According to a soon-to-be-published study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, a majority of people think less of someone if they are simply referred to as “black,” rather than “African-American.” It seems that socioeconomic status is the driving force behind this view, as people seem to think that being black means you make less money than someone who is African-American.
The study—authored jointly by researchers from Emory, Columbia, and USC—suggests that even in the professional world, serious racial biases impact someone’s ability to get a job. Simply carrying a professional organization with either “black” or “African-American” on your résumé can seriously impact one’s chances at getting a job.
There’s also this interesting finding:
“In one of the study’s experiments, subjects were given a brief description of a man from Chicago with the last name Williams. To one group, he was identified as “African-American,” and another was told he was “Black.” With little else to go on, they were asked to estimate Mr. Williams’s salary, professional standing, and educational background.
The “African-American” group estimated that he earned about $37,000 a year and had a two-year college degree. The “Black” group, on the other hand, put his salary at about $29,000, and guessed that he had only "some" college experience. Nearly three-quarters of the first group guessed that Mr. Williams worked at a managerial level, while 38.5 percent of the second group thought so.”
While the authors don’t really have a suggestion for how to change all this, the findings should at least make you stop and think about which of these “PC” terms you use, and why.
[via The Atlantic]
