What's That Smell?

In one of my classes, our professor asked us to take this 5 minute online cognitive test called the Implicit Associations Test (IAT). It’s a test that’s designed to measure associations that are implicit or hard-wired into your brain that you usually suppress. To summarize, the test measures the time in milliseconds that it takes you to assign characteristics to different categories. Our professor asked us to do the racial associations test to see if we associated white or black faces with being “good” or “bad”. I invite you to go check out the site and play with the tests (there are some for gender, sexuality, agedness, and obesity associations, too).

To try out the tests, CLICK HERE and then select “demonstration”, then “go to demonstration test”, and then select the “I Wish to Proceed” on the disclaimer. There are about a dozen different tests and they take about 5 minutes to complete.

I won’t debate the validity of the test, because you can clearly game the test by purposely taking more time on certain sections, but assuming you play along, and do the test as fast as possible, the findings would at least have face validity as to measuring your “implicit associations”. I took the racial AIT, and the test reported that I associate white people with being “bad” more easily than blacks, and that I associate blacks with being “good” more easily than whites. I discussed my results with a group of my white classmates (I’m the only black male in the class), and they all bragged about how the test came back neutral for them.

In our homework essay, our professor asked us to comment on if we found it difficult to accept our test results. I don’t find it particularly difficult to accept that my test results indicate that I have some implicit associations that are racially biased. I already knew I had some implicit bias in my view of race. To have no implicit associations between race and “goodness”, I would have to be incredibly unobservant of the world around myself. The world is full of messages (both obvious and subtle) that blacks and whites are good or bad. Being that I grew up in an urban black community in the South where many people were overtly mistrustful of white people and some were clearly racist, does it surprise anyone that I implicitly associate white Americans with “badness”. I cannot remember my parents ever having a white person even come into our house with the exception of those who were there to repair things. I watched my parents behavior as a child and I am sure I was able to discern different patterns of behavior around whites versus blacks. (Not to mention the occasional offhanded comment from them.) My parents grew up drinking out of “colored-only water fountains”, so I’m sure their implicit associations are stronger than mine.

What is more concerning than my having implicit racial bias are those who deny that they have any implicit associations whatsoever…those people that claim to be “colorblind”. If someone takes this test and brags about how neutral he is, I suspect that person may have something to hide. Anyone who tells you he is absolutely 100% racially colorblind is either cognitively impaired or a liar. It’s not politically correct (especially for whites) to admit to any bias in racial attitudes, but bias is present, because we have all grown up in this divided nation (divided by race, class, gender, etc). There is no sin in having your brain adapt to the world around it and form “hard-wired” associations from your observations and experiences. It’s called conditioning, and as Pavlov demonstrated, it’s how we learn. If my most impressionable years were filled with messages that I should not trust white people, then I am likely going to develop an implicit association between whites and “badness”.
Part of maturing into an adult is developing a rational intellect, where you are able to dismiss things that you associate implicitly, because you have learned that those associations are faulty. For instance, as an adult, I have learned to suppress my association of dogs and danger. When I was a child, I grew up in a neighborhood that had a handful of ill-tempered dogs that were not always properly chained or gated. I implicitly associate canines with snarling, chasing, barking and teeth. When I moved to Boston, I was initially disturbed by how many people walked their dogs with no leash. Some of the dogs were quite large, but I learned that in my yuppie neighborhood, those dogs were well-trained docile creatures that were accustomed to strangers. Having said that though, I am aware that the implicit association between dogs and danger still exists in my brain, because I have to “tell myself” that I am safe when I see somebody walking their German Shepherd down the street. Likewise, I have grown-up to realize that race has nothing to do with a person’s inherent goodness. I sometimes have to remind myself of that fact, when my implicit racial bias is tempting me to judge unfairly. I don’t think my character is flawed because of my implicit attitudes, but it would reflect poorly on my character if I did not suppress my implicit bias with my intellect.
The immoral man is the one who hides/denies his implicit biases regarding race, but let’s his racist associations rule his consciousness. I’d rather be around someone who is publicly racist and actually celebrates his implicit racial bias, because at least he has some honesty and integrity of character. Instead, so many people claim to be free from the perversions of the mind that our racially divided society engenders, and all the while their behavior is riddled with prejudice. Our cultural duplicity has the smell of rancid meat and fills everyone nostrils, but we all deny that we notice the stink. Political correctness has left our society thinking we are suppose to ignore race, but how are we as a society suppose to ignore the social construct that has most shaped and defined our collective social consciousness, ugly as it may be. The elephant in the room (or the foul stench, in my previous analogy) is racism, and if we don’t accept that we all have these racial biases than we will continue to be crippled by the social dysfunction that it generates. The Los Angeles riots of 1992 did not occur because some cops were acquitted of police brutality. LA burned because some white cops were acquitted of brutalizing a black man. And speaking of acquittals, OJ Simpson did not walk out of the courtroom a free man in 1995, because the evidence exonerated him. OJ was set free, because the jury could not assess the impact that racism might have in contaminating a murder investigation. And even last month, we saw race became the central theme in the hurricane Katrina catastrophe, with some taking the accusations of racism right to the White House. And with everything pointing to how malignant and pervasive racism is in our society, my classmates sat there bragging about how “colorblind” the online test had claimed they were. I’m sitting there dumbfounded. Do they think I’m going to get angry, because they admit that America’s racist culture got to them too…that they too smell the rank odor that is lingering in the air. I started to make my case that we all have implicit racist attitudes but I knew those who had claimed racial neutrality would be even more defensive about racist attitudes after having bragged about their equipoise, so I let it go until another time. I guess we will have to spend yet another day smiling in each others faces pretending that racism does not exist … ignoring the putrid smell of America rotting from the inside out.

Your implicitly racist brother,
chad

“In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”
~Harry A. Blackmun