That article was one of my wake-up calls as to the true nature of tranziness.

I suspect that the test measures your reaction time, comparing how long it takes you correctly identify ‘joy’ as ‘good’ when it’s associated with ‘abled people’ vs. how long when it’s associated with ‘disabled people’. There’s probably also a measur of incorrect answers, how many ‘wrong’ answers you get when the categories ‘good’ and ‘abled’ are together vs. how many wrong answers you get when ‘good’ and ‘disabled’ are together.

Anyway, it seems like a pretty easy test to fool (unless my understanding of it is wrong).

Some people are very selfless, but only towards those who they find “acceptable” and “agreeable”.

There are many on the Left whose definition of “racist” is anyone who disagrees with them.

You cannot make people tolerant; the very act of imposing tolerance is itself intolerant.

First, the interpretation is difficult. Which is really Eoin’s point. We don’t know whether the “bias” purportedly detected has any significance outside the laboratory. All the leaping to moral conclusions is premature, and a lot of it seems to be not-necessarily-relevant assumption.

Second, this particular test has its own hidden bias, in that it uses American names (whose social context is obscure to Britons, BTW, so it won’t work on us in the same way) which may also be loaded with a social message.

A black man, Mr X, could as easily be called George as Jamal. Jamal is the distinctively “black” name, so would be used in the test. But the name is also a message about social status and aspiration. It is one popularised in the 60s and 70s specifically as a distinctively black rejection of European “slave names”. Just like everywhere else vogue names are fashion-driven and a bit less popular among the middle class than the poor. So Jamal doesn’t just suggest Mr X is black, it sugests he’s on the young side and bolshie, and probably from a rough area. The other names in the test are open to the same objections. Thus the use of names as a proxy for race is pretty hopelessly compromised.

A lot of problems in racist and anti-racist rhetoric stem from this hidden overlap of race and class/culture concerns. We’d know we are biassed against Mr X because of his colour if the reaction is to an unnamed picture of him without distinctive clothing or other caste-marks, in comparison with an equally handsome white man of similar age (or among a sample with balance in those qualities) also without caste-marks. If we use a name or other social context then we need to know how George tests in comparison to Jamal.

[For the record, the test when I took it a couple of years back showed me as having no racial bias either way, and a slight (surprising to me) bias against women.]

I remember a few years back one of the US TV networks did a feature on the tests that Claire links to — specifically a black/white version of the test. What I found interesting was how the test administrator treated blacks who had a bias toward black as being proud of their race, but white who had a bias toward white were treated as having something wrong.

The test is, of course, unfalsifable:

“People who argue that prejudice is not a big problem today are, ironically, demonstrating the problem of unconscious prejudice. Because these prejudices are outside our awareness….”

It gives examples of steroetypes on a previous page. There is this egregious stereotype:

“The elderly, for example, are routinely portrayed as being frail and forgetful, while younger people are often shown as vibrant and able.”

The scales have dropped from my eyes. Now I realize that it was society’s prejudices that lead me to believe this horrendous stereotype. What appals me is the waste of money this entails: Can you imagine the money that the evil pharmacutical companies have made by articulating the view that old people are “forgetful”, or “less able”, or “less virile”, or ( most ridiculous of all, I know realize) FRAIL!! How did I ever believe this!!

We should abandon all medicare programs, as well. The sick steroetype that all “old”‘ people are not vibrant and able is based on this LIE! Let the old compete in the Olympics!! STOP THE DESCRIMINATION!!

Try this if you think you’re tolerant:

http://www.tolerance.org/hidden_bias/

Feminists are only concerned with rape when it is commited by white men. If an ethnic minority male rapes a white woman, it’s politically incorrect and is dismissed in a manner reminiscent of the worst mysogynists.

In most feminist circles, racial political correctness trumps women’s rights.

Would an honest look at women that recognized that just like men some are good and some are bad really be heretical? Are women really oppressed in the Western world? I have rarely felt that way. Most of the unfortunate things that I have dealt with were due to poor judgment on my part. Shouldn’t women be free to make some mistakes?

We had a Muslim preacher/mullah come and talk to our church after 9-11. He was pretty decent overall, but hemmed and hawed some about his culture’s treatment of women. Basically saying that women are weak and need protection. I told him that this may indeed be a fundamental fact, however that in a truly civilized society with law and order women do not much need protection. I asked him why he didn’t see to it that his society was such that women could walk and drive alone without fear. Jail the bandits, improve the society as a whole, demand that Muslim men behave rationally. He didn’t really have an answer. I didn’t tell him to arm the women because I was in church after all, but thanks to western technology I believe the score has been fairly evened out. To sum up an overly long post, western civilization deserves some kudos for its treatment of women not the whining of college girls at Brown. We need more self confidence in our society. I think true feminists should be leading the way not tilting at windmills like Martha Burk.