A Liberal Dose, May 27, 2021 "Systemic Racism and Implicit Bias- What Are They? Part 2

 

A Liberal Dose, May 27, 2021

Systemic Racism and Implicit Bias: What Are They?  Part Two

Troy D. Smith

 (See Part 1 HERE)

Last week we looked at Brown v. Board and the Clarks’ doll test, which the Court cited to prove the danger of implicit bias and the presence of systemic racism. The problem is that a lot of white people resist the idea of those things even existing, because no one likes to be called a racist. Unlike many people in previous generations, we have been raised to believe that racism is not only wrong it is evil, so to admit we are tainted by it would be to admit we are evil, too. But that is not what systemic racism means. It operates as it does without you making a conscious decision to be part of it, and it takes work and education on the subject to recognize it and work against it.

When my child was very little, in the mid-90s, they were pitching a fit because they wanted to go to the store with their mom and mom needed some time alone. My aunt happened to be over at the time –my beloved aunt who helped raise me and whom I love dearly. She wanted to help out in quieting the kid. So she said “You don’t want to go over there! Them colored people will get you!” I was shocked. I had never heard her say anything so overtly racist, and in fact she usually spoke in favor of civil rights issues. She herself was at a loss to explain it.

I gave that incident a lot of thought in ensuing years. Why would she say a thing like that? Well, because she wanted to scare a little child into behaving. But why that particular approach? It would have to be because that’s what her parents had said to her fifty years earlier to scare her. And their parents said to them, and theirs to them, and so on. To the point that no one remembered any longer why that threat had originally been so scary. Because if you go back far enough, you reach the days of slavery –when white people lived in fear of slave uprisings. Black people out on the roads after dark –with or without the proper “papers” –might be desperate runaways, or participants in a revolt. As one black friend once said, when a white man commented that black people don’t seem to age as quickly as white ones, “that’s because we don’t lay awake at night worried about a white uprising.” And when slavery existed, it was considered the duty of the white community –required by law –to take action against potentially rebellious or “uppity” black people.

Now think about all the incidents in the last few years where black people innocently going about their business were shot dead by panicked white people. A 12-year-old boy in the park with a toy gun. A man in Wal-mart carrying a BB gun he was going to buy. A man jogging at night. Kids playing their music loud. A teenager walking home from a convenience store. Car crash victims knocking on a random door at night for help. With most of those shooters, I don’t think they woke up that morning and said “Man, I hate black people, I hope I get to shoot one today.” I don’t believe they thought at all, I think they just reacted, because they were scared. But why were they so much more scared by black people? Studies prove this happens, and numbers don’t lie.

Do you think it might help if more people were aware of (and believed in) implicit bias, and the history of race in this country? Do you think that white people burying their heads in the sand will solve anything?

You know it won’t.

Another factor is Republicans trying to pass laws about how history is taught is what historians call “the Lost Cause narrative.” We’ll look at that next week.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A complete list of "A Liberal Dose" columns can be found HERE

A list of historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Troy D.Smith's official author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

A Liberal Dose, May 20, 2021 "Systemic Racism and Implicit Bias: What Are They? Part 1"

 

A Liberal Dose, May 20, 2021 

Troy D. Smith

"Systemic Racism and Implicit Bias: What Are They? Part 1"

note: unfortunately, the Sparta Expositor has had to cut the word count of their guest columns in half, so many of my topics will have to be covered in two or more parts from now on.

Last week we discussed how some conservatives (and some Republican-controlled state legislatures, including our own) have been following Donald Trump’s lead and freaking out about critical race theory, often without understanding what it is. We defined that theoretical approach (it comes from legal studies, and is about the historical connection between race, slavery, and laws) and other cultural approaches to the study of race. This week I’m going to give some examples, to more fully demonstrate what I’m talking about.

Trump’s complaint, you will recall, was not just about an academic field of study but about the very ideas of privilege, implicit bias, or “negative” focus on historical racism and/or slavery, which his supporters say are “divisive concepts.” One Tennessee Republican legislator actually defended the three-fifths compromise on slavery as a good thing. A GOP leader in Louisiana said earlier this month that schools should teach all the “good” things about slavery such as the fact that there were some kind masters who were beloved by their slaves, implying they were happy in slavery, and said that anyone believing otherwise is “indoctrinated by leftist, Marxist education.”

In other words, they are saying nothing bad ever happened, if it did it wasn’t that bad, and there are no modern-day effects of it. So let’s take a look at that.

In 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled –in Brown v. Board of Education –that school segregation was unconstitutional. This decision was the first of several that would end Jim Crow segregation in general, although it would take more than a decade. In their ruling, the Court cited the research of married couple Kenneth and Mamie Clark, both African American psychologists. In particular, the Court pointed to the “doll tests” the Clarks had run in the 1940s.

In the experiments, several children –one at a time –were presented with four baby dolls. The dolls were identical, except that they ranged in skin tone from Caucasian to dark brown. The children were asked to pick which doll they wanted to play with –they all chose the Caucasian doll. They were asked which doll was the most “good” and which the most “bad,” which was smartest and which was dumbest –which was lazy and which was not. Invariably, they always chose the white doll as being good and smart, and the darkest as being bad and dumb.

These were black children.

The Clarks concluded that segregating black children and reinforcing the fact they were different from all the others made them feel that black was inferior and undesirable while making the white children feel superior. Racism, the Clarks wrote, is inherent in American institutions and reinforced by laws. The Supreme Court agreed (and so did the Eisenhower administration, which lauded the Court’s decision). Although the Clarks stood out, many other sociologists, psychologists, and historians were cited in the Court’s unanimous opinion.

Although the term did not exist at the time… the Court was swayed by critical race theory.

Academics and others have been saying ever since then that there is systemic racism in this country, and that as a result people can have biases they are not even consciously aware of. Those children were probably not consciously aware of their bias against their own race; their parents did not sit them down and say “you’re black, therefore you’re terrible, so try your best to be white.” No, the children absorbed that belief from society around them. And not just from school segregation, either.

Here’s something that may shock you (and it may not). The Clarks’ experiments were re-run, with both white and black children, in 2010. With the exact same results. And again earlier this year. With the same results.

There it is. systemic racism; implicit bias. If you were raised in America, you were affected by this whether you wanted to be or not, and whether you want to admit it or not.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A complete list of "A Liberal Dose" columns can be found HERE

A list of historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Troy D.Smith's official author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com