She's Got the Jungle Fever

Have you ever noticed the staggering differences between the lunch tables in elementary school and the lunch tables in middle school? Aside from the sharing of meals developing into the hording of meals and the size increase of prepared sack lunches, I notice one major difference: race. Before the graduation from chocolate milk cartons to soda cans race never seemed to be a huge issue for our lunchtime munching. But something changed between elementary school and middle school, something major. I don’t really know what caused it but when I sat down for my first lunch in the middle school cafeteria where I sat was already pre-determined for me. I, being white, absolutely did not, would not, and could not sit at the Black table or the Mexican table. What happened? When did we start segregating our mealtime pals based on race? Was there a memo I missed before the first day of middle school?

I went to public school starting from elementary school through high school and was always submerged in a diverse atmosphere. It wasn’t until I got to high school, however, that I realized my affinity for people (men especially) of other races—most prominently Black people. The majority of my friends (and most definitely ALL of my love interests) in high school were Black, Mexican, Asian, Hispanic, or Multi-Racial. It is very hard to explain why it is that I feel so comfortable and easy going with people of different races than my own, but I do, I guess it’s just who I am: I am Rachel, the Uh-Oh Oreo (Black on the inside White on the outside) ☺. So let me tell you, coming to Southwestern and experiencing our “diversity” came as, well to put it bluntly, a swift kick in the pants.

After two years here I started to notice a change in my perceptions about and behavior towards people of different races (that was DE-pressing, to say the least). So, when the assignment to take the Implicit Association Test came up, I jumped at the opportunity to see what my implicit thoughts would reveal now that I am not in high school anymore—and thus not in such a diverse environment everyday (Greenwald, 1998). The Implicit Association Test was the first test developed to measure the extent to which two concepts are related—most notably being able to associate good and bad words with black and white faces (Greenwald, 1998). The results from this test show that most web respondents (and probably most European Americans) find it easier to associate negative words with black faces and positive words with white faces.

I decided to take two, very related, IAT tests to determine my level of implicit racism and my unconscious racial beliefs. I took both the African American—European American IAT and the Light Skin—Dark Skin IAT. I took the African American—European American IAT first and much to my absolutely delighted surprise my data suggest that I show a slight automatic preference for African American compared to European American faces. Woot Woot! These results are incredibly consistent with my conscious beliefs and attitudes and demonstrate my belief that everyone is equal no matter what but that I just happen to feel slightly more comfortable with Black people. I wish I could explain this phenomenon and I’m almost positive the Harvard research assistants categorizing this data would absolutely LOVE to study me based on my wacky results but it’s just how I feel. My results on the Light Skin—Dark Skin IAT revealed that I have little to no automatic preference between Dark Skin and Light Skin, which is also consistent with my conscious beliefs because I don’t really care at all what color your skin is, just that you’re a cool kid.

To be honest, I think that there are several reasons why I obtained the scores that I did. What I would like to believe contributed to most of it was truly my implicit feelings, however I’m not blind to the fact that I was smart enough to know how to control the outcome of the test about three quarters of the way through it. The first test I took closely reflects my personal beliefs as does the second; but, during the latter I knew what to do in order to make the test result show what I wanted. I did try to refrain from doing so but because of the ironic monitoring process I was primed by my attempts to not control the test, so I most likely did in fact curb my results to fit what I wanted them to reveal (Wegner, 1997). In all reality, I think that the IAT is reflecting my personal beliefs as well as my ideal beliefs. Luckily for me, the race IAT showed me what I expected and wanted it to prove and therefore there was no discrepancy between my self-concept and my self guide making me very happy (Higgins, 1989). Nevertheless, I am cognizant of the fact that if the race IAT had suggested that I displayed a slight automatic preference for European Americans I would have fully attributed those results to my surroundings instead of my inner beliefs in order to protect myself from feeling racist or guilt about the loss of my previous values.

When I returned to the website to take another test I retook the African American- European American IAT over again. This time I controlled my automatic responses and thought about each word as it was presented. I knew that this test was based on the timing of my associations so I made sure that I quickly attributed negative words with African American faces and made sure to pause before I attributed positive words with them. Enacting this slight modification to my test taking I ended up with completely different data that suggested that I had a moderate preference for European Americans. I believe that the reason it was easier for me to control the test was that this Social Psychology class and my previous psychology classes primed me to look for the discrepancies within the makeup of the test and how the test was actually put together. Really, the IAT is a simple timed word association and once the format is learned data can be controlled by sheer knowledge about the timing devices used to gain the results.

Completing the IAT made me think back to the lunch tables in middle school and the difference between how individuals were separated. In elementary school, you sat with your class and we were segregated by grades, because those were the people you knew and were most comfortable with. But in middle school, ideas of comfort changed and stereotypes began to form and play a part in how we sat at the lunch table as well as interacted with one another. Maybe we were learning from the older grades that it wasn’t okay to sit with other races, maybe a stereotype switch was flipped by our parents or our teachers, but for whatever reason as we got older we became more comfortable with the people of our own race (excluding my crazy self). This test makes me wonder what is was about getting older that made us employ stereotypes about each other and see people who we used to share our milk with in elementary school as foreign and unknown. I think most of what happened between the innocence of elementary school and the “grow up” world of middle school can mostly be attributed to modeling the older grades’ behaviors toward each other based on race, teachers’ behavior towards students of different races, and the family influences that start to take effect on kids once they get to be about 13 or 14.

Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480.

Higgins, E. T. (1989). Self-discrepancy theory: What patterns of self-beliefs cause people to suffer? In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 22, pp. 93-136). New York: Academic Press.

Wegner, D. M. (1997). When the antidote is the poison: Ironic mental control processes. Psychological Science, 8, 148-153.