Groundbreaking scientific research of the day
Black-and-White TV: Nonverbal Racial Bias Found in Popular Television Shows
Facial expressions and body language may reinforce racism
Quote:
Popular television shows that put black and white characters on an equal footing as doctors or detectives may still be transmitting racial bias nonverbally, according to a new study. Researchers found that in a selection of brief, silent clips from 11 prime-time television shows, white characters were consistently rated as behaving more positively toward other white characters than toward black ones, even when the black characters were deemed equal to their white counterparts in attractiveness, kindness and intelligence.
The study, published on Thursday in the journal Science , suggests one way racial biases could be propagated even when people are consciously on the lookout against racist stereotypes or remarks. "What this suggests is the media is one of the mechanisms of how we see people's true feelings and therefore how we form our own biases," says John Dovidio, a social psychologist at Yale University who did not take part in the study. "The nonverbal behavior really conveys what people are thinking and feeling, and that's why it's so potent."
Do we really need to look for every conceivable, remote possibility of an instance of racism, whether real or perceived? Or can we all just stop acting like damn fools around each other and move on? Doesn't science have anything better to do, like save the world, find a cure for cancer or fudge some data or something?
