Race Test

I was hoping throughout the test that the outcome would show that I do not have a preference for one over the other, but to my surprise the test result showed that I have a “slight automatic preference for African American compared to European American” This surprises me because I have always and still strongly feel that I do not differentiate between the two. I do not “hang out” with African Americans and frankly, most that I encounter do not seem approachable to me. As, I was responding to the images and words, I thought of the “African American mother” with whom I would be very comfortable. It seems that I needed to create that image in order to balance society’s discursive construction of reality about blacks in the US.

No Surprise: I Have a Bias Like the Rest of Us

Before taking the race test, I was more inclined to believe that there was no trace of racism in me. My belief came from a simple reality, my job is about helping the underprivileged and uninsured; I am a case manager/case worker helping the uninsured and low-income people obtain medical services with a network of services.

According to the test, I have a stronger affinity for dark skinned people. Well, now that I think about it, I don’t see the result that surprising. First, the majority of the people with whom I interacted while growing up in my native country—although not so many black— were dark skinned, with the minority being white, including most of my family members.

I could also attribute the results to the nature of my work as well. I have chosen to be in this type of work to help minorities, those who have fallen through the cracks, and against whom there still exists a lot of discrimination.

Although at first, I could not admit that I am a little racist, now I am more inclined to believe otherwise.

Jairo Toro

i had a great time in class talking about the different types of discourses and how they can apply to different areas of our life's. amazing how we don't really pay attention to it until someone either talks about it i have started to pay more attention whether I'm with family or a place other than with family how people talk and present mannerisms.

Race Test Discussion

I found this race test very interesting. I enjoyed the part of the test that you had to put the white and black races into categories along with associating with good and bad words. I realized that whether through my personal views or through society I associated the African American race more with the negative words. I first thought that the way the test was set up was automatically making it hard to associate the white faces with the bad words. Then they switch the order so that it couldn't of just been the pattern of what I saw. My results of the test said that I preferred to be with white people. I think that even though I dont want to necessary agree with all the results I do acknowledge that they are fairly accurate. I think that the test can be a result of what we are told on news and through society. I also agree that a fair majority of the test is from personal views or opinions. I learned a lot from this test and it helped me be more objective when thinking about this topic.

I have a preference...

... for European Americans over African Americans.

I'm not surprised, or even repulsed, because EVERYONE is racist. As I've stated before, the difference is whether or not we work to avoid using that racism for discrimination. Resisting prejudice and discrimination is, to me, significantly more important than worrying about what our preferences are, although the fact is certainly an interesting one for consideration and analysis.

Narishkeit pt. 2!

Revision on my blog-

I may be a racist; Tiffany may be one too. I think my main point is that I don't really care for that word. In my head, a racist is someone that carries hate and I never never want to be labeled as that person. I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and I can't quite decide what I want to believe. Several friends I grew up with are black and I never saw them as any different than myself. I'm the Jew. He's the black guy. She's the Hispanic girl. I grew up thinking we were all the same and I really don't care what you look like as long as you represent yourself neatly enough. (I know that may not make sense. If it doesn't, I can explain.)

After reading about Black English, I think I figured out my flaw. I was the one tagged as the presciptivist in the class, and this may just reaffirm this, but...I instantly judge people on the way they speak. Verbal skills may not be the first thing I notice, but it is usually the quality I remember the most. I prefer voices that are clear and carry an even tone. I may have mentioned that I do really love accents, but anytime an accent "clouds" language use, I inadvertently think less of the person.

I may not like it, but I admit it. :)

B.Knee

Narishkeit

I originally took these on Thursday night and was really peeved after taking it that I have waited this long to write about it on the blog. I have a slight automatic preference to lighter skinned people. Outside influences in our life such as family, media, and government teach us what is morally right and wrong in the world. We are obviously going to have a preference to strong and positive outside influences in our life. I think the majority of us have these stereo-typical images in our head of black "thug" drug dealers and white trailer trash. On the same note, I think we all carry images of a distinguished white family with a picket fence. I can picture a similar distinguished black family in my head, but it is harder. I didn't grow up in that kind of culture, so is it really my fault?

I had a good friend of mine from Florida take this test as well. She is originally from Haiti and carries a great deal of pride in her heritage. She was surprised to find out after taking the race test, that she is more responsive to lighter skinned people. Obviously this person is not a racist, so why would a white person that prefers lighter skinned people considered a racist?

I mentioned all of this to some friends of mine and we all came up with some interesting ideas. The conversation took on a life of it's own and I was a little surprised at the direction we ended up going. The subject of racial/skin colored preference turned into our preference in men. My Spanish friend Ingrid says that she prefers white guys. My white friend Adrian prefers black guys. When you hear this in a conversation, I don't think to myself: "Oh, she's a racist, but this other gal is an equal opportunity girl." It's the same idea as when my roommate Aaron brings his boyfriend over for dinner. I don't think, "Oh, here comes Aaron. He doesn't like the women enough to date them." In these types of situations, we (we being the people in my social groups) don't question or argue preference. But the minute the definite topic of race is brought up, suddenly we can't have a choice as far as preference goes.

I assume that there is such little tolerance in this world that it is hard to be just okay with the way person is. Regardless of my "slight automatic preference" to lighter skinned people, I refuse to believe this makes me a racist or a bad person in any way. I try my very hardest to assure that I am treating everyone I encounter the same way.

B.Knee

PS Sorry! I didn't proofread everyone. I hope there are not too many grammer errors.

I'm a skeptic

I took two of the tests that were kind of similar to each other. The first one was the Race test and my data suggested a slight automatic preference for European American compared to African American. Then I took the skin tone one and my data from that one suggested a slight automatic preference for Light Skin compared to Dark Skin.

Interesting that the results seem to match up to endorse the accuracy of the determination made. And, the theory that someone born and raised in Utah would naturally produce these results could be applied as well. But, I am not totally convinced that my reaction time to images and words can determine this about me.

Test Results

I took the age test, and i guess I like younger people more than older people. It makes sense when i think about it. Older people are usually the authorities, they are the people I have to listen to. Younger people are my friends, the people I associate with because i want to rather than I have to.

results

So I took the Race test and found that i have a moderate prefernce for White over black. But living in the state of Utah my whole life, that is probably a major influence for my association with other races. I was not really suprised by the results. But it is cool to actually realize that you have a preference because I am sure many of us, like myself, never pay attention to it or don't realize that it is a preference.
I have not taken a second test yet. i will later and will have to report the findings.

Preferences, slight

So I took a few of the Implicit Association Tests, with some surprising results. Apparently, I have a slight preference for dark over light skin. I'm wondering how to break the news to my blonde-haired girlfriend who can't be in the sun for more than a few minutes. "It's only a slight preference, honey." For some reason all of my preferences were slight. Right now I'm worried not so much about being bigoted as being passionless. I showed a slight preference for Judaism over other religions, but considering my opinion of other religions (in the survey I proudly select "Atheist" under the religion category, even though it's not a religion) it's not much of an accolade. It might just be benifiting from my ignorance of it in relation to other religions. No Muslim imagery, oddly. Would a crecent moon and Arabic script on a Koran skew the data maybe? I show a slight preference for straight over gay people, so I'll get a few of my progressive points knocked off. My girlfriend, who took the test also, has a slight preference for gay people. Hmm. . . The most interesting test for me was the one which tried to connect weapons with race. I showed no association. If anything I would have expected my association would be to white people. Most people in America, apparently, associate weapons with black people. My suspicion is that this data comes largely from the sort of wealthy gun-control liberals who only see guns or black people on TV, usually together. I was raised in Texas, see. I've witnessed plenty of white people with guns.

Implicit Association Test

I took the race-Iat and it showed I show a moderate preference to white people than black people. I associated the good with white and the bad with black, and like Tiffany said I think that is due to the society we live in. I believe that TV, our parents, our friends etc. play a huge role in the racisim that still exisits today. Movies and TV especially, the people in the shows that are white usually have the good, lovable role where as the black people have a more angry and obscene role. I honestly didnt believe myself to be racist in any shape or form but unfortuantly I think I slightly am.

The other test I took was the Gender-Science test. I linked males with science and females with liberal arts. I think its the same argument as the race test. Our society implies that men should be doing more technical, science type work, where females should be doing more liberal art type work. It goes with the whole masculine/feminine, men/women dispute. That men arent supposed to be emotional, caring or expressive and women are not supposed to be tough, rude or even smart. As with the Race test I thought I was indifferent but these tests open my mind to what outside influences impact me.

Very Interesting!

Language and Ideology

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for a great class today, at least for me. I enjoyed our conversations about ideology and critical discourse analysis. One issue that we talked about reminded me of this really interesting website that tests unconscious preferences through language/image association.

This website, called Project Implicit, out of Harvard, uses language and images to see if people have a preference for certain images more than others. It does this by associating "good" and "bad" vocabulary with different images and monitors how quickly you respond to the images.

They have a bunch of different tests: race, disability, sexuality and even Presidents! Each test demo takes about ten minutes and at the end, you receive a report of whether you are unbiased, or whether you have a slight, moderate or strong preference for certain images.

I took two tests. First, I took the Race test which scans through images of black people and white people. It showed that I had a moderate preference for images of white people. I've taken this test before and it was the same outcome. The first time I took it, I was really bothered by the outcome, but then I realized that I have always lived in a predominantly white society (Arizona, then Utah, with only two years of L.A. in between) and the majority of images of black people that I receive are often "problematic" (for lack of a better term). They're either through fictional media or the news, and those images are not that great most of the time. And, I also came to terms with the fact that I am racist, due to the fact that I have always lived in a racist society. (I'm not sure if there is a society that is not racist, so it would be pretty hard not to live in one.) And, for me, I think being conscious of it is a better approach than to deny it exists. This test just brings it to light.

The other test I took surprised me. I took the Sexuality test which scans through gay and straight images and words, and then associates them with good and bad vocabulary. I actually had a preference for gay images. I started thinking about why this would be, and of course, there's my brother who is gay, and my friends. But, why else? And, I thought of the images of gay people on the media and they're so often comic. They tend to have the best lines on sitcoms. Just tonight, on Ugly Betty, Mark, the gay assistant used the term "fashionutard" to describe someone. That's funny (at least to me).

So, what I thought would be a good blog for this week would be to have you each take the test and then report on your findings. Click here for the website and when you get there, you'll see "Select a Test" and a bunch of tests down the left-hand side of the screen. I'd like everyone to take the Race test so that we all have a shared point of reference in the discussion. But, then, feel free to take as many of the other tests as you would like.

After you've done the test, share your results, and what you think about them.

Thanks,
Tiffany