What was your experience like completing the Implicit Association Tests? Did you feel stressed? Anxious? What were your thoughts while reading your results? Were you surprised? Upset? Or, were your results what you expected?
I felt anxious during the tests because I felt that they would reveal my implicit biases toward whiteness, and it did. I definitely feel uncomfortable and embarrassed about that result. It was also frustrating to read in the results that there's no real way to change our implicit biases. Becoming aware of my biases is important, but it's hard to accept that they are beyond my control. I was also interested that skin tone and race biases were part of two separate tests, as I've never really thought of these two concepts as very distinct. When it came to the last test and my result was no association between Asian / European and Foreign / American, I was relieved. But it also made me look back at my past and specifically my childhood, and realize that this could have been influenced by having many Asian American people/kids in my community but fewer Black people. In school, Asian Americans were generally part of the white social groups, but Black students were not. I think this probably reflects the status of Asian Americans as a model minority, as well.
