Science Explains Why We Are Racist Against Black
MC Serch was right. It was a white guy that started all that. And that white guy's name was… Felix Unger! Scientific American reports on a recent study asserting that the metaphorical association of white with "good" and black with "bad" has at its roots the human desire for cleanliness: "The colors white and black have carried layers of moral meaning since long before Americans' infatuation with cowboys and automobiles. Indeed, some scientists believe that our conception of blackness and sin may be entangled with a fundamental and ancient fear of dirt and contagion that remains deeply wired in our neurons today."
In the study, two University of Virginia psychologists showed volunteer subjects words with strong moral overtones such as "greed" or "honesty" on a screen, printed in either black or white. The time it took to identify the color of the words, aside from their meaning, was taken as a gauge of the level of cognitive connection between the concept and the color. (The study referenced the well-established Stroop Effect.)
And?
"When moral words were printed in white and immoral words in black, reaction time was significantly faster than when words of virtue were black and sin were white." Then they added the element of concern about purity and pollution, testing volunteers' desire for cleaning and personal hygiene products against their results on the moral connection experiment.
"The results were unambiguous. As reported in the August issue of Psychological Science, those who expressed the strongest desire for an array of cleaning products were also those most likely to link morality with white and immorality with black. But here is the really interesting part: The only products to show such an association were Dove soap and Crest toothpaste, products for personal cleanliness. Items such as Lysol and Windex did not activate the sin-blackness connection. In short, concerns about filth and personal hygiene appear central to seeing the moral universe in black and white.
No one thought to wonder if the white/black good/bad correlations were a product of generations of negative racial connotations, rather than the cause of them?
There's definitely a screwy element in their study but there have also been studies in more homogeneous societies outside the US, which showed that darker skinned people _of the same race_ made less money than lighter skinned people.
Also? http://www.bestasianskinlightening.com/ Skin lightening lotions are extremely popular across Asia because in many places dark skin implies laborer.
To be fair, most of these societies (India, parts of Africa) have been the victims of colonialism for generations. In the case of India thousands of years. The Aghora, Indian cannibals, even abduct Israeli and American tourists because white people are believed to have the greatest power.
Also, let us not forget Claude Levi-Strauss' famous anthropological conclusion: "If it ain't white, it ain't right".
Remember that whole Tipping Point chapter on contagious teen suicide in Micronesia or wherever? (Yes, you read it. So did I. Though I stole a friend’s copy, I swear.) It said that suicide was anathema until one popular kid did it, then gradually it became a social norm. When Gladwell isn't garroting contextual logic or jerking off on a pile of royalty checks or sprinkling pixie dust on his cauldron of marketable anecdotes, he stumbles on the occasional good point—humans implant ideas in each other’s heads, creating viral permission-chains.
I wouldn't attribute this idea to Gladwell. Richard Dawkins has been talking memes for years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics
Sorry, This was a joke nobody seemed to get (likely because it is dumb). The above copy is directly from the previous horror chick post. so… yeah. I'm done for today.
I got it! (If only because I've been particularly obsessive about reading The Awl today.)
I thought it was a rather astute observation, actually!
I was forced to leave town after I divorced Mr. Clean and took up with the Jolly Green Giant.
Mr. Clean just couldn't take your dark (dirty, disgusting) humor, I suppose.
OhmygodIbetheissohung!
At least there's one point on which I think we can all agree: 3rd Bass sucks.
[GAS FACE]
Someone hasn't read his Moby Dick recently, and that someone is me.
They should try that experiment in cultures where white represents death.
It's called Scientific AMERICAN not Scientific Oriental. Anyway, everyone knows science over there is different than science over here.
Full of antioxidants.
Truth is, everyone wants to be caramel – like fried onions.
The world would be a better place. and such a delicious smelling one.