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blue bits. red rocks.
Wednesday 23 September 2009

The scientific data suggest two strategies that are, however, effective in addressing unconscious prejudices that can turn up the volume on other concerns. The first is to remind people of their conscious values, which tend to be our better angels on race. The average American strongly agrees with the sentiment that, “In America, we don’t discriminate against anybody because of their color, ethnicity, or anything else”—whether they see that as a statement of actuality or aspiration. And they mean it—and will act on it, as long as their conscious values are active and guiding their behavior. The second is to speak directly to the conflict between those values and the attitudes we hold at some level that we wish we didn’t—like the way most of us would respond to the immigration issue if it were about pasty Englishmen instead of brown-skinned Mexicans. It’s about talking to people like grown-ups. That’s the message the White House and Democrats should have taken away from the speech then-candidate Obama delivered last March in Philadelphia that saved his candidacy, rather than pretending that Jimmy Carter doesn’t know what racism looks like. Drew Westen

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