Priya Patel

Adam Padgett

ENGL102

04/04/2017

Are You Subconsciously a Racist?

Racism a topic that is never truly talked about in private with our friends and family

and is ignored most of the time to avoid conflict. We believe if it is out of sight then it is out of

our minds. Racism started early in our countrys history. It was an awful time for those who

suffered. We learned about it in a majority of the schools as we grew up from middle school to

high school. However, we learn about racism as if it is a topic of the past. No one believes

themselves to be racists nor do they want to be considered as one. How do we truly know though

if we are racist, no matter how high our morals are? I argue that racism is not as prevalent in

todays society as it used to be in the pre-Civil War, yet we fail to realize subtle racial biases, in

the 21st century, that are held subconsciously in all of our minds. However, are we all racist

without realizing it? Do we all believe that there is no such thing as racism unless we see severe

cases of it or that we all have a subtle way of being racist?

Subtle racism is when racism happens yet the victim or the creator are oblivious to the

fact that is racism unless it is a severe/blunt case. In America, the melting pot of the world, there

still is racism to this day and perhaps more than we fail to realize. There is still a gap between

perception and reality. For example, prior to President Obama becoming inaugurated, in 2009,

there was a poll taken to show how the people of the country felt as to where we stood on racism

in the USA (Reid, 291). 26% Americans believed racism was a huge social problem, 39%

believed that racial conflicts are still continued today, and 77% believed that race relations were
good (Reid, 291). More than 60% believe that life for people of color has gotten better over the

last few years (Reid, 292). Yet in reality 74% of Blacks polled, said they have been personally

discriminated against, 60% said they felt unwelcome in a store, and 40% reported being

stopped by police due to their race (Reid, 292). This shows how there is a large gap like stated

earlier. This shows how the gap shows a misconception of racism on one side which can lead to

subtle racism. In todays world, when one person is made fun of due to their culture it is

considered to be stereotyping and holding prejudices but not racism. However, many dont know

that these two forms of discrimination fall under the main topic of racism (Reid). I believe this is

a misconception that has been validating how people blur what truly is and is not racism. The

more the topic of racism is ignored the more the topic is becoming blurred in todays world. The

misconception is, therefore, rooted and then the thought of racism does not exist because it is not

as severe as it once was.

Then there is racism that is very subtle that neither the victim or the creator is aware of

the act being done. What is common in todays society is aversive racism. Aversive racism is a

form of racial microaggressions (DeAngelis, 2009). Microaggressions are stereotype threats that

lead to racism (DeAngelis, 2009). Whereas aversion is based socially and is subtle. For example:

When race A tends not to discriminate against race B, race Bs qualifications are just as strong or

as weak as the race As (DeAngelis, 2009). However, when race Bs qualifications are

ambiguous, race A tends to favor their own race versus race B (DeAngelis, 2009). This shows

how racism has evolved, we dont associate these types of events as racism because they happen

subconsciously. We choose to think that I only did that because I was the normal thing to do.

However, when we think about our day to day lives, we interact with people who look very

similar to us and tend to favor those types of people more. Think about your group of friends. Do
they all look similar to you? It can be more than skin tone, sometimes we have friends that have

the same hair and eye colors as well. We arent necessarily forcing ourselves to stick with our

own race/culture but subconsciously we feel favored towards those we look like most. This

shows how the definition of racism has changed as well. We used to view it as bluntly

segregating races whereas now its sort of blurred into subconscious actions we do every day

with our friends.

When relating the topic of subtle racism to everyday life, people may think what are

some ways in which this is shown. One example is a research study held with people aged 18-35

(millennials) and older people which resulted in showing that millennials are more accepting of

diversity. However, millennials believe themselves to be open-minded 100% and not be a

persecutor of any sort of racism, even subtle racism. Even though those who are aged 18-29 have

more racial diversity, more educated and more racially tolerant than their parents/grandparents,

they still harbor some of the same subconscious prejudices as them (PBS, 2015). The specific

experiment expressed how implicit bias is not just an issue between all blacks and whites but it

exists with all races. When you look around, you see people from all different backgrounds.

You have no idea where theyre from really or what theyre thinking or what theyre doing here.

But we categorize them instantly. (PBS, 2015). This type of subtle racism is probably one of the

most related to what racism has evolved to today, yet we use the term stereotype or prejudice as

a form of not believing that racism is happening. For example, a form of stereotyping race is

believing that all whites are privileged and that all blacks are criminals. This changes our

mindset of racism and makes us believe that it is not happening. The situation merely goes over

our heads and on both the receiving and giving ends of the situation, neither realizing what has

happened.
 The chart below resulted from an experiment which tested undergraduate students on

subtle racism. It is showing the views on racial bias based on gender as well as whether they

react to the written text of the game or to playing the video game itself (Gutierrez). In the video

game, a special game was designed called Fair Play, is a character named as Jamal, a black

graduate student (Gutierrez). Throughout the game the the players are playing as they would

form the perspective of Jamal and would experience subtle racism. The whole purpose of the

game is the player to play as Jamal and to help him get his science degree (Gutierrez). This was

compared to males and females who simply read the text of what Jamal experienced while trying

to obtain his degree. The data, down below, is showing how each gender in each setting reacted

to the game or text through awareness of bias, perspective talking, empathy and IAT (implicit

association test). While looking at the chart you can see that both males and females felt more

empathy while reading the text. When it came to Perspective talking females and males almost

were the same in average. In bias awareness, males were more open to seeing so while playing

the game more so than reading the text. Lastly, when it came down to IAT males had a higher

average in the game than the text and for females the results were opposite. The data is

ultimately showing that those who played the video games showed less bias when it came to

subtle racism (Gutierrez). This shows how we don't realize that subtle racism exists or is real

until we are put in the shoes of the person who is the victim of it. Racism is a sensitive topic and

we choose to not talk about it but when it comes down to if it still exists, we know it does but

dont really understand when it is happening. This experiment shows that subtle racism is the

new definition of racism in the 21st century and that this opened the eyes of those who didnt

believe/know if racism still existed.

 Females and Males on Racial Bias : Text and
6 Games
5.7 (Gutierrez) 5.69
5.38
4.98 4.97 5.01 5.12
4.89 4.77
5

4 3.76 3.71
3.11
AVERAGE NUMBERS

1
0.25 0.26 0.367
0.18
0
Males Female Male Female
Text Game
Bais Awareness Perspective Talking Empathy IAT

Not only does subtle racism occur through video games but also it occurs in the housing

world as well. Many minorities such as Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans suffer

housing discriminations. "Between 2000 and 2002 the department of housing and urban

developments conducted an extensive series of audits measuring housing discrimination against

Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans." (Pager). This was done in 5500 tests in 30

metropolitan areas (Pager). From the pie chart, the article is trying to show that roughly in every

one out of five houses Blacks experience discriminations. As for Hispanics, they suffer

discrimination when searching for roughly one out of every four houses. Along with the those

who did offer showing them a house they were shown houses that offered fewer opportunities

and were homes from less wealthy communities and neighborhoods (Pager). They assumed that

the minorities wanted to live where other minorities wanted to live as well so the neighborhoods

shown to them had higher minority residents (Pager). This shows that we as a country may not
be upholding the definition of racism from the Civil war times but this is a form of subtle racism

we dont acknowledge. There are judgments that are being made, that minorities cannot afford

wealthy homes or they want the cheapest homes. These judgments are what subtle racism is. If

we hold these characteristics towards a race, we are applying more fuel to the fire of racism in

the 21st century.

Adverse Housing Treatment

20% Blacks

Hispanics
55%
25% Other

In recent studies on racism, it has been shown that obvious racism has declined largely.

Researchers also stated that "Subtle and attributional ambiguous form of racism may still persist"

(Liao, 238). We have groups. Certain groups are perceived as better than the other. For example,

when comparing minority races with white individuals, the minority groups are widely perceived

as less socially worthy (Liao, 239). From this topic, there was a social experiment done. In this

experiment the setting was subtle and there also was ambiguity leading to possible results that

would happen in real life (Liao, 241). In this experiment Liao had 13w undergraduate students,

out of which were 75 women and 57 men, and in which 77 self-identified as White and 55 self-

identified as Black. They participated in a two-phase study where the first phase was to complete

a brief survey. The survey was a measurement of three ideologies: SDO (shows what group

strongly agrees and disagrees), BJW (belief in a just world scale), and CBRI(Color-blind racial

attitudes scale). The second phase was to show a short video from the movie Bamboozled, in
which the clip showed an authoritative white figure questioning a black figure. Also in the video,

there is an Asian female who asked the resulted male what she should do and the white figure

responded with "This is a dumb question." and then proceeded to respond favorably to the white

male employee. Also, all the employees were white except the black male and Asian female.

After watching the whole video, the participants were debriefed. In the end, the results showed

that blacks were more likely to notice subtle racism in the video than whites. Out of the three

ideologies, CBRI was the one that with subtle racism. This shows that we don't realize the subtle

racism that is happening when it happens in front of us unless we are the victim or our race is the

victim.

To get a better understanding of what people perceived as racism in todays world, I

surveyed a group of my friends who believed they werent racist and felt well aware of what

racism meant. When I asked them what they believed racism to be I got various responses. For

example, one friend responded saying, Racism today is more based on racial anxieties that

people have. It is about people still having the same mentality as before about how white people

are more privileged than most minority people. This points out how people currently see racism

as white vs. other minorities, yet this is a stigma of the past. Racism is currently evolving and in

this day and age stigmas are held in all races where one race can believe to be better than

another, not just whites vs. minorities. Another friend stated We see a trend where others think

people of color are related to the stigma of being thieves. Sometimes we think that all black

people are uneducated and poor which is not true." This is what she determined as racism in

today's world. This is closer to the definition of subtle racism in the sense that we correlate

certain races with certain activities being they are positive or negative. Another friend stated that

racism through her examples such as the currently going on Muslim ban. She said An example
would be the Muslim ban. It is based on what their religion is just like the holocaust: bases off of

ethnic group- denying rights to certain individuals due to lack of "criteria" or because of who

they are. This points out how again, we relate certain acts of racism to the past in which we do

not take in the severity of them both. The Holocaust was genocide whereas Muslim Ban is more

political racism. Relating two is being ignorant to subtle racism being prevalent in today's world.

This also proves the point that people believe that severe cases of racism are the only ones that

are used to define racism, and it proves my point of people not realizing that racism exists unless

there is a severe case such as the Holocaust stated here. In conclusion, you can see from this poll

that we think we are fully aware of racism and its definition yet we are just stuck in the past and

dont see subtle racism until it has reached a larger topic, such as the Holocaust.

In the end what I am trying to conclude is that the definition of racism and racism itself

has evolved. What racism is defined as now is a misconception that has been validating how

people blur what truly is and is not racism. Ultimately, to answer my research question, we are

all subconsciously racist. We hold onto stigmas that we don't realize and make snap judgments in

our heads. This is subtle racism. When we hear somethings about another race that don't sound

quite right we say those are prejudices. However, prejudices root from racism. We use prejudice

as an excuse to not believe that racism is happening every day. We rely on the past definition of

racism, where one race is considered superior to another race, to help us from confronting the

sensitive topic. There is the concept that always lies in our minds and that is out of sight out of

mind. Until certain scenarios dont get out of hand we dont realize what is going on when it

comes to racism. From the research Ive conducted, I believe that we do forget that the definition

of racism is constantly evolving and that we dont talk much about it which leads to the concept

of subtle racism, ultimately making everyone subconsciously racist.

 Works Cited

DeAngelis, Tori. "Unmasking 'racial micro aggressions." Pardon Our Interruption. American

Psychology Association, 2009. Web. 04 Apr. 2017.

Gutierrez Belinda, Kaatz Anna, Chu Sarah, Ramirez Dennis, Samson-Samuel Clem, and Carnes

Molly. Games for Health Journal. November 2014, 3(6): 371-378.

doi:10.1089/g4h.2013.0071.

Liao, Hsin-Ya, et al. "Perception of Subtle Racism: The Role of Group Status and Legitimizing

Ideologies." The Counseling Psychologist, vol. 44, no. 2, Feb. 2016, pp. 237-266.

EBSCOhost, doi:10.1177/0011000015625329.

Pager, Devah, and Hana Shepherd. The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in

Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets. Annual review of sociology 34

(2008): 181209. Print.

PBS. "Scientists test your instinct to uncover subtle racial bias." PBS. Public Broadcasting

Service, n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2017.

Reid, Landon D., and Rob Foels. "Cognitive Complexity and the Perception of Subtle Racism."

Basic & Applied Social Psychology, vol. 32, no. 4, Oct-Dec2010, pp. 291-301.

EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/01973533.2010.519217.