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Although many white Americans consider themselves unbiased, when unconscious stereotypes are measured, some 90 percent implicitly link blacks with negative traits (evil, failure). (You can find a test of unconscious stereotyping at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/.) But recent studies challenge the conclusion that racism is natural and unavoidable. Evidence that we are wired for racism comes from studies in which whites were shown pictures of black faces. That typically produced a spike in activity in the part of the brain, called the amygdala, that is the source of wariness and vigilance, responding automatically and emotionally to possible threats. The greater the whites' negative attitude toward blacks, as measured on the unconscious-stereotyping test, the greater the activity in the amygdala when they saw black faces, compared with the activity when they saw white ones. (Data from studies in which blacks saw white faces are less clear-cut.) But that primitive response is not inevitable. In a new study, researchers found that it indeed occurred when the faces were flashed for 30 milliseconds, so quickly that they could be seen only subconsciously. [more]