Poemranker [Replying] Sun May 05 19:42:26 PDT 2024

Replying to a comment on:

Middle-Aged White Woman (Free verse) by Dovina

Maybe itâs time. You look at me and see a symbol of conservative acts that hurt you. My kind abused your kind. Now with your freedom, your authority, your power, itâs time for retribution. Go ahead, ignore me, donât hire me belittle me in your verse skip over me at your readings. My ancestors did it to your ancestors. You have the right. Itâs a new experience for me, thatâs all. Maybe itâs time.

zodiac

22-Apr-05/9:44 AM

Don't be ashamed. I found three potential problems with the quiz:

1) I think I might have associated good with white more readily because it was the first option given (i.e., whatever the orientation - left or right - given to white/good, I trained myself in the first sections to hit, say, the white button for the response good, and so on.) I know the test worked to reduce that outcome by more-or-less systematically giving every permutation for white, black, good, bad, left, and right - but I don't know how effective it was. (I also wondered if I'd answered something different on the survey bit it might have started me with black/good and white/bad.) In any case, the test is probably only really effective for comparison; i.e., I got moderate preference for white, but Dovina got extreme preference, or something such, so she's more racially biased.

2) I couldn't convince myself that a face I thought was white was really black, and so got an X of shame for the entire test on that particular face. Also, testing only for black/white bias is extremely bunk. Where, then, do you fit a Japanese in the racial scheme of things?

3) I think you're going to disagree, but I think one's (automatic) racial bias rating has very little to do with one's engaging in overt racism - or what I'd simply call racism. For example, you're aware that you're automatically biased toward whites, so you make a conscious (and educated) effort to not say or do racist things, while Dovina, who maybe scores milder on the racial bias test, writes poems such as this one. (The part where I think you'll disagree is defining racism as 'racist actions' rather than 'racial bias'; you've said something to that effect before.) In any event, the test has little bearing on the conversation above.

By the way, I've become extremely (and fully self-awarely) prejudiced against Arabs recently. They are, as far as my experience goes, the most predictably and consistently stupid, unimaginative, and unentrepeneurial class of people I've ever met. Now I can't tell if George Bush & Co. really new that or were just racist when they started this whole recent Middle East annihilation business.

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