Reddit reviews Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

Part of the problem here is that racism isn't just on the scale of "I hate blacks and I want to lynch them" (or as everyone seems to refer to it in comments below, "real racism"). Racism is also when your brain keeps track of every time you see a black person commit a crime, but forget about all the white people who commit crimes, and use your confirmation bias to then conclude that black people are mostly criminals. It's the small, subconscious racism that's the problem.

In the past, outright racism was okay - you could be a racist in public, and you wouldn't lose respect for it. Nowadays, being explicitly racist is looked down upon (e.g. this guy gets downvoted for most of his comments). It's become part of the social consciousness that racism is bad, and that you shouldn't be racist, and anyone who says racist things is a bad person.

No one is ever the villain in their own mind. In our own heads, in our own story, we're the good guy. (This is one of the big sources of cognitive dissonance - when we do something that we personally think is bad, we start making excuses for why it was okay to do it. For a good read on that, check out Mistakes were made (but not by me), it's a really good book.) And so, people think to themselves, "I'm a good person, and good people aren't racist, so I shouldn't do or say racist things."

That's great - that's a huge improvement over explicit racism. But while the conscious mind does have some input into the subconscious, it's not a lot. So thinking to yourself "I'm not racist" doesn't mean you won't ever have racist tendencies.

Send each of two groups of people a resume that is identical except the name - one group gets a resume that has at the top a typically "white" name and one gets a typically "black" name. Recruiters in the first group will rate the candidate as more qualified on average than people in the second group, even though the qualifications were identical. Every single one of the people rating the resumes will tell you they're not racist; and when it comes to explicit racism, they're not. But they still have a bias against black people that hasn't disappeared, and that they don't even know about.

So when you say that racism isn't something you see, I won't argue with that - you probably don't see it. But I doubt that you've never been exposed to it. It is real. It does happen. But being white, you've never had to deal with it. You've never gotten rejected from a job and had to wonder if it was because of your name, or been stopped by police when you weren't doing anything illegal or even suspicious, or any of the other number of subtle racist things that go on every single day.

I know that hipster racism feels like it's proving that you're not racist ("Look, I'm so not racist, I can say racist things and it's funny because we all know I'm not racist!"), but it exacerbates that inner, subconscious racism both in you and in other people. I don't really know what the solution is, other than, when a black person tells you that you said something racist and it bothered them, don't defend it. Don't say it was just a joke, because to them it's not a joke, it's their life, and they have to deal with that crap for real every day. Say sorry, and try to figure out why you said it and how to not say something like it again.

And I just want to add on the end of this... I may have said something offensive or racist or condescending in this comment. Please tell me if I did. I went to a small private Lutheran school, and a small private Lutheran college, which means that 99% of the humans I interacted with before graduation were upper-middle-class whites. I then worked as an engineer in the (semi-)rural Midwest, which meant more of the same. So while I try to not be racist, I know that the privilege I've been unduly awarded my entire life simply due to birth probably creeps in to what I say. It's not that I want it to - I simply haven't ever had to deal with it myself, or had someone point it out to me. Please, please say something. Because I want to correct the subconscious part of me which I know is lurking down there.

TL;DR: Most of us are probably still subconsciously racist, no matter how much you want to not be. Joking about racism probably makes that worse not better.

EDIT: Removed what I had in the edit before because people were taking it out of context and using it as an excuse to whine about how persecuted white guys are, which is really not the point. Yes, I think racism against white people is bad too. No, (in the U.S.) it's anywhere near as prevalent or harmful as racism against minorities.

Oh, believe me (or don't) I've spent many hours studying the subject of cognitive dissonance, if you or the people out there would like a good primer on the subject this is a great book about it. And I agree Fox likes creating what's called a siege mentality within it's viewership and itself, their level of intellectual dishonesty is quiet nauseating.

Curiosity.

Who is saying this? Who's paying for this message? What is their motivation? Why are they trying to persuade you? What do they stand to gain? Why are they invested in telling you this?

Read "Mistakes Were Made"

http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0151010986

Þeim mun meira sem fólk veit það gerði eitthvað heimskulegt, þeim mun meira reynir það að verja það. Þetta virðist vera harðvírað í hausinn á okkur og hefur sennilega á einhverjum tímapunkti gefið okkur náttúruvalsforskot. Bók.

Hey já, það er hvorki venja í íslensku að tala um "pírata", né um "partý" í þeim skilningi sem hér er átt við. Þetta á eflaust að vera fyndið grín en hljómar bara kjánalega.

Answers to these questions can be found (generally) in this excellent book which I've read and enjoyed greatly. Be careful though, introspection can be painful.

Protection of self-esteem makes people become entrenched in their decisions, regardless of accuracy of those decisions.

Great book - Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)


http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0151010986

I think what you're talking about is mostly the anchoring effect, though because people's first impressions are based on what sources of information they seek, and they tend to seek sources of information that will agree with them, the backfire effect plays a role here too (edit: in fact, the article on the backfire effect uses the lack of impact of corrections in newspapers on opinions as an example).

Previous post:

That is a thing. I've never heard discussion of its implications in politics. I forget the name for it, but it's related to cognitive dissonance. I read about it somewhere in this book. If I find it and discover a name for this particular phenomenon, I shall report back.

I'm pretty sure it was Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) <https://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0151010986/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8> that I read catharsis (with regards to anger) is a totally bogus concept.

Actually a pretty good book if you like to know why people (or yourself) do things the things they do.

Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0151010986

In many ways, this book is nothing too special, because it is a piece of non-fiction that describes some parts of human nature that are pretty broadly understood by educated people. However, I think it fills a nice gap, potentially giving a reader a level of understanding somewhere between what he might get reading the wikipedia pages for "cognitive dissonance" and "confirmation bias" and what he'd (hopefully) get from a lifetime of accumulating wisdom and humility. These are concepts I think most people are implicitly somewhat aware and wary of, but this thorough exploration can reinforce the reader's decision making skills in a very positive way.

If you want to learn more, this is a really well written book on the subject.

This book (psychology) has an interesting take on how normal, healthy people might end up convinced to have seen aliens.

At the very least, it teaches you that the brain is not as reliable as most people believe, and that your memory is not as trustworthy as you think it is...

Not denying anything, just saying that alien conspiracies always seem to be based on eyewitness accounts and not actual evidence.