Black and White

Retell

Blink in Black and White
Malcolm Gladwell

This fascinating article talks about the IAT or Implicit Association Test.  This test looks at our unconscious associations and how they impact our beliefs.  Malcolm Gladwell brings us through several IAT type activities to show us how we quickly make connections between pairs of words.  Doing these quick quizzes really shows how, despite our conscious decisions to think of everyone on equal terms, unconsciously we do not.  It is the unconscious associations that the IAT measures to the millisecond.
In discussing the IAT, Gladwell explains, "It measures our second level of attitude, our racial attitude on an unconscious level- the immediate, automatic associations that tumble out before we've even had time to think.  We don't deliberately choose our unconscious  attitudes.  And . . . we may not even be aware of them.  The giant computer that is our unconscious silently crunches all the data it can from the experiences we've had, the people we've met, the lessons we've learned the books we've read, the movies we've seen, and so on , and it forms an opinion.  This what is coming out in the IAT."  (Rosenblum and Travis, 2012, p. 354)

His main idea is that when it comes to making important decisions, we aren't making them with the completely pure and rational thoughts we think we are.


Between Barack and a Hard Place
Tim Wise

Tim Wise writes about President Obama's victory in the 2008 election and analyzes what it says about racism in America. 

This piece begins with three positive outcomes of the Obama's victory.  First, it shows that racism can be eliminated in America.  Secondly, there was a large amount of cross-racial collaboration that occurred in the campaign.  It was collaboration "rarely seen in American politics. or history."  (Rosenblum and Travis, 2012, p. 364)  Thirdly, that a person of color can, over time, prove his intelligence, qualifications, and capabilities to white people.

Tim Wise's main idea, is that racism is far from over in America.  We cannot pretend it is just because we have a Black president.  America has a long way to go as far a racism is considered.  He thinks that comments such as the ones columnist Richard Cohen of the Washington Post said, are far-fetched and not helpful in our task to eliminate racism.  Cohen, on the morning of President Obama's election, wrote "It is not just that he (Obama) is post-racial; so is the nation he is generationally primed to lead."  and " We have overcome." (Rosenblum and Travis, 2012, p. 366)

Examples are given of how, even in the South during the 1890's, newspapers reported how well whites and blacks got along.  There doesn't seem to be a time in American history when whites admitted people of color were not treated fairly.

Wise ends saying, "That we were wrong in every generation prior to the current one in holding such a rosy and optimistic view apparently gives most whites little pause.  And so we continue to reject claims of racism as so much whining, as "playing the race card" or some such thing, never wondering, even for a second, how a bunch who have proven so utterly inept at discerning the truth for hundreds of years can at long last be trusted to accurately intuit other people's reality . . . ."  (Rosenblum and Travis, 2012, p. 369)



Recall/React

I went online to take the IAT test on the website www.implicit.harvard.edu.  I took two tests.  The first was on race.  It showed that I had a strong automatic preference for European Americans compared to African Americans.  My outcome was the same as 27% of the participants. I am honestly shocked by this.  As I was taking the test.  I thought I was doing really well and was really proud of how open my thinking was.  Boy was I wrong.  I guess it proves that my unconscious plays a much bigger role in my thinking than I had hoped.

The second test I took was the sexuality test.  My results showed that I had little to no automatic preference between straight people and gay people.  I was the same as 17% of the participants of this test.  I must say, I was surprised by this one as well.  I was nervous taking this test because I wasn't at all sure where I would fall.  I don't know many gay people.  I have a cousin that is gay and a student teacher I had was gay.  I actually felt guilty the whole time I was taking the test.  I was thinking I might not do well on it and what would that make me? 

The good news is, we have our conscious thoughts to help us make decisions we know to be right even if our unconscious thoughts would have us do otherwise.



Rethink
These articles have made me aware that it is not only my conscious beliefs and wishes that determine my actions, my unconscious thoughts have a very big say.  I need to be cognizant of this fact whenever I am making decisions and having reactions.  I need to ask myself, what, in my past, have I learned or heard or saw, that is forming my decision.  I also have learned that I need to make sure that I keep fighting and standing up for every person.  Just because I would love to think that issues like racism are coming to an end, they really aren't.  We can be getting closer to an end, but we aren't there.