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Importance of research method
Effects of race discrimination on society
Effects of race discrimination on society
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Angela Meyer Throughout the article, Buried with Prejudice, Siri Carpenter describes how researchers pick the brains of different cultures/ethnicities to better understand where prejudices come from, how they affect out psyche and if these biases can be overcome. He started by introducing a study that was performed where it was noticed that people in society recognizes people, places and things and ultimately places them into groups. Like noted in this article, “A person will be faster to respond to related pairs like hammer and nail as oppose to hammer and cotton ball”. Such responses allow researchers to depict hidden “pairing-thoughts” with different social groups, such as, negative connotations when thinking of women, African …show more content…
Both the Caucasians and African Americans mistaken a harmless object (i.e. cell phone or hand tool) for a gun if an African American is holding the item. In conjunction of this “unconscious fear” researchers decided to observe how these two races interact and communicate in a normal social setting. In the study they revealed that Caucasians frequently avoided eye contact or other uncomforting nonverbal ques of avoidance. These ques were detected by the African Americans and even believed that the Caucasians were doing so intentionally. When asking the Caucasians how they thought the interactions went they claimed it went very well. Lastly the article discusses that latest works claims we can restructure these views. Some researchers even suggest these imbedded processes do not imply person’s state of mind, in other words deem them prejudice. With hard work it is possible to consciously regulate your thoughts about other cultures or ethnicities. Although if multiethnic communication is exhausting people will avoid individuals from different cultures altogether. Siri closing by saying, “If we accept this tenet of the human condition, then we have a choice about how to …show more content…
And the worst part is: we act on them”. I start question if some police officer’s genuinely mistaken harmless object, as noted, just because an African American accompanies it. Reflecting upon this I realized I have been in a similar situation, minus the “weapon bias”. Walking in downtown Cincinnati my Fiancé and I are headed to a show at the Aronoff Center. A few minutes into the walk an African American (whose clothing was holed, covered in dirt and he carrying a large garbage bag on his back) was starting to approach us along the sidewalk. I clenched the arm of my Fiancé a little tighter fearing that something bad was going to happen. I unintentionally reacted with fear. I winced praying, “I hope we are not harmed.” Where could this have come from? Growing up in the Army (moving place to place) my family had many multicultural family-friends. Can people really say they learn these attributes from their parents like suggested in the article? The article reads, “children whose mothers had more negative implicit attitudes towards black…tended to choose white over black playmates” (p.35). I felt unsure in my experience if this was the case. Concentrating on what they called the “weapon bias” during the incident of Amadou Diallo, the police officer may have had similar “fearful” feelings (as I did) only the officer’s justified taking
Subsequently, this was a distressing revelation to me and according to (Mahzarin and Tony, 2013) “who were not pleased to discover that hidden race bias was an uninvited potential mindbug,” (pg. 52). Consequently, my cultural experiences or at times lack of true cultural experiences created within me a hidden bias about African
Referring to the article with the same name “I’m Not Racist, But…”, a social psychology lecturer at the University of Sydney, Dr. Fiona White says, “stereotyping is a normal cognitive process that allows us to efficiently categorise things into groups” but “becomes problematic when people begin to endorse certain negative associations and allows these negative associations to affect their behavior towards certain groups.”
Some common ethnic stereotypes are derived out of implicit social cognition, also known as implicit bias. The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity defines implicit bias in their report titled, “Understanding Implicit Bias”. “… Implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that effect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner” (“Understanding Implicit Bias”). Stereotypes from implicit bias contrast with others because they are created in one’s subconscious, not necessarily from a palpable event or reason. Implicit biases can become rooted in a person’s subconscious in several different manners. “In addition to early life experiences, the media and news programming are often-cited origins of implicit associations,” says the Kirwan Institute (“Understanding Implicit Bias”). The manner in which the American media portrays specific groups of people influence the implicit biases of the American people. These biases causes people to have feelings or attitudes about other races, ethnicities, age groups, and appearances (“Understanding Implicit
The police officer may not have explicitly racist beliefs, nevertheless, may enact racist attitudes in an unconscious evaluation and responses. The police officer perceives the male black as a threat because of the implicit bias subconscious. Police officers have the cognitive to use negative stereotypes and unconsciously act on them, even when conflicts explicitly avow. Racial profiling by police officers is one of the primary concern and commonly used, implicit and explicit. Racial profiling has recently become decorous among law enforcement officers. “Some Americans believed that police engaged in racial profiling, and 69 percent disagreed with the practice” (Dempsey & Forst, 2015, p.243). Police officers have a lot of discretion in their jobs, and this particularly evident in traffic stops. If people don’t feel they can trust police officers, the relationship will deteriorate. All people, no matter what race have biases that lead to automatic behavior responses, we are more or less aware
The hidden bias test by Project Implicit was interesting method of determining hidden biases. A hidden bias is, “Biases thought to be absent or extinguished remain as "mental residue" in most of us.”(Teaching Tolerance, 2014). Studies have shown a link between biases and behavior and biases can be revealed through an individual’s actions. If biases are revealed through actions then they must be learned. Teaching Tolerance indicates, “Bias is perpetuated by conformity with in-group attitudes and socialization by the culture at large.” (Teaching Tolerance, 2014). This perspective supports the belief which biases are learned and never forgotten and reestablished through behavior. My perception of biases is they are formed through experiences not group conformity. Culture is important influence in forming biases, yet biases can change. According to Teaching Tolerance, even if a bias still changes it lingers in the unconscious. An interesting perspective, biases continue to stay with each of us even if we think it is hidden.
In the videos all over the news and internet we have seen numerous cases of innocent lives of black people in the United States being taken. It was found that “nearly 1 in 3 black people killed by police in 2015 were identified as unarmed, though the actual number is likely higher due to underreporting” (“Police Killed More”). While about 33% of victims have been unarmed, for some reason these officers’ first instincts were to pull out their guns and shoot. These instincts are likely attributed to these officers’ past experience with violent black criminals; yet, what about their experiences with violent white criminals? Why don’t we hear about innocent, unarmed white lives being taken by the police force? It’s because it’s much less likely to happen. According to 2015 reports, unarmed blacks were killed five times faster than whites (“Police Killed More”). Also, based on a project by The Guardian, “black males between the ages of 15 and 34 are nine times more likely to be killed by police than any other demographic” (Craven). This evidence shows that safe to say that because there aren’t really any stereotypes on white people to be violent, the officers don’t initially think to pull out their guns and shoot. Stereotypes attached to young black males such as being violent thugs and criminals are the only logical explanation or excuse for
Second, many whites define culture in a way that draws impermeable boundaries around groups, and that views culture as consisting of flat and unchanging holdovers from the past. Moreover, equating ethnicity with race is a related strategy for evading racism, which actually highlights cultural heritage and denies whiteness as a phenomenon worth scrutiny. Furthermore, they evade white racism by constructing sentences that allow them to talk while removing themselves from racism. The final strategy is to avoid the use of a subject together by employing passive sentence construction. However, the more subtle one is the process called "white racial bonding", which the author explains as the interactions that have the purpose of affirming a common stance on race-related issues, legitimating particular interpretations of oppressed groups, and drawing we-they boundaries, for example, using strategic eye-contact, jokes and/or codewords.
...ce, personality, and genetics that we all share (p. 5). While we try our best to not discriminate or oppress as humans we have unfortunately been taught to categorize. We are born with the ability to quickly gather information and categorize it in a way that makes sense to us. We categorize people by what they say, how they act, how they look and in this situation the language they choose to speak. This way of categorizing often leads to shallow or hurtful stereotypes these thoughts are inevitable. By judging, assuming we created the negative stigma and form ideas about what or who we think we know.
In the article, Buried Prejudice by Siri Carpenter, we are shown how our world has come up with different stereotypes to categorize people. Nevertheless, this is all learned from a young age of how to make these assumptions and further our behaviors toward others. Many of these stereotypes that we have learned to put into categories are blacks versus whites, females versus males, young versus old, thin versus thick, straight and gays and etc. This article explains how people use their “awareness, perceptions, expectations and judgements” to make an accusation about someone because this is how they have learned to survive in the environment in which they live in (pg. 33).Also, we are given many different studies of tests done to show how people
In our global economy requiring functional and respectful relationships between nations, prejudice and stereotypes can be a destructive force both in the world and in individual societies, especially in diverse ones.
A current event that vaguely mirrors police misconduct and the racial prejudice in similar traffic stops like Cameron and Christian by Officer Ryan is the “arrest of Raymond Wiley, a 66-year-old black man”, on Friday morning when he “was stopped by a police officer and ultimately arrested” as he was taking a walk about four blocks from his house, wearing a pair of gloves to pick up any recyclables in his path as he is a scrapper and travels to automobile shops to collect spare pieces of metal for sale (Winkley). He was also “carrying a shortened cane with duct tape” for protection against unleashed dogs he’s encountered previously. According to police officials, an officer spotted Wiley and suspected he was casing nearby vehicles(Winkley). When stopped and searched, the officer found his car keys (which police officials claim could be utilized to break into vehicles) as well as $2,500 in cash. Wiley was soon arrested on suspicion of two felony charges: possession of a baton as well as burglary tools. His lawyer claims the only thing “Wiley is guilty of being black and living in Encanto”(Winkley). The original article, published by the San Diego Union Tribune appears to have no underlying biases, as it gives both sides a platform to tell their story and remains neutral throughout the
Officers are trained and taught different polices that require them not to be biased towards any gender or race. Such officers include Sunil Dutta, if you don’t want to get shot, tasted pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you.” (Dutta) uses policies to their advantage. Lack of African-American officers, mainly in communities with citizens of color, can lead to an inquiry that there is a bias in law enforcement agencies and their policies. With recent events in the news displaying the misconduct of officers in an African-American communities like, in July of 2014, where the death of Eric Garner because of “chokehold” by a police officer hit home for many African-Americans and made them question the legislative decisions on policies causing a distrust and lack of confidence within the police departments, shying away citizens from
The first characteristic of stereotyping is over-generalisation. A number of studies conducted found that different combinations of traits were associated with groups of different ethnic and national origin (Katz and Braly, 1933). However, stereotyping does not imply that all members of a group are judged in these ways, just that a typical member of a group can be categorised in such judgements, that they possess the characteristics of the group. Still, when we talk of a group, we do so by imagining a member of that group.
Prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping are important topics at the cause of debating within social psychology. A stereotype is a generalization about a group of people, in which certain traits cling to all members, regardless of actual individual variation (Akert, Aronson, & Wilson, 2010). As humans, people assign objects and individuals into categories to organize the environment. Individuals do this for not only organization, but also survival. Is stereotyping inevitable? That is the question; according to Devine (2007), it is, but Lepore and Brown (2007) have to disagree. Devine believes that “stereotyping is automatic, which makes it inevitable.” On the other hand, Lepore and Brown are not convinced that stereotyping is automatic, and have claimed, after observation, that it depends on the individual.
Many often justify discrimination through the means of statistical evidence, claiming that groups that are stigmatized deserve their treatment by citing negative attributes about them. However, this paradox is frequently unresolved to even those who realize the fallacy in discrimination. Several researchers in social psychology, including Galen V. Bodenhausen and Jennifer A. Richeson, have offered potential reasons behind this happening; “It should come as no surprise that individuals’ attitudes and stereotypical beliefs affect the way intergroup interactions unfold. Indeed, individuals who harbor negative stereotypes about the group membership of their interaction partners often display behavior that conforms to their stereotypical beliefs”(Bodenhausen & Richeson, 361). This shows how those discriminated against are likely to adapt to their societal status, and thus often behave according to their respective stereotypes. From this, one can begin to infer that this paradox is a reinforcing cycle, and that prejudice forms as a result of discrimination. Building upon this trend, in the final chapters of the text, a Peters reflects on the trends and results derived from Jane’s exercises, and how it related to the act of discrimination itself; “But even more pernicious, [the exercise] also illustrates how the results of discrimination tend