Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599;
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Jun 11;116(24):11693-11698. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1818816116. Epub 2019 May 28.
Implicit racial bias remains widespread, even among individuals who explicitly reject prejudice. One reason for the persistence of implicit bias may be that it is maintained through structural and historical inequalities that change slowly. We investigated the historical persistence of implicit bias by comparing modern implicit bias with the proportion of the population enslaved in those counties in 1860. Counties and states more dependent on slavery before the Civil War displayed higher levels of pro-White implicit bias today among White residents and less pro-White bias among Black residents. These associations remained significant after controlling for explicit bias. The association between slave populations and implicit bias was partially explained by measures of structural inequalities. Our results support an interpretation of implicit bias as the cognitive residue of past and present structural inequalities.
隐性种族偏见仍然普遍存在，即使在明确反对偏见的人当中也是如此。隐性偏见持续存在的一个原因可能是，它通过缓慢变化的结构性和历史性不平等得以维持。我们通过将现代隐性偏见与 1860 年这些县的奴隶人口比例进行比较，来研究隐性偏见的历史持久性。内战前对奴隶制依赖程度更高的县和州，如今其白人居民的白人至上隐性偏见程度更高，而黑人居民的白人至上隐性偏见程度则较低。在控制了显性偏见后，这些关联仍然显著。奴隶人口与隐性偏见之间的关联部分可以用结构性不平等的衡量标准来解释。我们的研究结果支持将隐性偏见解释为过去和现在结构性不平等的认知残余。
