Race & Weapons

Over at Tolerance.org, they've got some interesting tests, rather like the Implicit Assumption Tests. Since this morning I'm obsessing over race and last week I went shooting, I thought I'd mix the two together and see how I fared. I'm actually pretty good, or I test pretty well.

Your data suggest little or no automatic racial association with Weapons or Harmless Objects

The score above has already been corrected for the order that you performed the task. If your score was 'Inconclusive', click here. Compare your score above with the distribution of all respondents scores below.

This table does NOT contain your data. This data is from a random subset of others who completed this task, and reflects the percentage of people who fell into each level of bias or no bias.
Interpretation Percent of Total Respondents

Strong automatic association between African Americans and weapons 29%

Moderate automatic association between African Americans and weapons 13%

Slight automatic association between African Americans and weapons 23%

Little to no automatic racial association with weapons or harmless objects 26%

Slight automatic association between European Americans and weapons 5%

Moderate automatic association between European Americans and weapons 3%

Strong automatic association between European Americans and weapons 1%

If your test showed a "preference" for a group, the result points to a hidden, or unconscious bias. The results of over one million tests show that unconscious bias exists in most of us.

I favor these tests because I firmly believe that they can be indicative of what people really believe. In my time as the Boohab, arguing about race with people realtime all over the net, I concluded that it's about what people believe and the reasons for that which are mostly to account for racism in this nation. Unfortunately most debates about race don't get to such matters, rather they focus on external events and ethical behavior in response to racial conflict.

As an aside, I made a couple mistakes during the test which I think the researchers might find significant. I twice misidentified a black maglite flashlight as a weapon instead of a harmless object. Can you guess why?