The First Impression ..... Before the First Impression

               A Harvard study shows when viewing another person, your brain collects information about race and sex first before all else.  When you see someone or an image of a person, your brain’s primary focus is to gather information on gender and race before any other analysis.  This could be partly because of the cultural emphasis Americans place on these two classifications.  In Racism without Racist, Bonilla-Silva discusses the relationship between gender and race, arguing that they share a similar trajectory.  This is partly due to their position as oppressed groups under the dominant masculine male.  Our minds primary focus is to determine gender and race so we may evaluate our internal value of the person being viewed.  If the person is a woman or has different color skin, they are generally thought of as an unequal.

                Bonilla-Silva argues that women, specifically from the white working class, are most likely to have more relationship and better relate to minorities who generally share similar environments.  This can be attributed to four generalities within this classification.  First, these white working class women have a greater chance of being raised in a racially mixed neighborhood.  Second, they are more likely to have friends from racial minorities. Third, they are likely to be politically progressive; leading them to believe that change must be made in order to better the lower classes.  Lastly, these women are more likely to date across the color line.  All of these characteristics attribute to a more racially educated person who sees the humanity in others and not just the color of their skin. 

These factors, argues Bonilla-Silva, is what makes working class white women more likely to be racially progressive.  Racial progressives general acknowledge that being born a white male can give you an advantage in today’s society.   In Bonilla-Silva’s study on college women who were raised in the lower class, he found they were more racially progressive based on their common experiences with oppression.  Bonilla-Silva states, “actors who experience multiple oppressions are more likely to share literally a “social space” as well as a set of experiences that tend to develop a sense of commonality.”  Minorities in the working class are oppressed because they are part of a minority thought to be unequal to white males while also being oppressed because of their status of lower class.  Similarly, working class women are oppressed not only because they are not as masculine as males but also because of their social class level.  Multiple oppressions from the same oppressor create a community of commonality within which even they believe they are inferior as exhibited in the subject’s acknowledgement of the white male birthright. 

Using Bonilla-Silva’s theory of racial progressivism of similar “subordinates”, it is easy to understand why our brains register gender and race even before a first impression of the person as a human being can be established.  We base our interactions with others through a “race and gender prism” which directs our feelings and attitude towards a certain person of a different social class, skin color, or gender.  




http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/10/12/your-brain-first-notices-race-gender-before-all-else/60650.html