{"id":802,"date":"2019-09-03T09:10:02","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T13:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=802"},"modified":"2022-03-04T16:35:22","modified_gmt":"2022-03-04T20:35:22","slug":"implicit-racism-racial-stereotypes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/implicit-racism-racial-stereotypes\/","title":{"rendered":"Implicit Racism: 80% of Us Are Guilty – Here’s How to Fight It"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Could you be harboring implicit biases about people based on their race? It’s disheartening to learn that implicit racism<\/a> is far more prevalent than we like to think. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as much as you believe in racial equality and treating everyone with compassion and respect, you may be judging others<\/a> based on racial stereotypes without even being aware of it. Learn to become aware of and address signs of implicit racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Implicit Racism: The Dangers of Mismatched Conscious and Unconscious Attitudes<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Implicit racism is the unconscious prejudice against someone based on his or her race. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many psychologists use the Implicit Association Test <\/a>(IAT) as a tool in their attempts to understand how unconscious associations affect our beliefs and behavior. (You can find the IAT online at www.implicit.harvard.edu<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in learning more about your own unconscious associations.) Among other unconscious attitudes, this test can gauge test-takers’ implicit racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IAT test-takers need to put words into categories as quickly as they can. A computer program times the speed of each reaction. The longer you take to move a word to a category, the more your conscious brain is fighting your unconscious brain. This could indicate that your conscious brain is contradicting your implicit biases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Racial Stereotypes and Implicit Racism<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of their stated beliefs, more than 80% of IAT-takers have \u201cpro-white associations.\u201d<\/strong> In other words, it takes slightly longer for most people to put words like \u201cglorious\u201d and \u201cwonderful\u201d in the \u201cAfrican American\u201d category than to put words like \u201churt\u201d and \u201cevil\u201d in the same category. This is implicit racism. Again, the majority of us harbor unconscious believes of implicit racism based on racial stereotypes.
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This doesn\u2019t just apply to test-takers who aren\u2019t African American\u201450% of more than 50,000 African Americans tested have pro-white associations.<\/strong>
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In the U.S., where we\u2019re still bombarded by messages implicitly linking \u201cwhite\u201d with \u201cgood,\u201d it\u2019s hard to develop unconscious attitudes about race that match our conscious ones. We’re not racists. But we still make unconscious assumptions based on racial stereotypes, leading to implicit racism.
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The implications of this mismatch are unsettling. When we act automatically, we depend on our implicit attitudes. Studies show that if you have strong pro-white associations, you\u2019ll act differently around someone who\u2019s Black. You probably won\u2019t even be aware that you\u2019re behaving differently. The cues will be subtle:
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