Study Asks: Are You More Racist Than You Think?

Although I believe that it is virtually impossible to get any useful or accurate measure of racism in any but the most anonymous environments, some Canadian psychologists have just published the results from a recent effort. The conclusion?

A new study published Thursday in The Journal Science suggests many people unconsciously harbor racist attitudes, even though they see themselves as tolerant and egalitarian.

"This study, and a lot of research in social psychology, suggests that there are still really a lot of negative associations with blacks," said Kerry Kawakami, associate professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, Ontario, and lead author of the study. "People are willing to tolerate racism and not stand up against it." Source

Not surprising. But the experiment as outlined had no "control" and was based primarily on a reaction to a verbal slur. See what you think:

The authors divided 120 non-black participants into the roles of "experiencers" and "forecasters." The "experiencers" were placed in a room with a white person and a black person, who played out pre-arranged scenarios for the experiment. The scenarios began when the black role-player bumped the white role-player's knee when leaving the room.

In the first scenario, the white person did not comment afterwards. In the "moderate" case, the white person said, "Typical, I hate it when black people do that," after the black person left the room. In the "extreme" case, the white person remarked, "Clumsy n****r."

The "forecasters," meanwhile, predicted how they would feel in these situations.

The magnitude of the results surprised even the authors, Kawakami said. Experiencers reported little distress in all three scenarios, much less than the forecasters did in the moderate and severe situations.

"Even using that most extreme comment didn't lead people to be particularly upset," said co-author Elizabeth Dunn, assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Immediately afterwards, the participants were asked to choose either the black person or the white person as a partner for an anagram test. More than half of experiencers chose the white partner -- regardless of the severity of the comment that person made earlier. As for the forecasters, less than half chose the white partner when a comment was made, but most chose the white person when no comment was made.

"Some people might think that they're very egalitarian and they don't have to deal with their prejudices, and that's not related to them at all, when in actual fact they may hold these hidden biases," Kawakami said. Source

If someone bumped my knee and did not apologize, my response might have been something like, "a**hole." Thus, my problem with this study is that a racist comment does not mean that a person is racist. And the way words are thrown around these days, I don't know what an offensive term actually says about a person.

Also, were the participants asked questions about their anticipated reactions anonymously or were they talking to interviewers? What was the race and gender of the interviewers? How did that impact forecaster responses?

Personally, I find this study more problematic than insightful. I don't care what people think. I care about their actions.

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