“In the U.S., there’s a small percentage of people who in nationwide surveys say they won’t vote for a qualified black presidential candidate,” Professor Dovidio said. “But a bigger factor is the aversive racists, those who don’t think that they’re racist.” Faced with a complex decision, he said, aversive racists feel doubts about a black person that they don’t feel about an identical white. “These doubts tend to be attributed not to the person’s race — because that would be racism — but deflected to other areas that can be talked about, such as lack of experience,” he added.
When I was young, I ran into a few out-and-out racists. Today, I occasionally run into them (more so abroad) but it is rare. What I do encounter (at a higher rate as I get older and higher in economic status) is what I have come to learn is the aversive racism. In fact, I’d bet that the majority of the white-folk I meet nowadays are adverse racists. For example, I know more than a few whites that literally love Obama, say their hero is MLK, have been to Africa (a place even I have yet to go), are comfortable having friends/colleagues that are African-American but feel absolutely uncomfortable if they see an inter-racial relationship, will never sit by the open seat next African-American on the bus or will say some of then most racist thing and yet feel shock when I call them on it. This is the new racism … silent and worse of all so imbedded, so unconscious that their is very little one can do to battle it … but whose effects are just as debilitating if not more than the open racist. I mean that open racist is easy to ignore and isolate … but how do you fight a racism that people don’t even know exists in their mind.
