IAT Test

I was raised by a single, non-white mother from a lower-class background. I don't remember being privileged throughout my life and definitely not for being partially white. In fact, I remember a lot more suspicion, scrutiny and isolation due to it.

After reading the article by McIntosh I was in complete agreement. I feel it is uncommon for the privileged group to recognize their own privilege. I know I have had conversations with my peers about white privilege and those conversations have not lead to the agreement that there is white privilege. I think you really need to do as the author did and list things that you would otherwise take for granted, find what is in our knapsacks. I find that I am always checking myself when it comes to my interactions with others. Did I act a certain way due to the race of the people I am around? From the article by Bronson, it is discussed how children differentiate on their own. Our brains are wired to find the similarities and relate to those. It makes

I have experienced how my socioeconomic status can cause people to view me as a lesser human. I have had to exhaust myself to prove I am capable of contributing to my school, family, and community. I know what it’s like to be underestimated and overlooked, to not feel good enough because I don’t have enough money, because I’m not smart enough, because I don’t think the way I am expected to, because I have ideas and plans and want to do more with my life than anyone ever anticipated. I care about people and I can empathize with them because I know what it’s like to overcome obstacles, to beat the odds, to be more than what anyone wanted. I know how to live unafraid of others opinions, speak my mind and embrace every opportunity and have a unique perspective of the world thanks to my parents and

The ways some of my privileges are related to race are to the fact that my mother is white. She is very educated, and a successful business owner. By having the upper hand in life, my mother was able to take care of me great.

Ready to test my own subconscious decisions I decided to take the Race IAT test. The test is designed to gauge your automatic preferences between African Americans and European Americans. The test begins with a series of questions which involve your demographics, and a set that ask you straight forward questions about your preferences. Followed by, a test constructed to test your subconscious preferences between the two. Pictures and words are then generated, and you are asked to make a quick association between the races and a simple good or bad response. The results of my test classified me as a person who moderately prefers European Americans to African Americans. Honestly, my moderate preference to whites over blacks is not all that

My results for the Race IAT assessment were that I had no automatic preference between black and white people. 18% of people scored the same result as me. I do agree with my results because I did not think I was racist before the test so I was hoping I would get this result. The test measured whether I carried implicit racism or not by measuring the strength of association between the concept and evaluations. In this case, the concept was european and african American or black people and white people and the evaluation was good or bad. I think that it is a valid way to measure whether someone is racist but if you are trying to measure if someone is racist they should try this test and another test so the person can get

I have learned that I was born into a life full of privilege, although many times in my life I have felt as if that was not the case. Mary E. Swigonski notes several aspects of privilege in her article "Challenging Privilege Through Africentric Social Work Practice", all of which I can identify with. Some examples are: "I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race, I will feel welcome and normal in the usual walks of public life, and I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systematic racism for their daily protection" (Swingonski,1996). These kinds of privilege had never really occurred to me until I began studying social work and especially while working on this assignment, which definitely shows just how much privilege I am accustomed to

“To be white in America means not having to think about it,” declares James Baldwin. What Baldwin means by this is that white people do not have to think about how their race affects their lives on a daily basis. To take this to a further level, in American society to have privilege in any identity group is to not have to think about how being part of that group shapes your life daily and to think of what it would be like to be part of a different identity group. In fact, for most people thinking of how being part of a privileged group makes their lives easier makes people uncomfortable or annoyed for having to think about their privilege, all of this which A.G. Johnson calls “the luxury of obliviousness” (Johnson, A.G. (2006). Privilege, Oppression, and Difference. p. 12-40). Johnson paraphrases Peggy

American society consists of many equal races, yet people believe that as a white American, I am more privileged than others. However, I have learned that race is not the only factor that determines my status or position in life. In addition, the concept of white privilege is not as prominent in younger generations. Despite the assumptions made by others about the privileges whites are given, there are circumstances where being white negatively impacts me.

Am I privileged because I’m white? I’ve never thought that being a white, middle class, woman would cause a classification of myself being privileged. I’ve truly struggled over this past two weeks with this topic, and for various reasons. I came from a rough home, where alcohol abuse, emotional and mental trauma was abundant. After leaving home at an age of 17 years, I was on the streets for a few weeks. I’ve endured the hardship of not having clothing, or food to eat. I understand the feeling of being scrutinized for my appearance. When I finally got accepted into a shelter, it was scary. Everyone was white and going through hardship. Thinking back, I have to wonder why the entire shelter was white? All this being said, it’s taken years to get to where I am today. Nothing was given to me, nor was it handed to me. Everything has been an uphill battle. So understandably, this topic has been a struggle for me to come to terms with.

I experience a fair amount of privilege. Being a person coming from a great deal of privilege shapes the person I am but it does not take away the fact that I am not blind to those who do not have such privilege as

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) I chose to take was the Race IAT test. It tests the users ability to associate with images of European Americans (white) and African Americans (black) as well as words that correspond to good and bad. The normative results are that most Americans tend to have some form of an automatic association with European Americans. My results were typical. I felt a little embarrassed at first in reaction to seeing the results of a slight automatic preference to European Americans. I even took the test again to see if I would be better prepared for it and the result remained the same.

We are always trying to figure out where we are in this world, or how we got where we are today. Obviously you have no choice of parents or where your born and these are two major contributing factors of who am I today. Being born white and a male society has immediately granted social advantages or white privileges. But, how privileged was I really? Being born in a highly populated city to first generations Americans without high school diplomas. I did have some advantages and I realized them growing up around my non-white friends. But compared to other white people I didn’t see my self privileged in many ways.

To begin, I would like to examine the privilege that I inherited when I was born to a white mother and father. It is important, as a white person, to end the silence that so many white people engage in daily, regarding their privilege. It is not common to hear people speaking about the privilege they experience. This may be due to guilt. It may also be because most people wouldn’t want to willingly admit that all they were able to achieve, the stability they feel in their lives, and the pride they feel for the success that they created for themselves, in large part is due to how people in society perceive them as members of a privileged group. This isn’t to say that those who have achieved success have not earned it, but it must be said that skin color has made certain things easier for white people, and that it may have played a large role in their ability to achieve their potential. Of course I worked hard to be where I am today, but I

I never even consider the amount of mindbugs I have until reading Blindspot. After taking the IAT test about race did I truly discover these mindbugs. This experience was an eye opener to prejudges I might have]. Before taking the IAT test I thought I would have a higher preference for African Americans. The IAT race test presents black faces, white faces, good words (“joy,” “love,” “peace,” etc.) and bad words (“evil,” “failure,” “hurt,” etc.), and you respond as quickly by pressing one of two keys. If you work faster when good words are assigned to the same key as white faces, you purportedly prefer white people. After it revealed my hidden bias of preferring whites over blacks, I was stunned. Since I was a child I have always loved deeper skin colors. I wanted a black bitty baby instead of a white one. I always had African American friends I’ve always been one to fight for the social injustices of others, that’s why I was shocked when I found out I have a slight automatic preference for white people. In Blindspot, after taking the Race IAT test, many had themselves pondering a certain question, “Does this mean I am prejudice?” (Banaji and Greenwald pg.46) I even had the thought, even after educating myself on all the horrific things America has done to people of color, I was surprised to see a slight preference to white. Society had definitely influenced my white preference with in-group favoritism. In-group favoritism “is a pattern of favoring members of one's in-group