Author Archives: smithls

The common wisdom is that the United States is now enjoying a ‘post-racial’ era. So strong is this view that it is presently being employed to justify efforts to roll back the Voting Rights Act and to end affirmative action programs. Nonetheless, it is a myth. Let’s set the record straight: almost every serious academic study reveals racism to be alive and well in the United States. Indeed, prejudice towards blacks by whites actually has increased in recent years according to a 2012 study by scholars from Stanford University, the University of Michigan and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. This commentary examines some evidence of this situation and argues that is it not irremediable. I do this by adopting an interdisciplinary approach to understand racism in society while drawing on recent findings of cognitive science. I argue that some whites are intentionally seeking to maintain their privilege in society by strategically popularizing belief in a black pathology while simultaneously promoting the idea that America is a post-racial society. Continue reading →