American society teaches everyone to be racist — but you can rewrite subconscious stereotypes

Benjamin Waddell, Fort Lewis College and R. Nathan Pipitone, Florida Gulf Coast University
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Progress toward a more just and equitable society may be on the horizon. Since the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in May, around the United States, millions of people have taken to the streets, statues have been felled, leaders have been fired and pressured to resign, and activists-turned-politicians have gained traction in prominent political races.

But until people recognize that racism is wired into the American mind, we believe that few of these efforts are likely to actually reduce racist behavior.

Our work provides a way to understand how race and society influence the brain. One of us (Waddell) is a sociologist who researches social inequality; the other (Pipitone) is a psychologist who examines the biological implications of human behavior.

Our respective work reveals a difficult fact regarding recent efforts to eradicate racism from U.S. society: If you’re American — regardless of the color of your skin — racism likely structures how you think.

Everybody’s racist
A great deal of attention has been paid to the rates at which police officers kill minorities. In the U.S., police shoot and kill Black people at two and a half times the rate at which they kill white people, and the disparity between Latinos and whites is nearly as high, about 1.8 times more frequent.

But it’s not only white officers who kill minorities at higher rates. read more… https://www.cali.fm/american-society-teaches-everyone-to-be-racist-but-you-can-rewrite-subconscious-stereotypes/