Ok, we all have heard almost every side of the argument for Affirmative Action and many of us can get pretty heated when arguing pro/con. Well, here is something I came across earlier today that I thought might bring some interesting insight. I was reading this book, “Blink” by this guy Malcolm Gladwell and it was talking about how we think without thinking… for example, first impressions, gut feelings… Like those times when you know something is wrong or right but you can’t explain why? Well, he makes reference to race in that, even though many people may say that they believe in equality, their subconscious actions don’t back that statement up.
So anyways, to the point of this thread, this website - <a href=“http://www.implicit.harvard.edu%5B/url%5D”>www.implicit.harvard.edu</a> take the race test (or any other for that matter) and see how you do… the results can be surprising…
So, this is just to show that, even though blatant racism isn’t very prevalent anymore, sometimes we can make race preferences without even knowing it.
<p>I tried the test. However, I feel the test is not impartial. On the second time through, with different associations between race and words, I had trouble because the first time through had me trained to associate one kind of word with one side of the screen. I kept putting words on the side they used to be on. I don't feel this necessarily indicates hidden racism, but just trying to undo training set by the test itself.</p>
<p>That was my thought about the test as well, Susantm. It originally aligned White with Good and Black with Bad, and as it is commonly said, the initial impression tends to be the lasting one. You sort of have to make a concious effort to undo the first impression, and that's why I feel I had a tendancy to occassionally revert to the first impression. I honestly don't feel any racial bias had very much to do with it.</p>
<p>It changes though... I'm pretty sure sometimes you start on the left and sometimes on the right. And it is true that you say it trains you to get used to each side, but that argument has a flaw. If you were used to associating adjectives to certain sides, then you would equally screw up blacks AND whites.......</p>
<p>COols875, it's true that you would theoretically mess up both of the races equally, but messing them up equally in the second trial means incorrectly aligning 'Good with White' <em>and</em> 'Bad with Black', as you would be aligning them in their original positions. The results are not only made more biased by only "screwing up blacks", they are done so by incorrectly assigning <em>either race on the second trial</em> after the switch-up. Acting in a manner that would indicate a bias in favor of blacks would be messing up on the first trial, and acting in a manner that would indicate a bias in favor of whites would be messing up on the second trial. In my opinion, since we are left with the original impression after the first trial, we are more likely to incorrectly align the words on the second trial, thereby falsely indicating a bias in favor of whites.</p>
<p>There may be some aspect of racial bias contributing to the results, but I think that if they replaced the faces with any other objects of distinction, there would be similar results.</p>
<p>damn! slight preference for european americans. i agree with the assessment of a bias towards one side of the screen, though. But that is true and I've known it for a while. It sucks, but, well in my small town in Texas there have never been any black kids in my AP classes and I've never weren't any black kids at the private catholic school. BUT, my ex-girlfriend and absolute best friend for the past six years is black. She's the first girl I went further than kissing with. (not meant to freak anyone out, just to point out that I think black girls are as attractive as any other race) She's very smart btw and speaks impeccable english.</p>