Friday, October 25, 2013

Storytelling in Racism and the Self-Serving Bias


                          




                As the title suggests, there are several ways that racism seeps out of a color-blind façade which denigrates minorities while praising and solidifying, in the case of Bonilla-Silva’s book Racism without Racists, whites both old and young.  Color-blindness is an ideology that people do not take race into account in their social interactions, by not “seeing race” but “seeing people,” racism is no longer a factor in whites’ interactions with minorities. This is clearly, however, not the case as racism does exist even if very few people claim to be racists. Actions are very important, but color-blind racism often comes through in the form of verbal interactions both amongst races, amongst the majority, and in the public domain.
                There are several storylines that whites surely use amongst themselves, but most clearly used when asked to discuss race, that fit into the self-serving bias. The fundamental attribution error is a cognitive bias, or error in thinking, that attributes the failures of others to their personalities or actions, and attributes others’ successes to situations, rather than realizing the role of the environment and it’s potential negative effects on a person’s status. In this case, whites tell several “stories” that are very racist, and occur because of this fundamental attribution error. The following stories is each one of these cases: “If other minorities have succeeded (Italians, Jews, etc.), why haven’t Blacks?” and “Blacks are the racist ones.”
                One blatantly racist statement is a prime example of the fundamental attribution error. When a white person says that if one minority has been able to “overcome discrimination” at a higher level than Blacks, this implied something much more. This implies that all minorities have the same start, at the bottom, and can escape structural racism with a bit of hard work and effort. This puts the blame on Blacks, when they have been the most disadvantaged group historically, and have not found much improvement in their situation in comparison with other minorities, likely due to their somatic and geographical distance from the dominant group. They are most discriminated against, putting it simply, because they are the least white. When someone says something that blames them for not overcoming their discrimination, they do not take into account how relative to other groups, Blacks have the longest way to go to gain structural equality.
                One other way to defend themselves, which is another cognitive bias, is to blame the other group, in this case saying that Blacks are racist and always “cry racism” to get benefits from services such as welfare and affirmative action. This takes the responsibility off of whites for being racist; they can claim that they don’t do anything to promulgate racism, but Blacks keep bringing up the race issue making them the racist ones. Whites also resent Blacks for affirmative actions, asserting that they lose their jobs to other people they view as less qualified, on the account of race. They do not want to pay taxes for welfare that people of all races use, and do not take into account that Blacks and minorities did not have the same ‘start’ and advantages they may have had, and this aid may help them in ways that are vital to survival and creating a balanced playing field.
                Both of these story telling methods ultimately achieve the two goals most important in upkeeping a color blind façade: it takes the blame off of the individual committing the fundamental attribution error, and attributes a negative situation to a personal attribute rather than taking into account a situation. Racism is recreated in these tales every day, and while they are being told, of course there will be racism “without racists.”

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/microaggressions-in-everyday-life/201010/racial-microaggressions-in-everyday-life 

http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/The_Fundamental_Attribution_Error

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