Are we all racist?
Has racial prejudice really been abandoned or just changed its outer appearance? Do we really endorse the values that today’s society promotes? In this entry, I will argue you that even though the overly optimistic newspaper articles and research point that we’re starting an era where racial stereotypes are only story of the past, and that public opinion polls constantly portray a decline in racial prejudice, it is morbidly still running in our veins and will likely remain ubiquitous in our subconscious. Furthermore, even though socio-political-cultural pressures sanction any types of discrimination/stereotyping against racial groups, we are still unable to get rid of it, which poses a question to all the psychological tests circulating around trying to prove that racial stereotypes are long gone as part of our personalities. We’ve seen in class, as well as read in the textbook about validity and reliability. Those tests that claim to be valid, in the sense that they measure a person’s likelihood to exert discrimination, while pretending to be reliable at the same time, assuming that traits do not fluctuate greatly over time, are in effect not as valid, nor as reliable as they claim to be.
In fact, the Modern Racism Scale (1986) or the later revised version the Symbolic Racism Scale (2000) claim to validly show that we are believed be less discriminative than before. However, there is a catch, for those that genuinely viewed themselves as “non-racist” and therefore, does “not” endorse racist values (the low prejudice group), still viewed racial minorities as in a derogatory manner after being primed with racial cues. (Lepore & Brown, 1997). Moreover, they would also be as likely as high prejudice people convict a black defendant of being a criminal even though they score low in the MRS or SRS. (Dovidio et al., 1997). After reading chapter 3 and 4 of the textbook, I found some potential causes of error that might explain these findings. I would probably exceed the words count limit of this paper if I talked about all the validity and reliability issues that come into play, so I will attempt to be short and clear!
When it comes to reliability, the MRS and SRS might have suffered from systematic measurement errors, which could explain why those tests are highly reliable, yet does not actually predict real life behaviors. Among systematic measurement errors, one of my hypothesis as to why participants scored lower on these scales is based on social acceptability bias. Because there is such a huge social stigma against whoever publicly declares themselves as racist and that racism has become a taboo subject, it would be normal that participants, wanting to actively integrate non-racism as part of their identity, portrayed themselves in a way that is sociable desirable, rather than their true selves, which they want to get rid of.
Regarding validity, which the textbook refers as the most fundamental and important characteristic of a test, also comes into question for the racism scales. Could it be that the MRS and SRS are trusted for its face validity? Which would mean that respondents and experimenters perceive the test as being so valid and legitimate, thus gives it so much credibility; therefore results in them being the most widely used tests of racism to this day. One thing for sure, these tests are not completely valid, in my opinion. Could it be that because the construct of racism itself is too hard to define, which would then become an issue of construct validity? Maybe.
What I find interesting is that although studies have shown that racism scales are far to be valid and legitimate in their reflected scores, we, as people full of optimism for the future, still decide to trust in them, maybe because we feel more secure that the world is seemingly becoming better?
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sources:
Lepore, Lorella; Brown, Rupert. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 72(2), Feb 1997, 275–287.
Dovidio, J. F., Smith, J. K., Donnella, A. G. and Gaertner, S. L. (1997), Racial Attitudes and the Death Penalty. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27: 1468–1487. doi: 10.1111/j.1559–1816.1997.tb01609.x
