Discussion 5 - Unconscious Prejudice Discussion PDF

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1. Jay Smooth’s main point about unconscious ideas is that many people today have good intentions and aren’t racist, but due to us all living in systemic structural issues involving race, we sometimes make a “mistake” and subconsciously say something we don’t intend to be racist (Jay Smooth). Unconscious prejudice is connected to cultural bias because we tend to show cultural preference without even actively thinking about it in our subconscious, as evident by the Project Implicit Survey where most Americans show a moderate bias towards European Americans. 2. People have biases or “unconscious prejudice” because “research shows that our racial biases are often more about who we choose to help . . . and we tend to help people who are similar to us” (Check our Bias to Wreck our Bias). Our behavior is impacted by bias because of this tendency to help those similar to ourselves, and is why the 6500 professors emailed in the second video of this discussion showed heavy bias towards white male names. We develop this behavior through learned cultural behavior, explained in the AAA statement on race that “studies of infant and early childhood learning and behavior attest to the reality of our cultures in forming who we are” (AAA Statement on "Race"). The anthropological term for this is culture, a set of learned and shared behavior. 3. Focal vocabulary in terms of race in America includes slurs and other offensive terms usually used to identify a physical trait of another race. These words are used in part with cultural categories of different races in America, combining to create certain behaviors and biases. The focal vocabulary most definitely reinforces racial hegemonic structures in American society because offensive slurs are used as a tool to demean the “lower class” group. In the words of the AAA, “The ideology magnified the differences among Europeans, Africans, and Indians, established a rigid hierarchy of socially exclusive categories” (AAA Statement on "Race”).

Sources: Smooth, Jay. “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Discussing Race,” TEDx Talks, November 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbdxeFcQtaU. American Anthropological Association Statement on "Race", May 17, 1998.

Check Our Bias to Wreck Our Bias, The New York Times...