Reprinted with permission from seeingred

From this post.

From Scientific American, May 2008: Buried Prejudice: The Bigot in Your Brain: "All of us hold unconscious clichéd beliefs about social groups: black and white, female and male, elderly and young, gay and straight, fat and thin. Such implicit bias is far more prevalent than the more overt, or explicit, prejudice that we associate with, for instance, the Ku Klux Klan or the Nazis. Certain social scenarios can automatically activate implicit stereotypes and attitudes, which then can affect our perceptions, judgments and behavior, including the choice of whom to befriend, whom to hire and, in the case of doctors, what treatment to deliver. Recent research suggests we can reshape our implicit attitudes and beliefs - or at least curb their effects on our behavior." In other words, we can be racist without realising it and without meaning to - but we can also teach ourselves to resist that unconscious racism.

From Discover magazine's Top 6 Mind & Brain Stories of 2006: Looks Can Kill. "Study after study has shown that black defendants are more likely than white ones to receive the death penalty. But according to a paper published in Psychological Science in May, it's not just whether you're black that matters in capital sentencing; it's also how black you look."

And now, some pseudoscience: a celebrity photographer and a member of the Royal Geographical Society has disgraced himself by claiming that different races evolved from different ape species on different continents. Scientists respond: "wtf?!" (I had some trouble getting this link to work - let me know if you do.)

ETA: From New Scientist, 18 July 2008: 'Ten Commandments' of race and genetics issued. A multidiscplinary group suggests principles for geneticists, medical researchers, and other scientists.

GARP

( Another first. )

Thanks for reading.