In a speech Wednesday afternoon, Colgate University Professor Jack Dovidio '73 said white people still discriminate against black people, although in different ways than in the past.
Dovidio, a psychology professor, gave a speech called "Modern Racism: From Individual to Social Policy," to about 35 faculty members and students in the Hinman Forum of the Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences.
Dovidio is one of the final candidates to replace George Demko as the Rockefeller Center Director.
In his speech, he said recent statistics show an apparent decrease in white-on-black racism. He cited a study that shows more whites said they would vote for a qualified black to be president.
But he said those statistics can be misleading. "The patterns of discrimination showed some inconsistency," he said.
He said a people are biased for cognitive, motivational or socio-cultural reasons.
Dovidio said there is a much shorter list of reasons why people are not racist. He said he has done studies looking at "normal" people who are not overtly racist, but may still be biased.
He said these people will not discriminate when discrimination is clearly defined, but said their negative feelings will be "expressed in subtle ways when the appropriate behavior is not clearly defined."
For instance, he described a situation where whites would be asked if they would help a person in trouble, who would be either white or black.
If a white person believes he is the only one aware of the situation, the subject shows no bias, he said. But Dovidio said there is bias if the subject believes other people are aware of the situation.
"If you give people an excuse not to get involved, they accept that excuse," he said, "but more so with a black victim than a white victim."
He said these studies lead him to believe that the perception that prejudice is disappearing from America is wrong. He said prejudice is not disappearing, but changing.
"It's not that blacks are worse than whites, it's that whites are better than blacks," Dovidio explained.
Dovidio further explained that by showing tests where he has seen that when people have time to think, they tend to associate negative characteristics equally with whites and blacks but positive characteristics more with whites than with blacks.
And when the test is done subliminally whites associate negative characteristics more with blacks than whites -- the negative feelings "exist below the level of people's consciousness," Dovidio said.
An implication of his findings is that because whites may have subliminal prejudice against blacks, they will tend to give off more negative body signals when talking, he said.
"You could be telling me as a person of color that you think I'm good, but your non-verbal behavior is saying you think I'm not good," he said.
The solution to this is to have the two groups work together towards a common goal, Dovidio said.
