Racial Bias Research Paper

Racial bias, defined as “unreasonably hostile feelings or opinions about a social group” by Dictionary.com in which the social groups are different races, has been a problem for a long time, and it still exsts today. People cannot ignore the truth that is being shoved in our faces on the media. There are multiple examples of racial bias in the criminal justice system. If you don't believe this, here are some statistics by the Huffington Post: In a California study, the ACLU found blacks three times more likely to be stopped than whites, African Americans are arrested for drug offenses at rates 2 to 11 times higher than whites stated in a May 2009 report by Human Rights Watch, the U.S. Sentencing Commission in March 2010 stated that, in the

The Implicit Association Test or IAT is a valuable tool that those in the criminal justice system use; often times during the hiring process candidates will be required to complete the IAT so that hiring officials can see if they have any unconscious bias. The IAT is still relatively new in terms of psychological research only being created in the 1990’s by psychologist Anthony Greenwald (Kaufman, 2011). Individuals who take the race portion of the test are shown pictures of Caucasian and African-American males or females, then are given positive or negative words that they associate with each race as fast as possible. After taking the test it measures the unconscious bias that everyone has deep down (Kaufman, 2011).

Prejudice is a huge factor in how people treat others. “After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, rumors spread, fueled by race prejudice, of a plot among Japanese-Americans to sabotage the war effort” (history.com). When fear causes rumors to spread, prejudice is allowed to run free;however, not all people allow prejudice get in the way of their

Research centers for the study of racial bias have developed experimental studies to help understand how race can, for instance, influence a police officer to shoot an unarmed suspect. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is one of the most commonly used tests for this study. IAT was developed by three scientists, Tony Greenwald (University of Washington), Mahzarin Banaji (Harvard University), and Brian Nosek (University of Virginia) (“ProjectImplicit”). Their “Project Implicit” program was designed to identify our societal biases through the association of faces (black and white) with words (good and bad). This program uses a scoring algorithm that can identify those who are faking the test with approximately 75% accuracy (Cvencek et al.).

What contributes to people becoming racist? Numerous factors contribute to the construction of people’s beliefs and ideologies. First, childhood environment plays a fundamental part in creating one’s identity, such as, residing in a monoracial neighbourhood, and family and friends’ sociopolitical view. Second, academic curriculum determines what information one receives. As each curriculum emphasizes varying aspects of historical background. For example, religious schools and racially homogeneous schools tend to have different academic curriculum. All of these components ultimately contribute to finalizing people’s mindsets: ignorance, religious belief, hereditary beliefs, and spatial and social isolation.

Dovidio, Gaertner & Kawakami (2002) found that a shorter timed response of implicit prejudice predicted spontaneous nonverbal behaviors, such that there was a negative bias from Whites towards Blacks, despite explicit self-report measures by Whites indicating a more positive bias. However, studies have shown that individuals can employ implicit motivational tactics to control these implicit attitudes to such an extent that these associations and negative biases are non-existent. Glaser & Knowles (2008) found that those who had an implicit motivation to control prejudice did not show an association between weapons with Blacks (as opposed to Whites) and the Shooter Bias—being more likely to “shoot” the Black individual quicker than the White individual. That is, participants were equally likely to “shoot” both White and Black individuals. It might be noteworthy then, to investigate the effect priming has on more specific stimuli such as names. Namely, this study aims to investigate how likely White individuals are to match stereotypically Black or White names to a description of an individual after having been primed with hostile versus non-hostile behavior, and whether differences in frequency of matching are seen in individuals showing high versus low implicit prejudice. Thus, it is proposed that priming individuals with images of stereotypes characteristic of Black individuals (such as hostility) will facilitate the activation of implicit prejudices—high or

It can be difficult to maintain a different mindset, and sometimes relapses can occur. The implicit associations we harbor cause us to have feelings and attitudes about others based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity, age, and appearance, which can produce structural injustice. This is often seen in law enforcement, for example, police officers pulling over Philandro Castille over 44 times due to subconscious racial profiling. Structural injustices that people experience can be a result of “often unconscious assumptions and reaction of well-meaning people in ordinary interactions, media and cultural stereotypes, and…the normal processes of everyday life” (Young, 72). Everyone possesses some implicit bias shown through his/her actions. Even if an individual does not intend to be biased, certain stereotypes and beliefs are innate due to his/her upbringing. For example, in media, African-Americans are portrayed as drug dealers and/or criminals. Due to this, people tend to associate African-Americans with such stereotypes. Law enforcers are not immune to this exposure and form an implicit bias against these ethnic groups. They should not be blamed for their unintentional implicit biases, but should still hold some responsibility for their actions. In the case of Philandro Castile, Officer Jeronimo Yanez should have considered his actions, but his subconscious told

Racism and racial stereotypes have existed throughout human history. The radical belief associated by thinking the skin color, language, or a person’s nationality is the reason that someone is one way or another has become extremely detrimental to society. Throughout human existence it has sparked tension between groups of people and ultimately influenced wars and even caused slavery. Racism in America dates back to when Native Americans were often attacked, relocated, and assimilated into European culture. Since then, racism within the states has grown to include various other cultures as well. In the essays by Brent Staples, Bharati Mukherjee, and Manuel Munoz, they discuss the various causes as well as the effects that racial stereotyping can place on a victim and the stigma it leaves behind for the society to witness.

For this assignment, I chose the Race Bias Implicit Association Test. I was surprised because I have taken this same assessment for another class years ago and my results changed. The first time I took the test, I received a result that did show a slightly biased preference for European American’s over African Americans. However, this time, I took my time to read and select the answer that I thought was best. However, this time around, the data suggested no automatic preference between African Americans and European Americans. I was honestly shocked at these results after conditioning myself to believe that slight implicit bias was normal after reading my results on my first attempt a few semesters back. The first time I took this test, I was devastated by the thought of even the slightest bit of bias as I’ve always been a bit of a social justice warrior when it comes to race issues. Initially I attributed the results to poorly worded questions and then attempted to rationalize by

The environment in which one is born in has a way of embedded certain ideas into one’s head. Through socialization and personal experience, these ideas are formed and many people are never consciously aware of where these ideas stemmed from. Implicit bias is an unconscious thought process that many individuals are never aware of due to its intrinsic nature. The United States of America, which may be a country rich in diversity and culture, is also a place that is struggling to overcome a history of racism, oppression, and prejudice that has been prevalent since its founding. Over time, we have experienced less explicit racial discrimination and bias but implicit racial biases seems to be a vast concern worth exploring in the

In this modern world, prejudice is still a universal problem we still have yet to overcome. Although it is true that our society is much less prejudiced than it was 40-50 years ago, we are still struggling to create racial harmony in a world that is so diverse in terms of racial group, sexual orientations, ethnicity, nationality, religions, and so on. I think the core of prejudice comes from stereotyping, which is the generalization of motives, characteristics, or behavior to an entire group of people. In the world where media propaganda is ubiquitous, often times most stereotypes are not formed on valid experiences, instead they are based on images publicized by the mass media, or even created within our heads after seeing and hearing examples from many different sources, like movies, or even hearsay. Stereotyping is more powerful than we think, because it allows those false pictures to control our thinking that leads us to assign uniform characteristics to any person in a group, without consideration of the actual difference between members of that particular group.

Although there are some with varied findings, most studies has concluded that “jurors of one race tend to show bias against defendants who belong to another race” and that the difference in race “influenced both verdicts and sentencing” (Kang et al., 2012, p.1142/3). Judges, “both as citizens and as elected officials,” can also be prone to the general implicit bias in society and allow racial stereotypes to affect their decisions regarding the incarceration of an offender (Steffensmeier, 1998, p.768). It is therefore not surprising that research suggests that “in one hundred otherwise identical trials, eight more Black than White defendants would be found guilty” (Kang et al., 2012, p.1142/3) and receive longer sentences (Steffensmeier, 1998, p.775). Oliver (2003) notes

Despite global increases in diversity, social prejudices continue to fuel intergroup conflict, disparities and discrimination (Amodio, 2014). What exactly is prejudice tendencies and how can one avoid it? One of the most common types of prejudice is racial. Racial prejudice is based upon negative preconceived notions of select racial groups with the assumption that all members of a particular racial group can be categorized with the same negative characteristics (Gassner & McGuigan, 2014). To better understand prejudice I took the “Test Yourself for Hidden Biases” questionnaire on race. I have to say that I was not impressed with how this test was used to find out if you have unconscious prejudice towards African Americans. The test

people discriminate: Evidence from a series of natural field experiments. No. w17855. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012.

Another attribute that leads to racial discrimination is the way that people find means to justify their actions by degrading the actions of others. For instance, during the Vietnam War, American soldiers assumed that civilians of small villages were aiding the Vietcong. Based on presumption, the soldiers felt justified to torture the villagers and destroy their homes. “If we are able to convince ourselves that another group is inferior, immoral, or dangerous, then we can feel justified in discriminating against them, enslaving them, or even killing them”. The American soldiers deemed the torturing of the village people reasonable by convincing themselves that it would help destroy the Vietcong. Self-justification is apparent even in today’s society. Humans are always searching for excuses to justify our actions towards one another.