Subliminal Racism.

The government is urging employers to use a prejudometer in order to determine how racist they are. The test is based on the Implicit Association Test produced by Harvard and supposedly determines subconsious racial prejudice. It's an interesting idea, most people demonstrate a preference for white faces in the test, in fact the results for everyone who takes the test are:

27%- Strong automatic preference for white people
27% Moderate automatic preference for white people
16%- Slight automatic preference for white people
17%- No automatic preference
6%- Slight automatic preference for black people
4%- Moderate automatic preference for black people
2%- Strong automatic preference for black people

When I took it it I scored a "Slight preference for white people", which means that at least 61% of the population have more prejudons than me. Obviously I'd hoped to to register "no preference" but my result isn't bad.

On the other hand when a liberal hand wringer who is zealous about using heavy handed measures to punish racial transgressions takes the test he discovers that he has a “strong automatic preference for European Americans compared to African Americans”.

So this is my first hypothesis; the people who are most obsessed with the idea that the general population are a simmering cauldron of racists whose prejudices need to combated by endless 'anti racism' campaigns, community outreach and all that crap are assuming that everyone in the population shares the deep felt racial prejudice that they themselves feel.

Here's my second hypothesis; the constant focus on race and racism, serves to deeped and entrench racial attitudes.

Via Obnoxio.