Study of elementary school children reveal the pervasiveness of implicit racial bias
We must admit that we’ve come a long way in our race relations, nearly stamping out (except for minority fringe groups) explicit or candid racism. However, the years of racial separation and discrimination have left behind a hidden residual racist residue, if you will. Psychologists call this residue an implicit bias—biases that we are often not even aware we have. The problem with implicit biases is that they do actually influence the way we think, the little every-day decisions and judgments and guided by our implicit biases. Mikayla, and all the other children in this video, is not necessarily a racists child, at least not in the normal sense of the word, but she does hold implicit biases that affects her judgment of situations, who she believes will steal and who will be the good Samaritan, and ultimately who she will befriend.