Systemic Racism

Posted On July 4, 2020

My Own Bias:

This is a very important thing to note! Despite my conscious awareness that I have unconscious biases, I still am implicitly biased against black people. Now that I know this, I will make note of times that I feel something towards or against black people and will compare it to the way I think I might feel towards white people in similar situations. From there, the hope is to become more aware of when I’m feeling biased and to prevent these feelings from becoming actions. Perhaps then I will also be able to close the gap of my implicit biases so I won’t be negatively impacting those around me due to something as arbitrary as the pigment of their skin.

For instance – on a sex based discrimination – I heard a female news host interviewing another woman. And the news host was asking her questions, as they do. But to me, her voice was very abrasive and combative. Then I wondered, “Am I getting frustrated with her being assertive because she’s a woman? If she were a man, would I be annoyed with her asking these questions?” I concluded that I probably would not be annoyed. Rather than getting angry at this woman, I decided, I should admire her strength in being confident and direct.

In another example, when Sam Smith first came out with their song “Stay with Me,” I got physically tense and noticeably irritated when they sang the lyric, “Why am I feeling so emotional” and “I don’t want you to leave; will you hold my hand?” I was angry because I perceived a male acting in socially-deemed feminine ways. And it bothered me. I saw that reaction as it was – sexist. If this person had been a female, I would not have been upset.

That’s not to say that this one thing makes me a sexist, rather that I have sexist biases that I need to be more aware of and fight against by reminding myself that men have feelings and needs just as women do. I do this by exposing myself to content that allows me to adjust and adapt to this fact.

The fact that I can easily come up with examples of sexist reactions I’ve had but that I struggle to come up with examples of racists reactions is a negative thing. It means I pay more attention to my sexist behaviors than I do my racist behaviors. In one way, that might make sense due to the fact that I’m exposed to men and women as a group more than I am to a minority. However, I think I also am just more willing to ignore these behaviors because they don’t effect me as much. This is not cool and is something I should be more conscious of.

The more awareness we have of implicit bias, the more able we are to fight against it. What’s more, the more we understand implicit bias, the more we can understand systemic racism, which will allow us to agree upon measures that can be taken in order to make the cost of living in America an even playing field. What’s more important than your own individual bias is a bias that systematically keeps minorities from having the same opportunities to succeed as white people.

Speaking of, I’m not done here. We still have like ten other studies to go.

But, if you’re convinced and you’re starting to think, TL;DR, skip to the end.

Empathy:

In a study done entitled “Racism and the Empathy for Pain on Our Skin,” 61 participants were hooked up to nodes that measured their physiological responses to videos they watched. There were 12 different videos consisting of 6 different actors: 2 white, 2 Asian, and 2 black with one of each gender. The videos comprised of a person either being introduced to a painful stimulus (a needle) or a harmless one (an eraser).

When the participants saw a white or Asian person being introduced to a painful stimulus, their skin conductance level (used to measure stress) was significantly greater than when shown a black person being introduced to a painful stimulus. Furthermore, participants reactions were positively corelated to their results from the implicit association tests. Meaning, the greater one’s preference for white people over black people, the greater the reduction in physiological response to perceived pain in black people.

There are numerous studies that also reach similar conclusions. Another study focuses specifically on white and Chinese people, with more telling results than the above study (I imagine because it uses fMRI technology). While another focuses on the positive effect of simply being in contact with people of other races, so much so that it significantly reduces the empathy gap.

Health Care:

Doctors are significantly more likely to rate black people (at 47%) as overestimating their pain than any other race (at 33%). Additionally, in a study done in two parts (one with participants who don’t have a medical education and the other with participants who are medical students), 73% and 50%, respectively, of the participants rated black people as having biological differences to white people in that they assessed the black body to be stronger than the white body. Compound that with the disparity between races on being treated using analgesics and opioids (black people 22% less likely to get analgesics and 29% less likely to get opioids than their white counterparts and Latinos having no difference in their likelihood of getting analgesics, while being 22% less likely to get opioids than white people), and the difference in medical care becomes very clear.

Likeability:

In 2009 another study was done in which people were shown three pictures of Obama: one manipulated to make his skin lighter, one manipulated to make his skin darker, and the other untouched. People who voted for him thought the real picture was the lighter skinned one, while people who didn’t vote for him thought the real picture was the darker skinned one.  This also held true when the participants were shown pictures of unknown biracial candidates. The participants were told a “candidates” platform, and based on whether they agreed or disagreed with the candidate, they rated the lighter or darker pictures as more true to the candidates.

Trust:

Participants took an implicit association test (IAT) by rating photographs of varying faces of different races and rating them 0-9 on how trustworthy they were. White faces were deemed more trustworthy. Then the participants were given money with which they had a choice in giving the person photographed a portion of that money of which would be quadrupled with the option of the photographed person keeping the money or giving away half of it. This game measured the trust the participants had in the person photographed. IAT scores positively correlated with trust. White people were trusted 80% more than black people.

TL;DR:

The above is only a small sample of the studies done that prove how different races are treated, and, more importantly, they cumulatively show the disparities that exist in our society. To quote Kimberly Jones, “How can you win? You can’t win. The game is fixed.”

You might wonder how we counter this systemic racism that is so rampant in our country. And the answer is through representation. A major criticism I get about this (specifically about affirmative action) is, “I don’t care what race a person is. I just want the best person for the job.” To which I would say that affirmative action is the assurance of getting the best person for the job. Affirmative action is the way to combat the affirmative action we subconsciously use that benefits white men over anyone else, that sees white men as better capable, more trustworthy, more honest, more deserving of care, easier to empathize with, and on and on.

One the next page are my resources, along with my summaries of what they say. You will see that there are studies I didn’t include above. They are in bold, and they are studies based purely off statistics and are therefore up to interpretation. The idea is that given all the above information, one would be able to come to the conclusion that these statistics are a result of the clear systemic racism that occurs in our country.