Racial Stereotyping - "Colour Coding"

It's automatic.

Or so says Jones & Fazio (2010) in "Person Categorization and Automatic Stereotyping Effects on Weapon Identification". It was published in the Personality and Psychology Bulletin, 36(8), pg 1073-1085. The corresponding author is attached to the psychology department of the Ohio State University.

Stereotypes are cognitive representations of categories of people and their associated attributes. In the absence of individuating information, they allow us to 'predict' others' actions (ibid). I'm not sure if stereotyping really corresponds to action prediction, but I do know that under certain situations, even the most liberal and cosmopolitan people will make that mistake.



I did. I once met Andrew, who's Australian. His parents were Malaysian Chinese immigrants, but he's born and raised in Australia, specifically Melbourne. We were cycling together and introduced ourselves. Once he mentioned Malaysia, I immediately associated that with his racial features - Chinese - and asked "which parts of Malaysia have you cycled in?"

His answer was that he didn't. I committed a deeply regrettable faux pas. I've always known that I don't think very well during or immediately after sports activities. I told myself not to conflate race and nationality Down Under and have succeeded in that up till that moment. It seems that fatigue weakened my cognitive beliefs and led to "stereotype activation".

I've recently met a PhD candidate from Victoria University doing research in immigration and law. It's on a scholarship by the Australian Government. We happened to meet at a cafe and got on famously. I may be housing in with him soon. He's a cosmopolitan Australian: he's gone on diplomatic trips to Europe and lived in Singapore for a short time. His open-mindedness is most evident in his personal relationships: he's dating a Chinese woman from Singapore. I met him for dinner one night after he completed a day of research. Tired and distracted by some journal articles on ethnicity I put before him, he accidentally blurted out "The Islamic races..."

He didn't even notice it. When I stopped him and pointed it out, he apologised. It looks like mental fatigue is another factor in automatic racial stereotyping. It seems like the salience of race makes it an automatic de facto form of cognitively representing people. Sure, it commits some of the worst travesties and disasters in human history, but what can we do about this "colour coding"?

I'm working on an essay about colour-coding, how's it created and it's manifestations in public and private affairs. So far, it does not look good. Reducing people to the colour of their skin is to deny their individuality.

As Fanon (1952) writes in 'Black Face, White Masks', "The man who adores the black man is as abhorrent as the one who abominates him." Both reduce him to a stereotype.

We in the social and psychological sciences have much to do...