Racial Bias Research Paper

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Racial Bias

It would be hard to say that people are born into their prejudice, but rather form their prejudice towards other races from a young age due to influences from their peer groups or parental values and even societal values. Jane Elliott’s classic ‘Blue-eyed, Brown-eyed’ experiment has challenged people 's formed racial biases (Elliott, Golenbock and Talmadge, 2008). This will be discussed in more detail below. In order to understand racial bias one must understand what racism is. It will be discussed with regards to what racism is, then it will be outlined what the major factors of racial bias are. Then the role of ingroup and outgroup and finally studies that have tried to reduce racial bias from the Australia, the United States
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However, although explicit biases may be seen as mutually exclusive Staats and Patton (2013) argue that implicit and explicit biases have an effect on one another. In other words human subconsciousness has an effect on their conscious actions, Thomas and Henri (2011) argue that many people form racial bias because of being scared, envious or being treated differently. Simmons and Lecouteur (2008) believe partially, the reason that people are fearful of other races and ethnic groups is because of the way in which certain races and ethnic groups are portrayed in the media. Moreover, a much stronger reason that influences racial bias is through socialization (Grosfoguel, 2016). Grigg and Manderson (2015) argue that from as young as 4 years old children are aware that there are differences in racial identification, however, it is understood by the teenage years. With the evidence provided it is hard to argue that socialization does not play a role in forming racial bias views (Grigg and Manderson, 2015). Bessone (2013) puts it quite bluntly that the major factor that influences racial bias is ignorance. Benson (2013) also believes a person that engages in racist behaviour is not inherently an evil person; However, the racist person 's attitudes are simply wrong. Bessone (2013) believes that more education can help in reducing racial bias of either individual or groups, or in some cases

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