported simultaneously by individuals, the institutional practices of society, and dominant cultural values and norms. Racism is a universal phenomenon that exists across cultures and tends to emerge wherever ethnic diversity and perceived or real differences in group characteristics become part of a struggle for social power. In the case of the United States, African Americans, Latinos/as, Native Americans, and Asian Americans—groups that we have been referring to as people of color—have been systematically subordinated by the white majority.
There are four important points to be made initially about racism:
· Prejudice and racism are not the same thing. Prejudice is a negative, inaccurate, rigid, and unfair way of thinking about members of another group. All human beings hold prejudices. This is true for people of color, as well as for majority group members. But there is a crucial difference between the prejudices held by whites and those held by people of color. whites have more power to enact their prejudices and therefore negatively impact the lives of people of color than vice versa. The term racism is used in relation to the racial attitudes and behavior of majority group members. Similar attitudes and behaviors on the part of people of color are referred to as prejudice and discrimination (a term commonly used to mean actions taken on the basis of one’s prejudices). Another way of describing this relationship is that prejudice plus power equals racism.
· Racism is a broad and all-pervasive social phenomenon that is mutually reinforced at all levels of society.
· Institutional racism involves the manipulation of societal institutions to give preferences and advantages to whites and at the same time restrict the choices, rights, mobility, and access of people of color.
· Cultural racism is the belief that the cultural ways of one group are superior to those of another. Cultural racism can be found both in individuals and in institutions. In the former, it is often referred to as ethnocentrism. Jones (2000) mentioned that historical insults, societal norms, unearned privilege, and structural barriers are all aspects of institutional racism.
· People tend to deny, rationalize, and avoid discussing their feelings and beliefs about race and ethnicity. Often, these feelings remain unconscious and are brought to awareness only with great difficulty.
· When young children hear the stories of people of color, they tend to feel deeply and sincerely with the storyteller. “I’m really sorry that you had to go through that” is the most common reaction of a child. By the time one reaches adulthood, however, the empathy is often gone. Instead, reactions tend to involve minimizing, justifying ...
3. The Inspiration
• An American Dilemma
• Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal
(1944)
• Hypocrisy of Jim Crow South
• “How can a society that is so devoted to
equality, justice, and equal opportunity both
allow and enable a system of laws and
practices that oppress a significant percentage
of the population?”
• Unconscious bias
5. American Denial
• Christine Herbes-Sommers and Kelly
Thompson
• Llewellyn Smith
• Implicit bias (unconscious racism)
• Common root of discrimination in
modern society
• Historic and Modern studies
• Objectives
• Raise the questions, “Why do I think
this?/What are the consequences?”
• Open conversation
• Determine solutions for bias
6. The Research
• Mahzarin R. Banaji (Harvard)
• Implicit and explicit memory applied
to social constructs
• Implicit Association Test (IAT)
• ”a measure within social psychology
designed to detect the strength of a
person's automatic association between
mental representations of objects
(concepts) in memory.”
• Controls for social-desirability bias
7. The Research
• Implicit Association Test (cont.)
• Computer-based test of subconscious memory
associations
• Seven tasks
• Categorization of stimuli into two categories using Black/White
and various positive and negative words
• Measures implicit memory using response latency
• http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/american-denial/implicit-
association-test.html
8. The Research
• Kenneth and Mamie Clarke
• Black doll/white doll test (1940s)
• Young children are asked to identify which doll
represents certain adjectives
• Children are then asked what doll they are
• 1/3 of black children identify the white doll with
positive adjectives
• Faced with the question of what doll they are, they
don’t want to identify themselves with all the
negative adjectives they associated with the black
doll.
• Suggests internalized biases that effect racial
minorities as well as dominant groups
• May represent earlier evidence of implicit bias
• Modern replications have found identical
results
9. Other Research
• Test for implicit bias in medical care
• Patients equal in all respects except skin color
• Black men with identical symptoms are given blood
pressure medicine much less often
• Studies on employment bias
• Identical resumes treated differently after race
identification
• Research on identification by teachers and officers
• Black boys are deemed older and less innocent
10. Conclusion
• Asking people to think about racism in a way that
is not apportioning blame
• “It’s about how we are all victimized by the destructive
ideas we’ve internalized … and how that affects the
institutions we depend on.”
• There is a significant capacity for denial in our
culture
• “…a lot of it is self-protective, but in the end a lot of the
stuff that is self-protective is destructive to others and to
society as a whole.”
