The Racism Test

Recently in school, I took an Implicit Association Test (IAT) which measured my unconscious preference of African Americans and European Americans. After taking the test, my results revealed that I had a slight automatic preference for African Americans compared to European Americans. According to the chart below, I fall in the 6% of the IAT Web Respondents.

Personally, I feel that the this test did not represent my preferences. I feel that I have little to none preference toward black or white people. However, if I were to have any preference, I feel that it would be slightly toward whites. Since I am white, I am more likely to favor my race than another race. I think that the matching part of the IAT did not take other factors into consideration. It did not acknowledge my testing environment, or the stress of simply messing up the test. The subject of the matching test did not matter, but the fact that it was a fast subject matching test puts pressure on the test taker.

I do agree with the information presented before the exam. Prejudices and discrimination is taught, and I do agree that it is throw onto children when they are developing and learning about the world. I definitely think that I have been influenced by biases as I have grown up, but I do not reject my biases. Luckily, I have grown up in a very accepting environment, and those accepting values have been passed down to me. However, like I explained above, I do prefer my race, religion, ethnicity, gender, etc. over others because it is what I relate with in life. Even though we are all influenced by society to form our own biases, in the end it is up to us all as individuals as to how we present our biases, prejudices, etc.