SOCI 302 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Symbolic Racism, Social Desirability Bias, Racialization
Week 4- anti-racism
Modes of measuring racial discrimination
• Analysis of observational data on racial disparities (e.g. wage data) whereby we adjust
for non-race sources of difference e.g. experience (statistical decomposition). Difference
after these adjustments is discrimination.
o Main drawback is that it relies upon measuring racial discrimination as a residual
(remaining difference). However, it is difficult to know and measure all other
factors that may influence an outcome. Interpretations using this measure
require caveats regarding adequacy of control.
• Reports of discrimination from perpetrators suffer from reasonable suspicion that
perpetrators will not report their discriminatory action accurately e.g. fear of legal
action. Strong normative prohibition against discrimination influences underreporting.
However, they provide psychological insight into discrimination.
• Reports from targets of discrimination: face fewer social desirability problems but they
may capture perceptions rather than reality. They may understate the presence of
discrimination because the reason for the negative outcomes are not clear to the target,
or they may overstate it by incorrectly attributing negative outcomes to discrimination.
• if you latatly ask soeoe if they’re raist they are less likely to say they are
changing prejudice in post-civil rights era
• new optimists
o like being colorblind
o offer no insights about continuing discrimination
• new prejudice interpretations
o prejudice is deeply rooted in us but not all prejudice is racist
o symbolic racism
o minorities push too hard for equality
o no need to take actions and back off, let things settle themselves
rethinking racism reading
• racism is in the social structure
• we all have racial biases
• if our system is based on racialization then racism is normal and to be expected
• racism is rational and is instrumental but it can be something for minorities to
understand their position
• stop blaming the past and that there is just as much racism today
• until we get rid or hierarchy, the class and race of people will remain
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