The recently released movie, BlacKkKlansman, captures Ron Stallworth’s work in the late 1970s as an undercover cop in his Ku Klux Klan investigation. As an African-American police officer, he infiltrates the Klan’s ranks by impersonating as a racist white man. Having a white detective take his place for face to face encounters, he eventually receives his certificate of membership and successfully cons a KKK grand wizard (Taylor, 2014). **Haha, I love it.**
Stallworth’s story proves the ignorance and irrationality of this organization. Stallworth’s success caused a decline in support of the Klan and the publication of a black empowering book and movie. Deliberate actions like these are arguably the only way to end both explicit and implicit racism.
In an effort to define the different forms of racism, many neuroscientists have begun to divide racism into either explicit or implicit racism. Explicit racism is a term used when describing acts of racism such as the organization of hate groups, like the KKK, using racial slurs, or consciously supporting racism (Quianna, 2018). It is the conscious decision that some individuals make to support their belief of oppressing a group of people depending on the color of their skin.
On the other hand, we have implicit racism. This is the unconscious bias we have when making judgments about people of a certain race and ethnicity. This is shown when someone dismisses job and college applications, expresses microaggression, or subconsciously supports racism (Quianna, 2018). This bias develops from everything we experience throughout our lives. From the books we read, movies we watch, and the people we meet, they are all factors that develop our implicit racism (Gladwell, 2005). It is this form of racism that can only end through deliberate action and conscious thought.
These two forms of racism play a huge role in America’s history and how we live our current day to day lives. Yet, as already alluded to, explicit racism is arguably dying. For instance, in the 1920s the KKK was at the peak of their strength in America. They had fifteen percent of the eligible population in their cult, which reached as high as four million members (Moore, 2018). Now the KKK is at a mere 3,000 members (Trimble, 2017). Therefore, at first glance, it would appear racism has been on the decline for quite some time; however, this does not address the other side of the coin.
On the other front, the fight against implicit racism has remained at a standstill. Scientists are aware of this due to implicit-association tests (IAT). IAT measures the association between concepts by pairing two together and timing how fast someone can categorize them. The assumption with this test is if one can categorize two words together quicker than another two then our subconscious brains believe they have something in common.
The IAT for racism tests how well we associate people of color with the word “bad” and Caucasian faces with the word “good”. Through Project Implicit, I found that sixty-eight percent of participants have some amount of preference over white people compared to black people (Greenwald, 2011). To make matters worse, Malcolm Gladwell conducted an IAT only on African-American participants. Shockingly, he found that about half of the participants have a stronger association with whites than they do with blacks (Gladwell, 2015). In large, these results showed us just how inescapable implicit racism is in all Americans today.
If explicit racism really is as weak as it first appears, then how is implicit racism still so evident in our mindsets? How could so many of us advocate for equality when our subconscious is stuck in the 1920s? In short, this is because today’s society was built by white people, and therefore is structured for white people. As previously said, implicit racism is developed through everything we experience. Those experiences all build on themselves because with subconscious thought comes subconscious action. One may not even notice the speed he or she dismisses a job application because the first name is stereotyped as a “black name” (Ziegert and Hanges). Or even question the whitewashing of America’s history books.
Implicit racism is a problem that we can only change through deliberate action. Through conscious action that goes against our unquestioned, subconscious thoughts. One that fights this “natural process” of white people on top and black people on the bottom.
Ron Stallworth’s police work was not just extraordinary because it helped weaken explicit racism, but it also did the same for implicit racism. His publication of black empowerment has now been published for the world to read and watch, which is one step in the right direction for our subconscious minds to remember.
Please feel free to read the next post as I discuss a specific example of how our subconscious minds affect our world in unexpected ways.
The Whole Series is Now Available:
Bridging Our Understanding of Racism (Part 1)
How Unnatural Racism Is (Part 3)
Implicit Racism, the Racism you Never Knew About (Part 4)
Just How Present is Racism? (Part 6)
It’s Time to Take Action Against Racism (Part 7)
Work Cited
Gladwell, Malcolm (2005) Blink in Black and White Blink Pages 77-88 ELAINE BROWN
Greenwald, Tony, et al. “ProjectImplicit.” About the IAT, 2011, implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/iatdetails.html.
Moore, Leonard. “Ku Klux Klan.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Oct. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan.
Quianna, Canada. “Implicit vs Explicit Racism.” The Responsible Consumer, 15 Sept. 2018, theresponsibleconsumer.wordpress.com/implicit-vs-explicit-racism/
Taylor, Matt. “The Black Undercover Cop Who Infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado.” Vice, Vice, 30 May 2014, www.vice.com/en_us/article/wd4gym/we-talked-to-the-black-undercover-cop-who-infiltrated-the-kkk-in-colorado.
Trimble, Megan. “These States Still Had Active KKK Groups in 2017.” U.S. News & World Report, U.S. News & World Report, 2017, www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2017-08-14/the-kkk-is-still-based-in-22-states-in-the-us-in-2017.
Ziegert, Jonathan C. and Paul J. Hanges. “Employment Discrimination: The Role of Implicit Attitudes, Motivation, and a Climate for Racial Bias.” Journal of Applied Psychology 90(3):553-562