Sublime

Anthony Greenwald recently published the authoritative book on the topic, Blindspot.

The use of standardized tests to measure aptitude and intelligence is one of the most effective racist policies ever devised to degrade Black minds and legally exclude Black bodies.

Racial-group behavior is a figment of the racist’s imagination. Individual behaviors can shape the success of individuals. But policies determine the success of groups.

That is how racist power can call affirmative action policies that succeed in reducing racial inequities “race conscious” and standardized tests that produce racial inequities “race neutral.”

In psychology there are at least two biases that drive this pattern. One is confirmation bias:23 seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias:24 seeing what we want to see. These biases don’t just prevent us from applying our intelligence. They can actually contort our intelligence into a weapon against the truth.

WHITE PEOPLE HAVE their own dueling consciousness, between the segregationist and the assimilationist: the slave trader and the missionary, the proslavery exploiter and the antislavery civilizer, the eugenicist and the melting pot–ter, the mass incarcerator and the mass developer, the Blue Lives Matter and the All Lives Matter, the not-racist natio

Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998).