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Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases

livescience.com

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Re: Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases

#21

Post by dabent »

carbocation wrote: post #4

This is a novel finding and does help parse out the difference between how gender bias and racial bias form. That said, I wish people would stop talking about Williams syndrome as if it were, on the whole, desirable. Yes, these people are blessed with some desirable traits. They are also cursed with cardiovascular defects such as aortic and pulmonary stenosis; renal defects; vitamin D metabolic defects; and often del…

>I wish people would stop talking about Williams syndrome as if it were, on the whole, desirable.

I have a relative with WS. She's got a great personality, but has health issues that no one would want. Her intelligence is also well below average and she can't live on her own.

Re: Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases

#26

Post by epochwolf »

bigboote wrote: post #23

In a related study, blind people showed no racial bias due to skin color.

+1 best this actually does point out something important.

If you are incapable of forming biases about your environment, you are blind to the environment input that generates racial bais in most people. As pointed out earlier, this trait is also fatal in the wild, as blindness would be.

Re: Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases

#27

Post by lukifer »

tjic wrote: post #25

The clear implication is that racism has adaptive value for primates, or at least did in the period when we layed down this trait.

It's tribal cohesion, pure and simple: keep close to those like you, and fear those not like you. I wish there was a more widespread understanding that "racism" is just one facet of our instinctual fear of the other.

Re: Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases

#28

Post by billybob »

"Despite their lack of racial bias, children with Williams syndrome hold gender stereotypes just as strongly as normal children, the study found. That is, 99 percent of the 40 children studied pointed to pictures of girls when asked who played with dolls and chose boys when asked, say, who likes toy cars.

The fact that Williams syndrome kids think of men and women differently, but not blacks and whites, shows that sex stereotypes are not caused by social anxiety, Meyer-Lindenberg said."

Call me a crazy ignorant bigoted redneck, I don't think there's ANY bias in these kids minds. These kids do not think black kids are naughtier than white kids because they don't have the deep-rooted xenophobia we all do, so they just observe that on average, white and black kids are equally likely to be nice or mean.

On the other hand, girls ACTUALLY DO play with dolls more often than boys do, and boys ACTUALLY DO run around making explosion noises with their cards more often than girls do. It's not sexist to observe that. Whether you want it to be that way or not is a different question. Whether what you want is realistic is still another.

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