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Submitted by Phil Owen on Wed, 01/02/2008 - 7:15pm.

You say that race doesn't matter.  You say that qualifications are all that counts in employment and education.  You say that money is all that matters in lending and other market exchanges.  You say that you're color-blind, and that it's time to overturn affirmative action programs.  In fact, you say that affirmative action is reverse-racism.

You adamantly insist that you are not a racist, either overtly or unconsciously.

Now's your chance to prove it.  Either you have no racist tendencies or preferences... or this is your "Come to Jesus" moment.

Take the test.

Post your results.  (Be brave!) 

 

Go here to take the test, then click on "Race IAT". 

»

This site is elitist


It does not like my web browser. I feel offended. Clearly it is tilted in favor of those with mainstream full featured web browsers :-) (Am using Lynx for the moment)
»

Try it at the library.

It takes less than ten minutes.  And it could be an very big eye opening experience.  Or maybe not.  But the statistics show it likely should be. 

 

The Canaanite's Call

»

I was joking around. I am


I was joking around. I am installing a full featured browser, but I am waiting for X to finish emerging so I can install a window manager and Firefox. Dang I hate explaining jokes.
»

Well, if you'd stop speaking in foreign languages...

... I might be able to get the punch line! 

The Canaanite's Call

»

Well if you'd


Google unfamiliar terms now and then... Plus I already commented in Sarah's open thread about using Lynx and even made a blog posting about how much fun Olyblog navigation was with Lynx. Anyway suggest downloading it yourself and playing around. I'm still getting used to it...
»

My results:

"Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for European American compared to African American."

See?  Not so difficult to admit.  A little embarrassment at first, but no lasting pain.  Just a whole lot of work to do.

The Canaanite's Call

»

Same for me, Phil

It is a little disturbing, I have to admit.

This world's crazy, give me the gun. -- P.J. Harvey

»

My Analysis

Your Result

Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for European American compared to African American.

»

Just out of curiosity

Why bother? Are you insecure enough in your own beliefs that you need a test to tell you have you have a "hidden" bias or not? And how do you know if this test is truly valid? Do you take tests to decide what car you REALLY want? Or what books to read? Or anything else? Why rely on an outside source to tell you how you act? Deep down inside your hearts can't you even answer the most basic questions about yourselves? Why not find and take a test to determine how you should vote? "Oh you secretly actually are a conserative" Or your sexual preference? Yes I sound disjointed, because the whole premise is insane.
»

The question is

Why did I repost this? Aside from not being able to log in for a few minutes and not seeing anything being updated of course :-)
»

That's just the point.

[Edit: S6 edited this line from his second post, thinking the second post to be duplicative. It's a valuable thought though, so I'll retain it.] "I believe if a person has to take a test of all things to determine if they harbor subtle forms of racism, then they truly have no idea if they are a racist or not."

There is a great deal that we don't know about ourselves. A whole lot of conditioning that sits right under the surface, that we generally are unaware of. Tests like this are for helping us discover the things we can't see about ourselves, things that may be apparent to others but not to ourselves.

There's nothing particularly crazy about that. It is not uncommon that I will be surprised to find that I've offended or angered someone, quite unintentionally. Sometimes I really can't tell when I'm being a jerk or being unfair. So I look for an outside perspective, and ask my wife. Trust me, she's really good at providing perspective.

This kind of test is really just the same thing, a way of providing perspective. I can't always tell if I've been fair, been sensitive, or been way off the mark when interacting with people who have different backgrounds than myself. This test gives me a good sense of my own bias, so that I can be aware and be a better person. That's all.

One last thing. Be mindful of your own certitude, as well as of others who are unshakably certain about anything. Certainty is not a bad detector for fallacy.

The Canaanite's Call

»

Well...

I am suspicious of a test, as they historically tend to judge things based on what the creator(s) of the test want people to apply. When it comes to thoughts and ideals, there are too many variables for a test to be uniased.

A lot of conditioning also has to do with self preservation, or what people percive as a threat.

Consider seeing a group of loud people, wearing baggy clothes, shuffling down a sidewalk, and acting outside of your social norm. I have seen white and black people acting this way, and I tend to avoid those groups. Why? Because some instinct tells me loud unruly groups outside of my social group could be trouble. Am I correct? Am I racist? Or am I avoiding something that does not fit my group?

Consider if you saw me walking down the street openly wearing my sidearm and drinking tea. What is your reaction? My experience is that people make several different choices, some ignore it, some assume I must be a cop or security (after all "normal people" don't wear guns right?) they may consider my actions and view me as not threat, they may react on their beliefs anything outside of their norm is a threat, they may assume that since I am acting in this manner I must have every right to do so, or they go screaming to the police to protect them from the horrible armed tea drinker.

I don't think a test will show you if you have a subtle distinction between how armed people may or may not be a threat, anymore than if you have a subtle bias towards on race or another. This is something that you must answer out of your heart and your past experiences, coupled with your own worldview. A person who was mugged by a gang of will view those people differently than those who have not. Those with higher education will interact with races differently. I react with people based on outward action, and how I feel they will interact with me.

For instance every Monday I see a number of people who have been released from a local correctional facility (Shelton I think) at the Olympia Transit Center waiting for a bus to Lakewood. Sometimes I take that bus. These people range from bleary eyed former drug addicts who can barely communicate, to people who seem "normal" I avoid them all, regardless of race. Why? Because as a group, I do not wish to interact with them. Experience has shown me they are a less desireable group to interact with than others.

Ultimately, like seeks like. This to me is not wrong, but natural. Race, sex, creed, sexual orientation, these are not things in and of themselves that justify discrimination. I have a bias against those I cannot effectively communicate with, against those who have chosen lifestyles that strongly clash with mine, or with those who I feel based on outward actions or recent past history may be undesriable to associate with.

Action is the deciding factor. Some may not choose to associate with me because I am wearing a gun. I may choose not to associate with a person of color because they just got out of jail. I may choose not to associate with a white male because he is a drug addict.

I feel it is okay to have preferences in dealing with people. If you are a car dealer and an unwashed person with dirty clothes walks in at the same time someone in a three piece suit does, who will you talk to? Guess what, you just practiced economic discrimination. Was it wrong? To me no, because the choice was the one most likely on past experience to make a sale.

All people are created equal. They may not remain equal as they make life choices. All have basic fundemental human rights though that MUST be respected at all times.

That is to me is the balance point. If you respect human and civil liberties regardless of race, creed, etc... or if you would deny any of those liberties.

So the question is not, if you have a preference for one group or another, but if you would deny anyone civil and human rights.

»

did you take the test

or what?

image
»

did you not read

What I wrote about the Lynx browser earlier in this thread or what?

So now unless I take a test that I feel is pointless, I have no right to say WHY I feel it's pointless?

»

you are prejudiced!

You're prejudiced against tests!

image
»

Well clearly

You share an inborn bias of those using a text only browser, as you despite my present handicaps chose to upload a picture that presumably goes along with your post, without explaining for the picture challenged what it is.

Can I get a lawsuit out of this? :-)

»

blood from stone, friend

image
»

Bias plays a part.

A lot of the concerns that you brought up about clothes, body language, style, behavior, etc are not factors in the test.  It really does just narrow it down to race.

As far as whether implicit bias has an effect on behavior... well, it certainly does.  This does not mean that if you have a bias you have to act on it, but understanding the bias will help prevent (or promote, depending on your rational preference) its affect. 

There's a great deal of research out there showing how blacks pay more for cars, get paid less tips, and generally get the economic shaft - purely as a result of social bias.  Experiments measuring the affect of bias have been conducted, carefully controlling for clothing/presentation, background, education, etc.  I'll be posting some of this research in the coming weeks.

Guglielmo said this test doesn't measure racism; it measures implicit bias.  He's right, I exaggerated the headline on this post.  Having bias does not mean that your rational or conscious beliefs are racist.  A person can, and a whole lot do, have very strong beliefs against racism and also an unconscious bias against people of color.  It's important to know specifically because of our rational beliefs against racism.  We may not notice the affects of our bias, but I can promise you that the people affected by our bias do notice.

The Canaanite's Call

»

Anyone who pays too much for a car

Should learn more about the process before buying it.  There is a fine art to buying a car.  If you get shafted buying a car, you have nobody to blame for it but yourself.  I can't comment on tips, as I tip on service quality not skin color...  
»

Actually,

I'm referring more to well controlled behavioral experiments here than I am to the gathering of statistical information from normal economic exchanges.  The interesting thing about the research is that most people don't know when they are acting based on color.

I'll post the research later. 

The Canaanite's Call

»

my results

Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for African American compared to European American.

Regardless of my results, while taking the test I couldn't help but feel that it was just tricking my brain by switching around the choices. I feel like I guessed wrong on some of them because I wasn't quite straight on what side an answer was on, I'm not sure what this has to do with bias.

image
»

My result

I'm among the 17% that have "little to no preference"

»

Boy is S6 defensive or what?

Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for African American compared to European American.

»

Was your headline

Was your headline necessary?

I'll take the test, but before I do I'll admit that when it comes to women I'm physically attracted to Caucasians and Hispanics, sometimes Asians, rarely African-American though it's been known to happen. Does that make me racist?

»

lol

I had a friend that called me a racist for that. Very, very rarely have I found african-american women to be attractive. Other nationalities, some more than others, I've always had different attractions toward. I always got SO pissed at him over that. He's still a jerk.
»

Headline was unnecessary,

but I pasted from the website to save the keystrokes and that's what I got.

As to the racist question, I think that bias and prejudice, particularly bias and prejudice which we don't recognize in ourselves, is what makes a person a racist. 

Physical attraction is a whole different realm imho though bias and prejudice can probably influence attraction. I would point out that many slave owners engaged in intimate relations with their slaves, kind of suggests that physical attraction and racism are not necessarily incompatible.  

»

I would have to go through

I would have to go through all our old interaction to be sure, but there's a possibility that when you and others were trying to discuss "bias" I was equating the word with "racism" which may have...heh...biased my reaction to the topic. I fully accept that bias exists.

This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That's democracy for you.
C. Montgomery Burns

»

Ditto Merwyn.

Please don't be a jerk on my threads, Mike. 

The Canaanite's Call

»

I honestly need more detail

were you referring to my teasing S6 as being a jerk or the big bold font?  Need more detail and less vitriol there, Phil.
»

Annoyed actually

I'm still waiting for a test to tell me what subtle nuances actually influence my voting, so I will finally know how someone tenured know it all with too much time on his hands can tell ME what I believe.  
»

Tenured with too much time on his hands?

Who are you to decide what is or is not a valuable use of someone's time? What a decidedly anti-intellectual view of academia.
»

I was

Being sarcastic.  By extension if I think little of the test, then the creator(s) of the test also bear my scorn.  So now I'm anti-intellectual eh?  Ok.  BTW, who are you to decide that?  
»

You are free to think whatever you wish about the test

I welcome that opinion. And I have an opinion of people who think researchers have too much time on their hands.
»

Can I get a grant

To study where that other sock goes? 
»

Are you suggesting that

that is an unimportant question!?
»

I want an answer...

... to that one, as well as why my socks get holes so damned quick. 

The Canaanite's Call

»

This does no measure racism

it measures your bias. I demonstrate a slight prefference for white folks, a result that is no surprize to me.
»

It quickly got out of hand

It quickly got out of hand and I had to stop, I'll try again later. I don't think this test fairly demonstrates bias, it only demonstrates whether you have good hand-eye coordination (which I don't since I've been five years without my required corrective lenses), especially when it tells you to go as fast as you can.

Also, it designates "bad words" with Whites and "good words" with African-Americans; it's starting out already heavily biased.

When I hit the "left button" five times in a row, quickly, and then accidentally hit it for a sixth when I didn't mean to, that doesn't prove or disprove bias in anyway.

»

"Didn't mean to"

that's how it catches the implicit bias. We have little trouble associating good words with white folks. But when the table is turned, for some reason, we find it a little harder to adjust. Our timing is a bit slower. Or we're just flat out wrong. Also, the test adjusts for eye-hand coordination by running you through a baseline test in the beginning.
»

It had nothing to do with

It had nothing to do with associating words, it had everything to do with click-click-click. We'd miss just as many if the words were switched, or if we were dealing with mammals vs. reptiles.

This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That's democracy for you.
C. Montgomery Burns

»

I felt the same as merwyn

I think they should start the test with good/black, bad/white and see how the results work out.

image
»

No, you guys don't get it

they start with the "easy" one and measure your ability to answer the questions "correctly" and quickly. This creates a baseline of expected errors and timing. Then they give you the harder test (harder if bias exists) and compare those results with the first. Why should your eye-hand coordination be systematically worse in the second test? It's pretty elegant acctually.
»

but,

In the first series you get used to the pattern being a certain way, then they change it so that you're hitting a different key for different outcomes. It feels more like a mental trick than a test of bias. It should be tested with puppies and kittens, like all things, and then if it shows the same bias toward whichever we'll see that the test is flawed.

image
»

Maybe someone who does their

Maybe someone who does their crosswords and sudoku regularly is coordinated enough to breeze through it when they tell us speed matters. When you correctly click five lefts in a row, going fast because you're supposed to, it makes sense that you might not stop on the sixth regardless of what it might be showing. That sixth hit that you didn't mean to do could just as easily of been correct afterall.

It's no different than batting. You're supposed to swing at the good pitches, and let the bad pitches go by for a ball. The pitches are over 90 mph. The pitching machine shoots you five good ones that you connect with, the sixth one was a little high and you missed. You swung even though the ball was out of the strike zone.

Even if you were conditioned prior to the game that strike-zone pitches were White and Balls were Black your swinging wouldn't have proven any bias.

»

I don't like that analogy.

Having played baseball all of my life you don't swing at balls, only strikes. You're trained not to so even if you get a couple of good pitches in a row, say you foul off five pitches and you're at two strikes and the pitcher tries to get you to swing at a ball, you lay off and try to force a walk. Sorry, way off topic.

image
»

No it's not off topic,

No it's not off topic, although I probably should have clarified that this was batting practice where you're doing nothing but batting for an hour or so. An actual game would require different thinking and different strategy.

The whole point was if you're moving quickly by rote you're going to do something without thinking, and it has nothing to do with a bias on any issue. This same test could be used to "prove" Mac vs. PC biases.

»

"without thinking"

That's the whole point. Otherwise it would be a test measuring your explicit bias (something that is much easier to conceal). And you're right, the same test COULD be used to measure Mac-PC biases. These guys have similar tests for age, gun, and other biases.
»

So, if I'm walking down the

So, if I'm walking down the sidewalk at night, and a black person jumps out of a doorway and shouts BOO! and I jump and scream before realizing it's my fellow programmer from KAOS, it's showing a bias somehow? Does it matter that if it were you or Tammy I'd jump just as high?
»

Hey, you don't need to acknowledge implicit bias

and you are free to dismiss the test. The test's designers are well-respected researchers at the Harvard and University of Washington departments of psychology. The test has been in developemnt since about 1996 or so. I really don't know what to do with your hypotheticals.
»

Actually I've acknowledged

Actually I've acknowledged implicit bias elsewhere and am even willing to accept that a test might show more that was hidden. I just don't think the methods for this particular test is sound.

Now that the serious paragraph is out of the way I can point out, after you mentioned Harvard and UW, that I have an explicit bias against those two schools. Cougs and Trees do it for me.

This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That's democracy for you.
C. Montgomery Burns

»

About methodology.

Most of the questions asked about order of questioning, left/right handed, etc and their affects on the accuracy of the test have answers that can be found on the FAQ page for Project Implicit. 

The Canaanite's Call

»

Pete Rose used to say

that he swung at more bad pitches than good, because that is what was thrown to him.  He wanted to hit the ball, not walk.

»

Look how well he's doing now.

image
»

I'm not trying to argue that

I'm not trying to argue that there isn't bias; in fact I'm more than willing to admit to a bias. I also have no problem with the part about seeing a close-up of eyes and mistaking the race.

I just think this particular test isn't accurate in how it determines and scores bias. It depends on people's physical reflexes and the inertia of their clickety-clacking to achieve the results, after which people claim that it was our unconscious decision to think of one race as bad.

»

Sorry Merwyn

it does not depend on physical reflexes because the test establishes a baseline for those in the first go through.
»

If speed didn't matter

If speed didn't matter that'd be correct. Just because I can play pat-a-cake correctly at a certain speed doesn't mean I'm biased if I twist my arms up at double-speed.

I type 80+ words a minute. I can go faster but usahidly id s lokk s this.

Meanwhile if you connect me to a truth serum iv, have electrodes reading my pulse and brainwaves, and then put me in situations such as comparing black men in hoodies with white men in hoodies, or listening to audio of a speech in Queens English vs. the same speech in Ebonics, you'll get a more accurate idea of any bias I have.

»

Didn't we take this same test

a few months ago? I could swear I had a heated conversation with Meta about how dumb this test is.
»

Yes, I posted a link a few months ago

I'm pretty sure that those who think the test is dumb are merely projecting. ;)
»

I feel

That a person who scores "badly" on this test, can still be no more racist than Jessie Jackson. We are judged by our actions, not our thoughts.
»

Oh, absolutely

I don't think the test measures how you actually treat people. It is clearly possible to overcome your biases. Yet, the test reveals how our biases can still affect our subconsious and some behaviors.
»

There are a lot of unconscious processes...

...none of which have anything to do with a particular individual's bias, that could (and I would argue, do) cause this pattern of results. For example, priming, a well-known phenomenon related to the way that the mind represents language, could cause this effect. In short, there are strong associations between certain pairs of words. These associations have to do with the frequency of their coocurrance in the language -- NOT with any particular person's beliefs. I think the test is tapping into this mechanism, and not implicit attitudes. This is supported by the finding that prominent African American civil rights activists have been shown to score with preferences for European Americans -- a finding which I find dubious.


> It's OK to be nice. <
enpen's social contract
»

I don't know...

A lot of activists use the term "internalized oppression" to describe something that could be similar to implicit attitudes in oppressed populations.

I've been homeless, and I work with the homeless now, and I generally consider myself to be an anti-poverty activist.  But I'd be lying if I was to tell you that I don't have subtle attitudes that I still need to work on. 

You may be right about mixing up priming for implicit attitudes.  But priming affects behavior as well.  Either way, I think the test results should be taken seriously in terms of self-understanding and awareness of the way relate to people of color.

The Canaanite's Call

»

Absolutely.

I wouldn't call it internalized oppression, because it isn't really a measure of attitudes or intentions (implicit or otherwise), but rather a striking bit of evidence about the continued presence of racism at a cultural level. Everyone has had that experience of having some inappropriate racist/sexist/aggressive thought pop into their head -- followed by the thought: "Where the hell did that come from? I don't really think that." Well, there's a lot of stuff going on under the hood that never reaches awareness (such as priming). These processes can absolutely influence behavior (as shown by the differences in reaction times in the study), but still not be a good indicator about the beliefs and values of a particular individual.

I think the message from this study is that the present state of cultural bias is still strong enough that it is evident in the way language is represented in the brain.


> It's OK to be nice. <
enpen's social contract
»

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