What if it were the case, Mills
asks, that some citizens were able to operate with a greater freedoms within
the Social (and political) Contract than others because of a particular
subcontract? We do not have to think for very long about this hypothetical state
because, as Mills points out, it is in fact the reality of the world in which
we live. The reality of our social contract is that we do not all give up bits
of our own freedom for the benefit of all others, rather there are some who are
forced to give up many of their freedoms for the benefit of just a few who get
to keep it all. Though all men may have been created equal, all men are not in
fact treated equally. The modern nation state of our political world has
always, already been racialized. This political fact made me think back to
earlier in the semester when we were talking about white privilege and we
problematized certain assumptions about modern racism. Many of us like to think
that we are becoming less and less “racialized”… racism and prejudices are on
the decline. However, as we discussed in class, what we can possibly expect a
racial polity to produce other than racist individuals? The non-racist within a
polity which supports institutional racism is the exception not the rule. Socialization
into this type of environment has wide spread effects. As children, because of
our inability to understand the nuances our political correctness, the refutation
of implicit attitudes is much weaker.
In social psychology, the term “modern racism” has been developed to explain the ways in which this fact continues to manifest itself within the modern polity. Modern racism refers to the practice of outwardly acting unprejudiced while inwardly maintaining prejudiced attitudes. Our explicit behavior works to hide (from both others and sometimes from ourselves) the reality of our internal, implicit racist attitudes/assumptions. I cannot remember who exactly it was that introduced this idea earlier in the semester, but I want to reintroduce the IAT (Implicit Association Test) which is a test that has been developed with the intension of being able to reveal these implicit attitudes within individuals. There is some debate about how accurate the test is, but I found it to be a short and fun experiment. For those who are interested, here is a link https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/takeatest.html. I also was introduced to this video which gives some insight into what types of results have been found. The test has found that 27% of responders have a strong preference for European Americans over African Americans; 27% of responders have a moderate preference; 16% of responders have a slight preference; and only 17% have little to no preference. The remaining 13% have some degree of preference for African Americans over European Americans. Though this information can be rather disconcerting, there is still some hope as you will see if you watch through to the end of the first video.
Yay psychology! Anyway, I definitely think a lot of racism is embedded in learned associations in childhood psychology. Even with the children, they can't really explain why, but somewhere they have seen images representing those certain groups with "bad or good" as the bottom video shows. That is how the subconscious mind appears to work. It doesn't really explain why or how, but all it knows is "bad or good". And this appears to be especially true when a person needs to make a decision quickly. It takes longer for one to reason "why" they chose to associate the african american with crime, or the middle easterner with being "mad" than it does to just make this highly conditioned quick association. Unfortunately our culture and society HIGHLY conditions these responses.
ReplyDeleteFor example, the other day I was at the gas station and I saw the "busted" photos, which are published mugshot photos. And everytime I see them it gives me that real, uneasy feeling, and now I realize that it is because it subconsciously supports classism and racism. People see these photos and their brains makes these associations with crime and people that look a certain way, which anyone is capable of crime, but inner city memphis is largely african american and poor, so just statistically speaking more from this demographic are going to get arrested, and these people are representing their race and socioeconomic status in these photos, and I dont think that is fair to the rest of the demographic.
I think of another study - and I wish I could find it, but after 25 minute of googling, I admit I gave up - that traces brain stimulation as faces are flashed before a volunteer's eyes. They only thing the volunteer really has to do is sit in a chair and try not to blink so often, and the computer does all the rest. Hooked up to this crazy hardware, the computer highlights what parts of the brain lights up with activity based on the miliseconds of seeing a person's face. One result of the study showed that the amygdala, the fear center of the brain, jumps to life whenever a dark face is seen.
ReplyDeleteEven the emotional responses of a person can be implicit. No one can control their most *immediate* emotional responses, so we can hardly call all the volunteers, who represented a variety of races, racists.
A take away from the second video is the man who pairs white/black and good/bad - he says, "The insistence that my conscious beliefs still matter. It isn't that the fact that I keep showing these implicit biases mean that I'm a bias person and I should just accept that and move on. It's that 'no, I don't agree with those. I do have them, and I will admit to having those implicit biases, but I am not going to let that rule what I consciously want to have.'" Even though, through cultural expectations and biases, it is our conscious decisions, actions, and words that will be the key to determining what to do with the biases, and how to uproot the vertical scale of racism.
I think this study definitely makes an excellent point. There are definitely things we pick up that influence the way we think about things, whether we're conscious of it or not. I think something that plays a role in this is the fact that we begin to take in information and build identities before we can really form memories. For example, I may have picked up something at the age of 2, but as I get older, I have no memory of it. This could lead to me having implicit ideas that I'm not really conscious of.
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