Canadian study finds people 'indifferent' to overt racism

Almost a year ago, ScienceDave contributed this article that would seem to be a companion piece, which outlines possible perceptual causes for racism.  

George W. Bush would love to hear racist comments about black people “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.’”

“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.’ [. . .]”

“‘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. [. . .]”

“‘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. [. . .]”

“More recent work by Greenwald and colleagues shows that most people --between 75 and 80 percent -- have implicit, non-overt prejudices against blacks. Their Web site, Project Implicit, has a slew of tests that Web users can take to compare their self-perceptions to their underlying attitudes about people based on different social categories, such as race, age and obesity. Take the Implicit Association Test”

“What is responsible for these attitudes? Experts say one culprit is images in television, news and film that portray blacks in a negative light.”

Elizabeth Landau (CNN). (2009, January 8). You may be more racist than you think, study says. CNNhealth.com. Retrieved January 8, 2009, from http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/07/racism.study/index.html

George W. Bush is the kind of person who would not even be slightly upset by hearing racist comments about black people.

Actually, Bush would love to hear racist comments about black people.

After all, Bush hates black people (indicated at http://andrewyu-jenwang.blogspot.com/2008/12/andrew-yu-jen-wang-responds-to-stokely.html “George W. Bush hates black people”).

As president of the United States, George W. Bush has set a bad example.

Bush would have negatively influenced some people in terms of their perceptions about black people.

African-Americans can hardly wait for George W. Bush to leave office.

Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993

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