Chapter 12 First Impression

I highly enjoyed taking the tests. I chose to take the tests on race and sexuality, and my results were that I had a moderate preference of gay people over straight, and of black people over white. While this may seem interesting at first considering I am both straight and white, I was raised in a highly liberal and open environment (Boulder, Colorado) which had an affect on my home life, my social life and ultimately on my beliefs later in life. Being brought up in this type of environment means that white privilege and superiority were not tolerated in the slightest in any of the communities that I was a part of. This made it so that in a way I harbored a slight resentment for the stereotypical ‘privileged’ person (straight, white, financially stable, male), and because of this I began to more enjoy the company and views of those who did not fit that profile and express the views associated with white privilege.  I enjoyed the experience of taking the tests because it was interesting to see how similar my own perceptions of my views were to my actual results. I think this test could be extremely useful for college students in identifying and bringing underlying biases to the surface. I believe the only true way we are going to combat stereotypes and various ‘-isms’ (racism, sexism, ageism) is by educating others not only on the harm of stereotyping but  also by bringing to attention how many people truly posses these slight but harmful biases. I think this would also be helpful for my future career. As a social work major, it is going to be very important to be able to determine and get to the root of underlying biases to be able to eventually eliminate then.