Racism continues to be pervasive

Professor Jack Dovidio spoke last night about the prevalence of racism as part of the Psychology Department's colloquium on diversity.

"Can't We All Just Get Along?: The Consequences of Contemporary Racism" is the end result of Dovidio's recent studies at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. Dovidio is currently provost and professor of psychology at the school.

"Racism is a habit. Stereotyping is a habit," Dovidio said. "We can change these things, but it's nearly impossible in America, due to the great majority of whites and past influences, or historical racism."

According to Dovidio, high unemployment and infant mortality rates among minorities have not changed since 1949, and minority poverty rates have not changed since 1967 -- "proof that prejudices really still permeate society," Dovidio said.

"The effect of unconscious bias is one of the most important things in society today," University provost Jamshed Barucha said in introducing the speech.

Dovidio gave examples of this "subtle racism" that is often unnoticed. He mentioned the perception of white knights as "good" and black knights as "bad."

"It's a lot more common to have biases than to say you have no prejudices," Dovidio said. "I get much more suspicious of a person who claims that they are absolutely not racist than someone who admits to having some racist tendencies."

One of Dovidio's initial surveys conducted with white students at Colgate showed essentially no racism on campus, which Dovidio found hard to believe.

"It was clear that many of these students were particularly careful when it came to describing blacks because they didn't want to seem racist," Dovidio said. The test included a series of good/bad questions such as "How good are blacks?"; "How good are whites?"; "How bad are blacks?"; and "How bad are whites?" The results showed blacks than whites rated better in the "bad" category, but whites were conditionally better than blacks in how "good" they were perceived.

Dovidio administered a second study at Colgate University where he set up a mock university admissions panel. "Applications" were put into categories of "weak," "moderate," and "strong" and random photographs of both black and white applicants were attached to the applications. Colgate students were then asked to choose which applicants they would accept.

In the weak and moderate categories, there was no difference between the ratio of black students accepted and white students accepted; in the strong category, however, a greater percentage of whites were accepted.

Dovidio acknowledged some data showed prejudice disappearing from American life. He pointed to data showing in 1933, 75 percent of whites labeled African-Americans as "lazy" and 38 percent said they were "ignorant. By 2000, only two percent of whites considered blacks as lazy and five percent as ignorant.

Dovidio cautioned that this data should not to be taken at face value. He then raised the fundamental question of his talk: "What about those individuals, the 'average American racists,' who say that they're not prejudiced, but really are?"

Though his work dealt only with blacks versus whites, Dovidio said prejudice does exist against other minority groups. Although data is inconclusive, he said while in comparison to blacks, Asians and Hispanics suffer less, but still harmful discrimination.

Dovidio grew up in Medford, and attended Dartmouth College as an undergraduate before moving onto the University of Delaware for graduate work. Although he is currently provost and honorary professor of psychology at Colgate, he will be moving to the University of Connecticut next year.