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What? I'm biased?(Local)

Article from: The Virginian Pilot Article date: November 02, 2008

FOR THE PAST year and a half, a team of psychology professors has been conducting remarkable experiments on how Americans view Barack Obama through the prism of race.

The scholars used a common research technique, the implicit association test, to measure whether people regarded Obama and other candidates as more foreign or more American. They found that research subjects -- particularly when primed to think of Obama as a black candidate -- subconsciously considered him less American than either Hillary Clinton or John McCain.

Indeed, the study found that the research ...

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'Unconscious' Racism Holds Obama Back

Posted Oct 5, 08 10:07 AM CDT in US,  Opinion,  Politics 

'Unconscious' Racism Holds Obama Back
Source: AP Photo/Steve Helber

(Newser) – Barack Obama’s race could be holding him back in polls by some 6 points, a poll suggests, but it’s not necessarily because of racists, Nicholas Kristof writes in the New York Times. More likely, it’s an unconscious matter of “aversive racism”—decisions made based on race by people who don’t think they’re racist, a phenomenon shown in decades of research.

Aversive racists’ “doubts tend to be attributed not to the person’s race—because that would be racism—but deflected to other areas that can be talked about, such as lack of experience,” says a psychologist. More than half of whites have such biases, experiments show. “But another lesson, a historical one, is that we can overcome unconscious bias,” Kristof notes. Prejudice against Catholics dropped after JFK was elected; experts speculate the same could happen with race.

Source: New York Times

More about:  Barack Obama • Election 2008 • race relations • the race card • Nicholas Kristof

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