A recent poll finding nearly half of Mississippi Republicans disapprove of interracial marriage is a disturbing reminder of the continuing prejudice faced by minority groups in 21st-century America. Why is such bias seemingly immune to eradication, and why does it seem to be more prevalent among social conservatives? A fascinating new study from Italy suggests at least part of the answer can be traced to the way we process information and form political attitudes. Psychologists Luigi Castelli and Luciana Carraro of the University of Padua present evidence that our perception of minority ... Read More
Walking Backward Out the Schoolhouse Door
December 7, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The NAACP held a conference last week in North Carolina to draw attention to a trend easily unnoticed in what many Americans have come to think of as the "post-racial" age ushered in by the nation's first black president: Fifty years after the Civil Rights era, American public schools are resegregating. More black students today attend "extremely segregated" schools than did in 1988, at the height of desegregation, the NAACP notes. It symbolically hosted the education conference in Raleigh, N.C., where the local school district has been wrestling with the controversial end to a busing ... Read More
Hey TSA, Racial Profiling Doesn’t Work
November 30, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Arguments over racial profiling at the airport security line typically turn around the assumption that such screening, at least to some extent, works. The idea may be unsavory, but it sounds logical: If we target people with a higher probability of being terrorists — whether they have Saudi passports, beards or headscarves — we'd have a better chance of catching real terrorists in the process. The question becomes one of morals. Is this the right thing to do? Does the societal benefit (catching more terrorists) outweigh the cost (compromising our ethics)? William Press, a professor ... Read More
Confederate Flag Activates Racist Mindset
November 29, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The Confederate flag, which continues to fly on buildings throughout the American South 150 years after the Civil War, is a potent symbol. But of what? Cultural heritage, answer many Southern whites. Lingering racism, insist many blacks. Newly published research provides evidence supporting the latter view. It suggests exposure to the flag evokes anti-black sentiments among whites, regardless of their stated beliefs on racial issues. Specifically, white students at a large state-supported Southern university who were exposed to images of the still-ubiquitous battle flag judged a ... Read More
Study Confirms Unconscious Linking of Blacks with Apes
July 12, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Two years ago, just after presidential candidate Barack Obama made his famous speech on race, we reported on disturbing evidence that white Americans unconsciously associate African Americans with apes. Newly published research suggests that connection remains stubbornly lodged in our psyches. “This broadly held association has the power to spontaneously change the content of one’s visual world,” Stanford University psychologists Aneeta Rattan and Jennifer Eberhardt report in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Specifically, they write, white Americans who are primed to ... Read More
Love Thy Neighbor? Not If He’s Different
May 4, 2010 • By • 25 Comments
Universal brotherhood and tolerance toward others remains common fare at Sunday church sermons everywhere, but does the message have any impact? Apparently not. In a new study drawing on nearly a half century of data, a team of researchers report that religious adherents in the United States — especially fundamentalist Christians — are more inclined than agnostics to harbor racist attitudes toward blacks and other minorities. This "religion-racism paradox," as University of Southern California social psychologist Wendy Wood explains it, is deeply embedded in organized religion which, by ... Read More
Racists Believe They Are Well Within the Norm
April 28, 2010 • By • 3 Comments
Racists take comfort in an imagined consensus. That’s the implication of a new Australian study, which suggests a possible approach to breaking through bigoted beliefs. The newly published research, which surveyed attitudes towards that nation’s Aboriginal population, found prejudiced people are far more likely than their non-prejudiced neighbors to believe their fellow Australians agree with their attitudes. Furthermore, they tend to think the attitudes of their friends and colleagues toward the minority group is even more negative than their own — a false belief that allows them ... Read More
‘Toughness’ on Crime Linked to Racial Resentment
March 24, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
The era of punitive punishment, in which campaign promises to get tough on crime lead to ever-stricter laws and harsher sentencing guidelines, may become a victim of the economic downturn. That’s the implication of a newly published New York Times story, which described the state of California’s attempt to save money by reducing its prison population. But how did the “lock them up and throw away the key” ethos come to dominate America’s approach to crime and punishment in the first place? Criminologists James Unnever of the University of South Florida-Sarasota and Francis Cullen ... Read More
The Invisible Woman of Color
November 22, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is a classic novel about a black man who feels unseen by his white neighbors. But new research suggests the most invisible Americans of all may be African-American women. A just-published study suggests black women experience "a qualitatively different form of racism" that contributes to them not being "recognized or correctly credited for their contributions." On an unconscious level, African-American females are "treated as interchangeable and indistinguishable from one another," according to University of Kansas psychologists Amanda Sesko and Monica ... Read More
