Page 325 - The Social Animal

Prejudice 307

Direct and Subtle Forms of Prejudice When most people
think of acts of prejudice, they imagine overt behavior—the kind Ian
12
Ayers and his colleagues discovered when they sent black and white
car shoppers to 90 automobile dealerships in the Chicago area. Using
a carefully rehearsed, uniform strategy to negotiate the lowest possi-
ble price on a car (a car that cost the dealer approximately $11,000),
they found that white males were given a final price that averaged
$11,362; white females, $11,504; African American males, $11,783;
and African American females, $12,237.Thus, all other things being
equal, when it comes to buying a car, being African American or fe-
male puts a person at a disadvantage. (Since then, comparison shop-
ping on the Internet has helped level the playing field for car buyers.)
But many otherwise decent people, despite their best efforts to be
open-minded, are nonetheless capable of subtle acts of prejudice. In-
deed, many investigators, like Thomas Pettigrew and his colleagues, 13
believe that indirect—and perhaps more insidious—forms of preju-
dice have largely replaced the blatant kinds of racial bigotry expressed
by many white Americans in the past. Today, most people probably
think of themselves as unprejudiced, even though they may continue
to discriminate against minority-group members in less obvious ways.
Prejudice also has subtle but important effects on the behavior of the
targets of prejudice, too—on the behavior of women and minority-
group members. Most people are unaware of these effects, whether
we are the ones holding the prejudice or the recipients of it, and in-
deed a majority of Americans believe that discrimination is no longer
14
a barrier to life success, but research suggests otherwise.
For example, sociologist Devah Pager recently enlisted pairs of
15
well-groomed, well-spoken college graduates with identical resumes
to apply for 350 entry-level jobs in the Milwaukee area. Half the ap-
plicants were white; half were African American. Within each group,
half admitted to having served 18 months in prison for cocaine pos-
session. The question was this: Who would be called back for an in-
terview? Employers clearly preferred the white applicants. Those
with a clean record were called three times as often as the blacks with
a clean record. Among the ex-convicts, the employers called back the
whites twice as often as the blacks. Indeed, the employers even
showed a small preference for white convicts over blacks with no
criminal record. Skin color, it seems, still outweighs character where
hiring is concerned—unless the applicant is a truly exceptional indi-
vidual, such as Colin Powell, Tiger Woods, or Barack Obama.