Courtland Milloy: Out From Under The Thumb Of White Bias

• The Implicit Association Test exposes bias that is deep-seated.
  

I took the Race Implicit Association Test --  it measures "the thumbprint of culture on our minds," says Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji. So now it can be told: "Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for Black relative to White," the summary of my test results said. For some readers, no doubt, this is confirmation -- if any was needed -- that I am a "reverse racist." But the last thing I wanted was to end up in that group of African Americans who showed a pro-white, or anti-black, bias. I'm talking about 48 percent of black test takers who have internalized the same biases as a majority of white people: Black is bad; white is good. The shackles of slavery may have been taken off the black body more than 140 years ago, but many a black mind remains in chains. Of course, the test results don't reveal much that is new. A lot of black people have long looked down on their race. At the same time, the results do provide something of an update on racial progress. Note the findings of another race bias test, conducted recently by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago. As Vedantam reported, 5,000 résumés were sent to 1,250 employers who had help-wanted ads in Chicago and Boston. Some applicants were given stereotypically white-sounding names such as Greg; others were given black-sounding names such as Tyrone. Every employer got four résumés: an average white applicant, an average black applicant, a highly skilled white applicant and a highly skilled black applicant." Vedantam noted that only one outcome was measured: "Which résumés triggered callbacks?" Résumés with white-sounding names triggered 50 percent more callbacks than those with black-sounding names. Researchers also found that highly qualified black applicants drew no more calls than did average black applicants and that lower-skilled white applicants got more callbacks than highly skilled blacks.[more]

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