"So what does this mean? Does it mean I’m a racist, a self-hating black person? Not exactly. What it means is that our attitudes toward things like race or gender operate on two levels. First of all we have our conscious attitudes. This is what we choose to believe. These are our stated values, which we choose to direct our behavior deliberately.” [snip] “But the IAT measures something else. It measures our second level of attitude, our racial attitude on an unconscious level – the immediate, automatic associations that tumble out before we’ve even had time to think.”
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A test shows how racist we really are, meaning our cultural bias. In the American setting even the blacks taking the test have a bias towards white culture. Is this racism or just cultural predominance? If you are raised anywhere as a minority( catholics in Western USA small town for example) biases of neighbours will creep in or majority attitudes from TV, film, music, literature. Racism is cultural bias. People follow the majority culture as the role model. Preserving minority culture, regardless of where one lives, chinatown or little Italy for example is hard. Osmosis is a principle in chemistry and it works in people's attitudes as well. Black music and culture has gone mainstream, a mixture of African and European styles. As the world gets smaller, cultures clash and mix. Sometimes we have wars, genocides, empires, oppression. What is considered racist today may be different tomorrow in attitudes. This becomes more subtle over time, which is why such a brutal murder by a policeman is so shocking as PC talk is the current thought limit for most. In reality the roots are much deeper and just focusing on superficial language codes is ineffective. It is like always living at the superficial level of polite conversation. Real life is about money, power, passions.
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