Implicit Association Test

In mythology, darkness or blackness is often associated with death, evil, or fear while light is associated with goodness. For example, Darth Vader is one evil motherfucker and he is the intergalactic man in black. Luke Skywalker on the other hand dresses in light colors and comes from a planet with two suns. In fact, Luke might literally mean light. My point is that an implicit preference for light or white over dark or black does not necessarily mean that you favor light skinned people over dark skinned people. Fortunately most people, well at least some people, can explicitely think about sub-conscious or implicit thoughts or associations and behave morally. Nonetheless, I find the IAT research pretty interesting. Nice thread.

angelica wrote:

Maybe you've heard of Malcolm Gladwell, New York Times bestselling author (who grew up a mile away from me, went to high school with me and was on my school bus!). He wrote the books "The Tipping Point" and "Blink".

You might find his work interesting. "Blink" actually talks about how we make unconscious decisions all the time, without realizing it. He's considered one of the most influential people of our time. Anyway, he is half black on his mother's side, and he talks about taking this IAT test in the book "Blink", where he also comes up as naturally biased against blacks, which if memory serves me, he attributes to the cultural values we internalize growing up. i.e. Blacks being portrayed poorly all around, on TV, etc.

Above mentioned author Malcolm Gladwell was just on Oprah talking about this test. I didn't catch the whole show. I don't watch tv, but my brother called to tell me Malcolm was on.

They were talking about this test, and how it indicates what is in our unconscious and what we've seen our whole lives. So black people also watch the same tv shows where the crack dealer is a black man and the judge is a white man. And they therefore have the same unconscious bias. They say that our unconscious associations that we have, and that this test sees show us what we've seen in our life before. For example, Oprah assocates women with entrepreneurship because of her experiences, whereas I would not, due to my experiences.

The point is, and that they talked about, is that we can change this programming, by changing our world. We can direct our attention to having and creating experiences that are empowering to us and to others. We do not need to accept the views and images that we have accepted thus far and without our conscious awareness. From here on in, we can create a new unconscious awareness. For example, we can turn off the media that portrays stereotypes. We can immerse ourselves in healthy situations that create new experiences and a new view. I personally know this works, because I have reprogrammed my unconscious as to what serves me, and makes sense, rather than my old self-defeating unconscious ways.

We can step out of our programming, if we want.

Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between African American and European American.