Our Racist, Sexist Selves

In class we were given this New York Times article by Nicholas Kristof called "Our Racist, Sexist Selves." The author states that he is a racist, at least according to an online test. This interested me so I went on to his blog and took one of the race tests. In my test first you had to categorize white faces and black faces and then good words and bad words. Then the categories are grouped and you put words either in the white and good category or black and bad category. Finally, they switched the categories to black and good and white and bad. I scored strong automatic preference for white. I am not very convinced by this technique though because of the order in which it was presented. I think I would have scored much differently if they had first grouped black and good together and white and bad. A lot of the time, I do not even recognize someones race when I talk to someone I do not know. For instance, the other day I was at the mall and one of the employees helped me get something off a high shelf. When I was at the register, the lady asked me if someone had helped me and I said yes. She asked me who it was and I said that I was not sure of her name. She then asked me if she was black or white and I did not know the answer. Regardless of this though, it is likely that I do hold some unconscious bias considering where and how I grew up, considering media influences, and because I am white.

The article goes on to discuss the role the unconscious is playing in politics not only against blacks but against women as well. Racism appears to be easier to overcome than sexism. Unconsciously, women are thought of as warm and friendly which could be why voters feel a female candidate for a political position is not the right person for the job. Friendly and warm are not typically thought of as attributes of leaders but rather they should be strong and tough. I do not even need to take the test on gender to know that I am biased when it comes to this. I would like to be able to break that bias but it is so ingrained in my mind that I do not think I would be able to.