Fast Thinking Discrimination Is Destroying Our Society

A girl sits alone in her room, late on a wednesday evening studying, wishing and hoping she has done enough to live up to the racial stereotyping implemented from her family that she has to be smart and get good grades because she’s Indian.

“I am expected to get high grades by both my peers and parents” Says an Indian Grade 8 MS student “I have to push myself to the limit to prove to live up to expectations and stereotypes” Says a Asian MS student.

Underlying these words is the issue that racial stereotypes still exist in our everyday life. In this day and age especially in developed countries such as Singapore we believe there is no racism. We've eradicated slavery and racial segregation, but in truth According to A harvard online test most people show some sort of Racial Bias. This affects how we treat people of all colours.

According to Psychologist Daniel Kahneman We think both fast and slow, We weigh very few factors deliberately and the hundreds of other factors on intuitive judgement. Our intuitive judgement is called fast thinking. Our fast judgement relies on accustoms we have. “Mainly from Fictional Television shows to news reports” Says a New york Times article. These platforms rely on stereotypes both accurate and inaccurate. The key to “Fast thinking” discrimination is that we all share it.

Fast thinking discrimination doesn't only affect people of Majority Groups. Mahzarin Banaji as a woman and a member of a minority group had felt the firsthand sting of discrimination, yet she showed a very strong racial preference. She said “it was a truly disconcerting experience” As a psychologist she was one of the first person to label what is now known as fast thinking as “Automatic and Implicit stereotyping”.

Our ability to categorize and recognize is a vital part of our survival, but we have taken stereotyping too far. “When we stereotype we take gender, the age, and the colour of skin of the person before us, now our minds respond with messages that say hostile, stupid, slow and weak, these qualities aren't in our environment, they don't reflect reality” says Dr.John Borough, of New York University. And so it becomes even more clear that our mind will match general things such as gender, age and skin colour with hostile words because society has taught us to label people in such a way. Furthermore this ostracizes people from groups and leads to societies creating and grouping with people of similar race, skin colour and gender.

A study conducted in 2003 by the University of Chicago proved that employers with job openings were 50% more likely to callback the person if they had a white name. The girl who spends hours studying in school to help her get a good job will face trouble getting work because she has a “black” name but another girl who may not have worked as hard or be adequate for the job will have an arbitrary advantage because her parents decided to give her a “white” name.

A study conducted in 2009 by Harvard Research Institution in 2009 found that African- American applications with no criminal record were offered the job at a rate as low as white applicants with criminal records. How would you feel if you didn't get a job that you were highly qualified for but instead a white male with a objectionable criminal record did. Why should a qualified black male man have to suffer because our society has stereotyped him to be dangerous and incompetent.

How can we combat “fast thinking discrimination”? We can train ourselves to not hold implicit biases on race, gender, sexuality, class or any form of identity. The change is not going to be instant as these stereotypes have been put into place over hundreds of years. And it will take another hundred years to remove these stereotypes from our society. It will take generations before our brain change and stops relating negative words with people of specific people,cultures, genders and skin colours. It will take personal as well as united perseverance to change long-held and stereotypical ideas of race, gender, sexuality and ability.

Wouldn’t you want to live in world where everyone was treated equally and fairly. Where young girls are not staying up till late and night to live up to stereotypical expectations, where everyone has a chance to be equal and weren't discriminated against based on things they can't change.

By Anisha Sullivan