A few months ago a paper came out, The Threat of Appearing Prejudiced and Race-based Attentional Biase, which got a lot of press. Here's the important part:
The research took place over six years at Stanford and Penn State under Eberhardt's supervision. It involved mostly white male undergraduates. In a series of studies that subliminally flashed black or white male faces on a screen for a fraction of a second to "prime" the students, researchers found subjects could identify blurry ape drawings much faster after they were primed with black faces than with white faces. The researchers consistently discovered a black-ape association even if the young adults said they knew nothing about its historical connotations. The connection was made only with African-American faces; the paper's third study failed to find an ape association with other non-white groups, such as Asians. Despite such race-specific findings, the researchers stressed that dehumanization and animal imagery have been used for centuries to justify violence against many oppressed groups.
Two salient points are that the subjects were young Stanford students. These aren't likely to be individuals pining for Jim Crow; rather, Stanford like most campuses attempts to raise consciousness on various race issues last I checked. Second, the effect is not one where all non-whites trigger the ape association; Asians do not. I bring this paper up partly because it relates to my comment yesterday that white-Asian multiracials can, and often do, pass as white or "mainstream" socially in the United States. In contrast, someone who is white-black is black according to society. Ward Connerly is a black conservative because he is 1/4 black in terms of ancestry; Dean Cain, who played Superman on television, just happens to have had a ethnically Japanese grandfather. This difference is important to note when we talk about racial issues; not all white vs. non-white can be swapped without effect.
So here's a new report from ScienceDaily, Fear of Messing Up May Undermine Interracial Contact:
Study participants indicated that they worry about inadvertently getting in trouble for somehow seeming biased. As a result, the study suggests, they behaved in a way that research shows people respond when faced with stimuli that cause them to feel threatened or anxious: they instinctively look at what is making them feel nervous and then ignore it.
In this case, study participants, 15 white college students, indicated that they were motivated to respond in non-prejudiced ways toward blacks primarily for appearance's sake because of concern about social disapproval -- rather than because of their internal values.
...
Richeson's study draws from a body of such clinical psychology research on threat and attention. Basically, that research shows that people who have anxiety about various stimuli in everyday life tend to ignore what is stressing them out, unlike people with clinical anxiety, who tend to fixate on what triggers their anxiety.
Richeson stresses in every class she teaches on stereotyping and prejudice that a solution to a problem often presents another problem. Ironically, her study suggests, standards to create a diverse yet harmonious society may unwittingly be encouraging anxious responses toward blacks.
The wording is a little strange here; the primary issue is that the authors are finding that there are implicit dynamics undernearth any conscious motivations. Just as most white male Stanford students will disavow associating blacks with apes, most white Americans are careful not to admit to fearing blacks, especially black males. In the first Beyond Belief V. S. Ramachandran admitted to his assocation between black males & crime when elucidating the nature of information processing and inference generation. I'm pretty sure if Ramachandran was a white native born American he would never have admitted this in front of dozens of colleagues and on video tape. I also doubt Ramachandran would have looked surprised when Neil deGrasse Tyson rose up and politely bitched him out. Honestly, what sensitized American would use that example to illustrate the associative nature of the mind in a public forum, especially when a black man is sitting right there in the front row? Despite Ramachandran's long residence in the United States I suspect he hasn't internalized the cultural reflexes which any normal white, upper middle class or above, or college educated or above, individual would have developed through socialization from elementary school on up.
But I think we need to cautious not to oversimplify the reaction to black males as undifferentiated racism. I recall a few years back watching American Beyond the Color Line, where Henry Louis Gates Jr. travels through black America. There was one segment on affluent and successful couples who had moved to upper class black enclaves; at one point one woman said it was so great to be around black people as now their social lives were better and their children could go over to the neighbors' houses to play. I found this pretty weird; is racism so bad that their children were totally isolated in their cul de sacs? Couldn't they strike up friendships with their neighbors? I myself am not white, and have spent the vast majority of my life in a "white world," and have never felt particularly excluded or alienated. Yes, I've had my non-trivial brushes with racism, but it's never been an omnipresent factor hanging over my head, at least to my knowledge. There are a few points that are relevant. First, I think I can pass as black American if my hair is shaved cut short, but I suspect most people can infer that my ancestry is from the Indian subcontinent. Perhaps the day to day racial reflxes didn't kick in to the same extent as they would if I was perceived as a black American. I'm rather sure that if I was perceived as a black American most people would assume that I'm not as intelligent as I am (and they might be less likely to look to me for help with setting up their wireless card at Starbucks as often happens to me).1 As it was I was asked where I was from, if I worshipped cows, and what not. Second, there is the important fact that we aren't just our group identity, but individuals. In all honesty there are people who you can infer by looking at them or knowing their name a great deal about their values & folkways. If someone's last name is "Patel" there is a far greater than average chance that they won't eat beef, if their last name is "Ali" there is a far greater than average chance that they won't eat pork. I'm not one of those individuals. Frankly, there's just a whole lot weird about me that my ethnic identity might quickly become a lot less salient than it would be if I was a more vanilla individual. Finally, there's the fact that black Americans have a self-identity as being part of a distinctive and robust American subculture with its own norms, values and folkways. The creation of black American communities of wealth might not be a factor of "push" as much as "pull." People are more comfortable with their own kind.
When I say "own kind" there might be some negative associations which crop up; but that doesn't need to be. Kind might be racial, religious or class-based; which American society notionally frowns upon as axes of association. But, it might also be ideological or lifestyle based, which American society is only coming to grips with. Quite often I am in social situations where I am the silent and invisible token "conservative." In these scenarios there is an unstated assumption of common "progressive" values and norms, and the discourse basically operates with some axioms as givens. People talk about Republicans or conservatives is they are an alien species which they clearly can't conceive of as being present & listening. This is not an unfamiliar situation for me; in high school many of my friends were very conservative or Mormon. They knew I tended to disagree on a variety of issues, but for the sake of speed they would pretend as if we shared the same assumptions anyhow because otherwise the conversation just wasn't as fluid. I knew enough about Mormonism to catch some allusions or metaphors for example; being a minority of one I accepted that even if I didn't share the norms and values I should be fluent in them so as to be able to trade in the common semantic currency. The same dynamic applies when I am socializing with liberals; I might not agree with all the axioms but I make sure I know the general score because it makes the conversation more intelligible.
I started this post with pointing to research which suggests that many white Americans have an association between blacks and apes, and am now ending with a discussion of the conscious domain of norms and values. There's a lot of grey territory in between, and many times norms and values bleed into the implicit territory through repetition (e.g., I've been in discussions where there was no question that everyone in the room supported abortion rights, there just wasn't any other conceivable possibility). A lot of the shape of public policy is determined with how facts and norms relate to each other, how we determine the ends and what means we find possible and palatable. All these are complicated questions, and unfortunately there's a lot of room for over-simplification and personal parasitism. If for example it is found that someone who is married to a black individual also has associations of blacks with apes what are you to conclude? Should they be scouraged for their racism? The implicit and explicit minds blur into each other, but neither should one be judged by the other, and each has their role. Women are much more racially conscious when speed dating (that is, they have much stronger preferences for individuals of the same race than men). Should we conclude that women are the repositories of race consciousness? I think we can explain this finding in a simpler manner in terms of differentiating between male and female ends in this sort of dating...if you know what I mean. In terms of personal parasitism, having lived in the Pacific Northwest for most of my life so I believe I have a lot of experience with this. I've encountered many people who excoriate white Americans from the South for being racist bigots who can't appreciate diversity; at the same time I observe that many of these same individuals are internal migrants from the Bay Area or Los Angeles. In other words, it is rather easy to criticize others for being racist when you yourself are relatively insulated from said issues by virtue of residence in a region without much diversity. This an example of using racism as a status marker. In contrast, during one of my college jobs I had an acquaintance who was black who would use his racial minority status to insulate himself from "first firing" (his term). Basically he explained his modus to me as thus: he totally slacked off when he first began working at a new job until the supervisor called him in to talk about his lack of workplace productivity. He would then object that as a large black male he found that people were scared of him and judged him excessively harshly; instead of being fired he would get a reprimand from the nervous supervisor, and he would henceforth work just enough not to be fired. It took them about a month of him not working before he was called when I worked with him (when he worked near me it was pretty annoying since he always wanted to talk or shoot the shit, distracting me from my task).
Social issues are complex. Social science is riddled with results not reproduced or not properly controlled in terms of confounds. Relating these often tendentious data to how we want to organize the world is often difficult. People unreflectively praise diversity, but generally my own experience is that ideological or value differences can make it almost impossible to derive agreed upon inferences from a body of work. Whenever I post on the nuances of evolutionary and population genetics in terms of various human races, I often notice many links which declare that "See, race does not exist!" Well, actually, I do think that reasonably construed human races do exist! But I don't object too strongly because to get from here to there often takes a lot of work, and many of the differences hinge on disputes over definitions of words and the weights upon each definition. This isn't too surprising; there are many posts where I toss out some empirical results without much commentary where others draw totally inverted conclusion from my own. But then I know my own values, I don't know theirs.
1 - I don't encounter black Americans very often, but I've remarked several times that it seems white Americans are much more likely to let stupid comments slide if they are are uttered by a black American than otherwise. My own self-perception is that though I have some slack on several issues (e.g., my Islamophobia) many times my comments will elicit objections or critiques as if I am a peer rather than whatever black people are perceived as.
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It's probably not even helpful to point out that humans actually are apes....
Presumably in this context the usage of ape to mean "non-human ape" is implied.
(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape#Cultural_aspects_of_non-human_apes)
wait up, these are social scientists...don't go all cladist on them ;-)
"There was one segment on affluent and successful couples who had moved to upper class black enclaves; at one point one woman said it was so great to be around black people as now their social lives were better and their children could go over to the neighbors' houses to play."
growing up African American in a rural area of Ohio, then moving to Chicago, and then later to the MidAtlantic coastal area I can say this depends on where you live. As a child in Western Ohio I didn't feel or experience much racism. Most of my friends were white and I often slept over at their houses.
I think when I became a team we had moved to Chicago and their were a lot of "ethnic whites" (where as in Ohio white was white...most were Anglo-Saxon, German, ancestry...), in Chicago there were Poles, Italians, Greeks, Irish, etc. I found that the Italians were the most anti-black, but at the same time i found they acted more like the urban black subculture than any other whites. this was the late 1980's and they worse the big chains, spoke the slang, listened to rap, etc. Most of the Poles were not doing that, a few of the Irish. The Jews definitely were not, and the Italians tended to pick on them (they tended to be nerds).
Then by the start of high school I moved to Virginia and believe it or not, although the former heard of the confederacy, the coastal areas were far more tolerant than Chicago. There was more mixing of races (Asians, blacks, and whites) in my high school, this includes more interracial dating. I had a lot of white and Asian (mostly Filipino and Chinese American) friends. There were incidence of racism but they were far more rare than in Chicago...but everywhere I lived the people were pretty solidly middle class.
Another thing to consider, that I think you hit on, a lot of older blacks (depending on how they grew up) do not trust white people and assume them all racist until proven otherwise. Some blacks just don't like white people, not hatred, but they just don't have much in common with them (they don't often watch the same TV shows, enjoy the same comedy, music taste is often different, etc). I think the older the black and white people the more true this is. Also the more class differentiation. Many middle class whites come from families that were middle class in the 70's and 60's, many blacks who are middle class now come from families who were poor and often nearly illiterate in the 60's. One of my own grandfathers could barely read the newspaper, would read "out loud" and he knew men his age who could not read at all, all from the Jim Crow deep south who dropped out of school to try to find work in the North or go in the military (WWII) during the Great Depression.
To make a long story short there his historic animosity and distrust and it is not always whites don't want to be around blacks. Often it is blacks don't like to be around whites when they feel they don't need to and do not go out of their way to be friendly to them either.
Also I think if I would have spent my teen years in Ohio it might have been that the centrifugal force of groupism would have push me in a "black orbit" away from my white friends by junior high, this does happen.
If you, Razib, had grew up in a area that was 15% South Asian you might have had a different experience as well. I think when you are one of a few people of your ethnicity in an area their is less cultural/racial polarization and you are just not as "threatening" you in fact are "special" or "exotic" to some and people will befriend you faster than if you have 500 of your co-racials behind you. :-)
The black person - nonhuman ape connection is kinda weird, but oh, well.
I don't tend to join in discussions about race, because there's this notion that people can completely excise racism from their own minds. I don't think that's possible. The best I can do is recognize when I'm responding to a person's race, gender, religion, etc., try to suppress that response, and focus on the person instead.
I doubt I carry around more implicit assumption baggage than other people do, but it's there and damned hard to get rid of. After several decades of trying, I've dumped some of it, but what's left sneaks out to surprise me more often that I'd like.
If you, Razib, had grew up in a area that was 15% South Asian you might have had a different experience as well. I think when you are one of a few people of your ethnicity in an area their is less cultural/racial polarization and you are just not as "threatening" you in fact are "special" or "exotic" to some and people will befriend you faster than if you have 500 of your co-racials behind you. :-)
yeah. this is surely right. that's one reason i'm not a big fan of huge concentrations of south asians.
Maybe the experiment only showed that viewing high contrast figures helped subjects detect high contrast figures. Did they try some shape other than 'ape'?
It would not surprise me at all to find that classes on stereotyping and prejudice create more problems than they solve. I noted some years ago that many Black grad students and professors from Africa or Caribbean countries seemed to have more relaxed and friendly relations with white students than Black Americans did. Why? My guess was they hadn't been trained to expect a racist interaction. Their lack of prickly defensiveness allowed the whites to relax and behave normally. American Blacks and whites (especially outside the South) are so uptight about race that it is hard to relax and relate normally. In the South there are enough unavoidable interactions that the nervousness wears off and people just act like people, mostly.
Their lack of prickly defensiveness allowed the whites to relax and behave normally.
this can be generalized to any dyads X & Y.
In terms of general visual similarity (as in patterns of light and dark), I'd expect a Black face to look more like most types of apes than an Asian, Indian, or Caucasian face. Just because they're darker than most.
If they'd shaved the chimps / gorillas / etc. first, perhaps they'd have gotten different results.
In terms of general visual similarity (as in patterns of light and dark), I'd expect a Black face to look more like most types of apes than an Asian, Indian, or Caucasian face. Just because they're darker than most.
a good test would be facial features then. i haven't read the original paper cuz i don't have access. if anyone wants, they can email contactgnxp@gmail.com.
I agree with Caledonian. There are other traits which may rimind of apes, i suppose. well.... flat nose. But most obvious is the colour, of course.
One addition - if the Orangutans, Gorillas and Chimps builded the ape humanity - they surely would find each other somewhat resemling... baboons:)
I thought the reasons are clear and have nothing in common with the rasism. Nothing derived from the rasism, to be correct.
As well as the fact that people find closely-related languages sound funny, or that the apes look funny.
Once i was surprised to find that one particular East Asian resembled me the ape by... don't remember what. M.b. his gait or his cnstitution, or the face. Then i thought for a while and came to the conclusion i've posted above.
It would be interesting to ask Blacks from e.g. Transkey, South Africa to come through the same test. Caucasians have a disadvantage: the colour, but...
P.S. Excuse my English, please.
PPS (just finished 'Europeans don't like...' comments)
I'm kinda happy to live in a country without the prominent rasial issue (not so many blacks here), as well as without political correctness.
I may invent all these concepts of equality and respect to the minorities/others/genders/anibody myself and feel noble and proud:) (the picture is different when it's widely discussed)
And i can say what i feel or think!
I usually feel myself tired reading the Americans discussing the issue. What a headache they have:)
Only one thing makes me sad - i would be not so happy if i was a Black or a gay or Caucasian (a man from Caucasus:)) or whoever:-/
The first thing I think of here is prognathism. A feature shared by apes and human populations who are skeletally negroid amongst others.
Also the whole "double standards" thing about 1/4 black and 1/4 asian people has got to have a lot to do with simple empirical differences in appearance between such people. It really could just be that simple. Bjork looks more mongoloid than Dean Cain, so do a lot of Finns or Norwegians, though I guess one could argue that that may possibly be because they actually are.
Ward Connerly looks less white than Dean Cain in objective ways. If we tried to design a facial recognition computer to assign race it would have a harder time with Cain than Connerly. Ditto if we trained a dog to do the same (which probably would be possible).
Ethnic whites are interesting to be around. I grew up generic white guy, but a friend of mine is a Finn ethnic white from Chicago. Talking to him is like stepping back in time to an earlier America. When he sees others whites, he sees ethnicity -- especially the Northern European/Southern European differences. His mother would be very upset if he married a white girl with Southern European features. Finns best, then other Nordics, then Germanic/Anglo-Saxons. then Irish. Slavs and Italians are a last resort.
I think the generic White racial category in America came about because there was the polar opposite Black category to define itself against. I think that's partly why there are so few ethnic whites in the South.
It'll be interesting to see what happens going forward. In areas where Asian and Hispanic minorities are small in % terms it is my experience that they basically become "White" in the way they are treated. Of course, once you get a sizable ethnic cohort then there's potential to become a new racial category. The intermarriage rates show dramatically more intermarriage among whites-asians and whites-hispanics than whites-blacks.
I know the Black-White divide is more of an eastern US issue, but I think it's such a powerful mental construct that it's operative even where Hispanics and Asians are larger numerically than Blacks. I think new immigrant groups to America quickly choose sides (and have it chosen for them) on the Black-White divide -- and most learn to identify more with Whites than with Blacks.
Dark-skinned South Asians provide a fascinating twist on the normal Black-White racial categorical scheme of America. I think it really does throw many Americans for a loop. Although, even there, my prediction is that dark-skinned South Asians will, long term, basically be treated as dark-skinned White people.
Jim,
While I can't speak for all White people, I see most South Asians as looking like darker versions of myself, so familiar.
Facial features are what to me defines the "foreignness" of some African Americans and some South East Asians - especially prognathism and having very wide noses.
So for example someone like Kiran Desai, whom I know through a mutual acquaintance, is always going to look familiar to me, whereas Barack Obama - whom I'm probably closer to genetically - is more foreign looking.
paul, desi is 1/4 german ;-) though point taken.
whereas Barack Obama - whom I'm probably closer to genetically - is more foreign looking.
hm. i don't know about that. could just average out the Fsts right?
Very interesting discussion. I can only say that when I was a exchange student in inner Virginia (two decades ago) I was quite shocked by the subtle but very solid divide between white and black people (and the emphasis in racial classification in all sort of official papers, unheard of for me and that I found quite repulsive).
Anyhow, I read this yesterday: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7329768.stm . The article deals with a curious research that found that some (UK) English accents make people be percieved as much more or less intelligent. Bristol accent in particular gave much worse intelligence perceptions than mute photos.
It's somewhat related: stereotypes seem to be deeply embedded in subjective perceptions. I think it may serve as contrast, not just because it's about stereotypes of white Britons but also because it's not about looks but sounds.
1) They used a particular sub-set of primates - Western African apes. These usually have dark skin (in adulthood) and flat noses. By contrast, the Proboscis Monkey looks very much like a caricature of a European.
2) Apes are associated with Africa. Would they have similar results with pictures of, say, antelopes or African elephants? (The study mentions use of elephant images, but no specific data is given - only averages for ape / non-ape images)
3) A South Asian female friend confided to me that white, blonde males (not girls) made her think of monkeys. This makes sense when you know what the typical Asian monkey looks like - and thus, what South Asians identify as "a monkey".
The variety found among apes is also found among humans, because humans are apes. The underlying potential avenues for morphological variation are the same. Some people look more like African apes, other look more like Asian monkeys. Add to this a natural tendency to de-humanize the out-group (which is also mentioned in the literature review of the article).
In short, I'm not convinced that this particular study is specific evidence of anti-Black racism as much as more general mechanisms of inter-group associations. I believe that the original Implicit Association Test is much, much more efficient for the purpose of demonstrating implicit anti-Black prejudice (it certainly taught me something...)
PS: While googling for the IAT I found this study, apparently from the same guys, which suggests that "Showing pictures of admired blacks or elderly can lower levels of unconscious prejudice". If true, this would suggest that the basic mechanism of prejudice is indeed based on association with past encounters (or media reports thereof), rather than a direct, "Hamiltonian" defiance towards strangers in general.
By contrast, the Proboscis Monkey looks very much like a caricature of a European.
That's interesting.
It looks really like _some_of_the_caricatures_of_an_European_. Though it's not so easy to me to associate it with man. There's nothing similar in the shape of the nose with the european or human one from my european point of view. I always wondered why caricaturists draw human nose this way!
Seems evolution and caricaturists imagination follow the same paths:)
@jim
In terms of biogeographic categories Finns and Nordics are actually not that "pure" in relation to a major cluster because of the Sami and the genetic influence of other original Uralic speakers. Despite them often being blond the Sami are actually quite likely to be a result of mixture between bone fide skeletal mongoloids with skeletal caucasoids. Bjork's features, though not an indication that she is in general more similar to (say) Chinese than a typical Icelander, may be the result of actual mongoloid ancestry. Ditto Rene Zellweger (who is half actual Sami).
There is also a good chance that people from the Horn of Africa such as Ethiopians and Somalis (and northern Sudanese) are the result of past mixture between people who were bone fide skeletal caucasoids with bone fide skeletal negroids and not some kind of "origin of man" as some people paint them. The linguistic evidence would support that hypothesis.
An interesting part is that while many common racial categories are supported by autosomal clustering "white" is not one of them. "White" seems to be a composite of appearance and culture, often corresponding to what was once "Christendom". For example the Maltese are often considered white despite Spencer Wells demonstrating that they are mostly genetically of Punic origin similar to the people we now call "Arabs" living in the Levant. They're actually genetically closer to Syrians than Italians. White racists don't generally get up in arms about Malta being admitted to the EU and being permitted to emigrate to any EU country and "race mix" with white women, but they would with Turkey being admitted to the EU. In reality the average Turk is probably genetically closer to the average (say) German than is the average Maltese.
Also most Americans consider Ralph Nader, Tiffany Darwish and Mika just white rather than non-white or "mixed". A component of that is the way they dress and behave, but also their physical appearance to an extent. Turks can also play this trick. For example in the UK most people consider Tracy Emin to be white and don't think about her race. It helps if you have a Christian sounding name, either by adoption or because you actually are a Christian (e.g. Ralph Nader, Casey Kasem or Tony Shalhoub). Here is an article in the Guardian originally berating Ralph Nader as a "millionaire white man", now altered,
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_adams/2007/06/nader_nada.ht…
This "white" category was also at times historically absent. When Septimius Severus became Roman emperor there was no outcry that a "half breed" was becoming the leader of the Roman Empire, at least in terms of our modern racial categories, but there is evidence that the Romans (and indeed the Phoenicians) recognised the negroid / caucasoid distinction. The Carthaginians (who unlike the Egyptians had only a little contact with actual negroids) even produced some coins with visages with exaggerated negroid features. "White" is a category at least partly defined by the Christianity / Islam barrier and not by genetically valid categories or even bodily physical appearance.
Another phenomenon is the broader meaning of "white" in Europe than in the USA. Nobody over here would get the idea of claiming an Arab or Turk is not white, and most people called "Hispanic" in the USA would automatically be considered "white", too, because that's what many people around the Mediterranean and all the way to India look like. (And pretty far south into India.)
I've never come across a racist outcry against the fact that Turkey is an EU candidate. Sure, there is a broad sentiment that Turkey shouldn't join the EU, but that's about culture & religion (as you say -- the Maltese are as Catholic as the Irish or the Poles, because it's part of their national self-identification), or at most about ethnicity (like the prejudices Germans and Poles, or the different "ethnic whites" of the USA, have about each other), never about perceived race.
@David MarjanoviÄ
Nah, I believe that the EU and the USA have pretty much zero difference in what they consider to be white. Also the idea that the USA can more successfully assimilate immigrants than EU countries is a nationalist myth. Whether either can do so is mostly a function of who the immigrants are. Mostly immigrants who assimilate in America also assimilate in the EU and vice versa. Indeed in some cases Europe is more assimilating, for example blacks in the UK are more likely to have a white partner than blacks in the USA.