Many have been left wondering the motives causes and effects of the ferguson incident, and some have gone to the extent of finding out how and these are the psychologists of the APA. The APA includes many from MIT, University of Chicago, Duke University and Stanford. They believe that racism has taken on a new form in which racists are no longer a component.
The psychologists presented an experiment to people consisting of two photographs showing two people fighting, they asked them who is the person that is armed. The first picture is two white men fighting and the second one is a black man and a whiteman fighting. Both pictures have one person armed with a knife and the other is empty handed. Most people pointed out it is the black man that is armed in the second picture when he is actually unarmed meanwhile in the first picture they picked the armed white man and said he was armed in the first picture.
Some people displayed racial discrimination on innocent people just because of their race without intending to be racist or having any strong opinion on them. Race minorities and white have different point of view on racism.
Questions:
How long will this new racism last without notice in the USA and how will it continue to affect the people?
If people are affected by this psychological phenomena, what societal causes under the influence of the government are said to be the root of the problem?
How does racism influence and affect people’s point of view and behaviors when the society has already improved and changed?
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3 comments:
The article you mentioned says that rather than previously defined ideas of "racism" as violent acts against another race, the new type of racism is a more discreet bias towards one race or the other. I think the main difference between these two types of racism is the intention. It takes real evil intent to do the former and attack other races, while the latter is a more subconscious action without a necessary ill intent. Stereotyping is a natural survival instinct of humans, but that doesn't make stereotyping races (or other characteristics of people) okay, so I think that's where it becomes so hard to change. In the past, people had to take action to be called out as racist, whereas now, we have to take action to consciously avoid subtle racism, so it's definitely a change of mindset.
Can we find a more suitable coat for this said racism? I would go out on a limb to label it as racial prejudice rather than a discreet bias racism because this a new negative attitude birthed from the intentional hate crime. The people are doing it with no direct knowledge or experience. As Netta suggested, there could be a factor of innate survival tactic behind this. I believe this new "racism" has the potential to lead towards communal isolation within individual racial groups. Ultimately also leading to drastic changes in public opinion with party shifts.
I definitely agree with Netta on how racism has been more discreet over the years and that stereotyping is more of an instinct of humans. Firstly, it's been shown that there's been trends in the US that could be attributed to racism such as employment rates among certain races, the rising police violence, and even attacks on immigrants. Regarding stereotyping, we like to classify. To group. To place others in distinct categories so that our minds can remain relatively uncomplicated. Confrontation with something that breaks our norm can seem strange, even daunting. After all, with understanding comes power. If the new information we receive doesn't coincide with our preconceived ideas, we can lose control of the truth we thought we understood. To avoid that sense of confliction, our means of escape is to categorize or stereotype. We try to be culturally sensitive but at the same time, by categorizing, we may actually be encouraging racism and prejudice. To continue, this discreet sense of racism in our society is difficult to change. One solution to reducing this problem is by simply being diverse. A community in a broad sense (school, work, etc) should be diverse and can teach others about being culturally sensitive.
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