The Black Paper

The Page Six cartoon - caricaturing the police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut - has created considerable controversy. The cartoon shows two police officers standing over the chimp’s body: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill,” one officer says.

More recently, a photo emerged, taken from a window display at a Georgia bookstore. It shows several books featuring Barack and Michelle Obama, and then shows another book, positioned squarely in the center of the display, that features a monkey.

While this demonstrates the undercurrent of racism in the collective consciousness, what is less apparent is how race and racism operate predominately at the subconscious level, which in many respects, makes it more insidious, less apparent and, seemingly insolvable.

It seems insolvable because no one has addressed the real, underlying issue: cultural conditioning.

There is a tool called the Implicit Association Test or the IAT. The Race Test measures unconscious or automatic associations of “good” and “bad” with Black and White people.

Continue reading Veronica’s post at Huffington Post.