JOMC 441 IAT Post

I took the Asian IAT, and after ten incredibly overwhelming, stressful minutes, got the result "a little to somewhat biased," which sort of surprised me. Not going to lie, my first reaction was, "but I'm not racist!" This post, though it may seem like it, is not about blaming someone else. Obviously I was the one who took the test. But I do think a lot of factors went into my results.

First, the test itself was a little crazy. It took way more effort for me to remember which category was on which side than it did for me to associate Asian people with American things or vice versa. I, for some reason, just could not wrap my head around the categories. Then that ominous, "Don't take too much time or your results won't be accurate" thing came up, which made me really nervous, so I'm not sure how focused I actually was.

Secondly, coming from a small town where I knew two Asian people, it probably shouldn't be very surprising that most of my exposure to Asian-American people was the media, which meant stereotyping their "non-American" attributes. After years of this, I think anyone would be "a little to somewhat" biased.

Anyway, the test gave me interesting things to think about, and I plan on taking a few more of the tests in the future, if I can get my stress levels down from the first time.