Why Does Racism Persist?

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- One reason racism may continue to exist is because many people think say one thing and do another, a new study finds.

Researchers examined why racist acts against blacks are still alarmingly common even though racists carry a powerful social stigma.

"People do not think of themselves as prejudiced, and they predict that they would be very upset by a racist act and would take action," Kerry Kawakami, lead author and a psychology professor at York University in Toronto was quoted as saying. However, the study revealed people's responses are much less overt than expected.

While thinking they were waiting for an experiment to begin, student participants watched as a white accomplice made a racist comment to a black accomplice.

"The racist comments ranged from moderate to one of the most powerful anti-black slurs in the English language," Kawakami said.

 The participants were then asked to choose a partner to work with on a subsequent exercise. Students were 63 percent more likely to choose the white confederate as a partner.

"People often make inaccurate forecasts about how they would respond emotionally to negative events," Elizabeth Dunn, Ph.D., a professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and an expert on people's ability to predict their future emotional responses, was quoted as saying. "They vastly overestimate how upset they would feel in bad situations such as hearing a racial slur."

Dr. Dunn says people may quell their negative emotions after witnessing a racial comment by reconstructing it as a joke or harmless remark. 

SOURCE: Science, January 9, 2009

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