Implicit Waters: Black Fish = Bad Fish, White Fish = Good Fish

Socialization – “swimming in the same waters” – often renders us racially illiterate. When we add a lack of humility to that illiteracy (because we don’t know what we don’t know), we get the disconnect we so often see when trying to engage white people in meaningful conversations about race.

You may be a white who claims you are not racist. But, no one can deny whites and minorities are still deeply divided by race. Eight in ten blacks say racism is a big problem in American society, and about half of whites say the same, according to the Pew Research Center. This is another telling statistic: 55% of whites believe whites are discriminated against in America today, according to a poll from Harvard, NPR and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

It is evident people develop strong emotionally laden opinions about racism, and those views will not necessarily be informed opinions. Why?

It is common to view racism as a binary concept. In other words, racist = bad; not racist = good. This binary conceptualization is an either/or proposition. If a person sees himself/herself on the non-racist side, what further action is required? None, because that person sincerely believes “I don't have a racist bone in my body. Racism is not my problem. It doesn't concern me, and there is nothing further I need to do.”

While this attitude is reassuring to Whites as it is used to negate any impropriety of bigoted misconduct, it limits, and, in fact, very often debilitates the active role of becoming a positive force to change lingering racial injustice. Statistics even show that a majority of Whites now view themselves as victims of reverse discrimination. Add the two together – a binary racial view and a belief that “things have gone too far” – and it is easy to see why many whites believe they need do nothing more to improve race relations.

Yet, implicit bias, or unconscious prejudice, does not necessarily align with a person's declared beliefs. People generally tend to hold implicit biases that favor our own ingroup. Extensive research has documented the disturbing effects of implicit racial biases in a variety of realms ranging from classrooms to courtrooms to hospitals. Implicit bias – bias that we harbor unintentionally – is much more difficult to eradicate. It remains pervasive.

For example, a 2012 study used identical case vignettes to examine how pediatricians’ implicit racial attitudes affect treatment recommendations for four common pediatric conditions. Results indicated that as pediatricians’ pro-White implicit biases increased, they were more likely to prescribe painkillers for vignette patients who were White as opposed to Black. This is just one example of how understanding implicit racial biases may help explain differential health care treatment, even for youths.

Other research explored the connection between criminal sentencing and Afrocentric features bias, which refers to the generally negative judgments and beliefs that many people hold regarding individuals who possess Afrocentric features such as dark skin, a wide nose, and full lips.

Consider also, from multinational corporations to police departments, organizations have tried to tackle the problem by hiring consultants to lead diversity or unconscious-bias training. But the science behind the approach is debated. A 2016 meta-analysis of 494 studies on the topic found little evidence that reducing implicit bias affects behavior.

White people are bad at admitting implicit bias and therefore good at denying the realities of racism, says Robin DiAngelo, who conducts workshops on race, including implicit bias, and recently provided Starbucks with feedback on training support and follow-up.

Addressing racism makes many white people feel anger, fear and guilt, which leads to denial, minimization and defensiveness, DiAngelo says, even though racism inevitably touches everyone.

"No one, no one can escape the messages of white superiority," she said, adding that the reflex to shut down conversations about racism helps keep it alive.

Implicit racial bias has been called "the new diversity paradigm – one that recognizes the role that bias plays in the day-to-day functioning

of all human beings." You can think of it generally as "thoughts

about people you didn't know you had."

Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald, capture this type of bias well in the title of a book they wrote about the concept. It's called Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People. The authors acknowledge mplicit bias lives deep in the subconscious, largely separate from the biases a person knows he/she has.

Studies have shown that people have implicit biases that favor Germans over Turks (in Germany), Japanese over Koreans (in Japan), men over women (when it comes to career-related stereotypes), youth over elderly, and straight people over gay people.

So it's no surprise race, if you live in America, there's a widespread preference for light-skinned over dark-skinned and white over black. A telling 2014 study, “Black Boys Viewed As Older, Less Innocent than Whites, Research Finds,” found that black boys as young as 10 may not be viewed in the same light of childhood innocence as their white peers, but are instead more likely to be mistaken as older, be perceived as guilty and face police violence if accused of a crime.

Black adults? A 2017 study, “People See Black Men as Larger, More Threatening, Than Same-Sized White Men,” revealed that people have a tendency to perceive black men as larger and more threatening than similarly sized white men. “Unarmed black men are disproportionately more likely to be shot and killed by police, and often these killings are accompanied by explanations that cite the physical size of the person shot,” said lead author John Paul Wilson, PhD, of Montclair State University.

“You” and Implicit Bias

In conclusion, you live in a culture that readily recognizes a continuing racial divide. On this, we all agree. You can choose to take no action to correct this problem if you like, but to do so helps perpetuate a blind spot that harbors inequality and injustice. And, just maybe you … yes, you … possess a little more bias against minorities than you think.

Those people who quickly link “White = Good and Black = Bad” are not necessarily prejudiced against Blacks. They don’t believe Blacks are bad people. Research by Eric Uhlmann and his colleagues at Yale University posited: “White Americans’ negative automatic associations with African Americans may partly result from associating members of low status groups with unfair circumstances.”

So, one can see Black families are often falsely associated with symptoms of systemic neighborhood disinvestment, such as criminality. Repeated exposure to these associations translates to a pervasive implicit association of race with risk, or more precisely, blackness with risk, and whiteness with security and safety.

Implicit biases often predict how you will behave more accurately than your conscious values. Instituting specific procedures of decision making and encouraging people to be mindful of the risks of implicit bias can help you avoid acting according to biases that are contrary to your conscious values and beliefs.

Research shows that the best way to remedy the effect of your implicit bias is to immerse yourself in opportunities to make positive connections with a diverse group of people and experience situations that may put you outside your comfort zone. In this way, you can begin to chip away at your personal ingrained implicit biases.

“From implicit bias you can [draw] a direct line … to the use of white supremacy

in our country that [carries the] notion that black people are inferior.

And I think most of us consciously have repudiated that,

but I think that is still in our unconscious.”

– Eva Paterson, the president of Equal Justice Society