Racism Essay

The weeks we spent discussing race were very informative to me and I think I benefitted

from the discussions. One of the ideas that really struck me was the concept that most, if not all,

people have a subconscious bias that essentially makes them racist. Many people claim to look at

all races equally but they may not realize the implicit biases that their culture forces on them. The

same implicit biases that lead white police officers to shoot unarmed black children (Mooney).

Society writes off these police officers as racists and extremes, but what if they are just the

average white American but in a position of power?

We know there is bias and stereotype in this country. We see unintentional discrimination Commented [Rs1]: cause

everywhere. Walking the hallways of Blair one would be hard pressed to find a group of students

of varying race and socioeconomic status. We think we’re aware of stereotypes and we try our

best to avoid them. What we forget to acknowledge is our subconscious thought process,

something that is impossible to control and extremely difficult to change. We all make a split

second judgement on everyone we see. With so little time and no knowledge of a person’s life,

there is little to go off of in making this judgement. Human nature causes us to judge people by

their physical appearance; their facial expression, posture, clothes, and race. Few people would

consider this an accurate judgement of character, but we cannot help it. We will always judge

someone by our first impression of them, and often times this idea of a person remains beneath

the surface throughout our experiences with them, even if proved wrong. This is why “first

impressions” are such a big deal. The problem is we don’t control our criteria. In some cases, it is

created by our culture and socialization, and without realizing it, we hold negative stereotypes

about certain groups of people.

Subconsciously carrying these negative stereotypes is dangerous. The idea we get from

our first impression of a person can lead us to treat them differently than others, and we often

don’t realize what we’re doing. Evidence of this unconscious discrimination can be seen in many

aspects of our society. In medicine, minorities are less likely to be complex surgeries or
transplants, and they are more likely to be given more disagreeable treatments, such as

amputations (Lyubansky). An experienced medical professional should not be prescribing

different treatments for patients of different races, but they don’t realize what they're doing, it’s

completely subconscious.

Over the past decade, multiple psychological tests have been created to judge the

subconscious biases Americans carry. One of the most well known tests is the Implicit

Association Test created by Project Implicit. The test requires the subject to rapidly distinguish

“African American” and “European American” faces while also sorting words such as “agony,”

“joy,” “happy,” and “anger” between “good” and “bad.” The test measures the speed for each

categorization and bias is found if negative words are faster matched with black faces and

positive words are more quickly associated with white faces. Its data, which includes over two

million people, shows that whites in certain states show higher levels of implicit bias than those

in other states. The higher levels of implicit bias are centralized in the southeast United States

while the states with the lowest numbers are located in the northwest; the gradient spreading

diagonally across the country (Mooney). Most importantly, the data shows that white people in

every state are biased (Test your Implicit Bias with Science). However, the results include only

people who decided to go online and take a test that measures their bias, they do not represent the

nation as a whole. Nevertheless, an important idea to note is the type of person to take this test.

This may be someone who does not consider themselves biased or racist but wants to know if

they harbor some unconscious bias. The test shows that many of them do. Project Implicit keeps

track of the type of people taking the test and they tend to be younger and more liberal than the

average American (Mooney). In addition, older people who took the test tended to have higher

scores of implicit bias than younger subjects. This suggests that the sample represented in the

results is most likely less biased than the population as a whole. Regardless of the sample, the test

does reveal an important fact, racial bias exists in every part of the United States.
 This bias stems from centuries of racial hierarchy in this country that has defined how

whites perceive people of color, and these subconscious perceptions are hard to change. We

develop these biases and stereotypes quickly and at a young age because, as humans, we learn

quickly due to our ability to make generalizations (Gjersoe). This becomes a problem when we

have little exposure to variety. So if the news and our society tells us that young black teenagers

are violent, that’s what our subconscious will believe. Even if we think it might not be true. This

idea is accentuated by the fact that no matter what, we tend to associate with our own “group,”

whether it be our family, people of our age or race, even people wearing the same color shirt.

This mentality also causes us to consider everyone not in the “group” the same while the

members of our group are unique. This makes forming stereotypes very easy. One way to alter

our subconscious perceptions is by stepping out of our “group.” For example, interacting and

relating to young black teenagers and realizing that they are no different from themselves

(Gjersoe). This offers proof to our subconscious. It’s sad that we need this proof, but it is one

possible solution.

As it relates to recent incidents of police brutality, “racism, it turns out, is not necessarily

perpetrated by racists but by people who feel threatened for other reasons and are not aware of

their racial bias” (Lyubansky). These police officers may not all be racist, but their subconscious

bias controls their actions in these crucial moments. However, this is no excuse. Whites need to

be aware of their subconscious biases and work to change them. The first step being to actually

get to know people of a minority before making a judgement of their character, and most

importantly, never make a generalization about a group of people.