Black Male Faces More Likely to Be Seen As Threatening
Seeing an angry face on a black man makes whites more likely to view other African-American males as threatening, a new study finds.
By: Tom Jacobs | July 22, 2009 | 18:53 PM (PDT) | 
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Many details remain unclear regarding the recent arrest of Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates at his Cambridge, Mass., home. But this much is certain: Police sped to the residence after someone reported a break-in in progress. A black man attempting to push open the stuck front door of his own house was assumed to be a burglar.
To many columnists and commentators, the incident strongly suggests that racism — and specifically a tendency to stereotype black males — is alive and well in Obama-era America. Their fears are backed up by a just-published study, which suggests white Americans have difficulty discriminating between angry and non-angry faces of black men.
A research team led by psychologist Jenessa Shapiro of the University of California, Los Angeles conducted a preliminary study and three experiments to determine whether whites are more likely to perceive facial expressions as threatening if the face in question belongs to an African-American male. Their disturbing results are detailed in their paper “Following in the Wake of Anger,” which was published online Tuesday in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
In the key experiment, 36 white American college students viewed an online slide show in which pairs of faces appeared on a screen in succession. All were of men between 18 and 35 years of age. The first face had either an angry or a neutral expression; the second had a neutral expression. Participants were asked to rate each in terms of how threatening the person came across, on a scale of one to nine.
When an angry white male face was paired with a white male face wearing a neutral expression, the second, neutral face was judged as less-threatening. However, this entirely logical result did not hold when the two faces in question were black.
“Instead, white participants failed to reduce their judgments of threat when a (neutral) black male face followed an angry black male face,” the researchers report. “Indeed, after viewing an initial same-race angry face, black males were seen as more threatening than white males, even though the faces were pre-tested to be equivalently neutral.”
The researchers attribute their findings to “the association of black males with physical safety threats. We note, however, that limitations in our design preclude us from fully disentangling whether these findings are driven by specific beliefs about black male dangerousness vs. a more general bias to favor the ingroup over the outgroup.”
Either way, the study suggests that for whites, the stereotype of the threatening black male is easy to activate. Once it’s lodged in the mind, it is then unconsciously projected onto others of his race and gender — even distinguished Harvard professors.
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Who really cares what whites think?
The study is not really relevant to the events with the professor. The professor WAS angry ... and followed the cop out onto the porch spouting racist invective. The cop WAS trying to communicate with his dispatcher: he couldn't do it in the kitchen and he couldn't do it on the porch. Even on your own property you do not have the right to interfere in that communication.The professor, not knowing that a white neighbor had called in a burglar report in order to protect his home, assumed that the cop was racially motivated. That, after all, is the professor's specialty.Yeah, an apology is due. From the professor to the cop. The professor assumed racism on the part of the cop --just because the cop was white.The sword cuts both ways. Anyone with enough intelligence to form an opinion is capable of racism.
I think that "anonymous user" who claims that Gates was spouting "racist invective" is proving the point about how many white Americans harbor unconscious racial bias. Gates's account of the incident is that, while Gates went to get his ID to prove he lived there, the cop followed him into his house without asking permission. This makes sense, given the circumstances. If Gates knew enough not to step outside for fear of what the cop would do, he'd be unlikely to have invited the cop in.The cop refused to give his name or badge number, according to Gates's account and only for that reason did the professor follow him out onto the porch. That, too, makes sense. He was outraged at the disrespectful treatment in his own home and forgot his earlier caution.And no, the professor's specialty is NOT as "anonymous user" characterizes it.The professor assumed a racial motive which can't be proven and said so. Even if he was wrong in his judgment about the motivation behind the cop's bullying behavior still have a first amendment in this country. The cop had no cause to arrest Professor Gates once he determined that the 911 call was made in error. He should have apologized immediately for the inconvenience as he almost certainly would have done to a distinguished Harvard professor of a lighter skin color.Comments like "anonymous user's" show us how far we have to go to get to post-racial America, our black president notwithstanding. - signed, Anita B.
Tom Jacobs - the "angry" black face is the face of popular culture, hip hop and rap - since Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre in the 90's (white kids act black now)...you're either an extreme leftist liberal consumed with so-called "white guilt" or you're a racist. If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck it is a duck, not racial profiling. And there's a very good reason why we call Cambridge, Massachusetts "The Peoples Republic of Cambridge" - on par with San Francisco and communist China.
Gates is a racist - check out his YouTube videos/
I was actually glad to see that out of all that has transpired in the Henry Louis Gates and Police Sgt. Crowley incident, the appearence of a united front on part of the Cambridge Police, as seen in a press conference held shortly after the incident. This appeared to be a united front of both Black and white ranking officers, male and female. It also occured to me that this incident might be a shinning example of how we have indeed entered a new era--one where you're either a cop, or little people. No one, Black or white, wants a police state. But it seems that this aspect of the issues is not something the news media will want to cover. So for me the broader and more salient question might be something about the nature of policing that begins with the problem of racial profiling which has more to do with respecting the rights of individuals. But we end with the crisis of our lives in a society that so willingly betrays its Civil Rights gains by promoting white guilt which is a more virulent form of American racism. Maybe this is part of what makes this issue so difficult to address. As an Afriamerian male, I have no doubt that my response to being confronted or accosted by the police, acting on the presumption that I am buglarizing my own house, would have been not pleasant. But here is perhaps another crucial point that Dr.Donald Cheeks attempted to address back in the mid-70's. When Black people are endeavoring to assert themselves, something familiar happens on part of whites; our assetiveness can in many cases be misconstrued as anger or hostility. But, my frustration with the Cheeks studies and others like it is that it does not give enough attention to countless intervening variables that comprise interpersonal interactions. Such perspectives deprive me of my uniqueness as an individual as much as a any persons, Black or white, might presume that I am either ofay or very strange in fact unbelievable as a Black man because I try to write and speak English-yo, waz up wit dat! And by the way, just a brief comment to Tommy Florida, in regard to the "People's Repblic of Cambridge" where I've been a good many times as my daughter attemded college there, there are people who are homeless everywhere, most of them are white, not Chinese. I say this to point out that we can't pigonhole any one communities problems, but it is smart to point out the dilemma's one story at a time.
Written By:Tom Jacobs
Tom Jacobs is a veteran journalist with more than 20 years experience at daily newspapers. He has served as a staff writer for The Los Angeles Daily News and the Santa Barbara News-Press. His work has also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Ventura County Star.
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