Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

by Isabel Wilkerson

What kind of person is likely to carry this kind of unconscious bias? “This is a wonderful person,” Williams said, “who has sympathy for the bad things that have happened in the past. But that person is still an American and has been fed the larger stereotypes of blacks that are deeply embedded in the culture of this society. So, despite holding no explicit racial prejudices, they nonetheless hold implicit bias that’s deep in their subconscious. They have all these negative images of African-Americans so that when they meet an African-American, although self-consciously they are not prejudiced, the implicit biases nonetheless operate to shape their behavior. This discriminatory behavior is activated more quickly and effortlessly than conscious discrimination, more quickly than saying, ‘I’ve decided to discriminate against this person.’ “This is the frightening point,” he said. “Because it’s an automatic process, and it’s an unconscious process, people who engage in this unthinking discrimination are not aware of it. They are not lying to you when they say, ‘I didn’t treat this person differently, and I treat everyone the same.’ They mean it because, consciously, that is the way they see themselves. These implicit biases shape their behavior in ways they are not even aware of. The research suggests that about 70 to 80 percent of whites fall into this category.”