[Sherman]

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Wow. I am quite surprised at the responses in this forum. Lots of obviously racist remarks; but beyond that, the quality of responses can be characterized as less than thoughtful.

Here are some facts based on, oh I dunno, scientific evidence:

1) Racism is real in America.

2) The number of criminal acts of discrimination (behaving in a way towards a person of another race that is unfair or harmful, simply because of his or her race) has been gradually decreasing.

3) One reason for this decrease is due to an increased stigmatization against racists.

4) The increased stigmatization against racists has resulted in an increase in a) covert racist (see my earlier post) and b) reverse racism (see my earlier post).

5) Because of this trend towards covert racism and reverse racism, the number of acts of discrimination has been reduced; However, this has not reduced the level of racial prejudice and racial stereotyping in this country (see my earlier post).

6) Someone mentioned that it is human instinct to be racist. That is yet to be identified, however, science has shown that it is human instinct to have an increased liking for those similar to you. Which isn't very different.

7) David's hypothesis isn't totally wrong either. Science has also shown that people tend to join together when faced with a common enemy. However, I just don't think his hypothesis explains as much of the variance (in decreased discrimination) as do my earlier points.

For a forum which prides itself on facts (though often mathematically derived), this particular post has an absolute lack of factual evidence presented. I found it shocking.

R. Sherman
Ph. D. Student Personality/Social Psychology

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You haven't mentioned any "facts" either...just someone's hypothesis--no citation, and I seriously doubt there is some massive body of research verifying a widespread phenomenon known as "reverse racism".

That's why so much of psychology is known to be mushy dreck...you guys get all excited over practically any half-baked notion that sounds like it MIGHT be plausible. A physicist of my aquaintance makes the point when he says that psychologists get all excited when one some study shows a 2 standard deviation anomaly whereas physicists don't even bat an eye until they get an experimental result that's 4 SD from the norm.

Which is why physicists build things like nuclear bombs, while decades later psychologists are still fighting off Sigmund Freud.

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A couple of points:
1) In another post I clearly cited the book: "Prejudice and Racism" by James M. Jones. And no, I did not provide citations in the post b/c no one here is gonna go look them up anyway. But most of that post can be found in the aforementioned book. The citations in the book can lead you directly to the research articles validating the aforementioned claims. You can get the book on Amazon for under $12.00 if you are so inclined (although I'd wager that you won't)

2) Your friend is a physicist? That's great. Science is very important. However, because there is very little variability in physics it only makes sense that they would be concerned with things that are 4 SDs from the norm. In psychology, the measuring tools are imperfect and we attempt to measure something much harder than physicists do, one of the most variable objects in the world, HUMAN BEINGS.

When the object of measurement is quite variable, which causes the measuring tools to be somewhat imperfect, of course we should get excited about something 2 SD deviations away from the norm. Outside of 2 SDs is approximately the top and bottom 1% of people. Don't you think that there must be something interesting about them?

I'd sure want to know who was in the top 1% of "most likely to committ murder" wouldn't you? (note. example is hypothetical).

R. Sherman
Ph. D. Student Personality/Social Psychology