queerbychoice (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queerbychoice) wrote2001-12-05 12:32 am
queerbychoice) wrote2001-12-05 12:32 am
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Test Your Unconscious Biases!
Finally, a set of personality tests that are actually worth taking!
Age Bias—Do you prefer the young or the elderly? This test measures the automatic association between the young and old and positive and negative concepts.
Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for young.
[Hmm. I took this test first because it felt the least scary; I didn't think I had any preference.]
Racial Bias: Asian Americans—This test probes for an automatic stereotype that Asian Americans are not as "American" as European Americans.
Your data suggest little or no automatic ethnic association with American or Foreign.
[Yay, so I did learn something from having grown up with all Asian friends instead of Euro ones!]
Gender Bias—This stereotype test measures the strength of automatic association between women and men and the concepts "liberal arts" and "science."
Your data suggest a strong automatic association between male and science.
[This test was by far the most overwhelmingly difficult for me of any of them. I was pretty sure ahead of time that I'd get a rotten score, I was still shocked to find out just HOW extremely incapable I am of associating "female" with "science," no matter how hard I try. Off to feminist reeducation boot camp with me!]
Body Image Bias—Using drawings of people who vary in weight, this test measures automatic attitudes about obese people.
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for fat.
[Cool! Maybe now all the people who keep annoying me by constantly declaring themselves "too fat" will shut up and start trying not to get too skinny for fear I won't prefer them anymore.]
Racial Bias: Weapons—This test measures the automatic association of weapons and harmless objects with Black and White adult faces.
Your data suggest a moderate automatic association between White and weapons.
[Um, actually I'm not used to seeing members of ANY race carrying weapons around in my everyday life.]
Racial Bias: Arab Muslims—This test measures the automatic association of Arab Muslims with positive and negative words.
Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Arab Muslims.
[Well, hey, all the Arab Muslims I ever went to school with were cool . . .]
Racial Bias: Black/White Children—This test measures unconscious or automatic associations of "good" and "bad" with Black and White children.
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for White children.
[Bad me. I put off the Black/White tests until the end (except the Weapons one) because I knew I'd do well on any measurement of racism involving other races, but not so well on the ones involving racism against Black people. In California, there's always a good healthy and reasonably integrated mix of all races except Black, which is still extremely segregated. We even have a convenient naming system for segregated neighborhoods around here: any neighborhood that's 75%-100% Black is named after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and any neighborhood that's 50%-75% Black is named after Abraham Lincoln, just so everybody knows which races are allowed to live where and all. I currently live in the Lincoln neighborhood, but my unconscious biases are unfortunately more influenced by having been raised across the river in the No Black People Allowed neighborhood.]
Racial Bias: Black/White Adults—This test measures unconscious or automatic associations of "good" and "bad" with black and white people.
Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for White.
[Ack, even worse me.]
Racial Bias: Skin-Tone—Do you prefer darker or lighter skin tones? This test measures automatic preference for skin color using faces that vary in skin tone and positive and negative words.
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for lighter skin.
[Well, this is the only test result that I really feel is inaccurate. I do have definite skin tone preferences, I know, but my perception of skin color is divided for some reason very much into three categories of "light, middle, and dark," so the binary light-dark division presented on this test didn't really jive with the way I actually mentally perceive people - on top of which, the drawings on this test were really awful, and the fake drawn-in skin tones were not realistic looking at all. But I do have definite skin tone preferences in real life: I know that if I walk into a room full of strangers and I need to pick one of them to talk to, I invariably approach someone of medium skin color, with brown eyes and dark hair, and most of the time it's someone who is neither White nor Black. If there's anyone Asian in the room, especially, I'll always go to an Asian person first, because I've gotten used to thinking of Asian people as "the people I fit in with" and of Euro-Americans as "the people who have an annoying habit of mistaking me for one of them, and who I have to push away and put in their place for fear they'll succeed in actually making me one of them."]
What are YOUR Unconscious Biases?
P.S. In other, less important online personality test news, apparently I am a strawberry.
Age Bias—Do you prefer the young or the elderly? This test measures the automatic association between the young and old and positive and negative concepts.
Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for young.
[Hmm. I took this test first because it felt the least scary; I didn't think I had any preference.]
Racial Bias: Asian Americans—This test probes for an automatic stereotype that Asian Americans are not as "American" as European Americans.
Your data suggest little or no automatic ethnic association with American or Foreign.
[Yay, so I did learn something from having grown up with all Asian friends instead of Euro ones!]
Gender Bias—This stereotype test measures the strength of automatic association between women and men and the concepts "liberal arts" and "science."
Your data suggest a strong automatic association between male and science.
[This test was by far the most overwhelmingly difficult for me of any of them. I was pretty sure ahead of time that I'd get a rotten score, I was still shocked to find out just HOW extremely incapable I am of associating "female" with "science," no matter how hard I try. Off to feminist reeducation boot camp with me!]
Body Image Bias—Using drawings of people who vary in weight, this test measures automatic attitudes about obese people.
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for fat.
[Cool! Maybe now all the people who keep annoying me by constantly declaring themselves "too fat" will shut up and start trying not to get too skinny for fear I won't prefer them anymore.]
Racial Bias: Weapons—This test measures the automatic association of weapons and harmless objects with Black and White adult faces.
Your data suggest a moderate automatic association between White and weapons.
[Um, actually I'm not used to seeing members of ANY race carrying weapons around in my everyday life.]
Racial Bias: Arab Muslims—This test measures the automatic association of Arab Muslims with positive and negative words.
Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Arab Muslims.
[Well, hey, all the Arab Muslims I ever went to school with were cool . . .]
Racial Bias: Black/White Children—This test measures unconscious or automatic associations of "good" and "bad" with Black and White children.
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for White children.
[Bad me. I put off the Black/White tests until the end (except the Weapons one) because I knew I'd do well on any measurement of racism involving other races, but not so well on the ones involving racism against Black people. In California, there's always a good healthy and reasonably integrated mix of all races except Black, which is still extremely segregated. We even have a convenient naming system for segregated neighborhoods around here: any neighborhood that's 75%-100% Black is named after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and any neighborhood that's 50%-75% Black is named after Abraham Lincoln, just so everybody knows which races are allowed to live where and all. I currently live in the Lincoln neighborhood, but my unconscious biases are unfortunately more influenced by having been raised across the river in the No Black People Allowed neighborhood.]
Racial Bias: Black/White Adults—This test measures unconscious or automatic associations of "good" and "bad" with black and white people.
Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for White.
[Ack, even worse me.]
Racial Bias: Skin-Tone—Do you prefer darker or lighter skin tones? This test measures automatic preference for skin color using faces that vary in skin tone and positive and negative words.
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for lighter skin.
[Well, this is the only test result that I really feel is inaccurate. I do have definite skin tone preferences, I know, but my perception of skin color is divided for some reason very much into three categories of "light, middle, and dark," so the binary light-dark division presented on this test didn't really jive with the way I actually mentally perceive people - on top of which, the drawings on this test were really awful, and the fake drawn-in skin tones were not realistic looking at all. But I do have definite skin tone preferences in real life: I know that if I walk into a room full of strangers and I need to pick one of them to talk to, I invariably approach someone of medium skin color, with brown eyes and dark hair, and most of the time it's someone who is neither White nor Black. If there's anyone Asian in the room, especially, I'll always go to an Asian person first, because I've gotten used to thinking of Asian people as "the people I fit in with" and of Euro-Americans as "the people who have an annoying habit of mistaking me for one of them, and who I have to push away and put in their place for fear they'll succeed in actually making me one of them."]
What are YOUR Unconscious Biases?
P.S. In other, less important online personality test news, apparently I am a strawberry.
(continued)
There is nothing I can teach you about sexism that you couldn't have learned from your mothers and the women of your community. There does appear to me, however, to be much I can teach you (or rather: I could if your ears were open to listening, which they are clearly not) that you did not choose to learn from your mothers and the women of your community.
"So, Black people were offered suffrage 'first'. Big whoop. Have you read DuBois' _The Souls of Black People_? Do you know why they were offered sufferage or does it not matter to you in your diatribe?"
I did read The Souls of Black Folk, actually, for a class on African-American History that I took in college (I presume this is the book you are speaking of, though the last word of the title is "Folk," not "People"). I know why Black people were offered suffrage and I also know why women were, and furthermore, I'm not under any illusions that a democratic system in which "majority rule" continually silences all minority views is a system in which the power to vote can ever be very worth having; but even so, I don't think either of us would want the fifteenth and nineteenth amendments outright repealed. There are other indications I could point to if you need more help being convinced that sexism is of a comparable severity in our culture to racism, but I had sufficient respect for you to believe you could figure that out without me having to enumerate them all. Perhaps I was wrong to have that respect for you, but I think not: I think you are merely being willfully ignorant rather than honestly incapable of figuring it out. Think about it: we have in this culture separate pronouns for males and females but not separate pronouns for race. This in itself should hint to you that gender has at least approximately as great - if not greater - a significance in determining people's social status as race has.
Furthermore: in the time of slavery, white women also were the property of white males and compelled to perform unpaid labor for them, yet modern historical biographies continually persist in glossing over the importance of this and presenting those marriages purely as romantic "love affairs," as though the fact that the woman was denied education and the right to paid employment and sold by her father into ownership by her so-called "loved one" does not render utterly perverted and disgusting the whole idea of her loving her husband. How would you feel if the common history books on Black slavery still, in this day and age, went so far as to extoll the virtues of slaves who supposedly loved their masters dearly?
I am not going to tell you that sexism is a more severe problem than racism, because the two oppressions function in different ways and have different kinds of results that are difficult to strictly compare - certainly White women are able to glean certain monetary comforts from being born into families headed by White men (provided that they are born into families with fathers present) and from marrying White men (provided that they're bi- or heterosexual), and certainly White women are not treated by men with the same fear and alienation that Black people are generally viewed with by White people in the North and the West (though racism in the South is structured in a more comparable way to sexism, I think); but for you to dismiss sexism as being of drastically inferior importance to racism is quite plainly sexist and unworthy of you.
(continued) 1
I think you are being ignorant and offensive. But I am going to do my best to ignore your offensiveness.
I am glad that you have read _The Souls of Black Folk_, however, I find it pitable that you didn't understand what, exactly, it was that you were reading.
Suffrage was offered to Negros because the liberals won and the Freeman's Bureau was being dismantled. Suffrage for Negros was the _counterstroke_ not the stroke. So while you are sitting there itemizing, you are missing important lessons. You are guilty of glossing over the reality of slavery -- or at least -- universalizing it so that it fits the reality white women lived under. But let's review this, shall we? Were white women kidnapped and beaten and treated like dumb animals? You say in some ways they were? I am saying in all ways were slaves. That suffrage was offered to Negros was nothing more than how the Freeman's Bureau could _screw_ the powers that be. And you seem to forget how many Black bodies littered the ground or were "disqualified" from voting.
As I read this post, I kept thinking about Alice Walker. I thought about the reasons why she (and others) started the womanist movements... you, too, seem to be quite unaware of your whiteness and insist on woman-ness in the face of woman-ness coupled with culture. You are blind to your whiteness and your narrow constructs -- but this doesn't anger me. I just look at it and think, "Typical" because I have only seen this kind of thing and I pray for something different by the Ancestors don't feel the need to lie to me.
You wanna talk about white women? White women are STILL slaves to white men -- along with everyone else. This is not because of mere sexism. No! This has to do with the culture of whiteness. Am I to feel sorry for you because you are second in line to the white man? You experience all of his power _except_ having a penis, that is, unless you choose to have one inside of you. White women are known to be just as racist as their men. They have killed Black bodies or caused the death of Black bodies.
I have said before that racism is the glue that holds all the -isms together, but I never said what it is that racism holds together: European/Euro-American/"white" Imperialism, Dominance, and Hegemony.
Besides, having my ears close to your version of socialized feminism (within its cultural trappings) does not mean my ears are closed to that of my mothers and the women who raised me. White womanhood, for the most part, just doesn't look like anywhere I would want to put my hands. Sorry, I like Black womanhood. I like their strength and their determination not to be perpetual victims.... these are the stories, the experiences, the lives I am open to. Yes, there are white woman-hoods that speak to me. But it is because they remind me of them, not because they have swallowed all of this other BS. I identify strength with femininity. Show me weakness and I'll show you a man at the bottom of it.
Some slaves did love their masters dearly, Gayle. It is to be expected. Especially those who were born and raised into slavery and know nothing better. It is no different today -- for either of us. We recognize the system in some ways, but we love the system -- can't even imagine other ways of being. This is slavery, Gayle. When you know something's wrong, but don't know how to stop it. Learning about European/Euro-American/"white" imperalism/hegemony/even culture is learning how to not be a slave. How not to fear. How not to feel stuck.
(continued) 2
And we return to white women. Do you really mean to tell me that some white women have not been very much okay with the arrangement? Maybe she isn't equal to her husband or other white men, but she is superior to all other others? Is this _not_ power? Do some white women not become drunk on this power? And we are not talking about the obvious ones, we are talking about the liberal ones, the ones who would never really admit to the power they have as white women, but instead like to bitch about the plight of woman-hood as if universal? Bitching about the plight of woman-hood even as they use their power to silence each other and non-white women? Is this what you are in favor of? Is this the stage of the dialectic that you cannot reach? Power analysis?
You are not going to tell me that sexism is a more severe problem than racism, but racism doens't touch your life in any meaningful way. That is part of your privilege as a white person -- that you only have to think about racism if you want to. You are not going to tell me that, but it is obviously what you believe -- and you are right to believe it. Through the privilege your whiteness affords you, you can afford sexism to be more severe than racism and not have anyone, any people of color who obviously know better and/or different, to tell you that this is not true.
Now, I am a Southerner and I have lived in the Pacific Northwest and now in the Southwest and I can tell you that, actually, racism is healthier in the South. *smiles* In other places, white people are just as racist as those Southern whites they like to be superior to, but they aren't as honest about it. Instead, they act racist while telling me it isn't. In the South, at least, they say it, but it isn't always an action.
I dismiss _all_ other -isms as being inferior to racism because they don't hold people apart from each other as plainly as racism does. For you not to recognize this is racist and unworthy of you... but expected and I do not hold that against you -- it is the nature of the beast.