I took a test called the Implicit Attitude Test (IAT), where it determines the race preferences you have. Maybe you think you’re completely unbias towards different races and ethnicities. This test pairs good words like hope,love,faith with faces of African Americans. The test then gives negative words like hate,greed and so on for European Americans. The IAT is good at making you feel uncomfortable by the last portions of the test. You have to pair the bad words with African Americans and the good words with European Americans. I found it easier to put European Americans with good words, and African Americans with bad. Change the circumstance to have African Americans with good words. It was hard and consciously I felt I was already bias. I’m a biracial American (Black/White) already knew this would favor towards white people. It’s the word association that we categorize them with. White you think of pure,innocence,good,angelic,virgin,flawless and then black with evil,dark,and devilish. The dualism from white and black symbolizes the dichotomy of good and evil. God separated the light from the darkness on Day One. Labeling races White and Black are already subconsciously giving superiority to people with lighter pigmentation. Kenneth and Mamie Clark, a married couple of African American psychologists, used this ideology to study children in the Civil Rights Movement. In the 1940s, they used black and white dolls to study the children’s attitudes about race. They preferred to play with a white doll instead of a black doll. They chose with play with similar humans with their own skin color, yet they strongly preferred lighter shades. The black children labeled white as good and pretty while black was dirty and ugly. Even children that were to young to understand racism knew they were inferior in society. They internalized racism unconsciously, and that’s where the problem lays. The racism is linked to how society portrays “white” and “black.” Even people that admitted to not having a prejudice had a lean bias towards whites. Even the pictures used in the test, I felt like the black models looked angry and dangerous. When the white models had no emotion whatsoever; this is why racism still exists. When ever we are categorizing and ostracizing a certain group we are giving the other superiority. Maybe its how we are raised to avoid everything that might hurt us. In the most racist depictions of blacks were monkeys,gorillas, apes, and chimpanzees. Primates with lack of self control that needs to be locked up. Just thinking about the high rates of blacks in jails, the thoughts of a gorilla in a zoo. The untamed beast that racists for generations depicted blacks as. I never heard a racist remark about whites; only ethnicities. People belonging to a certain social group, and many people seem to confuse race and ethnicity. Race is the common physical characteristic belong to a group. As long as there is tests like the IAT, I know that racism in society will continue. We are thought from a early age that white is better;everything from the clouds to angels. Black is only the corruption of the innocence of White.
What the IAT test says about society
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