December 05, 2006
A Psychological Perspective on How Racism Works
My last entry on "How Racism Works" has generated some great conversation among viewers and I would like to encourage more. Check out this FAQ website sponsored by the American Psychological Association on Racism and Psychology.
I also happened to read a recent issue (vol 17, # 10, October of 2006) of Psychological Science: Research, Theory, and Application in Psychology and Related Science (phew, long title!). In a study titled, "They All Look the Same to Me (Unless They're Angry): From Out-Group Homogeneity to Out-Group Heterogeneity," Johua Ackerman and colleagues found the following (read abstract):
ABSTRACT—People often find it more difficult to distinguish ethnic out-group members compared with ethnic in-group members. A functional approach to social cognition suggests that this bias may be eliminated when out-group members display threatening facial expressions. In the present study, 192 White participants viewed Black and White faces displaying either neutral or angry expressions and later attempted to identify previously seen faces. Recognition accuracy for neutral faces showed the out-group homogeneity bias, but this bias was entirely eliminated for angry Black faces. Indeed, when participants' cognitive processing capacity was constrained, recognition accuracy was greater for angry Black faces than for angry White faces, demonstrating an out-group heterogeneity bias
So, maybe my anger at the WG from the other night will have a beneficial effect! Let's Be Angry! Lela Lee had it right with her Angry Little Asian Girls (now Angry Little Girls) comic strip.
Posted by richlee at December 5, 2006 01:40 PMHi Rich,
I happened upon your blog purely by chance. I was trying to find contact information about someone who works at MIT's Lincoln Lab, which lead me to a page on your blog (it was another guy with the same name), but I was impressed enough by what I saw to linger and do some reading.
First off let me say that I admire your writing ability. I am assuming since it's a blog that you don't do huge amounts of re-writing, which makes it even that much more impressive.
I was especially drawn to your Dec 19 bit on the three Korean American men. I couldn't agree more, these men are exceptional, and I wish my neighborhood was full of people like them. I'm fortunate to have Korean friends and neighbors, some from martial arts training, others simply neighbors or people I know from church. I should probably have said "Asian", since I also count Chinese, Japanese, and Phillipinos among my friends, but most are Koreans, and you're Korean, so I guess that's why I started off with that.
I confess to being a WG who is to some degree fascinated by what I guess you could call micro-immigration, that is, personal stories of how individuals came to America, especially those who came as adults or teens. There's almost always common elements of difficulty, sacrifice, hardship, etc, that seem to set these people apart. Hopefully I blunder less often than the WGs I read about on your blog, though I probably have once or twice.
As an aside, my wife's grandmother was an Ellis Island immigrant from Sweden at 14, and I was lucky enough to hear some of her story firsthand before she passed away.
Anyhow, as I'm writing this I'm beginning to realize that maybe it's some distinctive common quality shared by most immigrants that I admire, as opposed to some more superficial fascination with cultural and racial artifacts. I dunno, I'll figure it out eventually.
BTW, I used to work with an Indian woman who I spent lots of time talking with. One day she happened to mention that I had "starlingly light-colored eyes" (they're blue). I now realize that she probably wasn't half as fasinated with my conversation as she was with my peculiar (to her) eyes. At least she didn't ask to touch my hair! Then again it was straight, black, and unremarkable. Oh well...
I'm w/you on the real Christmas tree thing, and a little envious that you have room for a 7-footer.
Merry Christmas!
Ed Preston
Posted by: Ed Preston at December 20, 2006 08:43 PM