By Cliff Kincaid ——Bio and Archives--May 25, 2012
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“This collaborative project outlines a series of studies investigating the role of individual differences in executive functions (EFs) in expression of implicit racial bias. Executive functions refer to higher-order control processes that regulate thought and action. Although an individual’s performance on laboratory-based implicit bias tasks is typically interpreted as a straightforward manifestation of his/her underlying automatic bias, recent preliminary evidence suggests that performance on all such tasks implicates executive control processes, such as the overriding of dominant or pre-potent responses. According to the team of researchers involved in this project, racial bias, as assessed by implicit bias tasks, is a complex construct jointly affected by automatic bias and individual differences in EF abilities.”While this seems deliberately vague, additional research led to the “Stereotyping & Prejudice Research Laboratory” in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago and the video game that has been under development since 2000. We are told that the video game “presents a series of images of young men, some armed, some unarmed, set against realistic backgrounds like parks or city streets. The player’s goal is to shoot any and all armed targets, but not to shoot unarmed targets. Half of the targets are Black, and half are White. We have used this game to investigate whether decisions to ‘shoot’ a potentially hostile target can be influenced by that target’s race.” The video game seemed designed to prove racial profiling or racism on the part of police. Indeed, it is reported that Correll came up with the idea of studying this issue when U.S. attorneys decided in 1999 not to file federal charges against four white New York City police officers in the Amadou Diallo case. Diallo was a black illegal alien who was shot and killed because officers thought he had pulled a gun on them. According to the article, unconscious racial stereotypes may have been at fault in that case and, after being identified, it is possible that this “bias” can be “trained out” of the officers. The problem is that Correll told NPR, which was recently doing a story about the shooting of the black youth Trayvon Martin, that his research at this point suggests even blacks have preconceived notions about other blacks being potentially dangerous. NPR reported, “Correll says the participants are universally more likely to fire at black men — whether the shooter is young, old, male, female or even black.” Correll told NPR, “Everybody [on the video game] was faster to shoot a black target than a white target, and the magnitude of that bias was equivalent” regardless of race. Media coverage of the Martin case was driven by a real stereotype, encouraged by agitators like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Congressional Black Caucus member Rep. Corrine Brown, that a racist white person shot Martin for no legitimate reason, perhaps as part of a “hate crime.” The evidence produced in the case demonstrates a case for self-defense by the shooter, George Zimmerman, who is Hispanic and was monitoring the neighborhood for criminals before he was viciously attacked by Martin. Additional information about the dead teenager’s lifestyle and background, including juvenile delinquency and marijuana use, has come to light since President Obama commented if he had a son, “he’d look like Trayvon.” Left-wing network MSNBC has pulled back on its saturation coverage of the case, after apparently concluding that Zimmernan, who is in hiding from black mobs out to kill him, has the evidence on his side. Sharpton is a host on MSNBC. One wonders if Correll will receive any more federal money if his final study finds blacks just as “guilty” as whites of “racism” or “hate crimes” against blacks.
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Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. usasurvival.org.