Another study on how racist White people are *yawn*

[Ah Xoc Kin]

10-07-08 White people – including children as young as 10 -- may avoid talking about race so as not to appear prejudiced, according to new research. But that approach often backfires as blacks tend to view this "colorblind" approach as evidence of prejudice, especially when race is clearly relevant.

These results are from two separate sets of experiments led by researchers from Tufts University and Harvard Business School. Their findings are reported in the October issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the September issue of Developmental Psychology.

In one study, 101 white undergraduate students were paired with either a white or black female partner who pretended to be another participant. The pairs were presented with 30 photographs of faces that varied in race, gender and background color.

"Efforts to talk about race are fraught with the potential for misunderstandings," said the studies' lead author, Evan Apfelbaum, a PhD candidate at Tufts University.

"There was clear evidence the white participants' behavior was influenced by the precedent set by their partner, but especially when that partner was black," said Samuel Sommers, assistant professor at Tufts and co-author of both papers. "Whites are strategically avoiding the topic of race because they're worried that they'll look bad if they admit they notice it in other people."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081006092518.htm

notice the following facts:

- these researchers had a population to draw from that included several races
- these researchers had the opportunity to study other than White reactions to photos of Black people (whichever skin color)
- these researchers chose not to

*sigh*

[caraher]

1. That's not at all what the study is about

You criticize the researchers for all the things they might have studied instead, yet you seem to misunderstand the questions their study is supposed to answer. The original article says that white avoidance of mentioning race is a strategy that can be misinterpreted. As a white person I think that's useful to know. And it explicitly states that the behaviors sometimes interpreted negatively do not mean the white people engaging in them are racist. The article concludes,

"Our findings don't suggest that individuals who avoid talking about race are racists," Apfelbaum explained. "On the contrary, most are well-intentioned people who earnestly believe that colorblindness is the culturally sensitive way to interact. But, as we've shown, bending over backward to avoid even mentioning race sometimes creates more interpersonal problems than it solves."

Maybe there's something more important to research, but please do the investigators the courtesy of reading what they actually have to say!