Stereotypes  

Can  you  choose  the  “real”  Native  American?  

A.  

B.                                                  C.  

D.  

E.  

F.                                                    G.                                

H.  

I.  

 J.                                        K.  

 

1. Look  at  these  pictures.  Some  of  the  people  in  the  pictures  are  Native  Americans  and  some  are  not.  Which  of  the  people  do  you  think  are  Native  Americans,  why?  Which  are  not?  Why?  

2. List  the  reasons  for  your  decision  for  each.    3. Would  you  be  surprised  to  know  that  the  ones  who  look  like  Native  

Americans  are  not,  they  are  just  actors  dressed  up  as  Native  Americans.?  Why  or  why  not?  Or  that  light  skinned  people  that  dress  like  us  are  Native  Americans?  Why  do  these  stereotypes  persist?  Does  the  media  help  perpetuate  these  views?  Why  do  you  think  they  do?          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Assignment  Day  2  in  Class.  

                                 

Malcome Gladwell and an excerpt from his discussion on race and unconscious stereotyping from his book Blink. Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink provides an anecdotal account of how split-second decisions are

made through a process Gladwell calls “rapid cognition” or “thin-slicing.” Gladwell distinguishes this

type of rapid cognition from intuition, which he claims is more emotional, claiming that rapid cognition

is a distinctly rational process, a type of thinking that simply movers a little faster than ordinary

conscious and deliberate decision-making.

One of the most interesting parts of the book deals with first impressions about race, particularly those

that happen at a subconscious level. In the chapter entitled “The Warren Harding Error: Why We Fall

for Dark, Handsome Men,” Gladwell describes the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The IAT, developed

by Anthony G. Greenwald, Mahzarin Banaji and Brian Nosek, measures a person’s attitude on an

unconscious level and the immediate and automatic associations a person makes before that person has

time to think. In the IAT designed to examine automatic associations with race, a tested individual is

timed to see how quickly they associate categories of good and bad adjectives with black and white

faces. The test results reveal that the 80% of Americans more quickly pair words like “love,” “peace,”

and “joy” with white faces and words like “terrible,” “evil,” and “failure” with black faces. The level

of difference is a matter of microseconds, yet is still statistically significant.

What the IAT most significantly reveals is that unconscious attitudes and the behaviors which those

attitudes give rise to may be completely incompatible with a person’s conscious values. Even those who

consider themselves very enlightened in matters of race still overwhelmingly tend to have an implicit

preference for whites. Gladwell himself, who is half-black, was found to have a “moderate automatic

preference for whites.” As he notes in the chapter, he considers himself an enlightened and

progressive individual on the matter of race relations, with a strong conviction that blacks and whites

are equal. Gladwell’s point, however, is that just knowing of cognitively assenting to the idea that the

two races are equal does not tell the whole story. He writes,

Our attitudes towards race and gender operate on two levels. First of all, we have our conscious level.

These are what we choose to believe. . . . which we use to direct our behavior deliberately. . . . But

the IAT measures something else, our attitude toward racism on an unconscious level. the immediate,

automatic associations that tumble out before we have had time to think. We do not deliberately

choose our unconscious attitudes . . . [and] we may not even be aware of them. The giant computer

that is our subconscious silently crunches all the data it has from all the experiences we’ve had the

people we’ve met, the lessons we’ve learned, the books we’ve read, the movies we’ve seen . . .and it

forms an opinion. That is what is coming out in the IAT. The disturbing thing about the IAT is that it

shows us that our unconscious attitudes may be utterly incompatible with our stated values.

The IAT does not just reveal what we subconsciously believe, which a virtue ethicist like myself would

call a “disposition.” It is also a predictor of how we behave. A person with a subconscious preference

for or dispositional tendency towards whites will in conversation lean in towards black people less,

stutter more, and become visibly tenser. These subtle cues can have a major impact on our social

engagements. Gladlwell cites law professor Ian Ayres’ study of racial discrimination by Chicago car

dealers which found that car dealers gave the lowest initial offer to white men, and the highest initial

offer to black men. Even after 40 minutes of negotiating, black car shoppers were still offered prices

nearly $800 times higher than the initial offer made to white shoppers.

Much more disturbing is the discussion of Amadou Diallo, a black man who was shot 41 times by four

cops who saw him standing on the street corner in the South Bronx late at night. Gladwell argues that

these cops, though probably not explicitly or even consciously racist, displayed certain racially-

motivated automatic implicit associations that caused them to make a prejudicial, and in this case,

lethal split second decision:

The officers, observing Diallo on the stoop, sized him up and in that instant decided he looked

suspicious. That was mistake number one. Then they backed the car up, and Diallou didn’t move.

[Officer] Carroll later said that “amazed” him: How brazen was this man, who didn’t run at the sight

of the police? Diallou wasn’t brazen. He was curious. That was mistake number two. Then Carroll and

[officer] Murphy stepped toward Diallou on the stoop and watched him turn slightly to the side, and

make a movement for his pocket. In that split second, they decided he was dangerous. But he was not.

He was terrified. That was mistake number three.

Seven seconds later, Diallo was dead, shot 41 times, wallet in hand. When the four cops went to trial

and were found “not guilty,” there were protests against what was widely perceived as a racial

injustice. It seemed that these four cops were clearly guilty of overt racism that motivated them to

shoot an innocent man. Gladwell, however, interprets the situation differently. He argues that these

four cops, due to past experiences both personally and professionally with black people caused them to

automatically and implicitly associate black people with danger, much more quickly than they might

associate white people with a threat. These cops were habituated to automatically conclude that a

black man in a dangerous New York neighborhood reaching into his pocket meant trouble, and their

automatic implicit associations cost an innocent man his life. Gladwell’s point in describing these racial

anecdotes is that even if we do not think of ourselves as racist, and even if our consciously held values

hold that blacks and whites are equal, our split second decisions or “thin-slicing” activities, as Gladwell

describes them, may indicate deep-seated, racist tendencies.

So what do we do about our subconscious, split-second tendencies to prefer whites over blacks? We

cannot, as Gladwell argues, simply try to develop our conscious values. That is, we cannot just think

more that blacks and whites are equal. Gladwell considers himself a consciously tolerant person and

still, his IAT indicates an unconscious preference for white people.

“I’ve taken the race IAT on many occasions and the result always leaves me feeling a bit creepy. At

the beginning of the test, you are asked what your feelings towards blacks and whites are. I answered,

as I am sure most of you would, that I think of the two races as equal.”

Gladwell’s theory about rapid cognition or thin-slicing indicates that it is not enough to make certain

conscious changes in attitudes or values, but must also acknowledge the subtle influences that can

alter our subconscious, thereby undermining our conscious attitudes. Gladwell argues, however, that

by taking control of the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, one can also control rapid

cognition and prevent or lessen the mistakes made.

He suggests that we have a responsibility to not only alter our conscious values, but also to alter our

environments in such a way to develop our rapid cognition to make the best possible split-second

decisions. People’s results on the race IAT change if they expose themselves to images and verbal

information about black people with positive connotations prior to taking the test. People who look at

a picture or read a story about Martin Luther King, Jr. right before taking the IAT, for example, register

much less implicit racial prejudice than other test takers. More practically, Gladwell suggests that

putting ourselves in environments that expose us on a regular basis to racial minorities can alter our

stereotypes of them and thus alter our unconscious automatic reactions to them. Thus, despite the fact

that racial and other implicit attitudes operate on both a conscious and unconscious level, Gladwell

seems to think that we are still morally accountable for even those automatic associations not

governed by conscious choice.

Although Gladwell does address any theory of virtue or the moral psychology underlying a virtue ethic,

his description of rapid cognition illustrates a remarkable parallel in contemporary psychology with

what Aquinas calls a habit [habitus]. More remarkably, Gladwell inadvertently illustrates how habits—

both good and bad—can be developed not through rational control over attitudes and behaviors, but by

the subtle interaction between a person and her environment. Changing a bad habit, therefore, is not

just about conscious effort. Any smoker can tell you this. A person who tries to quit smoking despite

the fact that her friends are all smokers and much of her social engagements revolve around smoking is

likely to be unsuccessful, no matter how hard she tries to change her habit. Rather, she must also

change her environment. She must put herself in situations where she cannot reach for a cigarette for

pleasure or stress-relief; she must surround herself with non-smokers, and engage in activities where

smoking is contrary to enjoying the activity, like long bike rides. In short, developing virtue through

habituation is as much about trying to make conscious dispositional changes as it is about putting

ourselves into situations where we don’t need to try.

Additionally, if we take Gladwell’s book seriously, we must conclude that we are habituated in ways

which we do not intend all the time. We may read fashion magazines and think that we approach these

enlightened about body satisfaction and weight, but simply exposing ourselves to these magazines over

and over again, whether we realize it or not, habituates us to associate beauty and desirability with

thinness, as I wrote about here. We may think that we can watch overtly violent or sexually explicit

films and not become influenced to be more violent or more lustful, but Gladwell’s research (and

virtue ethics) says otherwise. We may live in an overwhelmingly white and middle-class neighborhood

and think of ourselves as racially unprejudiced, but I bet the IAT would say otherwise. What Gladwell’s

book teaches us is that our moral development is much more dynamic than we consciously recognize.

Homework  day  2:  

     Please  go  home  tonight  and  write  an  essay  responding  to  Mr.  Gladwell’s  experience  and  views  as  well  as  the  results  of  the  IAT  test.  Do  you  agree  with  him?  Why  or  why  not?  Does  this  mean  people  can  never  change  their  biases?  How  could  they  be  changed?  Why  should  we  want  to  eliminate  stereotyping  of  people  based  on  religion,  ethnicity  or  race?  You  can  give  some  personal  examples.              

 

 

Also:  

                   

   Take  a  look  at  this  cartoon.  What  does  it  say  about  American’s  views  of  Native  Americans  and  explain  ways  in  which  the  stereotypes  can  be  fixed?  

 

 

 

 

Homework  Day  1  

Please  write  an  analysis  of  this  Thanksgiving  painting  in  light  of  our  discussion  of  Native  American  stereotypes.  

1.  What  two  groups  are  shown  in  the  painting?  When  do  you  think  it  took  place?  How  do  you  know?  What  are  the  hints  to  support  your  view?  

2.  Describe  the  behavior  of  the  people  in  the  picture.  Who  is  feeding  whom?  Is  this  how  you  remember  the  story  of  the  first  thanksgiving?    

3.  The  painting  was  made  by  J.L.G  Ferris  in  1932  and  is  called  the  “First  Thanksgiving”.  Why  do  you  think  the  artist  portrayed  the  Puritans  (Europeans)  and  Native  Americans  the  way  he  did?  Remember  it  was  painted  in  the  early  twentieth  century.