How do racists think

Roberts , a Stanford psychologist, that arrives during a time of heightened attention to racial injustice in the United States. Steven O. Roberts Image credit: L. In the paper, which is available online and will appear in an upcoming issue of American Psychologist , the journal of the American Psychological Association, the scholars contend that racism is a deeply American problem and identify, based on a review of prior research published on the topic, seven factors contributing to racism in the U.

It is a hierarchy. It is a pandemic. Racism is so deeply embedded within U. After examining research on racism from psychology, the social sciences and the humanities, the researchers argue that American racism systematically advantages White Americans and disadvantages Americans of color — but that it does not have to. It all starts with awareness, they contend. But people need to understand that those horrific events are a consequence of a larger system.

Really, really great. But racism has been alive and well in America for more than years, so it would be naive to think that this current highly charged moment is going to fix centuries of inequality and discrimination.

Movements tend to wane and fail because people lose motivation and mass protests can lack resilience. What do we need to do to create lasting change and a more just society? As James Jones, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Delaware, Newark who has studied the psychology underlying prejudice and racism, told Science Magazine the key to creating a more just society starts with understanding where biases come from and how to counteract them.

Almost all cognitive biases, both conscious and unconscious, influence our perception of race and can be linked to the perpetuation of racism, says Angela Bell, a psychology professor at Lafayette College. For example, the in-group bias , which is where we favor people who look like us and see out-groups as having less favorable attributes, is often linked with discriminatory behavior. And research shows that an us-versus-them mentality increases the likelihood of out-group prejudices to develop.

Research has found that the in-group bias can lead to employment discrimination , as well as racial bias in police investigations and judicial decisions , among many other things. Another one is the just-world fallacy , which is where we tend to believe that the world is a just place — aka good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people.

Studies have shown that people who believe strongly in a just world are more discriminatory. Some might even feel fear for themselves, or more likely, for their property.

After all, the destruction of property gets more time on the news than speakers voicing righteous anger at the violence enacted on Black bodies. But, actually, white people get the most worked up when they or someone they know have been labeled a racist.

This kind of outrage comes because people see racism as a relic of the past. To them, racists are Klan members or old relatives to be tolerated over the holidays. How can anyone these days possibly be racist?

Hate crime legislation defines race in a similar way. As previously explained, structural racism is deeply ingrained in our society. The result of this is that minority ethnic people, especially those who are more visibly minority ethnic, experience everyday racism.

This has a big impact on their lives. It pervades all areas of life and is hard to challenge, so in some ways it can have a bigger impact than obvious forms of racism. Everyday racism acts to silence and demean minority ethnic people, and reinforces the inequalities they face.

This happens even to people whose grandparents were born in Scotland. Even equality workers sometimes use language which suggests that minority ethnic people are less skilled or capable than white British or Scottish people, despite having statistically higher levels of educational qualifications.