Three in Ten

According to today's Post, three in 10 people, in an ABC News/Post Center survey, admit to race bias.

What this means:

All surveys are subject to what is called a "social desirability" bias. Therefore, if someone approaches you with a clipboard and asks you if you believe that exercise and a healthy diet are part of your daily routine, you are likely to answer "Yes"--even if you have been stopped on your way to fulfill at daily urge at the nearby Ben and Jerry's--because you want to be viewed in terms that you believe are socially desirable, rather than the more ugly and human truth.

Therefore, when three in 10 people admit to a race bias, we can be sure that the actual rate is higher.

This is especially true when we are dealing with a particularly repulsive characteristic like racism (more powerfully loaded for social desirability than, for example, age bias). Few will admit to holding the view--often, even to themselves.

As a result, the bias takes many different forms, beyond the blatant bigotry that one may think of when first asked the question.

One may think, for example, that they are not biased against race--just against a perceived "arrogance" that they have never stopped to consider that they allow for more easily in some people than others.

They may intellectualize their bias by creating a stereotype or straw man of the holder of unbiased attitudes--rather than of the target of their bias. This, I'm sure, was akin to focusing on the supposed intellectual naivety of the abolitionist 150 years ago, as a screen for their more essential perspective. We see the equivalent of this today--scan the blogs.

They might also want to believe that they are beyond such fearful, impulsive and banal reactions--congratulating themselves for the simulacrum of a reaction, in an act of self-deceptive and illusory personal consistency, likely to crack at the first powerful test, in a cloud of inarticulate (or unarticulated) and unexamined scattered doubts.

Cracking the crust of deep and hardened attitudes and taking a core sample has its own difficulties. Having the focus, persistence and courage to evaluate those attitudes in yourself, to an extent that you will allow them to change your behavior, rather than fading into the easy familiarity of the past, is a far greater challenge.

However, in the face of the all-too-familiar difficulties of the past 8 years, it is an imperative.

Just as the unexamined life is not worth living, the unexamined vote is not worth casting.