Good question. I had been editing my comment before you replied, in the hopes of removing an errant comma but also to add: I don't hold (most of) the journalists covering the story blameless, either. By writing from a perspective that identifies more with the police and the woman who called them than Prof. Gates, they do lead their readers to one particular conclusion.
But that's exactly what makes the fault issue so messy -- do you blame people for fully nonconscious biases? For being defensive when a belief in their own success at being egalitarian is challenged? For reading an already biased media through the lens of their own additional preexisting biases?
Social psychology draws a very clear distinction between overt racism and aversive racism, the latter practiced by people who, consciously at least, value equality and don't think or understand that they can hold racist beliefs and behave in a racist manner anyway. I'm not sure anyone's arrived at a good idea of how to remedy aversive racism, but I can't help but think that encouraging people to get their basic facts right before arguing is a necessary start. (And yeah, when any Fox News-watchers start subscribing to that philosophy, I will let you know.)
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Re: I hope this will be taken in the spirit it is intended...
Date: 2009-07-21 08:12 pm (UTC)But that's exactly what makes the fault issue so messy -- do you blame people for fully nonconscious biases? For being defensive when a belief in their own success at being egalitarian is challenged? For reading an already biased media through the lens of their own additional preexisting biases?
Social psychology draws a very clear distinction between overt racism and aversive racism, the latter practiced by people who, consciously at least, value equality and don't think or understand that they can hold racist beliefs and behave in a racist manner anyway. I'm not sure anyone's arrived at a good idea of how to remedy aversive racism, but I can't help but think that encouraging people to get their basic facts right before arguing is a necessary start. (And yeah, when any Fox News-watchers start subscribing to that philosophy, I will let you know.)