Aversive racism

According to Yale professor John Dovidio, conscious prejudice has declined over time, but unconscious discrimination (called “aversive racism”) has stayed fairly constant.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof cited Dovidio in a 2008 column, when Barack Obama was first running for president: “Faced with a complex decision, [Prof. Dovidio] said, aversive racists feel doubts about a black person that they don’t feel about an identical white.” Kristof went on to quote the professor: “‘These doubts tend to be attributed not to the person’s race – because that would be racism – but deflected to other areas that can be talked about, such as lack of experience,’ he added.”

Prof. Dovidio’s findings can equally be applied to the issue of Israeli policy in the disputed territories, whereby “aversive racists” unconsciously discriminate between Jewish Israelis and Arabs, attributing doubts about the former that they don’t feel about the latter.

Their doubts aren’t attributed to the former’s race (“because that would be racism”), but are deflected to areas that can be talked about, such as “settlements,” the demolition of illegal Beduin construction – furthered by European funding and caused in great part by Beduin polygamy – and discrimination against the inherent rights of Jewish inhabitants – for example, in underprivileged areas of Tel Aviv – in favor of infiltrators from African states.

Likewise, Europeans fear to compare the impact of Muslim urban settlement enclaves on prior Jewish spatial existence. Sweden’s Carl Bildt weighs in on Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel while countenancing the Muslim takeover of the Swedish city of Malmo – at expense of the town’s prior Jewish community space! KARL HUTTENBAUER

Berlin