Unconscious Racism
Do you ever consider why we recognize faces? Why can we identify any one of them? Our mother, father, friends, or our colleagues, our neighbors…
We can identify people we don’t know even, but similar to us. For example, you can distinguish butcher from greengrocer in your neighborhood. But we are in some trouble to distinguish people who don’t like us. If you a European or an American, you can say that all Far Easterners are alike. In reality, they not alike, each of them is unique.
But wait for a second, if so, why we behave as if all Far Easterners are the same? Before I answer, let’s talk about faces. For example, most of us can recognize our mother’s face. We can, actually, it makes sense. Because recognizing our mother provides us with food and security, and so her face becomes a symbol of safety.
Soon enough, our ability to recognize faces in our own ethnic group helps us orient ourselves within a particular culture, just like we recognize our mother/father’s faces. There are completely the same dynamics which take part and orient our life.
Unfortunately, these dynamics are the product of our subconscious. Because of that, this unconscious evolutionary trait means that we are less able to discern faces from unfamiliar ethnic groups just like I mentioned that all Chinese, Korean, or Japanese was alike.
The worst thing, there are some scientific resources about this “hidden racism” and there are some proofs about our unconscious racism.
Canadian psychologist Frances Aboud made a study with preschool children in Montreal. Frances Aboud found that racial bias begins at a surprisingly young age. Aboud asked 80 white children to assign adjectives such as “mean”, “dirty”, “good” or “kind” to either a picture of a White person or a picture of a Black person. The study found that 70 percent of the children associated almost every positive descriptor with White faces while associating negative adjectives with Black faces.
Yeah, I know, that sounds disturbing. More, this study reveals a lot about unconscious racial bias, since young children have yet to develop conscious ideas about racism.
It’s important to note that the parents of these children weren’t consciously racist. If so, here the meaningful question, why did their children have racial prejudices?
Here is the answer: Frances Aboud found that it came down to the fact that the children lived in an overwhelmingly white world. Even if a child had a few Black friends, white people dominated television shows and storybooks as well as the world around them.
Based on associative patterns, their hidden brain concluded that White people are good and Black people are different, even if their parents didn’t share those views.
In fact, the racial bias of these children was so strong that when Aboud’s research assistants read a story featuring a heroic little Black boy, the children continued to hold their prejudices. They even believed that the research assistants underlined the affection of the interracial friendships in the story did the children concede that the researchers did not share their prejudices against Black people.
So, what we can do about this “subconscious racism” or how should we raise our children?
Based on research, Aboud concluded that white parents who afraid of their children developing prejudices shouldn’t avoid discussing race. Instead, they should explicitly encourage racial tolerance through storytelling and discussion.
Yes yes, of course, you are not racist :D Few people consider themselves racist anyway. But, just like children, adults from unconscious racial based on associative patterns in the world around them.
While there are certainly people who are consciously racist. But these people belong to a minority.
The real problem is unconscious racial bias.
