Psychology Today thinks black women are unattractive

ETA: The outcry over the article in Psychology Today has apparently been strong enough that the magazine has removed it from its website.  However, no explanation has been offered, and the editors at Psychology Today need to strongly disavow such sexist and racist articles.  For more on this controversy, read on.

I wasn’t planning on blogging today, but it seems the media is working overtime to promote outrageously sexist and racist views.  Thanks to Tim Wise for posting on facebook about  this Psychology Today article, entitled (and I am, sadly, quite serious): “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” (note: as the article was pulled, this link takes you to the full article on another site, with a slightly edited title)

The “study” is based on interviews to determine how attractive the respondents are. This is, shockingly, called “objective.”  Here’s the author, describing the process.

“…the interviewer rates the physical attractiveness of the respondent objectively on the following five-point scale:  1 = very unattractive, 2 = unattractive, 3 = about average, 4 = attractive, 5 = very attractive.  The physical attractiveness of each Add Health respondent is measured three times by three different interviewers over seven years.”

Stopping to note that “women are more physically attractive than men”, the author suggests that black women are (and here’s that word again) objectively less attractive than women of other races. He attributes this finding to black women’s overall higher levels of testosterone.

Now let’s just take this apart for a moment.

The first question that springs to mind is why anyone would even think to conduct research around this question.  The very basis of the study speaks to a Eurocentric bias within the field of psychology, and a desire to rank different races, to prove that white people are better than people of color.  It speaks as well to sexism within the field, in the focus of resources on determining which women are the most attractive.  This approach reduces women of color, in particular, to physical bodies and objects of desire.

The second question is how the researchers could possibly have viewed their results as objective.  When you ask a group of people to rate the attractiveness of different people, their findings are inherently subjective.  They are based on social conditioning that is influenced by the myriad systems we operate in from the time we are born.  Certainly, the media shapes our view of beauty, of masculinity and femininity, and of race and ethnicity.  We are constantly inundated by advertising, movies, music videos, news coverage, and more, to teach us what is beautiful, how men and women should look, and what is valued in society.  Other institutions, like schools and religious institutions, support these views, and make them part of our consciousness.

The Psychology Today article feeds this bias by trying to place its respondents into neat gender boxes, with societally-defined standards of beauty, and then claiming that these standards are objective.  If this article shows anything at all, it shows the societally-produced bias that each interviewer has internalized.  And it shows how blind those who benefit from media bias can be to the existence of that bias.

Tim Wise has called on us to call Psychology Today to protest.  I’ll be calling.  The number is 212-260-7210.

How the media helps keep racism alive

At CARE, we talk a lot about how ridiculous the idea of a post-racial society is.  To be clear: the fact that the United States elected a black president does not diminish the real race discrimination that people of color experience every day across the country.  The myth that we are in a post-racial era is one that is intended to appease white people’s consciences, and to argue against programs and initiatives that combat racism.

But when we argue that we are not in a post-racial society, we definitely don’t mean this: a new study shows that white Americans believe that racial bias exists, and that it is targeted against white people.  The Wall Street Journal reported on a study that appears in the May issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, which surveyed 209 white Americans and 208 black Americans across the country.  In short, white Americans believed there had been a steep

decline in anti-black bias: from 9.1, in the ’50s, to 3.6, in the ’00s. But more striking, according to the researchers, was the sharp increase in perceived anti-white bias: Among whites, it shot up from 1.8 to 4.7.  White Americans, in short, thought that anti-white bias was a greater societal problem by the ’00s than anti-black bias.   (emphasis added)

It should go without saying just how backwards this result is, but apparently things really do need to be spelled out.

On the whole, people of color in our society experience constant and ongoing discrimination and oppression by multiple systems, while white Americans experience privilege and opportunities within these same systems.  In fact,the authors of the study acknowledge this.  Michael Norton of Harvard Business School, one of the two authors, points out:

“If you look at any metric you might want to use—childhood nutrition, educational opportunities, salaries—black people in America continue to have worse outcomes than white people.  But the feeling of being discriminated against is a very powerful feeling for anyone, whether accurate or not.”

So where’s this “feeling of being discriminated against” coming from?

There has long been opposition by some white people against affirmative action.  This is based in a denial of the existence of racism, and as the authors of the study point out, the idea that racial politics are a zero sum game.  If people of color get ahead, then white people must lose out.  But during the Obama administration, we’ve seen conservative media work overtime to create this mythology of anti-white bias. Feeding on these existing fears and biases among mainstream white Americans, the media has elevated its discourse to a fever pitch.  Cases of perceived anti-white bias have been created out of thin air, and then spread throughout the media outlets to become part of the national consciousness.

Do these examples ring a bell?…

• When President Obama spoke out about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., Glenn Beck of Fox News called the President racist, adding: “This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”
• When Judge Sonia Sotomayor was being considered for a Supreme Court position, a speech surfaced in which she had pointed out that a white man and a Latina would likely bring different life experiences to the act of judging a case.  Taking particular offense at her reference to a “wise Latina,” her opponents argued publicly that she was racist against white people.
• When conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart posted part of a video of Dept of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod speaking about her experience in dealing with a white farmer, the media siezed upon what was presented as anti-white bias.  She was forced to resign from her position in the storm of media controversy.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Is it any wonder that white Americans have increasingly bought into the idea that they, and not people of color, are the targets of bias and discrimination?

White Americans have a responsibility to think for ourselves, and to challenge media framing.  We have a responsibility to challenge ourselves to undo racist messaging that we have been taught since we were children.  Is it truly an American value to believe that white people should get ahead, at the expense of people of color? Can white America dare to challenge the concept of a zero sum game, and instead to advocate for equal access to resources?

The media in turn has a responsibility to reflect the reality of the news, and not to contribute to racism.